The Weird Look Immunity Phenomenon

I was in the bowling alley, looking for someone. I couldn't remember who, exactly, but I knew it was important that I find this person. As I walked by the concession stand, I noticed the man behind the counter was staring at me. He looked familiar, but before I could get a second look, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

A woman was standing behind me. She was tall, with dark hair, and old age hadn't found her yet, but she was clearly on its hit list. She looked worn out, as if she'd tried unsuccessfully to pull an all-nighter and woken up halfway through a sleep cycle. That, and she was dressed like the strippers I had seen at Isabella's the night before. It was a very strange overall effect. "Can I help you?" I asked. She just stared at me blankly, like the concessions man had been doing before she distracted me. Then she began babbling. I couldn't understand a word she was saying. Normally I wouldn't have been weirded out by this; when I was a kid, my parents often had their "important" discussions in Chinese, to prevent me from asking questions, but the speech didn't sound like a foreign language. If anything, it sounded inhuman. I smiled at her as best I could with the chills running down my spine, and turned around to walk away. I froze.

Somehow, I was now standing at the other end of one of the bowling lanes, right where the pins should have been. Everyone in the entire building was staring at me now, and the middle-aged alien-speaking stripper woman had vanished. As I stood there, trying to figure out a way to escape this frighteningly mortifying situation, the people in the room stopped talking and slowly moved towards the end of my lane, consolidating into one enormous, glaring mob. I was unsettled by the silence, and my first instinct was to put my hands in the air as if I was being arrested.

I couldn't move.

I began to panic, trying frantically to move any single muscle in my body, but I was completely paralyzed, stuck in the face of the silent, immobile crowd watching me. Oh, but now they weren't immobile! The middle of the crowd parted like a cheesy Moses reference, and I noticed that one person hadn't moved. The concessions man, still staring at me, put down his half-formed pretzel dough and came out from behind the counter. It was only now that I recognized him as Mr. DuBolaire.

"I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Chen," he said, and I wanted to scream, "ZHENG!," but my lips were as frozen as the rest of me. He made his way slowly through the crowd, without breaking eye contact, and as he grew closer to the end of the lane, I realized how far away the concessions stand must have been, since I could now see that he was twice as large as a normal man. His monstrous form, hunched over slightly to avoid contact with the ceiling, reached down and grabbed a strangely shaped bowling ball from the machine. He began to laugh maniacally, and the entire congregation of people joined him until it was a cacophony of evil cackles. Lightning struck the building from outside, and sparks flew everywhere, adding a loud banging noise to the laughter, just as Mr. DuBolaire threw the ball down the lane.

With deadly accuracy, the weird ball flew towards me, never even bothering to touch the polished wood. Some kind of yellowish silky strings flew behind it. The instant before it hit me, the room fell silent (except for the banging) just long enough for me to hear a scream.

"DAD!"

The bowling ball was Xiu Li's head.

It hit me square in the chest, and everything went dark. Nothing was left except the obnoxious, jarring banging.

Banging noise?

I woke up, and sat bolt upright. Fuzzballe, still on the couch next to me, looked affronted at me for disrupting her sleep. (Cats are good at that sort of thing.) Looking down at my sweaty hands, I sat there wiggling my fingers for at least five minutes, just to make sure. Wow. I looked at the clock. 4:55 AM. Ah, the reliable racket of room 704. I was still breathing heavily from the nightmare, and my hands shook as I made my coffee. I had never felt so alone in the apartment, especially with the newly chilly weather. It was still dark outside, but I couldn't even see any lights. I figured it must be foggy. I sat down with my coffee and turned on the TV. Again, there was nothing on. Oh, wait. There was a rerun of the same damn slug program. Who the hell cares enough about slugs to watch it the first time, let alone again!? I sure didn't, so I turned it to an infomercial channel. It's pretty pathetic when you intentionally choose to watch infomercials over everything else, but what can I say? I wasn't feeling like slugs.

