Crab Town (3 page)

When Johnny Balloon enters the bank, the place is crowded, even for Liberty Bank. He scans the people in lines, a mixture of middle class and working class people, with a handful of Crab Town residents sprinkled in. It’s going to be hard for him to get out of here in time to catch a movie.

There are two burly guards staring Johnny down as he gets into a line. Cops and security especially hate balloon people. There’s no reason why. They just can’t stand the floating creeps. A man in a yellow hat leans against a wall in the back of the room. He also stares Johnny down. The guy has to be an undercover guard. Every bank has one now. There are too many robberies these days, too many desperate people, and bank security isn’t what it used to be.

The corporate banks went out of business a long time ago. Now, only a few private banks exist in Freedom City. These banks are always packed and always getting hit by desperate criminals.

After ten minutes of waiting, Johnny realizes something is holding up the line. It has hardly moved. A middle-aged woman is at the front of the line, holding everything up. She is a pink lady: pink dress, pink shoes, and pink bow in her hair. Wealthy women like to wear pink or other bright colors. It is a symbol of high class. Nobody else in the room has clothes as bright and clean and new as hers. Most of them don’t even own washing machines.

She is the bank manager’s wife.

That’s when Johnny realizes the woman isn’t even in line. She’s just chatting up the teller. And the teller, an older woman with orange curly hair and white glasses, ignores her customers to gossip with her boss’s wife.

“What the fuck…” Johnny says, but the women are too far up there to hear him.

The pink woman has a son with her. By the looks of it, the kid is a real brat. He runs around the room with a toy metal airplane, making airplane noises at the top of his lungs. He charges at the people in line and makes machine gun noises at them, as if his little plane is gunning them down. The mother ignores her kid, too wrapped up in conversation to care that he’s being a nuisance to everyone around them.

The kid runs across the line shooting everyone. When he passes by Johnny, the balloon man inches away. Kids always make Johnny nervous. They are too unpredictable. You never know what they’re going to do, especially the ones who have parents that let them run wild in public.

There are three other balloon people in line with Johnny. They look like newbies to balloon life, probably at the bank to take out money to pay their gravity bill. The balloon woman standing near the front of the line doesn’t see it coming when the bratty kid swoops in behind her and slams the tip of his toy plane into her back.

The balloon woman pops. Her hollow body explodes into shreds of rubber that sprinkle in the air like confetti. Johnny gasps, but he’s the only one. The kid looks at what he’s done with a wide open mouth, and then he bursts into giddy laughter.

Nobody in the room seems to care. In fact, a lot of the people seem happy that the line is finally moving a bit. The mother continues chatting with her friend, as if nothing’s happened. She has to be aware that her kid has just murdered a balloon woman, but it doesn’t seem to be that urgent of an issue.

If you act fast you can save a balloon person after she pops. You can suck her gaseous form into a vacuum and return her to a balloon body, but nobody does anything. Not the security guards, not even the other balloon people. The woman’s gaseous form rises to the ceiling and then is sucked through the air vents, to be sprayed outside and dissipated into the atmosphere.

The kid realizes that he’s just found a new game to play. He creeps over to the next balloon person in line. It is an old man balloon. He glances down at the boy with his blank frozen expression.

“BOOOM!” the kid cries, as he pops the old man.

The kid is in tears with laughter as the line moves up another person.

“Kyle!” the mother says to him. “Keep it down!”

But that’s all she does. She turns back to her friend, ignoring her kid again. The boy has no intention of listening to his mother, as he creeps down the line looking for another balloon to pop.

Johnny crouches down behind the person ahead of him, hiding himself from the boy. A black woman behind Johnny cringes when his butt rubs against her purse. She gives him a look like she’s about to pop him herself, just for getting too close. Her eyes widen with anger and she shakes her head, grumbling some obscenities under her breath.

The other balloon man also crouches down to hide from the kid, but he’s a very large balloon with a big round belly. The boy spots him right away, sneaks up to him with his airplane pointed at his stomach.

“No, don’t!” the balloon man cries, backing away.

The kid yells “BOOOM!” and charges him. The man runs backwards, screaming for help, but everyone just laughs at the fat balloon trying to get away from the kid. A couple of women smile and sigh, as if what the kid is doing is so cute and precious. The balloon man runs toward the door, but one of the security officers trips him.

The guard laughs at the balloon man as the boy jumps on top of him plane-first. The fat guy screams one last time as he pops, and the kid falls through his confetti-flesh onto the ground.

