Hello, I’m Mangus Khan, and for the next few minutes, Brave Souls, I encourage you to walk into Madness with me.
We are on a journey through the ordinary and mundane, where we take off the rose-colored glasses and look at things from a slightly different angle.
For the next few minutes, reality will slant.
Walter had been walking for forty-three minutes when he decided the universe owed him somewhere to put his ass.
He hadn’t intended to walk that far. The afternoon was supposed to be simple: pick up his prescription, grab coffee, stop by the hardware store for the screws he’d forgotten twice already, and get home before the day disappeared. Somewhere between the pharmacy and the hardware store, however, his phone reminded him that he had three unanswered emails, two missed calls, a text from his daughter, an available software update, a banking alert, a request to rate his pharmacy experience, and seventeen news notifications explaining why civilization might not survive until dinner.
By the time he reached the little park between Fourth and Jefferson, his knees had begun negotiating terms of surrender.
The bench beneath the sycamore wasn’t anything special. Gray wood polished by weather and generations of tired asses. Rust gathering around the bolts. Somebody named Darnell had loved Keisha forever sometime around 2009, although judging by the gouge through her name, forever had lasted about three months.
Walter was lowering himself when he noticed the brass plaque.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
He straightened.
Read it again.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
“Of course.”
He checked beneath the plaque.
Nothing.
Walked around the bench.
Nothing there either.
No meter. No coin slot. No card reader. No QR code. Not even one of those cheerful little signs explaining which app he needed to download so somebody in Silicon Valley could collect his email address before allowing him to rest his knees.
Walter dug through his pockets.
Two quarters. A dime. A hardware-store receipt from March. Something furry that might once have been a cough drop.
“Pay where?”
The bench remained silent.
Walter looked around for instructions.
There weren’t any.
“Fine.”
He sat.
The splinter entered his left buttock with the precision of a trained assassin.
Walter came off the bench so quickly his knees temporarily forgot they were old.
“Son of a—”
A woman pushing a stroller glanced toward him.
Walter smiled.
“Bench.”
She increased her pace.
He reached behind himself, found the offender, and pulled free a sliver of wood barely longer than his thumbnail.
“City charges you to sit and can’t sand the damn thing.”
He inspected the seat carefully, ran his palm over the wood, found nothing sharp, then lowered himself several inches farther down.
His phone buzzed.
Your screen time was up 17% last week.
Walter stared at the message.
“Thank you for your concern.”
He opened his email.
Thwick.
Walter froze.
A tiny sting bloomed in his right cheek.
He stood.
Another splinter.
“What the hell?”
He brushed the seat again. Nothing.
He sat closer to the end.
His phone buzzed.
His daughter.
Dad, did you make the appointment?
Walter began typing.
Thwick.
“Goddammit!”
A pigeon abandoned the sidewalk.
Walter stood and stared at the bench.
Three splinters.
Three different places.
The bench offered no explanation.
An older woman approached carrying a folded paper sack beneath one arm. She wore sensible shoes, a blue cardigan despite the warmth, and the unhurried expression of someone who had stopped apologizing for moving at her own speed.
Walter stepped aside.
“Careful.”
She looked at him.
“Splinters.”
She looked at the bench.
Then at Walter.
Then she sat.
Walter waited.
Nothing happened.
She placed the paper sack beside her and folded her hands loosely in her lap.
A bus sighed at the curb across the street. Somewhere behind them, a lawn mower coughed to life. Two children raced bicycles along the path while their father shouted something about helmets. A dog investigated the base of a tree with the concentration of a forensic accountant.
The woman simply sat.
Walter stared at her.
“You okay?”
She turned toward him.
“Yes.”
“Just checking.”
She nodded.
Then returned to doing absolutely nothing.
Walter looked at the plaque.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
“Did you pay?”
The woman glanced at the sign.
“For what?”
“Exactly.”
She studied him for a moment, apparently found nothing requiring further investigation, and turned toward the trees.
Walter sat at the opposite end.
He waited.
Nothing.
“There.”
The woman didn’t respond.
His phone buzzed.
Walter reached for it.
Thwick.
His hand stopped halfway into his pocket.
Slowly, he withdrew it.
He looked at the woman.
She continued watching the trees.
Walter looked at his pocket.
Then at the bench.
“No.”
Nothing answered.
He pulled the phone out deliberately.
Thwick.
“Ow!”
The woman sighed.
Walter turned toward her.
“You heard that.”
“I heard you.”
“This damn bench keeps sticking me.”
“Then stop doing whatever you’re doing.”
“I’m sitting.”
The woman finally looked at him.
“No. You’re sitting while doing everything else.”
Walter opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
She turned away.
He put his phone facedown beside him.
For approximately eleven seconds, Walter sat quietly.
Then his knee started bouncing.
Thwick.
“Oh, come on.”
He stopped.
Nothing.
