The Lifter

Tony Monroe was perched eight feet above the sales floor behind the one-way glass of the security observation booth. In his left ear his boss, Mr. Reynolds, was yammering about something. In his right ear, Paul McCartney's voice, thin and nasally from the inadequate ceiling speaker, above Tony's head and neutered by whatever corporate conglomerate marketed the piped in music to department stores was singing With a Little Luck. It could have been piped directly from heaven, and it still wouldn't have muffled Reynolds' voice.

Tony focused his binoculars on the long legs of a blonde leaning over the jewelry case below as she browsed the display of gold chains. He traced her curves, turning the focus dial slowly to capture the best view possible.

"Tony - You still there?"

"Yeah, um- I'm still here Boss. I thought I had a stat there for a second."

Reynolds loved the term stat. Tony figured he had picked it up from a TV cop show, the same place he'd gotten his limited security experience.

"That's why I called Tony. Like I was saying before, you need to get your stats up if you want to keep your job." Paper rustled in Tony's left ear.

Tony clenched his teeth. There he was again using that word - stat- like he was an actual cop with a history of busts under his belt.

"You only have three apprehensions over the last three months. That just won't cut it -Tony." Reynolds spit out his name as if it disgusted him to even have to speak to about this subject again. "Do you know what the officers at the other stores are averaging?"

"There hasn't been any action lately. Everyone's buying. No one's stealing." He pulled the binoculars away from his eyes and let them dangle loosely around his neck.

"Don't give me that. Do you know how much your store is losing a month? People are stealing. You just aren't seeing it."

Tony bit his lip hard, fighting the urge to say something he'd regret. Reynolds could cite from computer print outs like there was no tomorrow, but he didn't know what it was like to be on the line. He was from outside the company and he had been handed a security management position straight out of college. He had a degree, but he had never actually had to spot the lifters and drag them back into the store as they screamed, kicked, and protested to high heaven, that they were innocent and the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

Reynolds didn't know how it felt to escort the lifter back through the store while legitimate shoppers gawked at you as if you were the bad guy, infringing on their happy shopping experience with all of the commotion. And above all, Reynolds didn't know what it was like when your eyes played tricks on you during a dry spell. He didn't have a clue that you could need a stat so bad, that your eyes could convince you that you saw someone shove a pair of rolled up jeans under his shirt, when they were simply itching their belly - An occupational mirage. Reynolds didn't know what it was like to make a bad stop - another cop show inspired phrase he liked to use when you screwed up and busted someone that hadn't stolen at all. You only got one of those and then you were fired for all of the legal troubles it caused the higher ups. He didn't know what it was like to worry each time you ran out the door to save the company's merchandise, that the lifter might pull a gun on you, because there was no way anyone was going to come between him and his next fix. No, Reynolds didn't know any of this. That was a college degree for you. He could talk smart, but he was blind to the way things really were. It all came down to the stats with him, so when it came time to answer to his boss, he would smell just fine.

Yes, even Reynolds had to answer to the man. It was this fact that gave Tony the strength, with the help of a little lip biting, to refrain from screaming what he really thought of him into the phone.

Tony unclenched his teeth and let out a slow, silent breath.

"I'm sorry. I'm just having a dry spell."

"I'd like to believe that, but I've been getting complaints that you have been spending a lot of time talking to the female employees. I'm also hearing that there is more than just talking going on."

Tony bit down hard on his lip again.

"Who complained?"

"Just bring up your stats. That's all there is to it." There was a faint rustling of paper on Reynolds' end, and then the connection was broken without another word.

Tony slammed the receiver down in its cradle. He glared through the one-way glass at the sales floor beneath him. Nothing was happening. What did Reynolds know?

Directly below his lookout, a balding man of about seventy, bellowed out a sneeze that sounded comically like a cartoon yelp of pain. Tony glanced at the old timer.

