‘The Graffito’

Future Focus Photography by NATALIE PARDUE extends an invitation to see robots as not just machines, but as beings capable of evoking feelings, reflections, and stories.

The Graffito

I had been driving for twenty-six hours straight when I first laid eyes on it. The deep hours had long settled in, and it would be some time still before the slow groan of dawn began to light my way, but the building’s variegated neons spiked out into the empty interstate darkness just the same. It was a gas station, but not any kind of chain, at least not one that I had ever heard of. The sign featured a neon white skeleton character kicking one leg in and out, probably meant to suggest a can-can style dance, but whoever molded the neon tubes must have been pretty new to the craft, or just did not care much. Beside the pose-alternating mascot stood blue neon lettering of a similarly dubious construction: JACK-A-BONES’S GETTIN’ PLACE.

My gas tank was not in dire need of refilling and would most likely hold out until I reached the nearest town, whichever that might be. I hadn’t been keeping track of where I was going, only the sheer distance from where I had left. But the thought of continuing without ample caffeination sent a jag down the back of my neck, so I decided that it was I who needed the refill. I veered into the small parking lot without a second glance for other cars, as is my way. Of course there were no cars around, nor had there been any for the last several hours. In that state of mind, you could have climbed into my passenger seat and told me cars had gone extinct, and I probably would have believed you. I came to a screeching stop, parked diagonally between two and a half spaces. This is also my way.

As I approached the full glass-pane exterior, it became immediately clear that, despite the lack of cars as far as I could see, I was not alone in this place. Two figures occupied the building, one behind the checkout counter, the other in the midst of the convenience store. The latter was a strikingly small man, perhaps only a head over five feet. He was deathly pale and wore bedraggled clothing, and was gesticulating wildly, angrily. He had the look of someone who lived in a gas station at the apex of night, so to speak.

“You don’t understand, J.B.!” he shouted. “How’m I supposed to get stuff at the Gettin’ Place if I don’t got cash to get stuff?”

The individual behind the counter was even more striking than his interlocutor, albeit for far more unusual reasons. For one, he was wearing a vintage Badfinger concert tee. A brave choice, especially given how well preserved the thing was. For two, he seemed to be a fully ambulatory human skeleton, bones in all the right places. Normally this would have been a red flag, but as I have mentioned, I was in an altered state at the time. Additionally, the creature sported a name tag at the end of a lanyard: JACK-A-BONES, Manager.

“I appreciate your struggle, brother,” he said calmly in an accent I couldn’t place. My fault, not his. “But a Gettin’ Place can’t get stuff for people to get if the people ain’t gettin’ it with tender, you dig? ‘Sides, there’s more currencies in this world than just cash.”

Fully aggravated, the small man began to reach for something tucked into the back of his pants, but was halted when Jack-a-Bones raised a dusty hand in rejection.

“Hold on. I’ve come to anticipate and even appreciate your repeated attempts to rob me, I really have. But it seems I’ve a new customer to tend to.” He shifted the bony, palm-out hand to point in my direction, then curled that same ivory finger to beckon me inside. He then turned his attention back to the would-be robber and said, “‘Sides, you know well as I do that this isn’t the kind of place you can rob. It’s the Gettin’ Place, not the Takin’ Place.”

I didn’t get a good look at what kind of implement the little man was about to arm himself with, but he seemed persuaded by the manager’s apparent lack of concern.

“Ahhhh, hell with it all,” he grumbled. He turned in my direction to leave and, in passing, spit on my damn shoe. It took me a second to even process how the slight made me feel, but when I jerked my head up to give the guy a piece of my mind, he was gone. The bastardry of it, I thought.

“Got a napkin for that,” Jack-a-Bones said, calling my attention back into the shop. “That one’s a sorry sort, but I mostly feel bad for him. Comes in here more often than I’d like, never buys anything. Gets a bit violent sometimes, but he’s easy enough to see off.”

The inside of the Gettin’ Place wasn’t far from what might be expected of a convenience store. The interior lights were neon like the outer sign, but in a sort of putrid white-green-yellow hue. It contained the typical rows of candy, snacks, a few simple groceries and toiletries, as well as fridges and freezers filled with all manner of drinks and ice creams. Many of these products were recognizable at a glance, but on closer examination, their logos were smeared and illegible, as if conjured from a memory of a dream of a memory. Music played dimly over the shop speakers, but it too seemed sludgy and misremembered. It was in this melange of unreality that I approached Jack-a-Bones and accepted his napkin.

