Excerpt: 3951

Between the glare of headlights,
The world moves differently; erratically
I feel its life underneath my feet; as a dissimilar reality, it moves forward
Sliding next to me, insane, or evil
It doesn’t matter,
I convince myself, when they come close
I will ignore them
Then they reach out and touch me
My mind is filled with shattering pain

It would be so easy to stumble, too be pushed into heavy traffic. I wondered if it would hurt; would I notice the pain when my body slammed against the metal side of a car, or hit the smooth windshield, then bounced off the black top. Would anyone stop? Would oncoming traffic wonder, for even a moment, about the bug that hit their windshield? If my body slammed into them would they stop?

Stupid questions! This street aimed expensive cars past me; they drove up north, or west. Even if I was bleeding on the hood of their Mercedes; fear would keep them from stopping. Too many people disappeared in this darkness.

One last look at the glaring headlights and I pushed off the building I was leaning on. Heading for the corner; took a sharp right and hurried home.

I lived in one of these old row houses. They were built somewhere around nineteen hundred. If you worked in the train yard at that time, you could live in these- connected boxes. The train’s hey-day ended many years ago, now, any one can live here as long as you have a few bucks to put down on a mortgage, and a blind eye to the past.

There were way too many families existing in each of those homes; one living, the others, restless spirits trying to reenact their past lives. Lucky me! I can see them all.