The only thing it said was, “Stop.”

Intrigued, I called the number to investigate and see who had left the mysterious message and what it might mean, but was immediately sent to a voicemail box that gave no indication of who, or what, might reside at the receiving end. Not wanting to give up on this communication, I texted back. These are the messages that ensued:

*********************************************************

Unknown Texting Entity: Stop

Me: Stop??? Stop what???

(One day passes)

Me: Can’t stop.

Me: Won’t stop.

Me: Maybe in the name of love. Maybe I will stop in the name of love.

(Another day passes)

Me: No. Changed my mind. Will NOT stop in the name of love.

(Two days pass)

Me: Is this the Instant Pot?

Me: You can see into the future, can’t you, Instant Pot?

Me: Is it true? Is it death by water for me? The Tarot reader said it was, but I’m not sure I believe her. I think she might have been unreliable. She was weird,  smelled exactly like a Harveys. Very suspicious.

( One day passes)

Me: And I’m never even in the water.

( One day passes)

Me: My wife told me that the Instant Pot cannot send texts, so sorry. I guess you’re not the Instant Pot.

( One day passes)

Unknown texting entity: Just stop.

Me: STOP WHAT???? YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE!!! JUST KNOCK OFF THE MEAN GIRL BULLSHIT AND TELL ME WHAT IT IS I HAVE TO STOP DOING!!!

Me: Sorry. I don’t normally lose my temper like that.

Me: I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: Lots on my mind.

( Two days pass)

Me: You’re a demon, aren’t you?

Me: I always knew a demon would pick me to seed.

Me: I knew this would happen. Ever since I read The Amityville Horror when I was eleven.

Me: That’s when I created a portal for you to enter into my life, wasn’t it?

Me: Fuck it!

( One day passes)

Me: Well demon, as you can see into my soul, you know that I’ve wanted to stop for a long time.

Me: The problem is I can’t stop.

Me: That’s why I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: I. Just. Can’t. Stop.

Me: It’s all I fucking think about.

Unknown Texting Entity: Paske, gen anpil moun ki rebèl, plen diskou sans ak desepsyon, espesyalman sa yo ki nan gwoup la sikonskripsyon. Yo dwe bese, paske yo ap deranje tout kay ki nan kay yo lè yo anseye bagay yo pa ta dwe anseye-e ke pou dedomajman pou malonèt.

Me: Is this you, Jen?

Me: Are you fucking with me?

Me: If so, this is NOT funny.

Me: So not funny.

Me: I just had to take two Lorazepams, you fucker.

(One day passes)

Me: Okay, this is Michael’s wife Rachelle writing now. Listen, if you actually are a demon, why did you start off communicating in english and then switch to whatever you switched to, when you saw my husband start to panic? Why not just continue with english? Seems like a rookie mistake to me.

Me: I think you’re a false prophet!

Me: Demon! It’s Michael here again! The above, the blasphemy about you being a false prophet? That was written by my wife, not me! I would NEVER say that about you!!

Me: Rachelle here, demon. Could you make yourself useful and tell me where Jones put the car keys? And if you’re the reason why the remote is always disappearing, you’d better knock it off. Don’t think I won’t holy water the shit out of this whole place. I will. And I have a Bissel steam cleaner that can suck you right out of the sofa.

It’s a real ghostbuster, so just consider yourself on notice.

It’s really just a big sandbox at our local park, but there are boulders in it and the children had carved little channels out of the dirt and filled them with water so that they’d become mysterious and winding rivers. It was the first warm day of spring, the first truly beautiful day after a very long winter, and Jones could not have been happier.

His smile first emerges in his eyes, quickly spreading from there into a wide, unprotected grin in which every tooth is made visible. Standing like that for a moment, he then threw his arms up and squealed– his joy a secret that must be shared—and began racing about Spooky Island in delighted circles. Our radiant beast, so fresh and hungry, so nourished by each day.

And not far away some other child’s parent was blowing soap bubbles. Catching the light and glistening, the undulating bubbles rose up and drifted just out of the reach of the children beneath. In their pursuit they sounded like chirping birds at a feeding, each one amazed by the miraculous gifts appearing around them.

In that moment it was hard to imagine anything more beautiful than what was before us.

Just a few hours earlier, in a different part of the city, a Van Attack had killed 10 people and left even more injured, and people were feeling weird. But nobody was talking about it at the park, nobody was on their smartphone looking for the latest update. No, it was as if a spell had been cast and all of us there were suspended within some magic bubble, one that existed beyond the reach of the actual. We spoke only of the world we stood upon, the world we could see, hear and touch. Anything else was too much, or perhaps even a sin, and so together we became the simple creatures we needed to be, and stood in the light for as long as we could before taking leave and returning back to the worlds from which we came.