I watched his non-face move as I wiped the saliva off my shoe. Despite lacking any and all muscle or skin, he seemed to have no problem with speaking, and while I couldn’t perceive any rise or fall in his chest, he occasionally preceded or punctuated his statements with a deep inhale or sighing exhale when the conversation called for it. Interacting with him felt unusually mundane, such that I’m not sure I’d notice anything strange about him if I were blindfolded. And yet, the experience of hearing speech emerge from an animate skull did not react well with my addled state.

I suppose he must have been observing me as I did him, for he then asked, “You seem a mite out of sorts. Get you a drink?”

Before I could respond, Jack-a-Bones drew two shot glasses from somewhere under his counter, accompanied by a large, swishing bottle of indeterminate brown liquid. As he filled the tiny vessels to their brims, I finally managed to collect the presence of mind to ask my host a question.

“Do you have a liquor license?”

Jack-a-Bones slid one glass over to me, then knocked back his own. The brown liquid poured through his jaw and a faint splash sounded from the floor beneath him. “A what?”

I briefly considered refusing, but maybe that was what I needed. Tying one on and passing out in the back seat of my car wouldn’t put any more miles behind me, but maybe that momentary blackness, that discontinuity of consciousness, would ease the pain. So I followed suit.

“There’s a good man,” Jack-a-Bones said. “Now come, we’ve some things to discuss.”

He swung his legs over the counter and vaulted into the store proper with ease. As he righted himself, he produced an overburdened keyring from his shorts pocket and locked the front door. He then beckoned me to the door marked “Employees Only,” wherein lay a set of rusted metal stairs.

Even with the added clarity of hindsight, I can’t fathom why I simply acquiesced to these instructions. Certainly my judgment was impaired to some extent, but to follow a stranger to a dark backroom of a locked building? I’d like to give myself some more credit than that. But something about Jack-a-Bones was so utterly disarming, so perplexingly reasonable, that not a single part of me spoke up in protest.

The stairs led only to a second door on an upper floor, which the skeleton opened without embellishment or bravado. We found ourselves then on the roof of the building, under a black spill of starless night. In the nearest reaches that meshed with the glow of the station, it seemed to bend into faint iridescent ripples like sunlight in a pool of gasoline.

Jack-a-Bones led me to the edge of the rooftop, where we proceeded to sit, our legs dangling over the lip of the front overhang. He reached into another shorts pocket and offered me a cigarette. I declined, at which he shrugged and lit his own with a white disposable lighter.

“I’ll be straight with you, brother, and I’ll hope you’ll do the same for me,” Jack-a-Bones said, taking a short drag on his cigarette. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, instead allowing his empty head to track the gentle curls of smoke. “This is a psychopomp-type situation, and it’s my job to help folks like you sort some things out before you take your next steps.” Another drag, longer this time. “Let’s start at the top. Why are you here?”

I felt my heart sink at that moment. I had hoped that this was some kind of dream. It still could have been, I suppose. But the strangeness of the place made some sense in this new light.

“I had to get away,” I said. The liquor was starting to warm my face, but it felt closer to a wash of shame. “I couldn’t be in that place anymore. Losing my job was one thing. I could cope with that. But then my partner and I started fighting. Constantly, bitterly.”

“Right. But that’s not the only reason, is it?”

I felt stupid explaining it, as if he already knew what had happened. There was no way to sugarcoat any of it, to make it sound understandable to anyone who hadn’t already experienced it. We were just two stupid people doing stupid things to each other until it went beyond us.

“Someone called child services on us. Our situation was deemed unfit to provide sufficient care. A week later, it was just the two of us, trapped in that house with each other. But I guess that was just a few days ago.”

“And now you’re here,” Jack-a-Bones said, finally facing me. “How do you feel?”

“Like it was all for nothing. Was it?”