He wiped away a mucous glaze from his lips and chin and peeked into the handkerchief before crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it in his back pocket. For a moment, Tony considered saying "Bless You" in a deep authoritative voice from his hideout above. But the old timer might think it was God Himself blessing his allergies, and might drop dead right there. With all of the commotion that would cause, he wouldn't catch anyone for sure, so he decided against it. That was a stupid tradition anyway, to bless someone when they sneezed. He had always been told not only was it the polite thing to do, but it served a higher purpose as well. The way it had been told to him was that some people believed that when you sneezed, the soul left the body briefly, and by blessing the person, it prevented the devil from snatching it. But he had heard many stories when he was child that turned out to be lies - the eyes were windows to the soul, and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny came once a year. Stupid superstitions that he had grown to see as lies created by adults that didn't have all the answers they needed.

Tony's body ached from sitting on the ledge of the security booth, a plywood plank tacked over with paper-thin carpet to give the illusion of padding. Illusion or not, his body wasn't fooled. If that wasn't bad enough, it was hotter than hell in his little cubicle.

He decided to take a break since nothing was happening on the sales floor at the moment. As he placed one of his snakeskin boots on the top rung of the ladder that led up to his post and eased off of the hard seat, he sensed a quick movement in his peripheral vision that caused him to delay his descent into the darkness of the booth below.

What looked like a potential stat had entered the store and walked straight to a round rack of overpriced novelty print tee shirts directly beneath Tony's booth. Tony slid back into position on the thin plank and fumbled for the binoculars. He gazed through the tinted one-way glass at the man, if you could call him that. His stringy black hair flowed beyond his narrow shoulders. The hair was clean but uncombed, as if he had traveled through a hurricane to get to his destination. His pale cheeks were soft and smooth. He could have passed for a homely woman if the deep black triangle of hair hadn't jutted downward from his chin like an overturned trident. The man quickly cut his pale gray eyes sharply toward the mirrored glass that concealed Tony from the sales floor.

"Gotcha, you're a lifter," Tony whispered with a grin in the darkness of the booth. Lifters always gave themselves away.

The lifter stared a little too long at the mirrored glass. It was as if the glass was as clear as water and he could see right through it, sizing Tony up, as he himself was being scrutinized from above.

Tony turned the focus dial and zoomed in on the lifter. He wore a crisp, white ribbed tank top and long bell-bottom blue jeans he had probably lifted a decade before. The legs of the jeans pooled on the floor at the cuffs, concealing both of his feet. His complexion was colorless and his haggard frame looked like it would topple with the slightest breeze. It appeared like death was tapping him on the shoulder and if he didn't get a fix of some kind soon, he might have to turn and succumb to the tapping. He cut his eyes quickly toward Tony again.

Tony locked the binoculars on his empty, cold gaze. The lifter's eyes, a faded no color gray, were reptilian in their emptiness. He locked Tony in his stare, causing the hair on the back of Tony's neck to rise. It seemed as if the lifter was looking beyond the mirrored glass, through the binocular lenses and into Tony's bright blue eyes, burrowing into his thoughts. Tony shook it off with a shudder. This puny little runt wasn't going to psyche him out.

The lifter grinned wide and turned his attention to the rack of novelty tee shirts, and

thumbed through the selection of merchandise in front of him. He seemed to have forgotten about the mirrored glass above. It was like beating the bullet in Russian Roulette- lifters saw the one-way mirror and took a chance that there wasn't anyone behind it watching - hoping for an empty chamber. Most of the time they were right. Tony only worked forty hours a week and the store was open more hours than that. He didn't blame them for taking the chance.

The lifter stopped at a shirt on the rack and craned his neck, attempting to get a closer look at its design. A wide grin, made even wider by the binoculars rippled across his face. Tony thought he could see him grimace in pain as the oversized grin stretched his thin cheeks impossibly beyond their limits. Quickly, the tee shirt was off of the hanger with a magician's sleight of hand finesse and in the process the hanger seemed to disappear completely.

Tony leaned closer to the one-way glass sweeping the floor around the rack with the binoculars. There was no hanger. The lifter clutched only the tee shirt, studying the print in awe, his grin even wider.

