One Jarful of a Wanted Man

Zachary Ryan

The sheet whisked away as if he were the final ta-da of a magic trick. Sudden light blinded him. Massive heads circled about, as if he stood center of a cosmic tribunal. Last he recalled, he’d been in bed, drifting asleep at the end of a wonderful day: he and Bridgette had taken the kids to a playground, they’d eaten ice cream, they’d capped the night with an old, black and white film. Now, he was trapped in a space that, according to the proportions of yesterday, may have been the size and cylindrical shape of a revolving door. As he stood in proportion to the massive heads staring on the other side of the glass, however, he was merely a man in a small jar.

“Let the bidding begin!”

A finger tapped the glass and caused vibrations in his bones and a sharp pain in his ears.

The lid unscrewed; a rush of air entered the jar.

“If you’re so inclined, you can feed him like this.

A pair of tweezers descended into the jar, pinching a small corner of cheese. The man/giant holding the tweezers was more eccentrically dressed than the dozen others in this elegant banquet hall. While they maintained a middle-class fashion, men styled by their wives and their wives fitted with department designer outfits, the more eccentrically dressed man stood out as an anachronism. Cloaked in a brown long coat, he wore a gray tweed suit beneath, with a trilby on his head. His hair and thick beard were the color of a pumpkin, though both his untamed eyebrows were gray and twisted like rising smoke.

He dropped the cheese beside the man in the jar.

“Of course,” said the man of pumpkin-colored hair, “you don’t have to feed him at all if you don’t care to. Sometimes, I like to spritz him.” And he held up a small spray bottle and squirted into the jar as if watering a small plant. The man in the jar shielded himself.

“Was it hard getting him out of prison?”

“At that size?” the pumpkin-haired man laughed.

The man in the jar, whose confusion, whose delirium, had become a disorienting and ever-strengthening whirlwind, found himself further spun at this question of prison. Prison? He’d never been in prison. The most he’d ever been served was a warning for speeding.

And giving no moment for a clear thought, the spectators all spoke at once.

“I know what I’m doing with him.”

“Let him out in the backyard. See how far he gets before the dogs find him. How it feels when they get ahold of him. Like how it must’ve felt for my daughter.”

“We agreed, no one can release him.”

“I wanted to fight him myself. I’ve been dreaming of it. Daydreaming of it. I didn’t expect he’d be so small. Could you make him a little bigger? Like the size of a small racoon?”

“I’ll keep him trapped in that jar with spiders. And wasps. And a praying mantis. See how he fends for himself in that nightmare. With other monsters.”

“The details can be worked out once the bidding is over,” said the pumpkin-haired man. “You collectively paid me to bring him here. Now you will individually bid on who takes him, and where, next. On that, we also agreed. Are we still in agreement?”

There was a unison of yes. 

“I’m not waiting thirty years for the state to execute him.”

Suddenly within this tempest in the jar, the mini-man caught a clear thought.

Years ago, the roasts from his co-workers in the office; the ribs that he looked just like a serial killer who’d been captured recently. Two months of cubicle jokes at his expense. 

I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it! he shouted. I’m the wrong guy! He brought you the wrong guy! He’s conning you! It’s a trick! I’m just a boring dad!

“What’s he saying in there? I can’t hear him.”

“Squeaking about his innocence,” said the pumpkin-haired man.

“Just like at the trial. He can never say, I’m sorry.”

Check the news! shouted the man in the jar. Breakout! Breakout! The killer can’t be missing!

“Let’s start the bidding.”

Hands rose into the air. Life savings had been emptied. Second mortgages taken. A middle-aged woman in a conservative black dress, buttoned to her neck, made the final offer. Her husband, dressed in lighter church attire of khakis and a blue shirt, stood behind her, hand on her shoulder.

“Congratulations,” said the pumpkin-haired man.

“We can’t thank you enough. You delivered. We didn’t believe it was possible.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” and the man held up the jar, smiling sinisterly, knowingly, at the tiny man inside, “He’s an interesting specimen. Radiates sadism, blind hatred, brings it out of everyone. Such an inspiring little bug.”

He winked at the boring dad.

You must have us over once it’s finished, everyone seemed to say.

Yes, yes, of course they would, and they threw the sheet back over the jar, and the tiny man collapsed in darkness.

***

“This is a flower from her grave,” said the winner. With tweezers, she lowered a pink peony into the jar. The tiny man attempted to grab it, climb up the stem, reach for the tweezers, but the winner pulled the tool away in disgust. “Her waterlogged grave, after you drowned her.”

Please! Please! Listen to me!

“I really hope you don’t smile through this, you sick bastard.”

She tilted a bottle of glue and poured it into the jar.

The tiny man did not smile through it. His final words were caught in a glue-bubble. They floated above his head un-popped. He was stuck gasping agony beneath the umbrella of the pink peony.

The lady tucked him away as a keepsake in the family’s small safe, next to their birth certificates and social security cards, along with the wedding ring the innocent man still wore.

AUTHOR BIO