Writing Prompt Boot Camp, Day 5

What happens when something you see every day reveals something new to you?

Tags

Alice was walking home from work when she passed “the wall of squiggles”. It was her pet name for a concrete retaining wall that was on her way to the MAX station. It was usually covered with a collection of short squiggly letters that seemed to form initials or abbreviations of some sort. Mostly it was just another bit of visual “white noise” that she encountered during her day.

Alice was not a very visual person. She always wondered why she lagged behind her friends at school when it came to solving picture puzzles, filling in the correct colors in a paint-by-numbers worksheet, or even those stupid brain teasers that put two almost identical pictures side by side and challenged you to spot the differences. She hated those most of all!

It wasn’t until years later during a routine eye exam that she learned she was partially colorblind. That alarmed her eye doctor because she had only run across one other woman who was colorblind during her twenty-year practice. She had Alice go through a bunch of other tests to make sure that the wasn’t exhibiting signs of macular degeneration or other problems that might be on the horizon. None were found, so Alice was advised to just go on with her life.

“But does that mean I see the world differently than everybody else?” Alice had asked her doctor.

“Yes, but is that such a bad thing? Think of it as a gift, rather than a disability,” her doctor encouraged her.

The only thing Alice was encouraged to do was delve into the subject as best she could. She read medical school dissertations and white papers for potential cures. She did find one thing that interested her, but it was only a comment buried in a medical journal online article about color blindness and its links to corneal development in later years: “Color blindness does limit color perception, but could it also reveal other visual elements that normal people cannot see?” There were no replies to that comment, save one: a single thumbs-down emoji. Alice never found anything ominous to worry about, so eventually she gave up the research and settled into the rest of her life.

As Alice walked past the wall of squiggles, she remembered what these short bursts of letters were called: tags. Jessica, one of her best friends, told her that over some after-work drinks at the latest hipster cocktail joint in downtown Portland. Still struggling to get back on its feel post-COVID, the city tried to bring people back downtown by showcasing new establishments. She met Jessica at a new place called Burning Pinecone, which was not too far from Jessica’s office, the City of Portland Planning and Development.

“Ugh, tags are awful!” Jessica said when their second round arrived.

“Why?” Alice asked.

“Because they proliferate,” Jessica answered, stressing the last word like she was describing a disease as venereal. “Every time Public Works gets rid of a batch, a new one appears almost overnight. They’re almost impossible to get rid of!”

“What about other kinds of graffiti? You know, the bigger murals and stuff?”

“Well, I’m not supposed to say this outside of the office,” Jessica looked to her left and right to humorously protect their conspiracy, “but if the murals are attractive, then the city just leaves them up.”

“Isn’t that selective law enforcement or something like that?” Alice said, betraying her ingrained conservatism just a little bit. It was hard being a classic conservative in a town like Portland. Fortunately, Jessica failed to notice or shared Alice’s conservative streak, so she carried on.

“Honestly? We should just whitewash all that stuff away! It may look cool to some people, but all it does is bring down property values and discourage businesses from returning. I know that’s not a very popular point of view,” Jessica used air quotes around the word ‘popular’, “but more people feel this way than you might think.”

Alice laughed to reassure her friend that she shared the sentiment, and they switched topics to who they were seeing at the moment. That carried them through a third round of drinks, after which they called it an evening.

Alice recalled all of this on her walk to the MAX station when she stopped at the wall’s midpoint. Was there anything here that was worth saving? That was even remotely artistic? Or should she come back here with a can of heavy-duty white paint and cover over all of this stuff herself? That was an entertaining thought, and she meant for that thought to spur her on her way home when something caught her eye. It was a new squiggle, but it was clearer than the others.

The squiggle was near the bottom of the wall, the lines of the tag almost touching the blacktop path. Alice bent down to get a better look, and she wondered why she thought this tag was “new”. It looked the same as all the others on the wall: short collections of stylized letters drawn with black spray paint. Maybe it was new, for she could smell the sharp odor of the accelerant the closer she got.

“Just another tag,” Alice said aloud as she got back up on her feet, her visual perspective changing as she did so. And as her perspective changed, Alice saw her name clearly sketched out in lines of black spray paint. Along with her name there was an arrow pointing up. Alice looked up, and gasped at what she saw:

RIP JEZZICA

It was the “Z’s” in place of the “S’s” that drove Alice from the wall at a run to the MAX stop.

Once on board the train, she called Jessica on her cell. It rang and rang and rang. Alice was about to hang up when she heard the clicks of an answered call.

“Jess! Are you there?” Alice shouted into the phone.

“Um, this isn’t Jess. This is Tony and I just found this phone on the ground next to a dumpster.”

“Is there a woman there? White, blonde, late 20s?” Alice pleaded with Tony. There was a long pause before he answered.

“Um, nope. Nobody around here but me. What do you want me to do with this?” Tony asked, becoming more annoyed.

“Can you turn it in to the cops?” Alice asked.

“Um, no, I’m not gonna walk up to a PPB cop and hand them a phone I just found on the street,” Tony answered in tone like he was speaking to a slow child. Before Alice could ask again, Tony made a suggestion: “Tell you what, I’m gonna leave this phone underneath the dumpster where I found it. It’ll be at the mouth of the alley at First and Ash, Southwest.” And then Tony hung up.

Alice tried calling again and again, but Tony must have turned the phone off.

She had to change direction at the Hollywood stop to go back into town, but Alice found the phone just where Tony said it would be. She brought it to the police herself, and filed a missing person report two days later.

Jessica was never seen again.

The City of Portland Planning and Development posted an ad to replace Jessica and Alice applied for the position. She expected to be turned down once her relationship to Jessica was discovered, but she got the job anyway.

Now Alice sits at Jessica’s former desk and reads the reports about graffiti and tags, just like Jessica did. Unlike Jessica, Alice does not forward all of the reports onto Public Works. She leaves the murals alone, as well as the tags that use “Z’s” instead of “S’s”.