Distracting the Hunter

He’s clearly not here to shop for butterflies, this guy, and the way that he keeps invading the space of this woman that he is clearly hitting on is getting my hackles up. When he puts his hand on her shoulder again, laughing at some joke he made, I decide I’ve had enough.

“Hey man, which butterfly were you looking at again?” I say moving into his space to get his attention. “Was it this one?” I add, handing him a random piece to his total confusion.

The Power of Belief

“The creative God-law of the universe... is all around you and in existence for the fulfilling of your every right desire,” I read.

A man shambles into the subway car and collapses into the seat next to me. He is clearly in the middle of a nod, and he seems to be falling over in an impossibly slow spin as he tries repeatedly to clear his sinuses by blowing his nose into his hand over and over and examining the contents in amazement.

As ropes of snot congeal between his fingers before his dulled, twitching, half-lidded eyes, I try to imagine some words I could say, some action I could take that would benefit him, something that would help to set him on a path away from this catastrophe next to me, but in the moment, I can’t think of a thing.

Swiped Out

I swipe my card through at the subway turnstile as soon as the guy in front of me goes through, but something about the way he goes through causes it to bounce back and then forward again, which uses up my swipe. I stand there, befuddled for a second - there’s no place to buy a Metrocard, and since I have a monthly, I can’t use it again for another eighteen minutes (an eternity in New York).

I sigh in annoyance, and turn to make my way up the stairs and down a block to the next entrance, where I know I can buy a single use Metrocard and get on my way, when a woman stops me.

“Hey,” she says, smiling, “I’ll swipe you in."

A Kind Of Theft

The woman selling her photography at the market has strung a chain across her booth so she can run grab some food. The chain is more symbolic than anything else, as it wouldn’t keep out anyone who was truly determined to come in, but most people stroll by without disturbing it.

One young woman, however, walks up with her friends, rifles through the rack of postcards the owner of the booth has at the front of her booth, pulls out a picture she likes, and snaps a photo of it with her phone. Expressionless, she slips the card back into the rack and walks away without a glance backward to see if anyone noticed.

Frantic

“You seem kind of frantic,” Katie says after I arrive home.

“I’m not fra.., I mean, I did close up the booth and then have to go back for my phone and my headphones, and then when I got to the subway there was this huge group just standing there that I had to sort of weave-slash-push my way through, and then this one girl waited to swipe until the person before her went through, even though you don’t really have to....”

“To be fair, it does look like those big subway turnstiles are going to eat you,” she interjects.

“Yeah, but only if you never seen them before, and then I was going down the stairs to the L and everybody was in my way and..., you know, maybe I am frantic."

Malware

“I saw that thing you texted,” Katie tells me. “But you should know that on Facebook, Instagram, texts, whatever, I won’t open stuff that has Trump’s image on it, so I didn’t open it.”

“Cool, well, you know how they’re doing that Trump emergency broadcast thing tomorrow at 2:18 where he can send a text directly to your phone, so I sent you a calendar request telling you to turn your phone off at 2:10.”

“Oh,” she says, her voice audibly calmer, “thanks."

Temporal Anomalies

After about four hours in the booth, I looked at my watch to find I’d been here about thirty minutes. Time seems to behave... differently, here.

"⏱has🛑” I text Katie, whom I relieved when we changed shifts half-an-hour ago.

“For some reason, the booth has been sucked into a wormhole,” she replies, confirming my suspicions.