Michael

A.
Michael showed up on the doorstep at three o’clock. Screaming. Hollering for all the faggots to wake up and get their lazy asses out, because it was time for an ass kicking. I climbed out of my sleeping bag and came to the door. I opened it, and he looked surprised that it was me there. Or maybe that he’d elicited any response at all. There was a “No Stopping Any Time” sign on a pole with most of the concrete base still attached leaning against the side of the house.
“Hey man… shit. Where do those assholes live?”
He’d got the wrong house.
“Where’d you get that sign?”
“Oh yeah man. That’s such an awesome story. Short answer? Jersey!”
He started laughing. I smiled. Jersey was 800 miles away. I opened the door and he came in. I pointed at the couch and he lay down. He fell asleep almost immediately.
I went back to my cot.
In the morning, Michael was gone. The sign was still there. I threw it in the back of the truck and drove down to the police station.
“I found this in my front yard”
“Oh.”
“Should I just leave it here or what?”
“Um. Let me grab my supervisor.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t want to try to explain Michael or how a no stopping sign from Jersey could possibly have shown up. I didn’t want to have to lie either. Bottom line, I didn’t want to make a statement.
“Would you please come into the back here, so we can get a statement?”
“Okay.”
In the corner of my mind, I could see Michael running at 12 miles per hour for three days straight, carrying the sign like some sort of javelin trophy over his head. Never stopping. That was how he did it, I was sure.
I told the police I didn’t know where it came from. I signed my name.

“You gotta learn to mind your own business, man.”
“What do you mean?”
“That sign man! Look at me. Come on. I put it there for a reason.”
“Put it where? Leaning against my house”
“Yeah man. You gotta trust me. That sign’s gotta be there.”
“Okay. So what do we do?”
“I’m gonna go take that sign back from those coppers.”
“Okay.”
I believed him, really.

B.
Michael showed up on the doorstep at three o’clock knocking quietly. I opened the door and stepped outside. There was a sign leaning against the side of my house. I guessed it was the no stopping sign he’d taken from the police station. Pole and all. I had been watching the news and I was a little surprised he hadn’t been on. I didn’t see how you got a sign out from the police station without anyone getting pissed or anything.
He looked exhausted.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder and coughed a couple times.
“Man. I mean, really. Wow.”
“How’d it go?”
He looked up.
“Shit… you can see the sign, right? Yeah. It went okay. But jesus. I mean. Whew. Wheeeeeeeee!”
He smiled and walked in.
I went to get him a glass of water.
“No man, I need a beer.”
I mean, I went to get him a beer.
When I came back, open beer in hand, he was asleep on the couch. I drank the beer.
I woke up early afternoon, and Michael was outside with the sign. There was already a hole in the sidewalk in front of my house. Michael was hitting the ground with his fist. I saw puffs of concrete dust. He stood up and looked over at me in my bathrobe in the doorway. He smiled and dropped the pole into position.
“Got any glue?”
I went and grabbed a tube of elmers.
“Here.”
He grabbed it, opened it up and poured it all over the base of the sign.
“Not gonna hold for long, but that’s fine.”
“Why don’t we want anyone parking in front of the house?”
“It’s not that we don’t want people parking, it’s that we want the sign up. I had this vision… It’s hard to explain. Look. Leave it up. We’ll see what happens.”
He left that evening without eating anything.

C.
I woke up at three o’clock and walked to the front door. Michael was outside, silently standing tall. I opened the door. Michael danced a jig. Not that I’ve seen many jigs danced, or that I even know exactly what a jig is, it was unmistakable. It wasn’t a waltz.
I saw a glow in the sky. I stepped outside. It was definitely descending. A perfect sphere of glowing energy. It pulsed periodically. It stopped in front of the house to my left. A glowing amoebic tentacle of energy extended toward my neighbors house. It melted. It moved past the front of my house and paused in front of the next house on the block. Again the blob simply dissolved the house, and, presumably, the contents therof. It ascended skyward again. It vanished into the darkness of the sky.
Michael smiled and set off northward at a healthy run.