Vapors

            Sweat dripped from his forehead on to the air conditioning unit by his feet. He removed his ratty, faded baseball hat and wiped his brow. He spotted the bus coming, so, with great effort, he scooped up the AC unit—the metal digging into his hands—and made an awkward movement with his foot to indicate to the bus that he wanted on. It pulled over to the side of the road and the door opened.
            “Route Seventeen: Northgate via Clifton,” rattled the programed voice when the door folded open.
            The bus driver, a black man in his forties with a shapely goatee and a pilot's hat, peered down at him as he struggled over to the door with the big metal box.
            “You can’t bring that on here,” the bus driver said.
            “Why not?”
            “It’s too big.”
            “Too big?”
            “Yep.”
            “Well, what I’m s’posed to do with it?”
            “I don’t know. Take it back where you got it.”
            “I ain’t walking all the way back there. This thing's heavy. C’mon, man.”
            “It’s dripping stuff out of it,” the bus driver said pointing to the wet spot on the pavement.
            “Aw, that’s just water.”
            “You can’t bring that on here, sir.”
            He dropped it onto the sidewalk, “Fuck it, then,” and started to board the bus.
            “You can’t just leave it at the bus stop either,” the bus driver said.
            “Damn, man. Why not?”
            “Cause, you can’t just leave air conditioners anywhere.”
            “What I’m s’posed to do?”
            “I don’t know, sir, but I’ll have to call somebody if you just gonna leave it at the bus stop.”
            He propped his foot on the unit and wiped his brow again.
            “Alright then,” he said.
            “What are you gonna do?”
            “I’m a wait here for the next bus. Maybe they’ll help a brother out.”
            “Suit yourself,” said the bus driver and drove away.
            He waited until the bus was out of sight and walked away empty handed. 

The Fallen Shooting Guard

*The following is a story written in May of 2010.  

The bumps on Kobe's head grew a little more every off-season. Some figured he had developed brain tumors, others thought he wore his hats too tight, but no one knew for sure. Kobe himself said he was fine and that he had it checked out regularly by doctors, though the names of his doctors were never divulged. He admitted that it was a strange condition, but that it was not harming his game nor his life and that it didn't hurt.

Then, at 35 when he returned to play in his 16th season, the horns started to show. At first the bumps opened into small sores and Kobe refused to talk with reporters, covering the openings with bandages and wearing his tight hats more than usual. But the season soon began and the media pressure became too great. The original reason Kobe gave for the bandages he wore on the court was that he had a skin disorder which had become inflamed. Wild speculation began to circulate that he had contracted a bizarre STD and would soon be dead. Kobe brought out a doctor who said it was a skin disorder that had become inflamed and that he was not expected to die anytime soon.

Meanwhile, his play reached new levels. Not only did he average 38.3 points a game after his first 20 games, but to a man, each player Kobe defended said that they had never faced defense that intense. More than one player said that Kobe was playing like a man possessed and most wondered how an aged veteran could raise their game so dramatically.

Soon the bandages couldn't cover what was happening underneath. The horns were nearly half an inch long and quickly became the worst kept secret in the NBA. The first to talk was teammate Lamar Odom who grew tired of answering questions about it.

“They're horns, alright? Kobe has horns. I don't get it either,” Odom said.

The league said that Odom was out of hand to make such a far-fetched accusation about another player and fined him fifty grand. Kobe's publicist announced via Twitter that Kobe did not have horns and didn't think Odom's statement was funny. Kobe himself had no comment.

Then came the clincher.

On a Christmas Day game against the Knicks in New York, Kobe, guarded by Jon Wall, took one dribble to the left, made a quick cross-over to his right and aggressively drove the lane. He cocked back his arm and prepared to boom a thunderous dunk when Wall wantonly crashed into him, sending Kobe into the throng of photographers perched just behind the basket. His right bandage fell off when he hit the floor and his horn was exposed.

The players on the court reacted right away. Knicks forward David Lee saw it and sprinted into the locker room. Kobe's teammate Pau Gasol, saw it and refused to play with him. Eventually, the whole arena saw it on the big screen and freaked out. The refs were flummoxed. They made Kobe leave the game for what was later explained as “concern for his health.” Once Kobe was removed from the game, play resumed but the outcome no longer mattered. It became arguably the most famous NBA game of all time, yet very few remember who won.

Afterward, Kobe's publicist once again denied his client had horns; Kobe wouldn't talk to anyone. But it was too late. The cameras had caught it, all those close up had seen it, and it simply couldn't be mistaken for anything else. They were still just nubs, but they curled upward to a point, almost like an elephant's tusk. There were two of them and they bulged from his forehead where horns are normally depicted on humans.

Kobe had to admit it; he could hide it no longer. He gave a press conference where he wore no bandages on his head for the first time in months. There he displayed both of his horns which had grown to a full inch. He explained that he didn't know why he had horns, that he was sorry for lying about it and that they still didn't hurt.

The world had a hard time dealing with Kobe Bryant growing horns from his head. Many, many people assumed he was the antichrist and some cities experienced riots anticipating Armageddon. Others threatened to kill Kobe if he surfaced, claiming to do so would be to conquer the devil himself. It was determined that it was unsafe for him to play and he was effectively banned in the name of his personal welfare.

Kobe was furious; he only wanted to play basketball and even though he was clearly the world's best player, he was not allowed to do so because of his physical abnormality. He sued the NBA under the Americans With Disabilities Act but the court ruled that having horns was not a disability and he missed the rest of the season. The Lakers barely made the Playoffs without him and were swept in the first round.

Questions were raised by the league itself if Kobe should even be considered human. Once the NBA decided that every win Kobe participated in would be upheld but would be denoted with an asterisks, and that he would be allowed to play the following season, it seemed to settle the issue. The public furor against him lessened. The news sensation of Kobe and his horns slipped off the front page.

He returned for his 17th season now brandishing two inch horns on either side of his forehead, but he was not the same player on the court either. He appeared physically smaller and less muscular and lacked his normal athleticism; the Lakers fell out of Playoff contention early on in the season. Once Cleveland finally captured their first championship and LeBron announced that he was a homosexual, the world completely forgot about Kobe and his physical oddity.

As did the NBA. Once the Lakers cut the former MVP, there simply weren't any other takers for a 37-year-old veteran with nothing left in his tank and horns on his head. So, with nothing else to do, Kobe went about his business of bringing about Armageddon and fulfilling his actual role of the antichrist. The religious zealots were right after all. Once the end of the world was complete and Kobe could rest comfortably again, someone asked him about what happened that last year of his playing career.

“I could have used special powers to play basketball but I never did. I always just used my human capabilities. But once everyone found out what I really was, they would never accept me again. Sure I was allowed to come back but what did it matter? Any success would have been looked down upon. To fade away like that wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was the human thing to do.”