Tony focused the binoculars on the print, expecting to see a naked lady, judging from the lifter's lustful grin. Instead, it was a huge brown cartoon image of the Tasmanian Devil shrugging his broad shoulders. A white word bubble floated above his oversized head with the caption "The Devil made me do it." The lifter's grin loosened slightly and his Adam's apple began to bob. He giggled wildly from deep down in his throat, a vintage cackle that he must have been saving for a special occasion.

Even through the glass of the booth Tony could not just hear it, but feel it. It reminded him of dirty bathwater running sluggishly down a congested drain. He felt its vibration through the plywood seat.

The lifter was still giggling when he returned his stare to the mirrored glass. He winked one of his reptilian eyes closed and then he clumsily reopened the colorless eyelid. Tony was reminded of those old window blinds that you could never open straight when you fiddled with the cord. By the time the lid righted itself, the lifter was wearing the black Tasmanian Devil tee shirt. The transition from hands to upper torso had been too quick for Tony to see.

"Come on. Leave the store with it and you're going down," Tony whispered in the darkness of the booth. It was as if Tony had uttered these words over the store's public address system. The lifter smiled politely up at Tony, bent into a half bow, half curtsey and floated slowly toward the exit on his seemingly nonexistent feet, hidden somewhere beneath the denim puddles of the bell-bottom cuffs.

Tony leapt off of his platform into the hot stifling darkness of the booth. He hit the floor hard, his boots already running, and busted through the door of the booth with a crash. He sprinted down low and fast so he wouldn't spook the lifter into running.

Tony slammed through the exit door and rushed out into the August heat, raising his body into his best tactical posture. He skidded across the brick sidewalk in his boots, still hoping the lifter didn't catch a glimpse of him and bolt away.

For some unexplained reason, the lifter hesitated at the edge of the sidewalk and that was where Tony grabbed him from behind. The lifter's frail body didn't tense. It seemed to relax and welcome the sudden aggression.

Tony's first instinct was to recoil in disgust when he grabbed the lifter by both arms above the elbows. The first thing that struck Tony was how the lifter's bare pale flesh felt like old cheese neglected too long in the back of a refrigerator. He was amazed at how the lifter's body seemed to crumple like a newspaper shell when he grabbed him around his upper body. But Tony held on- to hell with him. This guy's health didn't concern him. A stat was a stat. As far as the clammy cold texture of his flesh, he could always wash his hands later. His need for a stat trumped his threshold for disgust.

"Store security! I need you to come back inside with me."

The lifter turned his head slowly and glanced over his shoulder at Tony, displaying his oversized grin, which appeared even larger up close.

"No problem Son," the lifter said.

"I'm not your son," Tony said.

"No, not technically. More like a step-son." The lifter grinned even wider.

"Shut up and walk through those doors, smart guy."

The lifter let loose with another dirty bath water chuckle and allowed himself to be escorted back into the store.

"How do you walk in those things?" Tony said, nodding toward the bell-bottom puddles rippling with each of the lifter's steps.

"I've worn worse."

"I'm sure you have." Tony jerked the lifter's arm and paraded him through the store back toward the security office.

They passed by Tina working in the Lingerie department. Tony glanced at her, his gaze lingering on her cleavage, which exposed itself generously, as she bent over to place merchandise on the bottom bar of a clothing rack.

The lifter wasn't trembling or sweating like most of the other stats he had racked up over the years. He was so relaxed, that Tony thought his body might collapse to the floor and deflate like a balloon before he got him back to the office. Tony realized that his own fingers met as they hooked around the lifter's bicep. The bicep, what there was of it, yielded to Tony's grip as if it were tissue paper. He loosened his grip slightly as he reached into his back pocket, yanked out his keys and unlocked the office door.

Tony shoved the lifter into the tiny office, which was consumed mostly by a no thought beige oversized metal desk. A purple storage bunker ran along the wall like a fat lip. Tony motioned for the lifter to have a seat on the bunker. The lifter graciously complied and took a seat with his back against the wall.

Tony slammed the office door and turned to face the lifter. The puddles of denim didn't rise in the slightest bit when the lifter sat down. Tony wondered if the lifter even had feet. He shook the silly thought away with a quick toss of his dark hair.

"Give me my merchandise back," Tony said. He expected the usual denial he got from most lifters.

