The cube hovered, black and reflective above our island city. Its veins of gold, like kintsugi along its six planes, offered relief to the eyes from the overwhelming blackness of the massive cube. It cast a shadow over the new Toronto, a great cloud in the sky.
Today would be a dropping day. When the cube would choose something to lift and absorb into itself - or to drop back to the city. People moved through the streets, schools of fish in blues and whites. My friends and I were out too. Almost no one stayed in on dropping days, despite the destruction that was sure to come.
Mike’s basketball slapped loudly against the asphalt with each downward strike. A couple of his friends jumped around him, diving for the ball, or shouting distractions. I watched from the edge of the court, kicking my heels against the cement ledge I sat on. The capri-sun was cool on my tongue. My boyfriend sat next to me, flipping through painted cards.
The sharp plastic of my sour drink dug into my palm, finally empty, so I went to toss it. My boyfriend followed, hopping off the ledge with a rustle of jeans, and shoving the cards in his pocket. The trash compactor across the street opened its maw with an electronic wave, and crushed my waste in its hot belly. My boyfriend was asking me something, but I suddenly couldn’t hear him over hollering from Mike and his friends, and the sharp slapping of an inflated rubber runaway on the road. Mike was chasing it, and since the ball was coming over towards us, my boyfriend and I lazily followed its path. It would have been pretty funny to watch the ball just roll down the street and bounce off the high bluffs, down, down into the great abyss of the surrounding lake. We all knew we probably wouldn't fall off the island - but that knowledge didn’t stop the odd ball from going over the edge, or the bad weather from eroding the circumference back year after year.
As bad luck would have it, a car came down the road just before Mike got to his orange ball. The ball jumped once, smacked the oncoming car’s grille, Mike yelled frustration, and we all watched his ball go careening off right into the open window of a parked yellow pickup truck.
We three converged on the truck. Two things became obvious to us - one, that despite growing up, none of us were growing taller, and two, that the driver of this fancy yellow truck was probably a big guy who liked showing off that he was a big guy. It was jacked up, tall wheels dwarfed by the lightly rusted space of the wheelhouse. Mike was complaining with my boyfriend about, how was he was supposed to get his ball out, and my boyfriend was saying something about, we could just lift him. But the we wasn’t a we, it was a finger pointed in my thick direction.
So, I supported myself against the truck’s door, and waved Mike up. He said a million thank yous, and stepped his firm, gritty sneakers up onto my knees and hands and shoulders. When he got his stomach over the window, his feet lifted up off me, and I turned and watched him dangle out the window. His muffled voice said he saw it, and his legs went straight out like he was reaching on a high shelf.
That’s when sound went funny. A pressure grew in my jaw, and I closed my eyes and scrunched my face to make my ears pop. When I opened my eyes, the shadows around us were darker, denser. My stomach twisted, my ears went hot. My eyes darted to my boyfriend, who was looking frantically around, until his eyes met mine. We both looked up. It was right above us - it was always above us - but, this time, we could actually see ourselves reflected in its black walls. Heat radiated from its perceptors, judging us. My boyfriend and I were frozen, but Mike had no clue. Hidden inside the truck, he cheered victory with the basketball in hand.
The ground felt disconnected from my feet, and I realized there was some magnetic pull working on me, on us, as I saw my boyfriend hovering just an inch off the ground. I reached out to him, our knuckles white together, and the yellow truck began to lift severely off the ground. Mike - I thought - oh no, Mike! He was staring out the window now, turned around, face in one big Oh. He was crying, stuck in that shiny big truck, holding his ball just behind the window. We were all lifting, lifting, but the truck was going even faster. It tilted, flat-bed up, engine down, and I screamed for Mike to get out. I threw myself at the door, grabbed his arms through the window. His wrists were slick with summer sweat, the bones beneath his flesh unyielding, unhelpful. I felt my boyfriend grab my waist.
I held onto Mike through the window, felt the door frame dig into my ribs. Who did it want? What did it want? This bastard truck, the bad luck ball? Mike’s eyes were locked on the cube, hypnotized by its dread magnetic song. I had to get him out, I couldn’t watch him be dropped, couldn’t see the spot on the ground that used to be my friend. With all the effort I had, I pulled myself up and bit his arm hard, snapping him out of the hypnotic hum from above. My boyfriend was slipping down my waist, his weight dragging on my skin. Wind rushed in my ears, I realized we were moving laterally now. Mike finally dropped his ball in the truck and took hold of me. He scrambled against the door, but as he hoisted out, my boyfriend and I dropped down, and we realized we were perilously high now. Still, I pulled on Mike, but he started shaking his head, little shivers back and forth.
He said it wanted him. He could feel it. He let my arms go, and I screamed in protest, but couldn’t hold onto him, or the truck, as he pushed me out. His tear stained, resolute face got smaller and smaller as the truck lifted, and my boyfriend and I dropped.
There must have been a radius of desire for the cube. We fell slowly at first, and I wrestled with my boyfriend’s arms for some way to hit the ground softer. Then there was the pressure in my jaw again, locking out all thought as my ears popped and we fell hard. The ground was rough with my shoulder, and my boyfriend was screaming, and I felt my total body tumble. Everything was spinning, streaks of color in my vision. I wasn’t in pain, at first. I was like my empty capri-sun, crunched up and discarded.
Voices came into my head, and as the color explosions died down, I could see people around us. Beyond their blank faces, against the backdrop of the shimmering black cube, I made out the yellow truck and Mike inside the window. They were being tossed about a bit, swinging deadly side to side. It was going to turn the corner, out of my view. Bones screaming, tendons disagreeing with my choice, I peeled myself off the pavement. The giant, spinning wheels of the truck disappeared behind a building, and I followed, turning corner after corner. I was a shark through the schools of fish on the street, bloody and determined, and the scared little bodies scattered for me.
The cube was swinging Mike and the truck towards the bluffs at the edge of our disaster city. Bright yellow glinted in the sunlight, a little star against the blue of the endless lake and the sky. The truck tilted harder, and receipts and a loose hat and Mike’s basketball fluttered down to pollute the lake. Then Mike tumbled out the window, like the last piece of candy stuck to the bottom of a paper box. His voice was thin in the distance. For a moment, both the truck and Mike hovered over the bluffs, spinning slowly in the sky. Like it was debating.
A metallic screech cut the air. The truck groaned heavily, defeated, and the wind whistled through its seams, until it smashed against a tree overlooking the lake. The tree creaked, the truck tumbled, and a ball of metal, wood, and dirt went splashing into watery depths.
Mike was lifting, thrashing now against the pull. His inky reflection in the cube grew until Mike was pressed into it, like laying against water, and he began to sink up into it, absorbed.