Identity Theft

I dream nowadays in red and gold, of a beautiful bird cramped into a metal cage, a filigree web trapping the bird within. I dream of machines and mannequins, the horrific spectacle of uncovering metal casing and finding flesh inside. I dream of myself; I am a puppet. My body is gold, the brightest shining keening thing, and inside there is blood, the barest life-force keeping it functional. The body is large and bulky, an old Coleco machine all mass and hard edges. The body is a whirring device, a robotic mechanism I own and operate. I maintain it, but I am not it. I am the bird inside.

Some days when I wake up, it feels like the brightest morning imaginable. The Sun streams through the tiny foot-wide window in a blaze of incandescent glory, and in my barely-awake hypnagogic stupor I can see my body all aflame, skin peeling off and joining that stupendous celestial fire. Those days don’t come often, and I usually owe them to the miraculous power of illicit substances. Most days, the morning presents itself as just another in a chain of sorrows, an awareness of eternity that comes from the dreary greyness which stretches out on both ends towards infinity. I have on those days a prewritten routine, a checklist of shaving, showering, and working that I find to be much more a pact than a contract.

There is another contract, a mundane one I have with my employers. I work, I haul, I toil at their command. I stack boxes and sort shelves at the behest of heavenly glory. Sometimes customers will need directions, or a shady character will need a pair of eyes on them. I find no trouble in talking with people, because it isn’t me talking. I move the lips and pull the muscles to make sounds and smiles on this body of mine, and I’m good at it. I understand that at some level, this is lying (and to be sure, it is all a very involved enterprise), but this type of lying I do not consider to be wrong. My body can be one thing, my mind is another; it would be troublesome to be anything except what was expected of me. 

I sat down with myself one day and counted up the paystubs, then summed the cost of all those tiring things that are needed to fuel this body of mine, searching and sifting the documents for clues. A system made from natural self-interest, but my interests were nowhere to be found. A single injury, a broken stem in my filigree, and I would have been out in the cold. It seemed to me all a great big scam which left me no more than the mechanical slave of another. I realized then that there was no intrinsic value in my body, gruesome and crudely fashioned as it was. It served only as a cog in some grand architectural scheme, some self-interested ploy of which I was not a participant, only a part. I was, and remain, a cast-off figment of someone else’s immortality.

So that, perhaps, is why I stole. Why I steal. Why I walk out amongst the bustling sidewalks and search for loose pockets and open handbags. It is an act of pure pique and revenge against a world to which I am strange. I take pills and watches and little shiny things, stuffing them into the pockets of my bulky jackets and thick hoodies. I know I hurt people this way, innocent people, both people like me and people unlike me. But as I say, it is selfishness which drives me, the recognition of my own wants and the will to achieve them. I need to make rent somehow.

Most days, I steal nothing. I wander the city spaces until the Sun makes good on its threat to dim and darken. People tend to rush indoors, the sidewalk clears and I leave with the throng. I appreciate now the wisdom of humanity in practicing a healthy sense of fear, for there are queer things which arise in the darkness; the streets made strange by moonlight. I stayed out too long one evening and saw something I had not expected, a bird—possibly a corvid—as tall as a man, then left wondering if perhaps it was simply a hallucination. Can a city itself dream?

Some days, I go to Alice. Alice takes the things off my hands, anything I had gotten. Gold things and little rings, jewels and filigree made for other machines. She underpays, but she is nice. She feels safe. She tells me that someday, life can get better (I believe this is a lie, but this I also do not consider to be wrong). She extends offers, contacts, a dangerous web of relations that I could get myself tangled up in. She lets me sit in her bar, and gives me free drinks. She listens. I know that it is work to her, work to listen and facilitate and keep an entire underground ecosystem moving. I know it is work, to look at me with kind eyes and ask me what’s wrong, no really, what’s wrong, and patiently abide as I stumble through two decades of recriminations. I know it is work, but I cannot keep myself from almost crying in that choking half-sob way I do because I forgot how to let out tears a long time ago.

Then I go back to sleep. Every day’s a new day, maybe tomorrow will find me better. Maybe tomorrow the bird will flee the cage.

I saw her first in the elevator of the apartment complex we both lived in; she was coming down from higher up and I joined her on the third floor, going down to the lobby. The lonely brick of aluminum and graffiti rattled and shook, making desperate little cries as it shuttled us to our destination far below. She was dressed in a faded red t-shirt and loose cargo pants that rang out with every jostle the elevator made. Her hair was short and messy, seemingly blonde but possibly dyed; her roots were covered up with a denim baseball cap emblazoned with a flag consisting of pink, white, and blue horizontal stripes. 

I would have nicked something off her right then, but she seemed the attentive kind. She looked young, but she bore a harsh face worn down by stress. She had green eyes, something I’d missed on first glance. Her left eyebrow had a plain silvery piercing. She was attractive. By this time, I had been staring at her far more than was normal for a stranger, but she seemed not to mind, or at least pointedly ignored it. That may have been the only reason I didn’t stop paying attention to her then. 