Fuzzballe had never moved from her spot on the couch, so I petted her as I learned four different ways that a Snuggie could change my life, all the reasons why I was desperately in need of a Personal Vortex space heater, how ChristianCouplez.com found the perfect match for Alexis, 21, from Texas, and that I should ask my doctor about Cialis (but should stop use if I had an erection lasting more than four hours).

Curses upon room 704 and their noisy pipes. I was losing brain cells just watching this crap. Thankfully, after a few more rounds of before/after pictures, it was time to leave. I gathered my stuff (including a lunch this time!) and headed down the stairs. Whoa. It was chilly. I went ahead and put on my blue mailman's jacket as I exited the building. It was foggy outside, too.

The bum from the day before was already sitting outside the clinic. I nodded at him as I went by, and then felt like an idiot. Oops. Well, it was the thought that counted. Rather embarrassed, I walked on. As I neared the end of the block, an enormous silhouette appeared through the fog. A bus was rounding the corner from H Street. As I watched, the bus jolted and came to a halt, blocking the most space possible. The driver got out and looked at the bus. I asked him what was going on.
"Eh. Bus stalled."
Thanks, dude. I hadn't figured that out.
I tried to walk around the bus to get to the police station, but it was blocking the street, and I couldn't cross. Fabulous. There didn't seem to be any way around the bus, and I couldn't see around it well enough for jaywalking. I ended up walking all the way back down the block and crossing the street at the three-way intersection. It's worth noting that this time I told the bum "hi" out loud.

As I passed the apartments on the other side of the street, I noticed a small tent peeking out from above the roof. This mystified me, but by now I was in a hurry to get to work, and there wasn't even time to go ask about Xiu Li. I jaywalked on the other side of the bus, where I could see better, and walked into the post office.

Mr. DuBolaire walked through the main area just as I came in.
"Ah, Mr. Chen," he said. "I see we've learned our lesson about punctuality, eh?" I would've hit him, except that he was my boss, and I was now rather scared of him thanks to a certain dream. "Yes, sir," I muttered grumpily. He walked by me, stopped, and turned around. "Oh," he added, "I've just remembered. Do you have the money for the truck?"
Okay, now I really wanted to punch him. I'd forgotten about the shopping cart fiasco.
"No." I couldn't bring myself to add the "sir" this time.
"Well then, my friend, I suppose you'll be taking another walk today. Won't that be fun, just you and your--" He chuckled before adding, "--shopping cart?"
I left the room. Again, my proficiency at exiting places is overwhelming nowadays.

Well, there wasn't much else to do. I jogged over to Forever 21. The same woman at the counter saw me coming and quickly pretended like she had something important to do.
Oh, right. You have to help a customer this early in the morning. Honestly, girl, the kind of people who spend time at Forever 21 only get up this early if they have to blow-dry their hair. I called after her, "Excuse me!"
She ignored me.
Thankfully, another girl was also there. (Again, there weren't any customers. Why were there two employees there this early? But I wasn't complaining, given the circumstances.)
"Can I help you?" she asked me pointedly.
"Yes," I said, with as much dignity as possible. "I was wondering if I could borrow another shopping cart."
She looked at me like I'd just walked into a clothing shop in a mailman's uniform and asked to borrow a cart.
"What?"
"Well, um, I returned the one from yesterday."
She still looked puzzled. "Why do you need a shopping cart if you're a mailman?"
I thought about it. "Well, my truck is crashed-- I'm out of-- my daughter is-- my boss is a jerk. Let's just leave it at that."
She gave me a surprisingly sympathetic look. "Alright. Just please return it again."
I smiled gratefully and took a cart.

As I crossed the street with my mail "truck," I noticed that the bus was still parked in the same spot. Huh. I went past the pet store, and looked up towards the apartments to get another glimpse of the tent. I was startled. A man was up on the roof next to the tent. As I strained to get a better look, another guy came out of the shop behind me.
"Why are you standing outside my shop?" he demanded. "You look ridiculous with your damn shopping cart, gawking at the apartments' roof."
I jumped. "Sorry, sir," I said. I mumbled something about a basketball being up there that looked like a childhood toy I had, and hurried off halfway through my pathetic attempted lie, for fear of what he would say next.