"You got it Son," the lifter said, his voice crackling like old newspaper.

Tony took his eyes off the lifter for a split second so he could grab the proper forms from the top desk drawer. He spread the forms in a fan across the top of the desk like a Vegas card dealer. He glanced up at the lifter.

He sat casually, legs crossed in his white ribbed tank top in the same spot. The print logo tee shirt was neatly folded on the corner of the desk. The Tasmanian Devil stared up at Tony with a mischievous silkscreen grin.

Tony swallowed hard and felt the lifter's colorless eyes trace the bobbing of his Adam's apple. It was a grin not unlike the one staring up at him from his desk. Tony felt a quick chill run up the back of his neck. It was a chill you might get after realizing the hitchhiker you'd picked up had more than a free ride in mind.

Tony hadn't even seen the lifter rise from his seat. He had not sensed any tangle of sleeves and arms. Yet the tee shirt was folded nicely out of the lifter's reach. Tony remembered the sleight of hand the lifter had displayed earlier with the hanger, sending it to that other world where magicians send doves, handkerchiefs, and rabbits, until they are needed again.

Tony darted around the desk and dug into his back pocket. He yanked the company issued handcuffs out with a jangle.

"Stand up!" Tony barked, hoping the authority in his voice betrayed any fear he was feeling inside.

The lifter rose smiling and offering his pale, thin wrists.

"Not so fast! Turn around and put your hands on the wall," Tony said.

The lifter spun around willingly and assumed the position, as if he had plenty of practice with this procedure. Tony patted him down for weapons and again was repulsed by the cold, moldy texture of old cheese, even through the lifter's clothes. He was definitely going to wash his hands when he was through with this one. He felt a small lump in the lifter's left hip pocket. He reached in and pulled out a clump of fast food condiment packages - ketchup, salt, pepper, and sugar.

"Man, you'll steal from anybody, won't you?" Tony displayed the packets in his palm holding it in the lifter's face.

"No. Not just any body. It's what's inside that counts." The lifter grinned his cartoon grin again.

"You think you're funny, don't you?" Tony said.

"Those are complimentary Son," the lifter said, glancing over his right shoulder at the packets lining Tony's palm.

"Oh yeah? Well my merchandise isn't. You can keep this junk," Tony said. He stuffed the packets back into the lifter's pocket and continued to pat him down. He reached the puddles of denim, half expecting to find a concealed knife or packet of drugs, but he found nothing of the sort. What he did find shocked him. The lifter either had abnormally small feet or some kind of handicap. It felt as if the lifter stood on miniature, canned hams. It could only look worse than it felt. He chose not to look for now.

He handcuffed the lifter's hands tightly behind his back and forced him back down on the bunker against the wall. Tony returned to his desk and began the paperwork for the apprehension.

"What's your name?" Tony said.

The lifter flashed a painted grin, his colorless eyes fixed on Tony, sizing him up, as if he were measuring Tony's gullibility quotient.

"Randall Flagg."

Tony scrawled the name along the top line of his report in black ink. The lifter watched with glee as the name flowed across the paper. His colorless eyes sparkled dully underneath the florescent lights, but sparkled nonetheless.

"You don't read much do you?" The lifter said with a smirk.

Tony glared up from the report.

"I don't have time to read."

"I didn't think so," the lifter mumbled.

"Middle name?" Tony said.

"Don't have one."

"Birth date?"

"Not sure."

Tony pointed his pen at the lifter. "Look, the cops are going to be a lot nicer to you if you cooperate."

"Jail doesn't scare me. It's a picnic compared to what I am used to," the lifter said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Fine. It's your choice. Where are you from Randal?"

"From down under," the lifter said in a mock Australian accent. He grinned at Tony, his dry lips crackling as they stretched.

"Have it your way man," Tony said.

"I will," the lifter said with confidence in his voice.

"Don't mess with me!" Tony shouted, pointing the pen again. The lifter didn't flinch at Tony's raised voice.

"What's your name Son?" The lifter said with a dim glint in his eyes.

"You don't need to know my name." Tony answered.

"I'll tell you my real name if you tell me yours," the lifter said.