The elevator let out a pathetic ‘ding!’ and its doors rolled back with a groan. That thing was an ever-fraying death trap, not like the owner cared. If you lived here, it was pretty unlikely anyway that you’d feel comfortable going to the police. The lobby was swept clean regularly, but a thin film of dust had made its way back onto the floor, falling down probably from the peeling plaster on the ceiling. A sad drying house plant found itself in a pot by the front entrance, opposite the reception area (currently unstaffed, but there was a bell to ring on the desk). I glanced at the underwatered little leafy stalk, leaves curling with dehydration, edges yellowing as though it was crying out for help. You and me both, kid, I telepathically communicated to the nonsentient life form.

Behind me, my elevator companion shuffled off to the left after exiting the chrome container. Curious, I turned around and followed her for a short time. She made her way over to the mailboxes and produced a loose key from somewhere in her dense forest of pants pockets, which she used to deftly unlock a specific box—413. She took out a few nondescript letters and a single wrapped package, which when she whipped around made a noise I would recognize anywhere: the sound of pills shaking around in a prescription container. I had found a mark.

Pills aren’t always valuable, of course, and more often than not a random prescription could turn out to be for an elderly woman’s heart attacks or a businessman’s constipation. But this wasn’t a random prescription: she seemed healthy enough at first blush, and more importantly she was young. Out of the most likely candidates, it could be antidepressants for her mood, or painkillers for a hidden disability, or Adderall to make her fit in. All of that sold, and I needed money more than I needed a clean conscience.

Besides, if it was any good, I could probably take a couple myself. I needed a pick-me-up now and then. The circuits in my head seemed to be miswired.

For anything else I would have had to structure a way to break myself into her room or to nick it off her then and there, but the special thing about pills is that they’re a very regular shipment. I didn’t have to go for the package this time. But that key was loose, not on a key ring. And she’d put it back in her left side pocket, but she hadn’t zipped it up, and her attention was currently on reading the letters on top of the pile. I bet she would barely notice if I… score.

I calmly strolled out the building. The security footage would be deleted within a month.

I couldn’t keep the key for long, of course. She’d wonder where it went, then security concerns would arise, and then… game over, the tapes would be reviewed, and I’d be behind bars faster than you could say “plea bargain.” So that was why I found myself strolling down a cracked concrete sidewalk into the door of the least trustworthy locksmith this side of Main. The taped-together glass door made a small jingle as I pushed it inwards, steel bars adding to the weight. Keys and locks lined the walls of the linoleum-tiled establishment, harsh fluorescent lighting forcing me to blink in order to adjust my eyes.

“Why, mein freund, do you stroll in here with such a severe glare?” asked Germund, a frown forming behind his droopy brown mustache. He looked up from his work at the counter, apparently busying himself with disassembling a lock of some kind. “And so close to closing time, too. Could it be, you’re finally here to kill me?”

I could hardly stifle a laugh. Between the two of us, Germund was by far the more competent killer, even with one of his parts truly mechanical. If it hadn’t been for Alice’s introduction, I doubted I would’ve made it through our first meeting unscarred. “Not today, Ger,” I played along, holding up what I’d taken off the girl. “I need this key duplicated, and fast.”

He eyed it with that subtle squint of his, a kind of look only found on ex-military folks like him. Then he reached out his hand and stared at it closer, taking no note of the “Do Not Duplicate” stamped on the back. He turned back towards me. “Twenty bucks,” he stated with an air of magnanimity, “I’m charging you more for coming in so late in the day.”

“It’s half an hour before close,” I whined, dropping the proper scattering of bills and coins into his outstretched palm. He quickly counted that it was at least what he was owed and shoved the collection into the cash register.

“I apologize, mein freund, but if I cannot have time, then I must have money,” stated the middle-aged locksmith, already now searching through his cabinets to find his stash of blanks.

I examined the contents of his countertop a little closer. It was a lock all right, and a new one at that. He appeared to be practicing on it, ostensibly to better his skills as a locksmith. He could be more than that, of course, to the right people. And although I knew Alice, I doubted I was one of them.

It took only fifteen minutes for him to produce an exact replica of my prize, right down to the words “Do Not Duplicate” on the back. I took both the original and the replica, and headed back to my apartment. Germund waved me out as I went, then stumbled out from behind the counter on his cheap prosthetic leg, turning the sign in the window from a faded “OPEN” to a definitive “CLOSED”. He didn’t like company. I respected that.

Heading back to the apartment complex, the light outside had already begun to fade. Busy people scurried about, trying to get home. I joined them in their efforts.

I pulled open the main doors and the musty interior of the apartment building greeted me once more, though it was darker now. A single faint fluorescent light flickered above, gracing my ears with its incessant buzzing. Electricity could be almost damnably loud sometimes. I saw my friend the house plant still in her spot by the window, leaves bleakly rattling as the door closed behind me. One particularly yellow one finally let go of its tenuous hold on life, detaching itself from her stem and falling down into the soil. I briefly considered petting her before deciding against it. She would only lose more leaves that way. 

I was two steps up the stairs before I realized that I had just gendered a house plant. If anything, plants were hermaphroditic, so female pronouns didn’t even make sense. But I felt strangely compelled to do so; I’d even chosen a name: Chloe. It meant a young verdant growth, a sign of hope against struggle. I allowed myself the small irrationality and continued up the stairs, bidding good night to my quickly dying friend.

I took the elevator up to the fourth floor, and on the way there it groaned as though it were Atlas, bearing the weight of the world. It was a simple matter to plant the original key again, people were basically just happy to be getting their stuff back. I slid it under the door of 413 and headed back to my own private coffin numbered 392.