Irregulars
an excerpt

At least, he was trying to head for home. Thirty minutes later and Alex still had three blocks to walk, because for some ungodly reason the bus hadn’t shown and he’d grown tired of waiting. What had been a stiff wind had become something just short of a gale, or at least that’s the word that came to mind. He’d already had to pull off his hat and shove it into his satchel after it had almost come off his head. His forehead and ears were numb, painfully so, and he resolved to buy himself at least a pair of earmuffs, just as he did every time he got caught out in the winter cold. He trudged forward against the wind blowing into his face, fancifully imagining that it wasn’t blown up snow gathering along the temples of his hair, but his own freezing tears.
His feet scuffed along the sidewalk and through the semi cleared snow and icy patches on the concrete surface. He usually preferred not to shuffle, since it wore out his shoes faster and he didn’t like spending money he could save with a bit of effort, but the cold was making his legs unpleasantly tingly and heavy, and therefore he scuffed instead of stepping. He could see the stop ahead of him, at least, a few dozen meters up the road. It would be a relief to get inside and under some kind of cover not even for the warmth so much as just sanctuary from this god forsaken wind.
He was about six meters from the stairwell that lead down into the belowground station when he heard a scuffle behind him. He half turned toward it, not wanting to be in the way of someone in a particular hurry when the ground was so uncertain, when his vision seemed to waver, and then slow down.
Everything he was seeing became hazy for a moment, losing colour and definition. The yellow white glare of the streetlamps faded to a watery, grayish colour. The snow took the bluish tint of white in the darkness lit only by the moon. The moon, speaking of which, that he could suddenly see. It was there, peeking through the cloud cover and filling his vision with a pale, ethereal light. Everything was so blurry, so very hazy…then his vision pushed out from him, and things came into sharp, amazing focus.
He could see the individual snowflakes in the air, snowflakes he’d barely noticed had begun to fall from the sky instead of just being blown up from the street. He could see the ice patch ahead of his foot where he was about to step, a patch that was invisible moments before. Could see the details of the corduroy lining of his jacket, the locks and wisps of the hair on the back of his head, because he was behind himself as well as inside himself. He was watching himself like in some kind of film, as if his vision had stopped a few paces back and above where his body was continuing forward.
But more important than all that, he could see the guy from earlier in the day, the large Hispanic chap whose blustery threats Alex had shut down with a few of his own, advancing behind him. He’d been following him, that son of a bitch had been following him! He should be angry, wanted to be angry, but he was a bit distracted by another emotion, nervousness. He was nervous because one, he’d apparently begun to have some freaky out of body experience, and two, duder was approaching with a knife held along his leg, with two other large guys flanking a few paces behind him. Guy wasn’t coming for a social chat, it seemed.