imagination – Page 2 – Michael Seidel, writer

Do you ever imagine that invisibile beings surround you, watching what you’re doing when you’re in your home alone, commenting on it to each other?

They seem to come in three flavors: aliens from space, time travelers from the future, and deceased individuals — especially family — returned as spirits. What they say and how they watch varies, depending upon which group they’re in, and their intentions.

So, for example, aliens crowd around you in the kitchen as you clean up, remarking upon the cultural significance of your routine, applauding your efficiency (or lack of it), comparing it to their own processes and habits.

No? You never have this happen?

Yeah, neither do I.

Burping blue smoke and violent noise, a pickup truck pulled into the line of stopped traffic.

Tan with brown accent panels and chrome wheels, the pickup truck was elderly, maybe an eighties vintage, dated as far as motor vehicles go. The right-side door – that’s where the passenger is in America – was smashed in. Broad black tape all around the door held the door shut against the body.

It looked to me like he’d been run into. I could see how another vehicle had slammed head on into the pickup truck’s side. Imagined scenarios easily rose. Maybe he ran a stop sign or red light. Then again, maybe the other vehicle ran the traffic order to stop and hit him, who was innocently motoring along.

Or, it could be the result of passion. He and his wife – or his girlfriend, boyfriend, cousin, sister, brother – argued. He fired up his truck to leave. As he was slewing the vehicle around, dust flying, the other person leaped into their vehicle and drove it into his truck, trying to stop him.

Perhaps it wasn’t passion, but a broken drug deal, or an attempted theft. Television tales and real-life reports fertilized possibilities.

Maybe, though, the driver wasn’t involved at all. Perhaps it wasn’t his truck; he was just borrowing it to move some junk.

The maybes are endless, and I’ll probably never know.