404 Documents, Installment Five: Interrogation.

(Read all 404 Documents)

The interrogation room was nothing special. An office conference room. The ceiling fan whirred slowly overhead and the fluorescent lights flickered, flooding the interior with a dingy and unnaturally greenish yellow hue. The man seated opposite me was husky, forty-something going on seven-hundred, and world-weary. I could tell this from the lines and bags under his eyes, like the rings on the inside of a hewn tree. Those sunken circles made his face seem like that of a raccoon's, which may have been comical in any other setting.

“I’m Agent Trevino,” he said, the tone of his voice doing nothing to dispel my narrative.

The 404 Documents, Installment Four.

In a similar way, all of us were having a Grand Olde Time playing dress up in our MotherHiveBrain issue hazmat suits, when - as if out of nowhere - sirens and loudspeakers blared through the acoustically reflective mall: STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

Everything froze and then broke into chaos, like a giant pane of glass that shudders for a moment and then POOF! explodes in a great huff of shards. Down the hallway, we could see a group of mall cops pointing in our general direction, throngs of those mannequin people pushing and shoving in all directions, and behind them stood real cops in SWAT gear. We all took one look at one another and tore off in the opposite direction. Ripping off our masks, we scattered down side corridors and into random stores, depositing pieces of our costumes in trash bins and clothing racks as we went.