Lines And Squares

by Mike Mayak

We were in line outside the old movie theater which was showing the original version of one of those old epic movies, y’know, the one they re-titled and re-numbered a bunch of times when he started rambling.

“I was walking down Main Street a couple of years ago, y’know,” he said, “not on the street, but the sidewalk because the street wouldn’t be safe and the sidewalks were a lot safer so I walked on the sidewalk and this was the old sidewalk, the one with a bunch of cracks in it and I turned to where it goes past the City Park, y’know, the small one downtown not the big one over by the University…”

I knew. I nodded.

“When all of a sudden I notice the park is full of bears! They looked like they were trying to hide but they weren’t hidden very well. One was standing up behind a tree but he was so much bigger than the tree y’know?”

I knew.

“And there were a few peeking over bushes and one was actually sitting on a park bench pretending to read a newspaper somebody had left there but I knew they were all looking at me. Maybe waiting for me to step on a crack or something.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“So, I kept walking along, pretty casually, trying not to step on any cracks or anything, yeah I know that’s silly but it seemed the bears were really watching where I stepped and I remember when I was a kid I read a poem about bears who eat kids if they step on cracks or something.”

“Milne,” I said.

“So, anyway, I made it past the park and I glance back to see if the bears are following me and they aren’t but still I’m being careful where I step and I make it to where I parked my car and I drive away and I actually take a roundabout route because I don’t want, y’know, the bears running after me or worse piling into a car and chasing after me.”

“That would be bad,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “And so I make it back to my apartment and my landlady is all upset because she says somebody broke in and it was a bunch of bears and they ate all my poetry books.”

“That was good,” I say laughing.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hey, you done with that soda?”

I hold up the bottle I had just opened a while back. “Haven’t started it. Help yourself. Was going to drink it in the theater.”

“Thanks,” he said swigging it. Then he got a strange look on his face and fell over.

The poison did its work but the medics got to him in time. He’s in a hospital and I’m in a different hospital. I still haven’t figured who I really meant the poison I dumped into the soda for, but it would have been a funny way to end that story he was telling if he’d fallen down on a crack and the bears had gotten him.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the January 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were a Shaggy Dog Story involving a bottle of poison in a line outside a theater. I was stuck for an idea and a title and then I remembered A. A. Milne’s poem “Lines and Squares” and it all came pretty easily after that! Watch out for bears! ——mike