My route remained uneventful until I got to the coffee shop. I had an envelope to deliver. Apparently, 24-hour just doesn't mean anything anymore, since several people were waiting outside the closed building. The group was mostly adult men, but there were a couple of teenage girls, too. Most of them looked pretty reserved and sullen, but a couple of people were talking. They stopped and stared at me. "Uh, hi," I said. "Is the shop closed?"
One of the girls finally responded, "Yeah. Why?"
"I've got mail for the people who run the place. Could one of you possibly give it to them when they finally open up?"
No one said anything. They all just stared at me. Me with my obnoxious shopping cart full of mail.
Cool, guys.
"Well, alright then," I said, and pushed through to stuff the envelope under the door.
The staring was getting to me now; it was just a tad too much like my nightmare.
I started walking away down the street, and broke into a run after just a few yards. Today was weird. Awkward and weird. That whole interaction meant that now I missed Xiu Li more than ever; she's never awkward about these things. Somehow, she always knows how to keep conversations going, and she doesn't seem to worry about what people think of her. I don't feel weird talking to my daughter. It's everyone else that's the problem. I guess that's why her friends' moms never invite me out to lunch (that, and I'm a much younger father who sometimes calls at 5:30 in the morning... never mind).

I continued on my way, with a quick lunch stop around 1:15. When I finally finished my route, I had started aching again. I didn't know how the hell I was going to make it through my ridiculous shopping-cart-mail-route enough times to get the money for the truck. Everything was hurting. My feet hurt, my knees hurt, and if my self-image was a body part, I'd have been hospitalized. I limped back towards the post office like a plant towards light: longingly, but very slowly. Sigh. I went back to Forever 21, walked into the store, parked the cart, and left. The girl at the counter probably gave me a weird look, but I had essentially received the ultimate vaccine for weird looks over the past few hours, and I didn't register it.

Finally, I was finished with work for the day. I trudged down the block to the police station, suddenly blessed with a lot more energy due to my fatherly worries. I ran through the door with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm, in fact, and slammed into the inner door with a lovely thud. The guy at the main desk was Bruce [The Awkward Clumsy Sleeping Man], who was asleep again. The loud noise woke him up, and almost made him fall out of his chair again. Once he realized that the noise had been my face and torso colliding with the glass door, he tried so hard not to laugh at me that he turned a marvelous purplish color. Sometimes I feel like the God of Awkward Situations has adopted me as his earthly manifestation. I recovered, opened the door, and hoped desperately that the security cameras hadn't caught that little mishap.

Bruce noticed who I was at this point, and stopped laughing. "Oh, it's you." That's a lovely greeting. Why doesn't everyone use it on their Christmas cards?
"Yes, it's me," I said, and bit my tongue to stop from adding, "and that door is dangerously transparent." Instead, I opted for "I'm inquiring about my daughter again."
"Ah." He looked confused. Or maybe that was just his face. He seemed to look like that a lot.
After a pause just long enough to make me uncomfortable, he yelled, "Ricky!"
Officer Richard came out from the back room. "Bruce... I've told you not to call me that." He shuffled a bit, and then noticed the reason for his summons, that being me. "Well, hello again!" he said. Then he faltered.
"Did you, uh, find Julie?"
"Xiu Li," I said, "and no. She wasn't at... the place you said your friend said that I should look because she might have been."
He looked somewhat relieved, and then said, "Well... we haven't really heard anything else. Would you like to leave your cell phone number so you don't have to keep coming down to the station?" Bruce looked up eagerly, apparently happy to have fewer encounters with me.
"Uh, sure." I wrote down my number, shook hands with Officer Richard, and left.