A dead calm.

Existing just outside of time, lives hang suspended there as people wait to discover the toll they must pay to continue their passage.

Sitting across from me an older, Indian woman reclined in her chair, drifting. Beautiful in sleep, her third eye combed unknown realms before she returned to her mortal body and woke into the hospital lights, tired and disappointed.

A man, his eyes closed, breathed carefully while listening to his iPhone. He was so concentrated, so brittle and alone, and his lips moved almost imperceptibly as he repeated the words he was listening to.

An incantation.

A mantra.

A prayer.

And as if in response, a tired nurse coming off shift– her jacket already on– approached him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder. His eyes flashed open in alarm, and she smiled, asking if there was anything she could do for him. He quickly, reflexively, shook his head no, but she stayed, and growing more beautiful by the word, she spoke with him until something inside the man softly dissolved and the rigidity passed from his body.

Later, a cab pulled up at one of the hospital’s entranceways and a man on oxygen support and his wife got out of the car. They were excited, moving quickly, as if on a game show or late for their vacation cruise of a lifetime. I got inside the car they just left and the cabbie was a happy and talkative. He told me that the guy who just got out, after years of waiting, after countless false starts and failed matches, had just received the phone call that he was going to get a lung transplant and to come in NOW! The man, the driver said, was going to be able to breath again, he was going to be able to go to the family cottage and once again, just like when he was a boy, go swimming in the lake at night.

And as we pulled away from the hospital we passed by a couple of petite Asian women in vividly coloured bubble jackets waiting at the crosswalk. Smiling, they leaned in toward the traffic, swaying slightly, like brightly-lit balloons just about to lift off into the sky.

They all appear so wealthy and beautiful. Dressed crisply in black and plugged into their iPhones, they move swiftly and with such confident purpose that they seem visitors to this world—weightless, as if they might flicker in the dusk and then simply vanish. But the men who carried all of their possessions in hockey bags on their backs, who had decades of anger and disappointment burned into their features, they seemed weighted and permanent, and they stared like fires at these people streaming by.

Rocks left on the banks of a great river.

**************************

To get around the city I now need to use supplemental oxygen, which means I always have a tank on my back with tubing that leads to my nasal passages. In the stores, some people give me tight, warm smiles, the sort of smiles you see more in the eyes than on the lips. “There but for the grace of God, go I,” these smiles say. And of course, other people notice nothing at all, seeing just a form amongst other forms.

A couple, the only customers at La Hacienda, sat at a big, glowing window table.

She looked wary, as if a naturally defensive manner was built into her character. On the TV show of her life she would have been the sarcastic one, the one who always lived on love’s periphery. He was leaning in toward her, having made his body expansive and noticeable in effort to conceal his verbal insecurity, his fear that he was actually boring. And she was leaning away, as if she couldn’t believe she’d ben trapped by Jerome and his stupid man bun, and while he was talking she was actually composing the story she would tell her friends about this encounter later on, but still, there they were. Just the two of them glowing in their youth, glowing in the dark, glowing like a Christmas display in a window, and I wanted to yell at them, to shake them, “Damn it, fall in love, create a story that will last generations!” 

On the street I was trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab. After about 15 minutes a young, college kid in a hoodie showed up beside me. He was so fresh-faced. His smile a simple, uncomplicated thing, his eyes clear. He wanted to get a cab for me. He wanted to run blocks to find one. He wanted to kick through the slush and snow and bring this good deed home to me. He wanted to find the lost dog, he wanted to clear a path for everybody in need, to be that light in the dark, that thing you remember when you think of Christmas.

************************************

Rachelle: Is everything okay?

Rachelle: Oh.

Rachelle: Well, I don’t know why Netflix would be down.

Rachelle: But you’ve already seen Making a Murderer three times.

Rachelle: Yes, your thirst for justice is unusually obsessive.

Rachelle: No, strong. I wrote strong.

Rachelle: Must have been autocorrect.

Rachelle: Well, you’ll just have to be be brave, my love, I’m sure Netflix will be up and running soon and you can return to your Making a Murderer studies.

Rachelle: But tell me, how is Jones doing?!

Rachelle: Oh, he’s such a strong, little boy!

Rachelle: Well, you can’t take your eyes off him, you really can’t.

Rachelle: You should always be looking for his left.

Rachelle: Look, he always hits you with his left first. It’s his plan.

Rachelle: It’s not a dirty plan. He’s just a sweet, playful little boy!