As the boy rolls around on the floor, laughing, his mother charges him.

“That’s enough, young man!” she says, grabbing him by the arm.

The second the woman touches the boy, he shrieks at the top of his lungs as if her hand is made of acid. She drags him through the line, right past Johnny. As the kid goes by, he tries to swing his airplane at him, but Johnny is just a bit out of reach.

“No! No!” the kid yells as his mom pulls him away. “I want to pop the other one! I want to pop the other one!”

The woman sits him down in a chair.

“Do you like embarrassing me like this?” the woman yells at the child. “Do you think it’s fun to make me look like an idiot?”

The boy ignores her. “Just one more! Just let me pop one more!”

“No,” she says. “Now stay in this seat while I go see Daddy. If you’re not here when I get back you’re not getting a new toy after lunch.”

The kid cries out, gargling words that don’t make any sense. As she walks away, he pouts and kicks his legs, striking at the air with vengeance. Johnny wipes his forehead with relief.

After the mother disappears into one of the back offices, the boy becomes silent. Johnny Balloon advances in the line, but he can feel the boy’s eyes watching him every step he takes. He can tell the boy is trying to figure out a way to pop him without getting caught. Johnny decides not to take his eyes off of the kid. If he gets out of that chair Johnny plans to run.

When Johnny gets to the front of the line, the teller with the orange curly hair rolls her eyes.

She says, “Great, now I’ve got to deal with a fucking balloon.”

To most balloon people, being called a
balloon
is considered offensive. But Johnny doesn’t mind it. He thinks the term is rather appropriate.

Johnny unzips his knapsack and pulls out his wallet. “I’d like to make a withdrawal. Fifty dollars.”

He hands her his bank account number. Nothing is run by computers anymore, so she looks up his account folder via filing cabinet.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, “but your account balance is at negative nineteen-hundred-and-twenty-three dollars.”

“What?” Johnny shakes his head. “That’s impossible. I should have at least fifteen hundred dollars left. Look at the records.”

The teller intentionally uses her middle finger to push her white glasses up her nose. Then she goes to her records. As she pages through his account history, sighing loudly to express her annoyance, Johnny turns to keep his eye on the boy.

The kid is no longer in his chair. He is sneaking across the room. When Johnny’s eyes meets with his, he looks away, scratching his chest, acting natural. Johnny’s rubber hands begin to shake.

“Yeah, this is correct,” the woman says. “You were late on a couple of gravity bills, so the hospital had us take the money from your account.”

If Johnny’s facial expression could change it would now be one of rage. “I haven’t used gravity in over two months.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” says the teller. “Whether you use the gravity or not, you still have to pay for it. You didn’t have enough money in your account to cover your last bill, so now your account is overdrawn. You owe us 1,923 dollars.”

The bratty boy creeps through the line toward Johnny.

“But I don’t have that kind of money!”

“You will be charged a $50 overdraft fee every day until the amount is settled.”

“What!” Johnny cries.

The boy is now only a foot behind Johnny.

“If you don’t pay the full amount by the end of the month 90% of your wages will be garnished.”

“But I don’t even have a job!”

“Then you better start looking,” the teller says, closing the folder. “Next in line please.”

“But I didn’t want the gravity anymore,” Johnny shouts, holding up his bag. “I’ve been using my own gravity!”

The black woman pushes Johnny out of the way and gives her account information to the teller. Johnny pushes her back and says, “You need to reverse those charges and give me my money. Now!”

A smile widens on the little boy’s face as he aims his toy plane at Johnny’s butt.

“Get out of my way, balloon,” the black lady shouts, pushing Johnny back.

“Yeah, get out of here, balloon,” another person shouts.

“Give me my money,” Johnny says.

The teller makes eye contact with the guards in the back of the room. “Sir, if you don’t leave now security is going to escort you out.”

“Give me my fucking money!”

The little boy raises his toy airplane.

Johnny puts his hand in his knapsack, feeling around the pieces of debris. The guards move in toward him.

“BOOOM!” the kid says, as the toy plane flies toward Johnny’s back.

Before the toy pierces his skin, Johnny pulls out a .32 caliber revolver and shoves it in the kid’s face.

“Get back or I’ll blow your fucking face off, you little shit!”

When the kid sees the gun and Johnny’s demented smiling face peering down at him, he drops the toy. Then he begins to cry.