𝙳𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚢𝚎𝚍

This story almost included a plagiarized hip-hop lyric.

Zack Lyjak doesn’t believe in signs.

“Mumbo jumbo, I’d rather digest a bowl of gumbo,” he’s prone to quip when confronted with evidence to the contrary.

Take for example a luxury car commercial he tried to direct, on spec, a couple years back. The plan: shoot and chop the thirty-second ad spot, then sell it to the local dealership for an appropriate sum.

Zack’s production was plagued with secular locusts. First, a key piece of equipment failed during the climactic scene. Second, the cinematographer’s mother fell terribly ill, forcing a reschedule. Third, their heroic picture car’s bright yellow paint job was soiled by a neighbor’s clumsy, bumbling au pair, forcing yet another reschedule. Finally, also fourth, all entertainment work was foiled by a most draconian series of government-sanctioned lockdowns.

The truth of the situation was written in the stars, but Zack was stuck staring at his feet, pondering how many steps remained until he’d accomplish his branded feat.

Present day: the man in question has become involved with a woman, the answer to his stock loneliness. She’s a dime, trim fighter’s weight and flawless skin, prompting an investigation and subsequent paradigm shift of his own nutritional habits.

There is but a single problem: she doesn’t speak a lick of English, besides a broken but gracious “thanks you” when the moment calls for appreciation. His gentle corrections fall on deaf, or resistant, ears. Nevertheless, through the miracle of real-time digital translation technology, Zack is slipping deeper down the tunnel of love.

She leaves town for the weekend, and he’s granted ample opportunity to grapple with his shrouded doubts.

“Is she right? Is this my life?” Zack murmurs to himself while gazing out an exquisite bedside bay window.

SMACK. A bird in bullet mode flies into the glass, crashes to the ground, twitches twice, and expires.

Zack is obviously startled, but doesn’t correlate his train of thought with the random violence of the natural world. He refuses to see internal and external as functioning on the same energetic plane.

Instead, he walks to the living room.

“Is this my life? Is she right?” Zack murmurs to himself while gazing into an exquisite wall-length mirror.

THUNK. His reflection tilts and topples over, the heavy vanity crushing him beneath its staggering size.

Now, here’s the part where the moral appears, the didactic lesson for readers who lack hawk-eyed vision and elephantine memory and monkey-brained analysis.

Zack Lyjak doesn’t believe in signs, but you should.

If you like books that straddle the tightrope between earnest feelings and satirical wheeling & dealings, pick up my debut novel, The Charlatan. Available here.