Rachelle: So, just so you remember: The left comes first. And then when you’re dazed and trying to put your glasses back on, he will hit you with the right and then start kicking. Both feet. Every time, Pickle. You have to prepare for it.

Rachelle: I know he thinks it’s funny.

Rachelle: Well, I disagree, sometimes a bleeding nose can be very funny.

Rachelle: I know you get nose bleeds from the blood-thinning medication you’re on.

Rachelle: Sure. It’s not because Jones is stronger than you.

Rachelle: Yes, it is entirely possible you could still take Jones in a fight, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Rachelle: He has muscle definition in his back. Do you?

Rachelle: So, he’s sleeping now then?

Rachelle: And you fed and changed him?

Rachelle: What does he look like sleeping? Does he look like an angel?

Rachelle: I don’t believe you’re in his room.

Rachelle: I think you just made that up.

Rachelle: He’s not talking in his sleep.

Rachelle: Send me a photograph of him sleeping.

Rachelle: Oh, you’re very clever.

Rachelle: I know you got over 130 on an online IQ test.

Rachelle: Pickle, you tell people you meet at parties that. You tell everybody that.

Rachelle: Yes, you are a genius, yet you still can’t drive or hold down a job. It’s fascinating, that.

Rachelle: Yes, the wildly misunderstood genius community is subject to a lot of bullying.

Rachelle: You’d think all those geniuses would be able to band together and cast a spell, but I guess I just don’t understand how genius works.

Rachelle: What?

Rachelle: Jesus.

Rachelle: Look, there is no way that Jones’ Exersaucer is haunted.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: It is creepy that it plays music of it’s own accord, and only when you’re in the room, but I don’t think it means it’s the Exersaucer of a dead child.

Rachelle: Well, no.

Rachelle: I don’t know the history of the Exersaucer.

Rachelle: Yes, I did buy it used.

Rachelle: Yes, so in theory it could have been sold by a grieving family that lost their child to a possessed and murderous Exersaucer.

Rachelle: I must say, watching Making a Murderer so obsessively really has really made you a better lawyer.

Rachelle: Netflix is back up, isn’t it?

Rachelle: I thought so.

Rachelle: Just don’t watch the horror stuff, okay?

Rachelle: It’s not good for you. Your doctors said so.

Rachelle: No, your doctors do understand genius.

Rachelle: Look, just throw a blanket over the Exersaucer if its scaring you!

Rachelle: Okay.

Rachelle: I will be back in about half an hour. You wanted the low sodium Triscuits, right?

Rachelle: Yes, I got it, LOW SODIUM.

Rachelle: Love you, see you and Jones soon, you’re doing great! xoxo

Being generous and broad of heart, Rachelle has given access to our account to members of her family so that they can piggyback on our subscription and not have to pay to use the service.

What follows are the texts I received from my wife when I brought up the subject last week:

***************************

Rachelle: Oh, if it says the account is already in use when you try to watch, it means that someone in my family is probably watching.

Rachelle: We gave them access to our Netflix, remember?

Rachelle: Look, they do a MILLION things for us, you can just wait half an hour before you watch Arrow, okay?

Rachelle: I know you relate to the lead in Arrow. I know.

Rachelle: Yes, you got an arrow in your foot when you were a boy and ever since things have “changed.”

Rachelle: Of course, of course, it was certainly life-defining when you encountered a practice arrow that bounced harmlessly off your foot!

Rachelle: Must have been like meeting Bigfoot or seeing an angel!

Rachelle: Look, I’m not diminishing the arrow-harmlessly-bouncing-off-your-foot experience.

Rachelle: I know it doesn’t have to draw blood to hurt, or to alter the course of a young boy’s life.

Rachelle: I’m not mocking you.

Rachelle: Okay, yes, of course I’m mocking you!

Rachelle: Lordy, you can really be difficult, you know?

Rachelle: I know you REALLY love the show.

Rachelle: But honey, you’re unemployed and can watch it anytime you like.

Rachelle: Okay, I guess you can’t watch it when somebody else is using our account.

Rachelle: Yes, sure, game, set and match to Michael “Destiny’s Arrow” Murray.

Rachelle: And yes, I know that your fantasy baseball team is named “Destiny’s Arrow” to honour this pivotal moment in your life.

Rachelle: Leeches???

Rachelle: Are you really calling my family, the family that does so many kind and thoughtful things for us, leeches?

Rachelle: Un-fucking-believable.

Rachelle: Remember when my dad drove all the way down to Toronto from Alliston because you couldn’t open the patio table parasol?

