Silas Sharp and the Case of the Missing Tuesday: Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Man in the Chair

We found him in a park, or what used to be one. It still had the basic geometry—slide, sandbox, splash pad—but the colors were off. Too soft. Too polite. Like reality was apologizing for intruding. My metaphysical compass, a pocket watch with no hands and too many ticks, twitched in my coat. Not spinning. Not pointing. Just shivering like it was cold inside my pocket and knew why.

“He’s here,” I muttered.

Dr. Calico Verde had a toy of her own. At first glance, it looks like a vintage TV remote that’s been retrofitted with parts from a mood ring, a miniature harp, and a breathalyzer. The body is black Bakelite, smoothed by use. Tiny copper filigree lines run along the sides like veins. The tip glows faintly—not with light, but with hesitation. A glass orb is embedded near the top. Inside it floats a tiny, plush armchair—no bigger than a jellybean—which rotates slowly when furniture is nearby. The thing hums like a cassette rewinding. I had to know what it was.

“Metaphysical Furniture Tracker,” she told me with unexpected and, frankly, unnecessary sensuality. “Or, as I like to call it, my MFT Wand.”

I had heard of them, of course. You don’t work the metaphysical detective beat without hearing about bizarre gizmos and gadgets. The device hums near metaphysical furniture, but it doesn’t beep like a normal scanner. It pings in metaphor—emitting sensations like déjà vu, wistful sighs, and the phantom smell of old upholstery. The closer it gets to a piece of metaphysical furniture, the more emotionally specific the output becomes. But I’d never seen one in the field. And Calico wielded it like she invented it.

“I’m getting heavy avoidance,” Calico says. “Mid-spectrum denial. Wistful undertones. Definitely an armchair, possibly velvet, probably emotionally fused.”

We crested a small hill, and there he was under the oak tree. Randy. Seated in the Armchair of Avoidance like he’d taken root. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t blink. He looked like peace carved into a man-shaped wax figure. A dark pool of shadow oozed out on the ground beneath him, threatening to envelop anyone who got close.

“Don’t let the calm fool you,” I said. “That’s the posture of pure refusal. The chair’s metabolizing his pain and exhaling apathy.”

The mulch near him had gone pale. The slide looked like it had been Photoshopped out of a memory. Even the pigeons nearby were still. Perched like statues, waiting for instructions from a forgotten god.

A woman sat nearby on a bench. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t sobbing. She just... leaked. Quietly. Like she’d sprung an existential leak but didn’t want to cause a fuss.

Then she stood.

“Ma’am—” I said, stepping forward.

She didn’t hear me. Or she did and chose silence. She took a step toward the chair. Calico’s sensor spiked and chirped like a Geiger counter in a heartbreak factory.

“The chair’s tethering,” Calico said. “Location’s going porous. If she gets too close, the world forgets her before she forgets herself.”

“He looks so peaceful,” the woman breathed. “I want that peace.”

I moved to block the woman’s path, arm extended.

“You don’t want that peace,” I said gently. “It doesn’t come back when you need it.”

She stopped, dazed, blinking like a light trying to remember how to flicker. Behind her, a boy jumped from the swing set. But never landed. The swing kept moving. The wind kept blowing. But the boy was simply pending. Stuck in the space between moments, as if reality hadn’t processed his descent yet.

Calico cursed under her breath and pulled a folded paper from her coat. It was a laminated school calendar—hand-colored with construction paper edges and doodles of little stars. She slapped it against the oak tree trunk like a sacred relic. The air buzzed. The color in the sky flickered. The boy hit the ground with a soft whump, looked around, then ran off laughing.

Calico exhaled.

“Temporal anchor set,” she said. “For now.”

“He’s tethering more deeply,” I said. “The chair’s not just leeching meaning—it’s recruiting others to abandon theirs.”

Then a toddler began to toddle toward Randy.

A juice box in one hand. Cheeks sticky with popsicle residue. Arms wobbling forward with the certainty of someone who believes the world is basically fine. The child’s mother rushed after.

“No,” Calico breathed.

The child crossed the shadowy boundary. His skin began to pale. The color of his shirt dulled to the tone of overwashed denim. The mother reached across to grab child only to find herself being pulled into the expanding void as is connected to tractor beam.

I lunged, scooped them up just as the straw from the juice box vanished with a snap. They blinked at me, stunned, then began to cry.

Good.

Noise meant presence. Presence meant memory. The woman clung to her child, staring intently at Randy in his Armchair of Avoidance.

“I want to sit,” she said softly. “Just for a minute. Five minutes where no one needs me. Five minutes without... her.” Her lips trembled. Whatever "her" was—daughter, mother, past self—was gone enough to hurt but not enough to name.

I looked at her. Really looked.

“We all want that,” I said. “But if we all sat down, who’d be left to remember what standing felt like?”

She hesitated. Calico handed her the laminated school calendar.

“Hold this,” she said. “Don’t let go until you remember her name.”

The woman took it like it weighed a hundred pounds.

Randy, for his part, never moved. Never looked at us. Just sat, tranquil as a forgotten prayer. But the chair pulsated. It was hungry for more. Calico crouched beside her gear bag and pulled out something that looked like a hybrid between a tuning fork, a cattle prod, and a fountain pen. She handed it to me with more hesitation than I liked.

“Extraction spike,” she said. “Limited range. If he’s fused too deep, it could destabilize both him and the chair. Maybe more.”

“Define ‘more.’

“The concept of Thursdays. Or gravity, if we’re too close to a playground with unresolved nostalgia.”

I took the thing from her, inspected it.

“Do I jab it or whisper to it?”

“Both,” she said.

Randy sat motionless under the tree, eyes half-lidded in tranquil defiance of everything that made a Tuesday a Tuesday.

I approached slowly, the air growing thick—like walking through regret-flavored molasses. My compass began to tick erratically. Not forward, not backward. Just... sideways.

“Randy,” I said, my voice nearly swallowed by the chair’s hum. “You in there?”

Nothing.

His skin had taken on a faint upholstery texture, like his pores had been replaced with fabric weave.

I glanced back. Calico was setting up a containment loop—stringing together strips of annotated paper, dog tags, and Polaroids. Emotional artifacts. Anchors. Proof that people had mattered here. I knelt beside Randy and held the spike an inch from his chest.

“This is your last stop,” I said. “End of the line for avoidance. Ticket’s no good anymore.”

Still nothing.

Then, the faintest smile. Not peaceful. Knowing. Like he’d been expecting me.

I whispered to the spike. “You’re not a chair. You’re a man. A broken man. But still one with legs.” And jabbed it into the seam where his ribs met the armrest.

The world buckled. Not the park—the world. Sky rippled. Leaves reversed. The woman with the calendar screamed without sound. Randy’s body arched, spasmed. Everything paused. Not froze. Paused. Like a remote had been hit.  No movement. No sound. Just me, Randy, and the chair.

And then—his head turned. Mechanically. Slowly. He looked right at me. Eyes glowing faintly with the soft, sick light of surrender.

“You shouldn't have done that,” he said.

And with a sound like something unzipping reality, the chair began to sink—into the mulch, into the air, into nowhere. I reached for him. Grabbed his arm. My hand slipped through. Like he was already a memory.

“Randy!”

He smiled wider, fading.

“I miss Daisy,” he muttered. And then he was gone. Chair and all.