I figured it was about time to take some action of my own on the whole matter of Xiu Li's disappearance. I mean, she must've just gotten rebellious or something, but this was getting ridiculous. Or maybe she was hiding. I forced myself to come up with irrational yet strangely reassuring explanations as to why my daughter was missing, and then gave up entirely and went back to fretting. I decided to make some fliers, like people do for their dogs. I hoped that wasn't offensive.

I headed back home, and crossed the street to take another look at the mysterious tent on top of the apartments. By this time, it was getting dark, so it was hard to see anything. With some very stealthy eye maneuvering, I managed to make out an outline of a person. It wasn't the same guy from before. It looked like a woman. She quickly moved out of my line of sight, but I lingered for a minute, and heard very faint voices coming from the roof. There were two of them. I hoped they weren't up to anything disturbing. But honestly, in this town, there are a lot of strange bums. I decided to be glad for the two of them for having found company in the homeless world. I couldn't pick out what the voices were saying, so I went on my way home instead of lingering to stalk further.

I climbed the stairs with heightened awareness of the load my knees had been taking. I was brainstorming book ideas for my situation, with titles like "The Shopping Cart Mailman: How to Lose Weight, Money, Time, and Children" and "Why Wait for Old Age? Feel the Pain Now!" I must confess that I actually had to sit down and take a breather in between the third and fourth flights. When I finally got into the apartment, I threw off my jacket and shoes and lounged on the couch for a few minutes before inspecting the refrigerator. Oops. I had eaten basically everything yesterday. Bummer. It looked like I was going out to eat. But first it was time to make the fliers.

I found some scratch paper and tape, and then went through the photo albums. That, although necessary, was not a good idea. It made me all the more worried about where Xiu Li was and what horrors she'd been subjected to. I think I was extra fragile emotionally because of my impressively traumatizing day and my growling stomach, but I actually teared up a little. I felt a bit like I'd failed the fatherhood test, as if the orphanage had only let me have Xiu Li as some twisted examination, and I was being evaluated right then and there on how long it took for me to track her down. For the umpteenth time that day, I smothered the voices in my head, and continued flipping through pictures. I found a pretty good one of her modeling her new swimsuit in the living room, but I figured that'd probably be creepy to hang up all over town. I settled on her school picture from the year before, even though I could almost hear her protests ringing in my mind.

I pasted the picture sloppily onto the paper, and then emblazoned the flier with the words "MISSING DAUGHTER: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TEEN?" and a phone number. I figured that looked like we'd had a fight or something, so I added "she's not in trouble, just missed dreadfully!" That looked even stupider, but I was noticing the correlation between extra modifications and extra failure, so I left it at that. Wait, no... "and she's not a stripper." I didn't want that problem again, but I added the last statement in small letters at the bottom of the flier. Perfect. Now I was finished. I briefly toyed with the idea of making a "FOUND CAT" flier to hang up next to it, but I decided that could wait at least until I found Xiu Li. Fuzzballe was good company, and Xiu Li has always liked animals. Maybe we could keep the kitty.

I took the makeshift poster and descended three flights of stairs before going back up to get a jacket. Damn the whole seasons thing.

I realized almost immediately that I had no idea where to find a copy machine other than the police station. Perhaps the school? I got to the bottom of the stairs, left the building, and changed my mind at least three times about whether I was going to copy the flier first or go eat first. I managed to guilt myself into making my daughter a higher priority than sustenance, and walked down to the school. The doors were just as locked as they had been the last time I checked, but as I dragged my tired feet dejectedly down the street, it occurred to me that perhaps the orphanage would have one. I knocked.

This time, someone answered the door without leaving me standing there. A tall, dark-skinned man let me in, and was surprisingly accommodating to my arbitrary copy machine needs. He didn't ask too many questions about the flier itself, which was wonderful, although he did mention something about having talked to her the night she disappeared. He didn't seem to have much of an idea of where she went, unfortunately. I left with a stack of MISSING DAUGHTER papers and a smile. Hanging up posters as I went, I headed in the direction of Casa D'Waffle. I hung one on the door and then entered.