Tony's scribbling came to an abrupt halt.

"This Flagg name isn't real?"

"Oh it's real. It's just not really mine. If you read a little, maybe you would have figured that out before you wrote it down," the lifter said with a chuckle.

"If you're so up on your reading, maybe you read a book that said, Thou Shall Not Steal," Tony said.

The lifter shrugged of the jab from such an unlikely source.

"I'm glad you don't read," the lifter said."

"I know how to read, I just don't do it unless I have to." Tony bit his lip. Why did he feel like he had to explain himself to this petty thief?

"Enough with this reading garbage. What's your real name?"

"Dark. Mr. Dark," the lifter said.

Tony fixed him with a stare. "Are you sure this time?"

"Quite sure."

Tony hunched over and scrawled the name on a new form. The lifter's grin resurfaced.

"So, what's your name then?" The lifter said.

"I told you, you didn't need to know that."

"Need? No. Want? Yes." The lifter flashed his crooked white teeth.

"Well, you can't always get what you want," Tony said, motioning to the folded tee shirt on his desk.

A faint hiss of air whistled through the lifter's lips in a mock laugh.

"You don't need to tell me, Tony Monroe. I know who you are," the lifter said.

Tony's writing hand stopped in mid-stroke, leaving a jagged diagonal mark across the page.

"If you're trying to psyche me out, it won't work. I've been doing this a long time, and I have seen every trick in the book,' Tony said, his voice raised to just below a shout. But even as he said this with all of the macho he had in him, he was trying to figure out how this guy knew his name.

The lifter glanced at the jagged black mark across the report with a growing sparkle in his colorless eyes.

"If you're such an expert Tony, why are you scratching around for stats like a stray cat in a garbage can? Why isn't Reynolds working for you?"

Tony tensed. Maybe Reynolds had sent this guy as a test.

"What are you talking about?" Tony said.

"You got me for taking a twenty dollar shirt, but you act like I robbed a bank."

"Stealing is stealing man," Tony said.

"I know it is. I got a quota too," the lifter said.

Tony stopped writing again and glared at the lifter.

"You mean you're doing this for someone else? Why would you do something stupid like that? You're going down not your friend."

"Oh he's not my friend. He's my boss. You don't tell him no," the lifter said.

"What's his name?" Tony said, pulling a scratch pad toward him.

"Name? He's got lots of names," the lifter said with an uneasy grin.

"To hell with him," Tony said, pushing the scratch pad away. "If he wants my merchandise, he can come try and get it himself. I'll bust him too."

"Yes, to hell with him," the lifter echoed. The spark flickered again in his eyes. The boss knows he can come and get it, but he is very busy. There's a lot of merchandise out there. Besides, I don't see your boss helping you Tony."

"It's different. You shouldn't let your boss push you around," Tony said.

"Look who's talking. You'd bow down and kiss your boss' feet if you thought your job depended on it. And my boss makes yours look like a saint." The lifter spat out the last word with a grimace as if it had left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I'm sorry if I have made it tough with you and your boss, but I've got a job to do," Tony said.

"So do I," the lifter said.

"Right," Tony said with a smirk.

"You act as if you've never been tempted. I know you don't come to work dressed like a rodeo cowboy to be discreet," the lifter said.

Tony glanced down at his western shirt and jeans, and then looked back at the lifter blankly.

Does your girlfriend know you are seeing Tina on the side?"

Tony tensed, his face turning pale.

"I bet if she found out about her, or any of the others, you'd have hell to pay." The lifter flashed his oversized grin.

"Shut the hell up!" Tony's face went from pale to bright red. The lifter's grin widened.

Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"This game of yours isn't going to work. I told you I've been busting people like you for years. I've seen everything."

"It's not a game Tony. I've got a job to do just like you."

"Whatever." Tony rolled his eyes. "I'm through with you." He waved off the lifter with a sweep of his hand through the air. He reached behind him and turned the knob that controlled the volume of the music piped into the office. He cranked it up to 8 to drown out anything else the lifter had to say.

"No, but I'm through with you," the lifter said.

