Hang Man

There’s a man hanging over me, he follows me around like a balloon tied to my wrist. No doubt there’s something to be learned from him but I don’t care. I’ve been planning a way to kill him. 

I’ve tried several methods, they each don’t work in their own special way. One time I was driving letting him flit along outside and I was driving real fast and I tried splattering him against the overpass. No luck. He saw it coming for miles and what he did was he tightened the invisible slack between us and floated himself a foot above my head. The fucker. If I had a knife I would’ve stabbed him right there but I didn’t have a knife. 

Next time I tried a knife. I had to get him down to me low down within stabbing distance. This part proved to be very easy all I had to do was walk into the smallest room in my house. My closet. So I stood there in the closet and he floated over me in there his back against the ceiling and I pulled out my knife and I tried slicing him open. He caught it. 

Ever since then he’s been hanging over me with my knife in his hand. He was a potential threat before but now he’s armed. 

So I got a gun and I drove us far out into empty dirt nothing fields and I stepped out of the car and aimed him up. No wind. He hung still. Straight above me. I squeezed the trigger it popped my ear-drums and I shot him once and I shot him five more times bang… bang bang bang bang bang. 

I didn’t hit him once. He dodged them. Now he was looking down at me with that stupid blank expression on his face-Why was he looking at me like that? Staring me down, our eyes locked, I thought about the bullets. If I fired them straight up…

I bolted for the car. Bullets rained down where I stood. The fucker tried shooting me with my own bullets. Not only was he deadly, he was clever. 

I drove home with his shirt caught full sail and he beamed at me through the rear view mirror. 

I got home and I turned the ceiling fan on and I stood under it and it made me feel better watching him get smacked paddle after paddle after paddle it felt like I was in control of something until he grabbed the base of the fan and ripped it straight out of my fucking ceiling. 

I couldn’t sleep that night I was too busy yelling up questions at him. “Hey! Hey! Hey!… Hey!… Hey! What are you doing!… Hey!” 

He didn’t say anything he just floated up there knife in hand. 

Ever since then I’ve been planning something. Something elaborate. 

Step one: bait. I wake up and I make a shit ton of scrambled eggs more than I could possibly eat but maybe just enough for two to share. That’s right. “Hey, buddy” I call up to him “hey, you looked hungry up there so I cooked you up some eggs.” He’s either privy or deaf because he makes no notion of hearing me. “It’s getting cold. You better eat them while they’re hot, they’re good when they’re hot.” No response. He wasn’t falling for it. Which was expected. And part of the plan. 

Step two: guilt. For the rest of the day I go about my usual activities but while I’m doing them I make constant mention of the uneaten scrambled eggs from this morning. “You know, I spent a lot of time making those eggs… I’ve been trying to get more into cooking, it would’ve really been nice to get some feedback on those eggs… Things’ve just been so tense lately, I don’t know, I just wanted to do something nice for you but it’s alright I guess… You know, I really gave scrambling those eggs my all… It kinda hurt my feelings that you didn’t even taste them.” 

Hang Man gave no indication of hearing me but behind his blank expression I could feel that something somewhere in him was feeling it. Something was there. 

I repeated the process the day after. I made scrambled eggs for two. “Hey buddy, you looked hungry up there” and I could tell that that stupid fuck was eyeing up the plate full of delicious scrambled eggs that I made “and I was making scrambled eggs this morning and I just thought I’d make a little extra.” 

I saw him waiver a bit but he still didn’t float down. His eggs were cold so I threw them in the trash and went on with my day. “Money sure is tight around here. It’s a shame to waste such good eggs like that… and they were such good eggs, too. I know you would’ve liked them… I worked really hard on them today. Oh well…” 

Third day. I scramble the eggs. Two plates. One. For me. One for him. I scoop half the pan into my plate half into his and I walk back to the stove and set the pan down and I say something like “just whipped up some eggs, thought you’d like some.” I turn around, his eggs are gone. I look up, his mouth is full of egg. 

I sit down and eat my eggs. The trap is sprung. The beginning of the end. 

Everyday I cook up eggs and each day he takes a little longer to eat them until he’s sitting down with me for a full breakfast. He sets the knife down. I go about my day, I feed him small talk about the weather and sports, and I repeat the process every day.

I start making him lunch, making him dinner, and he sits down next to me in the living room. We watch the Red Wings lose, the Lions lose, the Pistons lose, the Tigers lose. I make a comment that Martha should sell the damn team already, he nods along. 

Sometimes I’ll go out and grab a beer with him and we get to stumbling around each other. 

I cook up a special dinner, steak and asparagus and baked potatoes and shit. We sit across from each other, we drink red wine over candle-light. He talks to me, confides in me, we feel safe with each other. He tells me I’ve come a long way since we first started out, he talks about growth, about friendship, and about loving yourself. 

I’m enjoying the conversation. I tell him I’m much less self-conscious, I tell him I’ve come to terms with letting new people into my life. The oven timer goes off. “Oh, that’s the soufflé!” At this point I’m a masterful cook. I walk passed him to the kitchen to get the dessert and I come back out with it. 

He says something like, “you’ve finally come to terms with it. You see, I’m a representation of your-” but he didn’t finish it. 

Because I didn’t walk out of the kitchen with a soufflé, I walked out of the kitchen with a baseball bat and I bashed his brains clear out of his head. 

Nothing was learned.