White Van
It is easy to take a person when they won’t be missed right away. The key is all in the timing. If they are out for a walk, they may be missed within an hour. Take them when they are going to the store, maybe two hours. A movie or church, three hours, (but really, who goes alone?). My personal favorite is shopping. No one know how long they will be gone and you can have upwards of six hours before someone starts to worry.
Where you take them is most important. You need to do the job and leave, preferably to an arterial road. Interstates are the best, so for me it’s a parking lot at a large mall. I park my white van next to their car and wait for them to walk up. They never see me. Nobody ever sees a white van.
Nobody.
It takes me awhile to notice one. They are so few and well hidden in the masses. It takes a truly trained eye, like mine, to see the subtle clues. The way they trip on the small steps, or their awkward gait. If you can get close you can smell the disinfectant. I figure their eyes don’t adjust as well as ours as I see them stumble.
They know I’m out here, looking; and they are getting better at hiding.
When I do find one, the door slides open and with a swift pull of lasso pole, much like a dog catcher, they fall right in. A taser and a roll in plastic with tape to wrap it up nicely, then drive off and no one ever sees them again.
When I first started taking them I would ask about the impending invasion, their forces and technology. Anything to help us when that day arrived, their ships over our heads. But they never talk. Just mumble and scream and pray and cry. Don’t try and make me feel sorry for you.
Don’t you try that on me.
The walls are gray and smell like disinfectant. The people wear white, some with many keys. I smile at all of them, but they don’t like me. It’s not pity, nor apathy, but purposeful distaste for my being there. I can’t say I blame them. I would have slid a shiv between my ribs without an afterthought if I didn’t know the truth either.
Criminally insane. That’s the phrase I couldn’t remember. So much is a fog now, the drugs potent and numbing. I shuffle across hard linoleum from one room to the next, my robe hanging open. I like the colors on the quiet TV. I like the little candy pills in the paper cup. The water tastes funny and isn’t that cold. I can smell something decaying, but it is fleeting; vaporous.
I am alone, watching the tree line from behind the steel mesh. There are flat boxes on the floor, board games loosely stacked by some crazy person. No, that doesn’t narrow down the field in here. I sit at the window and look to the sky. So clear and clean. The woods far off remind me of my other life, the cabin and my van, the people and all the holes. So many holes. So many bones. The shovels were well worn.
“Shit man,” the voice is shrill as clumsy feet scatter a Monopoly board, the wispy thin young man catching himself on a chair back. “Clean this shit up, man.” I watch him and he sees me, his eyes wide as he lifts his chin. “We need to be proud, right my brother?” he says to me. I nod.
“Righteous,” he says and walks up to my window, his fingers locking into the steel mesh. “Inside, outside, me-side, right-side,” he says leaning forward and back. I am still in my chair watching him. He looks down to me as he presses his face into the steel. “I am here. I am safe.”
“Safe from what?” I ask.
“At least for now, until I’m sprung,” he says in joyful arching of his back, his face smiling to the ceiling.
“Sprung?” I ask. “Nobody gets sprung from here.”
“Oh, my brother,” his chin now down, his face earnest, his eyes clear. “They are coming, and I am safe.”
“Safe from who?” I ask. I know the answer.
“Safe from the demon in the white van,” he whispers.
I smile.