Vanishing Act

The city streetlights were just coming on as Adam left the Italian restaurant on Fifth Street, a small hole-in-the-wall eatery, known as “Papa Giovanni’s”, having just filled his stomach with a delicious and calorie-rich lasagna. The orange-gray colors of dusk were rapidly giving way to the impending night. A fresh rainfall coated the streets and sidewalk, reflecting the pale luminescence of the lamps in an eerie and yet oddly comforting way. A faint drizzle still remained, which prevented Adam from turning his walk back to his apartment in a leisurely stroll. Instead, he turned up the hood on his tattered, black rain jacket, which honestly did very little to prevent him from getting wet, and kept a swift, dignified pace.

Adam always loved the city, the sounds, the smells, the constant activity around him, all feeding into his outgoing and positive character. The rainfall did not dour his mood, but just gave him new reasons to enjoy the present in the way the universe chose to give it to him. He splashed his foot into a shallow puddle, letting his inner child take the reins of his consciousness for half a minute. He didn’t care that his dress pants became speckled with the oily, acidic, rainwater of the city. They had been stuck under a 3x5 desk all day, it was about time they received a little action. He flashed a wide grin at the thought of what he must look like, a grown man playing in a puddle like a schoolboy. His grin widened, a wide wall of uniformed white sentries standing in perfect attention. He didn’t care how he appeared to others, this was his life and if his idea of fun was interpreted as stupidity by others, that was their own sad fault.

A few minutes and several more puddle visits later, Adam arrived at the foot of the steps that led up to his apartment. The paint was chipped on the wooden stairs to the point that one forgot what color they had once been, and the railing on the right side was badly in need of repair, but Adam never took the time to do so. The stair served their purpose as far as he was concerned and to waste a day fixing them seemed pointless. Life is too short, he’d say to himself, to clog it with useless fritting and fretting about things that don’t really matter. So ignoring their appearance, Adam took the steps in a few bounds, momentarily reliving his glory days as a hurdler in college track and field, and descended on the landing with an authoritative thud. As he fumbled through the pockets of his trousers searching for his keys, he spied a small package wrapped in brown paper, leaning up again his door. He grabbed it and stuffed it under his jacket to prevent it from getting any wetter. He finally located his keys, they never seemed to be where he had remembered putting them, and let himself into his apartment.

He lived in a modest, but cozy abode furnished with comfortable furniture that was clearly well-loved. His walls were painted a light blue, reminiscent of the only thing that Adam loved being in more than the city, the clear sky above. Adam’s father had been a pilot in the Air Force for over a decade before Adam was born and then had continued as one for a private charter company until Adam was 15. He had spent hours with his father in the expansive blue, riding above the clouds, soaring above the world and its problems without worry or care. Adam had begun flight lessons himself and had been only weeks away from getting it when his father had disappeared on the coast of Florida while flying a rich New York CEO to his vacation house in the Bahamas. The authorities said that an unexpected storm has sprung up and likely blown his father’s plane off course into the Bermuda Triangle, but they never found the wreckage or any other signs of his father or his plane. That had all taken place nearly 15 years ago, and while Adam still missed his father, memories of him brought Adam more joy than sorrow, hence the bright blue color of his apartment.

Having kicked off his wet shoes and ditched his soaked raincoat, Adam sat down in his armchair to inspect the package that had been at his door. It was of moderate weight and size, its proportions making it almost pleasant to hold. He ran his hand over the wrapping. It was perfect, with no creases or wrinkles, and the corners were all exact in their squareness. There were no markings anywhere, no name or return address, it was a simple box wrapped in brown paper. Adam flipped the package over and traced his hand across the back. Only the faintest sign of packing tape could be felt in the middle. It was so small one could easily miss it. Suddenly, a realization came to him. The paper was completely dry! There was not the slightest indication of rainwater on it, even on the short edge which had been laying on his water-infested front step. How was that possible? He turned the package over again. A gasp and a jolt caused him to almost drop the parcel from his hands. For there, in large, black letters of beautiful calligraphy was written his name. He knew it hadn’t been there a second before! Or was he going crazy, and he had just missed it?! That’s impossible, he told himself, I stared right at it moments before, there wasn’t anything!

Shaking his head in an effort to clear it of his current confusion, Adam decided to move on and just open the package. Inspecting it again he noticed that again there was something quite odd about the parcel. The brown paper in which it was wrapped was not held together around the contents in any way, with no string or tape. It was as if it was one continuous sheet without connections or overlaps. Adam became even more perplexed, for though it had been nearly undetectable, he was sure that the one side had had tape only seconds before. Determined, however, to discover what mystery was hidden behind the suspicious wrapping, Adam pulled his pocketknife from his pocket and cut a clean and resolute line down the middle of the backside of the package. He pulled the paper apart. Adam’s eyes widened and his mouth sat as an open cave to the dark cavern of his throat.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not an empty box kind of nothing, but actually nothing, just total empty space. The package was weighted though, Adam thought incredulously. I held it in my hand, it had shape. How could there be nothing?! The brown paper now lay flat as a sheet as if it had never held any form or shape prior. Any semblance of a box had disappeared from its being. Adam was beyond confused; he was utterly mystified. In 30 seconds, he had gone from feeling totally normal to now questioning the very stability of his psyche. Perhaps he was just tired. Maybe he was already dreaming. With a sign, he lifted his hands to his face and wiped them across his eyes. The brown paper that had moments before been a package wrapping slid from his lap and floated to the floor. Adam stared at it for a second and then stooped to retrieve it. Just as his fingers were reaching it, the paper vanished before his eyes, leaving nothing but a black spot on the floor where it had been lying. This was too much for the man. He shot to his feet in total surprise. An audible expression was escaping his lips, but before his lungs found their voice, the black spot on his carpet erupted and expanded to become a large, ominous hole. Adam could not avoid the phenomena. It opened beneath his feet and before he knew what was happening, he was plunged into a world of infinite and absolute darkness.