All Tony heard was Carole King singing the last verse of I Feel the Earth Move as he hunched over the report, his head bowed close to the paper.

Carole King faded away and Glenn Frey faded in with Soul Searching. Tony whistled along as he scrawled out the narrative to his report.

A shadow fell across his desk in a cold gelatinous cloud. Tony glanced up from his report to see the lifter standing over him like a mugger who has command of a back alley and is proud of the status that it brings, as he sticks a gun between his victim's ribs and collects the toll for passing through his territory.

But the lifter didn't have a gun. Not even a knife. Tony had patted him down. What he did have, were three black and white fast food condiment packets lying in his outstretched hands for Tony to see - the hands that Tony had locked behind the lifter's back. How did he get loose? He had locked the handcuffs tight. He could still see the recessed red rings where the steel bracelets had sliced into the lifter's pale wrists.

"Who the hell do you think you are, Houdini?" Tony said in an unintentionally high-pitched voice.

"Not even close Son."

Tony rose from his chair, but as he did, his hands snagged in the air and snapped back against the desk with a steel clink. Tony stared down in horror to see that he was wearing the handcuffs that moments earlier had shackled the lifter's hands behind his back. For the first time in his career, Tony feared for his life. Reynolds didn't send this guy.

"You said, you'd seen every trick in the book. I doubt you've seen this one. It's not in the book." The lifter's dirty bath water cackle resurfaced. His eyes had an addict on the verge of a fix hunger. He closed his hands tightly in upturned fists.

Tony's eyes bulged as the probability of one of the fists slicing through the air and knocking him unconscious flickered through his mind. As soon as this thought passed, the fists unfurled and they were each filled with a black mound. The paper packets had traveled to that magician's other world to visit the hanger.

The lifters locked his gaze on Tony's bright blue bulging eyes, and Tony could feel the pull of the lifter's colorless reptilian eyes, as if they were going to yank his own right out of their sockets. There wasn't any wickedness in the lifter's eyes, only a giddy playfulness, like those of a prankster who has secretly posted a "kick me" sign on an unsuspecting victim's back.

Tony felt a slight tingling in his nose nagging at him. He ripped his eyes away from the lifter's magnetic gaze and directed them toward the lifter's smooth palms, each presenting its own black mound. Tony wrestled with the handcuffs, twisting one way and then the other. The steel bracelets only tightened and sliced into his flesh.

"What do you want man?" If you want me to let you go, walk on out now. No questions asked." Tony said.

"No, I want you Tony." His tongue snaked out of his mouth and wet his top, then his bottom lip in two quick swipes. It disappeared behind his full, glistening lips. There was something in the lifter's insatiable, colorless eyes and moist puckering lips that said he craved more than freedom.

Tony opened his mouth to scream, but swallowed it like a flavorless wad of gum. Even if anyone heard him through the heavy office door and over the piped in music, what was he going to say? He was wearing his own handcuffs. How would he explain that to Reynolds?

The lifter seemed to read his thoughts. His grin grew and seemed to stretch around his entire head. He brought his pale face within an inch of Tony's sweat beaded face. The blank colorless eyes locked on Tony's frantic eyes. Tony could feel their magnetic tug again, but it was stronger this time. It reached down into the pit of his stomach and yanked at his bowels. Tony raised his shackled hands in protest, hoping to grab the lifter's throat and stake this newly sought after territory as off limits. His hands, in their strangler's grip raised a few inches and snapped back hard against the desk. The lifter seemed to float, untouchable in front of him.

"Come on man! Make it easy on yourself. This is robbery now. It's not just shoplifting anymore, "Tony said, his voice crackling and trembling on each multi syllable word.

The lifter moved his face even closer to Tony. "It's all the same to me. It's just taking what you need. You said yourself, stealing is stealing," the lifter said in a matter of fact voice. Tony grimaced from the lifter's chilly sulfuric breath. It smelled of old campfires doused in haste.

The lifter's quick magician hands were in front of Tony's face, one palm on top of the other. He slowly lifted the top hand. The two black mounds had morphed into one large one in the lifter's upturned palm.