Rachelle: Or when my mother typed out 150 pages of your Fantasy novel—Destiny’s Arrow–because you thought you might have a variation of carpal tunnel syndrome?

Rachelle: No, I don’t think autocorrect changed Peaches to leeches.

Rachelle: I simply do not believe you.

Rachelle: I think that you’re lying to me.

Rachelle: Yes, I think you lie all of the time.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: Well, when we met and you said you didn’t have any “emotional baggage.”

Rachelle: When you said you were 5’9, that was another lie.

Rachelle: That you were good at sports.

Rachelle: Do you want me to go on?

Rachelle: Look, if you send my parent’s a bill for $3.50 each month, “so that they can carry their own weight,” I will kill you in your loud, nauseating, snoring sleep.

Rachelle: Be back from work around 7:30, please be dressed this time.

R: My hockey game just ended and I should be there in about 10!

R: No fights.

R: There are never any fights.

R: Well, thank you, I guess.

R: I appreciate that you think I would be good in fight.

R: It’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.

R: Very romantic.

R: Oh, you got the best seat in the house!

R: Well done, Pickle!

R: Yes, your charm is considerable.

R: I bet the hostess didn’t stand a chance.

R: Those new sneakers really give you a lot of confidence, don’t they?

R: Imagine how you’d feel if you had a driver’s license and a job, too??

R: You’d be made of confidence! You’d probably take over a country or something!

R: I’m not being sarcastic.

R: I’m being cute, playful and funny.

R: Hockey doesn’t make me mean.

R: Oh, Pickle, you know I love you, and I do appreciate that you got there early and used your charm to get us the best table in the place.

R: Yes, you do have a commanding presence. It’s clear from the way that animals always obey you.

R: Our dog, for instance, she really listens!

R: And remember when the squirrel knocked you over and gave you a bloody nose when it stole a lozenge from you?

R: No? Well, you did hit your head pretty hard, it’s possible you got a concussion.

R: Yes, you just keep up with the online brain games and I’m sure you’ll be fine.

R: I know you skipped grade three, but honey, that was a very, very long time ago.

R: WHAT????

R: REALLY??? HOLY FUCK!!

R: For the love of Christ, DO NOT SAY A WORD TO HIM!!

R: I CANNOT BELIEVE JIM CUDDY IS IN THE RESTAURANT!! OMG!

R: NO!!! Do not tell him that you really admired his work in the Bare Naked Ladies!

R: You know damn well he was in Blue Rodeo.

R: But it’s true, I would be a bare naked lady for him!

R: How does he look?

R: Yes, it is interesting that you got the best seat in the house and not him. HOW DOES HE LOOK?

R: Oh, he’s wearing ugly sneakers, is he?

R: I still love him. I would love him in any weather.

R: Whatever you do, pleasepleaseplease don’t speak to him.

R: Please, promise me that.

R: Look, I’m allowed celebrity crushes.

R: I know you’ve been looking at the nudes of Jennifer Lawrence.

R: I know you say you’d never violate her and that it’s a sex crime to look at stolen photos, but your Internet history tells a different story.

R: Look, let’s cut the bullshit, just make sure I’m sitting where I have a clear sight line to him, I’ll be there in 30 seconds.

*****************************************************

M: There is a power outage!!! All is dark!!!

M: It’s another World Class power failure!

M: I think it’s the third this month.

M: Yes, I did call Rob Ford.

M: Couldn’t get through.

M: Got a message that said my problem was important to him.

M: My feet are cold.

M: We should get a heating pad that works without electricity if we’re going to live in Toronto.

M: Oh, right! A hot water bottle!

M: Yeah, I bet hipsters make them to look like owls. We should get one for our emergency kit.

M: What am I doing?

M: I’m lying in bed wishing I had a hot water bottle.

M: Yes, I guess I am draining my phone battery.

M: Yes, I am in complete darkness.

M: Except for the little glow of my iPhone.

M: When I turn off my iPhone, it must be exactly what it’s like to be a ghost.

M: Well no, I can’t float about or pass through walls.

M: Look, I don’t know why you have to be so difficult about this.

M: We really don’t know if ghosts can see or not. Maybe that’s why they pass through walls– they can’t see them but instead of bumping into them, they just pass right through!

M: Well, I don’t know how they know where the people are if they can’t see. Maybe they have super hearing?

M: Look, I just figured ghosts live in darkness is all, okay?

M: Whatever.

M: Okay.

M: Fine, maybe it’s more what it’s like for a dead person than for a ghost.

M: You people with power sure are arrogant.

M: I’m going to light a candle and see if I become all stuck up.

M: Oh my God.

M: The apocalypse blood-red moon was today!

