Thursday May 17th, 2018

The exercise:

Write about: security.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Well, I suppose with a prompt like 'security' there's only one place I can really return to... ok, so two. The one you're not getting is Charles Asciugimento. Instead,

Security
People see identity theft as a bad thing, but they're not really sure why. Maybe they know someone who knows someone who lost some money, or had their credit card cloned online somewhere, and they mutter dark things about it. That's a very minor form of identity theft though: that's just borrowing someone else briefly in order to achieve a small thing. When you borrow someone else for a long period to achieve great things; well, that's when you get to what I call identity theft.

He was lying in a hospital bed, the curtains partly drawn. He was tanned but pale; his upper arms were so white you could see his veins bluely through the skin and his lower arms were a gold-bronze colour that fitted his afternoons out on the football field under the summer sun. I'd read the newspaper reports -- a bad tackle near the sidelines and he'd crashed head-first into the water-barrel. Head trauma, blood spatter on the cheerleaders and the coach was up before a disciplinary panel who were relieved that the issue was only missing headgear and not sexual abuse.
His wallet and a few tawdry personal belongings were in the bedside cabinet. It was locked but these locks are flimsy things and the blade of my pocket knife was enough to slip the catch aside and pop the door open. I checked -- driving licence, state ID and library card. I made a careful note of my new name -- James Francis Taylor -- and my new birthday. Looked like I was a Scorpio now, which deserved a smile. Woman at parties love Scorpio men for some reason. The kid looked nothing like me, but it would only take a couple of painstaking hours to replace the photos. Ah, SSID as well, nice of him to carry that around with him.
The rest was, well, a little sad if I'm honest. A photograph of him with some girl -- someone had stabbed a pen through her face obliterating it, so there was definitely some unresolved tension there. A tissue, bit on the stiff side so probably used at least once. I dropped that in the bin. A receipt from a gas station for a barbecue, one of those foil trays preloaded with charcoal with a disposable grill on the top. Dated three weeks ago and I wondered if maybe that's when the fight with the girl had happened. And a handful of confetti. That was unusual.
"Who are you?" I turned at the voice behind me.
"Security," I said, smiling.
"No, our guards wear uniforms and don't sneak onto the wards."
Must be a senior nurse, or a matron. "Campus security," I qualified. "I did stop at the nurses station first but it was empty...?"
"Sharon," muttered the woman. She bit her lip and looked at me. "Why are you here?"
I picked up James's hand. "We think it might have been deliberate," I said. "There was a girl involved." I set his hand back down and showed her the photograph.
"Take your time," said the matron, turning away. "I'll go and find out what the hell happened to Sharon this time."
Once she was gone I turned off the alarms on the monitors and gently dislodged James's breathing tube. It's good security practice to not let people who think they pre-owned your identity wander around out there.

Marc said...

Greg - I was pretty sure this one would bring Charles back. Let's see where you went instead...

Ahhhhhhh, so creepy. Such a rational and impassive perspective here. Very, very well done. I had, sadly, forgotten about this guy. Now that won't be happening again for quite some time...