by Richard Oxman

The phone kept ringing and ringing, but The Great Matilda couldn’t make it in time. She was too transfixed by the news.

While Good Malone was burning rubber to get to Matilda’s before closing, health clubs around the nation were being informed that their clients were becoming sick –some dying– as a result of methylene chloride having been heated via their air ducts. In the form of Phone Calls Taking Responsibility…anonymously.

The colorless, volatile liquid with its sweet chloroform-like odor is quite pleasant. But…it becomes particularly toxic when heated, emitting the potentially deadly gas phosgene.

People had been dropping in droves. Aside from gruesome shots of the dead, those with the warning signs of headache, fatigue, giddiness, irritability, and numbness in the extremities were being featured on endless television interviews. Health professionals underscored the threat of heart arrhythmias, along with pointers about eye and respiratory tract irritations

In that the carbon monoxide converted into the bloodstream impacted differently from one individual to another — the variables of body weight, smoking habits and breathing rate factoring in — everyone wasn’t equally affected immediately. However, all the talk about how exposure possibly leading to lung or liver cancer down the road devastated one and all.

Two other aspects of the reporting had absolutely hypnotized The Great Matilda. One, domestic production was estimated to be well over 300,000 tons annually, the various household and other products which contained it…easily accessible. And, two, the names of the towns and cities that had been hit.

It was the first time she had been exposed to the “M” element in the news. She had been meditating of late, not staying up late with the news as was her usual habit, and, generally, staying out of touch with clients and others. She had felt the need recently to retreat into herself. And she had created a little space for herself.

Isolation was no longer an option, however.

And at this juncture it was the rare individual — worldwide — who hadn’t gotten wind of the clearly obsessive alphabetical alliteration of the locations targeted. There was a special tension generated by the choices. The common denominator contributed to much of the chaos starting to build nationwide.

Health clubs would tend to have their share of overweight individuals. And the breathing rates of members would be elevated more often than not during sessions, much higher than the norm, of course. These points also started to stick in her troubled brain.

As it did with many others. As each nook and cranny of the planning became more and more obvious. And talked about more and more. With increasing tremulousness.

Once the discussions went through the obligatory back and forth regarding how detailed the Master Plan was, how masterful the ingenious evildoers had shown themselves to be, the spotlight started to shine on the darkness of Accessibility. And seeming immunity.

“How much ease do they have in striking at us…to be able to pick and choose in such a manner,” went one strain of talk. “My God, how vulnerable are we if their range of options is as great as these targets suggest,” went another.

It was as if the general public had always thought of terrorist attempts as a wild game of tennis…without a net. A cat-and-mouse dynamic by which the Bad Guys could strike anywhere, but would –surely, with the recent protections implemented by the authorities– pick the softest bullseye available. As if they had thought that for quite some time, and now had their eyes opened to the fact that someone could — of their own accord — construct a net ten-feet high… and count on being able to lob a volley of shots a football field away on a 2 by 2 square. Bizarre beyond imagination. No *failed intelligence* to blame. Politicians useless.

There was nowhere to go to escape either. That was another nook that started to settle in. It wasn’t just the control factor. It was that places previously thought of as relatively safe were no more impervious to attack than a subway in a major city, or the Super Bowl.

A quiet health club in Moonachie that you couldn’t find except by accident was up for grabs.

And so were *you*. Whoever you were. Wherever you were.