M: I forgot that!

M: I just heard a wolf howl!

M: This could be the end of the world, and we’re fighting about what it’s like to be a ghost!

M: So petty.

M: Look, I’ve done a lot of research on ghosts, you know.

M: Have to.

M: No.

M: No, I’ve never talked to one so I don’t know what their lives are really like.

M: Fine. Rachelle 1, Michael 0.

M: You just don’t care about the apocalypse, do you?

M: It’s a pretty big deal.

M: Fuck, my battery is nearly dead and there are three weird looking people with shopping carts on the street.

M: It’s like they’re plotting.

M: Yes, plotting to take our bottles, but something worse, too.

M: I can feel it.

M: I’m scared.

M: And I don’t know where my inhaler is!!

M: Fuck!!

M: When are you getting home?!

M: Where’s the Ativan???

M: Oh.

M: Light just came back on.

M: Bottle collecting murders are still staring though.

A kind of stillness presides, an unhurried ease and absence of pretence. Nobody we saw was lost into the world of their iPhone like so many people in Toronto appear to be, all of them attempting to project a narrative of velocity and importance to the strangers passing by. No, the conversations here came slow and easy– almost humidly– as if each encounter were expected to last weeks rather than seconds.

While in a somewhat matronly dress shop I overheard the two middle-aged women who worked there talking.

“ John keeps crashing the truck into the barn.”

“Lordy!”

“I know! He hasn’t done any damage yet, but geez, it’s only a matter of time.”

“You gotta paint a big, red stop sign on that barn, I tell you. You have to stop that man!”

On the street a woman of about 25, pretty but wounded, approached us and asked for some change. She gestured to her loose fitting denim shirt, “I’m pregnant and hungry.” Seeing her moving toward us I had already decided that if I had change in my pocket I would give some to her, but if I had to dig into my laptop bag, I would not. This was the calculus I had made, the line I had arbitrarily drawn in the sand. After checking my pockets I apologized to her, telling her I didn’t have any change and she trembled, about to cry.  Rachelle then dug into her purse and gave her a couple of dollars, as regardless of this woman’s articulated circumstance, her need, for whatever reason, was more immediate and real than our own.

Cutting through a park near a church we passed a group of about a dozen people seated in a circle on the shaded grass. One man, probably around 35, sat elevated from the rest in a lawn chair that might have been bought at a Canadian Tire in the 1980s. He looked a bit like Jesus, this man, and the resemblance didn’t seem accidental. Leaning back in his chair, he nodded beatifically as the people around him brought him their troubles. A 50 year-old, a round and pale dad wearing a floppy Tilley hat, frustrated, was speaking with his hands, “It seems that the kids today are so remote from both their parents and God, all they ever do is play video games and I worry about this disconnect.” Canadian Tire Jesus put his finger to his lips, composing a thought, while the young girls sitting in this circle of faith watched him so closely, their eyes shining with something they couldn’t quite put into words.

Encumbered by a stern resting face, she’s locked like a laser into the world of her iPhone. Forced and slightly unnatural, she makes a point of never glancing around but lives inside her self-constructed bubble bringing small, impulsive miseries upon employees through calls or texts. After about 15 minutes her companion, hurried and apologetic for being late, arrives. The stern-faced woman is passive-aggressive, telling the new arrival that she had no choice but to go ahead and order, and then making unnecessary and pointed noises of completion with her cutlery. She then launches straight into business, a vampire sucking information from her guilty and compliant victim.

There are two waitresses serving the half dozen or so tables and both of them are lovely. One is tall and thin with a trace of brittleness to her, as if she hasn’t quite found her place in the world and might be looking for some time yet. She wears over-sized, bold glasses meant to add some complexity to the generic beauty queen image she projects—this, something she worries about, you can tell.

The other one is young and dewy, striding optimistically forward. She’s completely comfortable with who she is, and being good-natured and cheerful is not a mask she puts on when she goes to work—she wants to meet the world exactly where it stands.

An older woman, over-dressed for the weather, has the long, grey hair of a sociologist. She’s proud of it and considers it a political statement, pulling it into two practical pigtails that she fastens, one with a red band, and one with blue. She’s very particular, almost stubborn in her manner, and when she stands up to dust the crumbs off her placemat and onto the ground, it’s as if she’s beating a carpet out on a clothesline. Efficient, economical and unsentimental, she wants us to see her self-reliance, how she’s always been happy to live alone in this world. A train then trundles by, and everything shakes. Somehow, the patio then seems to dislocate and separate from time for a moment, and the world becomes a little richer, the passing aroma of electricity and oil drifting through us like history.