#guyawks

As an innovative urban planner, I was great at my job.

I knew just how to spruce up a modern city and keep it looking inviting to citizens and tourists alike. I did so mainly by keeping unsavory people out of sight and mind: namely, our city’s ghastly homeless population.

Each design proposal I drew up for the city council was more ingenious and effective than the last.

Sidewalk benches with armrests jutting through their center to prevent hobos from sleeping on them. Window ledges with spikes along them to stop hobos from begging on them. Heat exhaust grates with rippling metallic surfaces to discourage hobos from huddling there in winter. Sprinklers periodically discharging in parks to interrupt midnight hobo meetups.

“Hostile architecture is the inconspicuous solution to our homeless problem!” I’d proclaim.

The committee loved my designs, and were eager to have them eventually installed. Finally, we could keep those homeless bums from stinking up our pristine city. I didn’t care where they went, as long as it wasn’t nearby.

Satisfied with another approved proposal, I drowsily returned to my penthouse. Throwing myself back onto my luxurious bed, however, I was met with pain. Instead of hitting the soft of my mattress, I felt my back bouncing off what felt like metal bars.

I reached out and stared at the bed in disbelief. There was nothing on my linen, and yet, my fingers touched invisible metal armrests jutting through the mattress.

Thinking I must be hallucinating from tiredness, I went to my couch to sit, only to feel invisible spikes jutting into my bottom. Panicking, I tried to lay down on my carpet, but found the surface somehow invisibly curved so that I couldn’t lay straight. Now desperate, I sought refuge in my kitchen—and shrieked at the sensation of invisible freezing water spraying me from invisible sprinklers.

Everywhere I went in my apartment, I was unable to gain even a small amount of rest. I felt phantom pieces of steel poking into my skin, impossible surface areas bending my spine, icy liquid jarring me awake.

I tried booking into hotels, staying at my parents’ house, admitting myself to a hospital ward. But no matter where I went or what furniture I lay on, the terrible unseen irritants followed. Unable to get even a single night’s rest, my exhaustion grew. In mere weeks, my job was long lost.

I’m on the cusp of death when at last I see my salvation—an old wooden park bench. Unlike other furniture, I don’t feel the curse’s invisible torture here. I stretch out and fall into a restful slumber. For the first time in over a month, I sleep well. I take fleeting comfort knowing there’s a place in this hostile city where I can take shelter…

What kind of idiot husband goes and forgets an anniversary?

And not just any anniversary. Our 10 year anniversary.

I didn’t want to have to remind Stephen about it. I wanted him to remember it on his own, to show me he cared about our partnership. But lo and behold, come morning when I kissed him goodbye for work and asked if he’d planned anything for today—he hadn’t. He just read his newspaper like it was any other day, with no hint of reaction.

Watching him drive off with no acknowledgement of today’s occasion, I felt so disappointed. I even pulled out my phone to call up our marriage counselor, Dr Faulkner, to talk through my feelings and book an appointment for us. But, just my luck, he wasn’t picking up.

So instead, I swallowed my discontent and got our two kids ready for school. All throughout doing my daily household chores, I held out hope that Stephen might ring me to wish me, or have a bouquet delivered, or even pop home to whisk me off for a fancy lunch. Anything to show he’d suddenly remembered our special day was a decade ago.

But the significance of March 2nd clearly meant nothing to him, because no such gesture came.

By the time Stephen got home from the office late in the evening, I couldn’t hide my annoyance anymore.

Not wanting to even be around him, I stormed out to my car in the garage to drive off and get some space. That’s when I heard the muffled sounds coming from the trunk. Curious, I cranked open the boot to see…Dr Faulker—bound, gagged and terrified.

“Happy anniversary, honey” purred Stephen’s loving voice from behind me.

I whirled around, my heart aflutter and a wide, joyful smile on my face.

“Oh Stephen, you did remember! What a personal touch, you shouldn’t have.”

Swooning, I ripped the gag off our helpless victim.

“Stephen, Janice…p-please let me go!” Dr Faulkner gasped in sweaty confusion. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“He’s been in there since yesterday,” Stephen informed me. “I knew you’d find your anniversary gift eventually.”

“Anniversary?!” yelped Dr Faulkner. “I-isn’t your wedding anniversary in November!?”

To this, we just laughed, plunging our knives into him repeatedly—like we had with so many innocents before.

“Boys, don’t play in the woods! If you get mauled, you could die out there.”

That was the warning parents in our town told kids like me and my friend Beckett.

Technically, we obeyed them.

About a mile into the woods near our street was an abandoned bomb shelter. In the middle of the clearing was a slanted door jutting out of the ground, with two outward swinging metal panels that could be deadlocked from inside.

The furnished bunker had been stocked by some insane doomsday prepper in the 90s before they deserted it. Beckett and I discovered it unattended ages ago, making it the perfect safe, secret weekend hangout for two 10 year olds.

In the fall of my 5th grade school year, my parents announced that we were moving.

For old time’s sake, Beckett and I decided to chill one last time in the bunker. Saddened, I said goodbye to the piles of canned food, bottled water, flush toilet and electric generator.

“Pity you won’t get to try all this stuff” Beckett sighed. “Someone could survive for like 3 months with all the things down here”.

“Maybe” I laughed doubtfully.

Afterwards, I bid goodbye to him, shut the bunker door and went home. My family moved across state the next day.

I didn’t think about Beckett much after then. I’d made new friends and assumed he did too, which I imagined was why he never wrote.

In the winter of my 5th grade school year, that bunker suddenly re-enters my mind.

While opening a stationery cupboard in my classroom, the door jams. I can’t open it until I notice a chair blocking it from the outside. That’s when an insidious thought invades my head.

Could the same thing have happened to Beckett on that night? Could he be missing and alive in the bunker? I remember those words: “Someone could survive for 3 months down here”. Which means…

Immediately, I race from the school in panic, whizzing past confused students and teachers. Paranoid, I board a bus straight back to my hometown.

Reaching that sloped door on the forest floor, my worst fears are confirmed. A heavy boulder is perched on top, obscuring it. It must’ve rolled down the hill and pinned the door shut after I left. Adrenaline screeching, I throw myself at the boulder and heave it off.

Nothing could have prepared me for the unfathomable sight I see when I pry open the bulkheads. The boy I’d said goodbye to in the bunker is no more. In his place is a yellowed, emaciated, incoherent, balding, bearded…man.

While I went to college and became an elementary teacher, Beckett was trapped in that hole, screaming every night, completely alone.

If my mind ever recovers enough for me to teach 5th grade again, I’ll have a lesson for my schoolchildren.

Boys, don’t play in bunkers. If you get trapped, you could survive down there…