Residual Consequences of Friday the 13th

Absurd Geometry Field Notes No. 00

Friday the 13th wasn’t over yet, and at 11:59:30, an emissary of Themis pulled over my chariot.

As the officer approached my window, I began replaying the sins of the day like slides in a View-Master. First, I looked at the chicken △ △ △ my GPS rooster. I live in a town so small it barely deserves cartographic recognition; it doesn’t even show up on Google. Since moving there, I have relied on this bird in ways I would prefer not to explain in court. He was in the car because we had gone to Austin earlier.

For one terrible moment, I thought: was it because the chicken didn’t have a seatbelt on?

Then I remembered the exotic fruit I had bought across the county line. Could I now be in possession of some kind of superfruit capable of turning my car into a time machine, the way magical bananas once transformed the DeLorean?

By the time the cop reached my window, his steps were so slow I could only read them as a Mississippi word delay.

Then he asked the classic question:

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

I did not.

“You have a broken light bulb over your license plate,” he said.

I told him it was intentional because I am environmentally conscious and trying to conserve energy.

“Nice try,” he said.

Then he took my ID, went back to his car, and returned with what I first assumed was a ticket. It was not a ticket. It was, somehow, a 13% coupon to O’Reilly Auto Parts so I could replace the bulb. He also gave me his badge number, which, he explained, could be entered as an additional coupon code.

This felt less like law enforcement and more like sponsorship.

The next day, Friday the 13th was over, but the consequences remained active. I went to O’Reilly’s. The clerk called me over to the computer and asked what kind of car I drove so they could find the part.

“It’s a Ferrari,” I said.

Silence.

The whole place stopped. Heads turned. The country town itself seemed to pause and reconsider its identity.

The clerk looked at me and said, “You’re in the wrong town. You’ll never find that part here. It might take a decade before we could even get a compatible pre-owned light bulb.”

Eventually they MacGyvered a replacement, which felt appropriate given that I live out in the country. The employee was very confident he would be able to install it for me. But when we walked outside and he looked at my license plate setup, his whole expression changed.

“Oh my God,” he said. “There’s no way.”

He stared at it like he had just discovered an ancient locking mechanism.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We can’t help you with this. You’re going to have to take it to a mechanic. They’ll probably need to remove this whole panel from the back to get to it. You might even have to leave the car overnight.”

There was a pause.

“I’m not doing that,” I said. “At this point, I’ll just buy a new car.”

The man stared into my eyes, speechless, with the vacant solemnity only a mannequin could give you.

They asked me to go sit down and wait for a refund, since after three hours, several YouTube tutorials, and what felt like at least two episodes of MacGyver, they still had not managed to create a viable bulb situation.

That was when I ended up sitting next to a man in a paperboy hat.

“I’ve seen you around,” he said. “Always with that chicken.”

“Rooster,” I corrected him. “I call him a chicken because people ask fewer questions.”

He ignored this. “You think that bird is magical. You think he guides you because of that incident in the cornfield maze. But the magic is within you. And if that chicken could talk, do you know what he’d say? He’d tell you to get out of this town.”

“Then he’d point his beak west.”

He said this with the calm certainty of a man who had already filed the paperwork.

“So the chicken is just moral support?”

“Moral support,” he said, “with delusions of grandeur.”

“That tracks,” I said. “He’s allergic to everything except caviar and medium-rare steak.”

“But tonight, that ends. His luxury era is over. The finest thing he’ll be eating is Fancy Feast from a can.”

At this, the chicken became visibly agitated.

“That’s not all I know about you.”

“I know who you are,” he said. “You’re the woman songs and movies warn people about. You are △ △ △”

“Please don’t say it,” I interrupted. “I already have to live with the consequences. I’m saving the official revelation for when I appear on The Masked Singer.”

Then he noticed my biohazard tattoo.

“That’s why you got that tattoo, right?” he asked. “To warn them.”

Unfortunately, to be continued.