Tony stared blankly at the hand hovering in front of his face and shook his head. "I don't get it," Tony said.

The lifter pulled his face back so that it was just above the heel of his upturned palm. "No, but I do," he said and punctuated it with another two swipes of his tongue across his lips and a glimmer in his colorless eyes. "I get it, and that's all that matters." He parted his lips and he blew a cold gust of stale wind into his palm. The black mound swirled into a miniature funnel cloud and danced off his unlined palm. It touched down at the base of Tony's nose, dead center between his nostrils.

Tony's nose tingled, as a sneeze grew from deep down. It originated from the base of his brain with a draining force, sucking he organ of most of its fluids. The denim bell-bottom cuffs rode up on the lifter's legs as he crouched on top of the desk. Tony wrinkled his face and just before he closed his eyes for the inevitable sneeze, he caught his first and only glimpse of the lifter's tiny canned ham feet. They weren't human. They were the toeless feet of four-legged creatures that dwell in dark forests and hidden pastures.

The lifter brought his face closer. The black triangle of facial hair was the last thing Tony actually saw before the rolling sneeze forced his eyes shut. An image of a red-eyed goat clamoring across the desk flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt.

The lifter's eyes widened as he licked his lips eagerly like a dog waiting underneath a dining room table for a dropped piece of meat. He opened his mouth wide, so wide that his jawbone creaked like a door of an old car. He thrust himself onto Tony, his moist thick lips enveloping Tony's nose and mouth. Tony tried to pry his eyelids open to see what cold damp obstruction was blocking his airway, but the sneeze wouldn't allow it.

Tony cringed at this sudden trespass. Yet there was something mildly sensual about it. The cool tingling sensation of an adolescent boy's dream surged through him. He tried to will away this excitement that grew in him, but his brain, drained by the sneeze couldn't spare the power to make it happen. His body relaxed and yielded to the lifter's embrace and everything it asked for.

The sneeze came and the lifter was ready. He locked Tony in his embrace and arched his back He consumed Tony's breath with the force of gravity. Another sneeze came on the heels of the first. The suction exerted by the lifter tugged at all of Tony's internal corners and crevices. The force of the pull sparked a distant, childhood memory in Tony's dimming mind ... a childhood friend had been swimming along the bottom of a neighborhood pool and passed over an uncovered drain. The suction had pulled him to the bottom like a magnet and held him there. When his body was recovered, a huge, red recessed ring the size and shape of the drain was tattooed to the boy's lifeless stomach...

Locked in the lifter's powerful embrace, Tony finally understood how his childhood friend had suffered. This spark of this memory was doused by a cold, dark dizziness. Tony struggled to break free, but he could feel his thoughts fading to black and with it his sense of self.

As Glenn Frey wrapped up his musical Soul Searching, the lifter broke his embrace with an audible smack. He dragged the back of his hand across his wet lips wiping away a festoon of saliva and mucous and leaving black freckles of fast food pepper behind.

Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp faded in on the piped in music. The lifter hopped off of the desk and glanced at the empty shell slumped over with its head bowed in silence. It looked like a Halloween costume of Tony Monroe carelessly discarded after a long night of trick or treating. The handcuffs still shackled Tony's deflated wrists. If there had been any life left in his body, he would have easily been able to slip out of the shackles.

The lifter moved his hands in a Houdini-like flourish. He waved the print tee shirt over Tony's pallid empty shell in a quick flash of black. When he quietly stepped out of the office, the tee shirt was part of the discarded Tony Monroe costume. The cartoon character grinned his sharp-toothed grin across Tony's deflated chest. The white word bubble nestled just below Tony's sagging chin.

The lifter shuffled unnoticed through the store, whistling along with Supertramp. There was a rosy color in his cheeks and a bounce in his step he hadn't had in ages. His bright blue eyes caught a flash of flesh as Tina bent over to retrieve some merchandise, exposing an ample view of her cleavage.

"Easy now," the lifter said. We can't keep the boss waiting, now can we?" He yanked his gaze away from Tina, suppressing the bubbling urges that now battled within him. He bounced out of the store with his newly gathered energy intent on keeping his appointment with the boss.