Walter crossed his arms.
Uncrossed them.
Looked toward the street.
Wondered what time it was.
Wondered whether the hardware store closed at six.
Wondered whether he’d remembered to turn off the coffee maker.
His fingers drifted toward his phone.
He caught himself.
The woman remained beside him.
Not meditating.
Not humming.
Not staring blissfully into the middle distance as though she’d recently purchased enlightenment from a lifestyle website.
Just sitting.
Walter watched her for another moment.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“That.”
She looked around.
“Sit?”
“Yes.”
“I bend my knees first.”
Walter stared at her.
The corner of her mouth moved.
“Very funny.”
“I thought so.”
Silence returned.
Walter decided he’d show her.
He placed both hands on his thighs.
Straightened his back.
Closed his eyes.
Breathed slowly through his nose.
In.
Out.
In.
Thwick.
“Jesus Christ.”
This time the woman laughed.
Quietly.
Walter opened his eyes.
“Now you’re laughing at me.”
“A little.”
“I’m being still.”
“No.” She picked a piece of lint from her cardigan. “You’re working very hard at looking still.”
That irritated him because it was true.
Walter leaned back.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
The woman shrugged.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Walter looked at her.
Then at the bench.
Then at the plaque.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
Doing nothing shouldn’t have been difficult.
That was the ridiculous part.
Walter had spent most of his life wishing people would leave him alone long enough to do nothing. He complained about meetings. Complained about errands. Complained about phone calls arriving while he was eating. Complained about television commercials, junk mail, traffic, emails, passwords, appointments, deadlines, notifications, updates, upgrades, subscriptions and people who started conversations with Got a minute?
Yet here he was.
Nobody needed him.
Nobody was talking to him.
Nobody was asking him for anything.
And Walter couldn’t stand it.
His phone buzzed.
He left it alone.
Another buzz.
He wondered who it was.
He let himself wonder.
His knee wanted to move.
He let it want.
A thought about the screws wandered through his head.
He didn’t chase it.
Then came the appointment.
His daughter’s text.
The emails.
The dishes in the sink.
Tomorrow.
Yesterday.
A conversation from three weeks ago that Walter suddenly decided he could have handled better.
A bill due Thursday.
A news story he’d already read twice.
A song he couldn’t remember the name of.
The strange realization that he needed to clean behind the refrigerator.
His mind apparently considered silence an emergency and had begun breaking glass to find something—anything—to fill it.
Walter breathed.
Not deliberately.
He simply breathed.
The city continued without his participation.
Tires whispered across pavement. The mower sputtered somewhere beyond the trees. A siren rose in the distance and dissolved again. Children laughed. Somebody dropped something metal. The dog barked once and received an answer from somewhere several blocks away.
The sycamore leaves scraped softly together overhead.
Walter listened.
Eventually he realized something.
The park wasn’t quiet.
It had never been quiet.
He was.
The realization unsettled him enough that he almost reached for his phone.
Almost.
Instead, he remained where he was.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, Walter stopped waiting for the moment to end.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.
He could remember telephone numbers from forty years ago. Commercial jingles from childhood. Passwords he’d stopped using in 2017. The address of his first apartment. The exact sound his father’s screen door made when it slammed behind him.
But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat somewhere without demanding that the moment become something else.
Useful.
Productive.
Entertaining.
Documented.
Shared.
Anything except what it already was.
His phone buzzed again.
Walter smiled.
Not because he’d conquered anything.
Tomorrow he’d probably spend twenty minutes looking for the phone while holding it in his hand.
But right now—
trees.
Wind.
Breath.
Enough.
The woman eventually stood.
Walter opened his eyes.
“You’re leaving?”
“Eventually everybody does.”
She picked up her paper sack.
Walter looked at the plaque.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
“I think I understand.”
The woman followed his gaze.
“That’s usually when people get themselves in trouble.”
She walked away.
Walter remained.
He didn’t check the time.
Didn’t check his messages.
Didn’t photograph the sunlight slipping through the sycamore branches, although for a moment he wanted to.
Didn’t think about what he would tell anyone about sitting on a strange bench that apparently had opinions about his ass.
He simply watched the afternoon move.
A young man approached eventually, coffee in one hand, phone in the other, earbuds sealing both ears against the world.
He stopped at the plaque.
PAY BEFORE SITTING.
He checked the front of the bench.
Then underneath.
“Where’s the QR code?”
Walter almost laughed.
The young man shrugged and sat.
Thwick.
“Ow! What the hell?”
He jumped up and inspected the seat.
Then looked at Walter.
“You get splinters from this thing?”
Walter considered the question.
The leaves whispered overhead.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He left it there.
“Sometimes.”
The young man frowned.
Walter closed his eyes.
For once, there was nowhere else he needed to be.
And nothing he needed to say.
Because that shit …
be at a slant.
Memoirs of Madness 