The place was actually fairly quiet for this time of the evening. I guess maybe other people had some pretty hectic days, too. The service was pretty quick, and I left not that long after, having eliminated four waffles from existence.

Now, with a full stomach myself, my thoughts turned to Fuzzballe. Although this was a welcome respite from constantly pestering myself with worry about Xiu Li, it came with some problems of its own. I realized that no matter how many vermin lived in our apartment (I'm not aware of any, but you never know), I didn't have anything to feed the cat with. Oh, well. I hoped the pet store was still open this late, and I walked for what I hoped was the last time all the way across town. My feet were essentially numb at this point from so much walking, and even if they had bothered me, I assured myself that I would inform my feet of their stupidity, since I was being a good father. I passed the apartment building with difficulty, and promised it that I would return as soon as possible. I then realized that promising things to inanimate objects was probably one of the first signs of insanity. Or maybe that was one of the infomercials on mental illness medicines coming back to haunt me.

I got to the pet store just in time-- Alfonso was just about to close the place. I pleaded with him to sell me some cat food before he left for the night, and he finally consented. I hung a poster on the door, and then followed him inside. I bought the cheapest brand of cat food that didn't smell entirely like garbage. I couldn't figure out why Alfonso was so grumpy, though. He seemed almost suspicious that I had a cat. Ironically, there weren't very many cats in the pet shop. It occurred to me that perhaps the cat was a runaway from the store, but I blocked that thought with a firm belief that since I hadn't stolen it, nothing was wrong. I paid for the food, and then headed for the exit. I pushed open the door with the annoying little "ding" that pet store doors always seem to make, and Alfonso followed me out, locking the door right after I shut it.

I was just about to leave with my newly purchased cat food when something disturbing caught my eye.

The MISSING DAUGHTER poster I had just hung up on the door had already been taken down. Not ripped-- the tape was completely removed along with the flier. I was pretty shaken by this, and asked Alfonso if he'd taken anything off the door when I wasn't looking.

"Nope." He didn't seem to be lying; he mostly just sounded like a cranky guy who wanted to go home and stop being bothered at closing time. I didn't blame him. "Probably got stolen by that dumbass Russian dude who took the rest of the animals." He laughed, rather bitterly, and walked off into the night.

I wondered to myself if the 'dumbass Russian dude' was currently living on the roof of the apartments, barely visible from the store. I decided that wasn't worth chasing him for. I took another sneak peek at the roof. I really couldn't see anything this time, and it was pretty late. I headed back down the block to Castle Apartments. As I went up the stairs, I couldn't help but ponder the matter of the roof. Who was this random, apparently Russian guy, and who was the woman talking to him? More importantly, why didn't they want me to find my daughter? Maybe they knew where she was.

This last thought sent a huge wave of anger through me. Had these two people kidnapped Xiu Li? Were they going to hold her for ransom? I tried applying the brakes on this train of thought, but trains have a lot of momentum, so that failed. After all, this Russian guy had apparently already established himself as a thief. But why my daughter? And why hadn't I heard anything?

There were too many questions, and by now, I'd reached my floor. I went into the apartment and let my worries go for the night. There wasn't anything I could do at the moment, I told myself. After all, I couldn't see or hear anything on the roof after Alfonso left. Fuzzballe came into the kitchen, meowing. That was a welcome distraction.

"Here, kitty," I murmured, and fed her some of the cat food. After that, we lay on the couch and purred (well, okay, Fuzzballe did), and I watched some shameful chick flick that I never would have agreed to see if Xiu Li had been there. But, as it happened, and as I couldn't stop myself from thinking about, she wasn't.

I stayed up way later than I should have, especially considering the inevitable ruckus to ensue sometime shortly before five the following morning. After the chick flick finished, I watched a stupid sci-fi movie, some awful animated kids' show, and I think I may have caught a little bit of the news before I dozed off again. The last thing I remember thinking about was that I hoped I didn't have another nightmare.