“Not my place to say, brother. S’not my purview to make value judgments on folk that pass through here. The Gettin’ Place is more of a quasi-spiritual cognitive metaphor, dig? Anything you get from this experience is as valuable as you make it.” He rifled around in another pocket and withdrew a miniature flashlight. “Here, take a look at this.”

Jack-a-Bones shined his light on the concrete canopy that stood above the gas pumps. Evidently, someone had managed to climb onto the platform and had engaged in a bit of creative vandalism, leaving behind a piece of graffiti.

“That bit’s been there longer than I have, I reckon. But I’ve found it makes for a nice reflective exercise. What does it look like to you?”

I strained my eyes to see the image in the low lighting. It initially appeared to be a garbled mess, much like the products in the convenience store, but I soon realized that the image’s appearance changed relative to my position, as if produced by lenticular printing. Training my gaze on the picture from the left, it appeared to be a human hand with two fingers (index and middle) raised, accompanied by the text, “nd CHANCE.” When viewed from the right, it appeared as a game of hangman wherein the player had expended all of their guesses, leaving the little man dead on the noose, eyes turned to Xs; accompanying the doodle was the unfinished puzzle: S  _  R  R  Y. I described the graffiti to Jack-a-Bones as best I could.

“I see,” he said, smoke rolling into his mouth and out through his eye sockets. “I don’t think I need to spell out what you should be picking up from that, yeah? It looks different to everyone, but it all says the same thing in the end.”

“I understand, but I don’t see what I’m supposed to do with it. I destroyed my life, and my family’s. There’s no undoing that.” I watched Jack-a-Bones turn off his light and stow it once again, taking in the true absurdity of it all. “Is any of this even real?”

He laughed a sudden, grinding laugh, as if he hadn’t expected the question. “Mate, it doesn’t matter if it’s real if it affects your life or changes the way you think. This could be a bad trip, for all I’m concerned, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.” He snuffed his cigarette on the cold concrete roof. “Point being, you have a choice here. You can either get up and get on with it, or you can cut your losses and take the L right here and now. I’m just here to give you that choice. Your decisions led you here, and it’s your decision that’ll lead you out.”

“And what if I don’t choose?” I said. “What if I just get back in my car and keep driving? Or what if I just stay here?”

“You’re well within your right to do so, brother, but there’s no guarantee that the choice will come back ‘round. That’s how you end up like the guy what tried to rob me earlier.”

A darkness passed over my heart. I couldn’t blame Jack-a-Bones, but his words were cold comfort. I didn’t want this decision; this was all to avoid decisions, to avoid anything that would make it all real. But perhaps it wouldn’t have to be real for much longer.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Jack-a-Bones said at length. “I’m supposed to remain ultimately impartial, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a part of me that wants to see people keep going. So before you make your decision, let me say this.” He rose to his sandaled feet and tugged on my shoulder that I might join him. We stood facing each other in the night’s oily blackness. He spoke thusly: “You asked me earlier if your life was all for nothing. And as I said, I can’t be the judge of that. But you can. And so what appears to be a complex decision ultimately boils down to whether you want to go back out there and prove yourself wrong, or if you’re content to let it actually be for nothing. You can break it down into as many moral gradations as you like, but that’s the real core of it all. Get it?”

Jack-a-Bones made a deep inhale, then slowly let the breath out. He clapped me softly on the arm with his skeletal palm and turned to retreat back into the station. As he slipped out of sight, his voice echoed once more out of the stairwell. “I’ll be unlocking the front door now, so exit at your leisure. My break’s over, so I must get to stocking.”

Dazed, I ambled back to my car without a word. Something in Jack-a-Bones’ words had touched me, but still I felt lost and, above all, afraid. To take up the burden of finding purpose amid a sea of mistakes and heartache, he made it all sound so simple, so easy. My mind raced until it far outpaced my ability to keep track of my own thoughts, so deep had my exhaustion grown. I had completely forgotten my initial reason for stopping, to reinvigorate myself, and was now suffering the consequences.

Unable to carry out this ultimate decision with a clarity of mind, I instead laid my head on the steering wheel and closed my eyes, hoping that I might awake in a better place.

Alexander Forston (he/him) is an Indiana-based writer. His work often explores the fuzzy edges of the real and the unreal, yet never abandons the core of the human heart. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Lindenwood University, and teaches composition at the University of Southern Indiana.