Listening to Orange

A long orange, metal ribbed tube dangled from the 10 floor of the parking lot halfway down to the street. It waved with the wind. No one noticed, not even michael as he pulled his dark blue 3 series into the garage and waited for the ticket to click toward him, then wound his way up cursing the SUVs and idiots who left adjacent spaces unusable until on the thirteenth floor he finally slid between an Escalade and a Jetta. He caught his door just before it collided into the Cadilac and held his breath to squeeze out. No fucking point in any of this. Some where at the far end of the lot something sparkled brightly like sunlight on a watch face. Michael squinted toward it just as it vanished. Footsteps wandered casually away unseen. He checked the time. Late for the day but early for the meeting. Two stories beneath him the orange throat gasped a long gulp of air and went slack against the wall. Something in Michael clicked and he got back into his car, unwound the 13 floors, paid $5.25 for 8 minutes of parking to an elderly asian man, drove 12.6 miles to his apartment, walked up 3 sets of stairs, opened the door, went to the bedroom, picked up his alarm clock. The red lines glowed 9:38. He smashed it on the stained concrete floor. There was another reason he was here. There was something else he was looking for... something in the closet, above the clothes. The cold weight of it now in his hands, this thing he came home to find.