Free Disconnection by Erin Samiloglu

hands.
    Sela felt a small twinge of jealousy.
Maybe in my next life
, she thought.
    She approached the glass door and rang the bell. A silver-haired lady opened the door. She wore a black dress with a string of fat pearls around her neck. She was about sixty or so in age, Sela reckoned, but could be older, since she seemed rich enough to have a botox doc on speed dial.
    Behind her in the foyer, magnificent bouquets of flowers lined the marble topped table. On one side, in the room next door where Sela had glanced into the window before, the guests were not as happy as Sela had previously presumed. Their faces were solemn, and their voices were hushed tones that rested in a cradle of deep conversation.
    “Yes?” the woman said, looking Sela up and down. Her confused expression paused the longest at the big ‘Frank’s Diner’ marquee across Sela’s shirt. She frowned and looked up to meet Sela’s eyes.
    Sela tried to speak, but her words were muffled and interrupted. They fell out of her mouth like stones. She felt more uncomfortable by the second. “Hi, is this Chloe Applegate’s residence?” she asked.
    The woman said nothing. She opened her lips to reply, but no words left her mouth. Instead, large teardrops crawled down her face. She took a handkerchief from her dress pocket and rolled it under her eyes. She said nothing to Sela, but simply left the door.
    Sela watched the woman disappear through the crowd. Sela didn’t know what to think, but she was suddenly aware of an overwhelming sense of darkness and panic,
(what is wrong with me, why do I feel this way)
just like when the shaggy bearded man
(with the SNAKES in his skin!)
had grabbed her arm at the café earlier. Something strange was happening around Sela. She could
just feel
it.
    Yet she waited at the door, unsure of her next move. Finally a man entered the foyer and walked toward her. His blond hair—which looked suspiciously like a hair piece—stood straight up, uncombed. His cheeks and throat were flushed with a high blush. A fat unibrow sloped over two steady eyes. He looked to be around forty, maybe forty-five. He wore a traditional black suit, but with a twist—wedged under his black jacket was a tacky, vibrant tie. Little penguins and polar bears in bright reds, yellows, and blues jumped around with drums and trumpets in their hands. When the man spoke, his manner was sympathetic, helpful. “May I help you?” he asked.
    Sela took a deep breath. “Hi, I’m Sela Warren. I don’t know if I’m at the right place. Is this the Applegate residence?”
    The man’s eyes wrinkled with an emotion that Sela could not quite interpret. His hands folded together. “Are you looking for Chloe?”
    “Yes.”
    He nodded and unfolded his hands. He stepped away from the door as he closed it, and began walking toward the stairs. “Follow me,” he said, motioning toward the sidewalk. As soon as Sela was on the bottom step, he took a clean white handkerchief from out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. “You might need this,” he suggested.
    Sela looked at the handkerchief questionably. “I don’t suppose I would,” she said. “I mean, I don’t understand
why
I would.”
    Sighing, the man refolded the handkerchief back in his pocket and looked up to where a flock of crows were flying past, their dark wings beating back into the clear blue sky as they screamed.
    The time for the redeemer is at hand
.
    Sela shut her eyes. A vision of the shaggy, bearded man appeared before her, his head engraved in the body of a black bird soaring over decrepit trees and oceans laced with pretty ancient poisons and brittle bones decaying under hollow mountains.
    The time for the redeemer is at hand. Gawk, gawk
.
    Sela opened her eyes. She looked up to the sky. The birds were gone.
    If the man was affected by the birds’ screams, he did not show it. His eyes focused on Sela. He stretched out his foot and began digging his heel into the grass. He waited another