The Mustache Man

Chapter Sixteen

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN ON LINE MUSTACHE MAN

            Pete looked up. She’d broken the intimacy between them. She was very distant after she’d revealed herself. Her eyes were pale blue and withdrawn.

            “No,” he said.

            “No, what?“

            He reached out and took her hand and this time he felt the coolness, an icy coldness. Carlton stared at him, as though she were apologizing for the coldness of her skin. There was nothing he could feel from Carlton except the coming of a cold wind.

            “What are you, Carlton?” he said again. “Maybe you’re not something called an angel but maybe you’re not human either. You’re not a human being, Carlton, I know it.”

            Carlton didn’t reply. She was silent.

Pete got up and he went to another level and he stretched and stood on one leg.

            “The Karate Kid” said Carlton. She turned the film on in black and white and fast forwarded to the end of the film where the kid is stretching and extending on one leg looking like a big whooping crane.

            The screens were everywhere so the Mustache Man saw it and he laughed.

            “Is that what I look like? “

            Carlton nodded shyly.

            “Nick.”

            “Who was Nick?”

            “Saint Nick on the street. He taught me this. When I stretched to stop looking at oh some visual point, pick a point, close my eyes and focus on the darkness. It was after that I began to disappear, for just seconds at a time at first but then it would take longer. “

            “Did you have any control of it?”

            “Not like you. You can disappear at will, right Carlton?”

            “Yes.”

            Carlton paused and then she said, ”Take me into your storm, Mustache Man.”