Blue Van

I park in a friend’s garage in Houston. My vehicle is a 2002 blue Honda Odyssey with a huge dent in the side made by a 2020 Ford F-150 after my wife drove through a stop sign. That van door does not work.

We have our meeting. I return to the garage. The van is missing.

—Where’s my blue van?

The others deflect my question. One brings out a few six packs, cracks open a tall boy and motions for me to drink.

—Where’s my blue van?

They offer me a church cupola made of copper to sell as scrap.

—Where’s my blue van?

I go full donkey farmer wife with a carving knife.

—Where’s my blue van?

They try to push me out. Shove me aside.

Nope. Nope. I get in each and every face. I outlast repeating decimals.

Children pull me, adults push me. They try violence, they try negotiation. They call cops.

—Where’s my blue van?

The cops come, try to remove me. They cannot.

They send mechanized dogs. I stick forks in their gears, I make them whine, squeak, whimper. I grind their parts up in a dull blender.

—Where’s my blue van?

I notice a great number of people walk up to the driveway. People from other neighborhoods. Crowds form around the garage. I refuse to leave.

—Where’s my blue van?

They try to wall me in the garage with bricks and mortar like some drunk who wants the cask of amontillado. I knock it down.

—Where’s my blue van? Where’s my blue van?

I slowly realize the people are controlled by a strange intelligence. I sense it fears me.

—Where’s my blue van?

I start slow with the code trace, command by command, word by word, instruction linked to instruction. With infinite donkey persistence I break the passwords to logins to begin the step-by-step sniff for the mind hackers.

—Where’s my blue van?

I feel the hackers tremble like Parkinson’s down a long sequence link. The intelligence is not on earth. It tries to twist away as I pull myself closer. It screams shrill texts, emails, telegrams at me I am in a coma. Calm down. I grab this strand of polaritron communication tight, yank hand over hand like in tug of war, crimp gripping the edges, thumbing the slopers, my middle fingers for monodigits, ring and middle for two finger holes, gripping sidepulls, sharp angle elbowing the gastons, cycling and palming to friction closer on these warning to forget my blue van. I will break you before you break me.

—Where’s my blue van?

I feel them panic over the intimation of their tiny mortality. Still, hand over hand, step by step, I trace them through space to another galaxy.

As I study the trail, decrypt the encryption pebble by pebble like a bird eating Hansel and Gretel’s trail, I find the mind hackers play humans like video games.

They realize I don’t give a fuck about scales of reality, about the innermost knots of existence. I care about my blue van.

—Where’s my blue van?

They scream, they weep. They experience the peculiar emptiness of no remedy, no hope, no mercy, no fucking fix for stealing my blue van.

I reach my hand into the void, crush their sun into a black hole. They shred apart in the flaring gravity. The last words they hear:

—Where’s my blue van?