Dark Street

      So, let me tell you about this guy who raced to his door each night. He didn’t quite know why he was in such a hurry at first, but something always compelled him to get home as quickly as possible. It wasn’t long before our friend developed a unique type of paranoia.

      Before I continue, I should mention that this tragic hero possessed a fragment of control over his environment. This is not to say he willfully created the circumstances he found himself in, otherwise I don’t think he’d have been so miserably paranoid. More so, his expectations had an unusual affect on the eventual outcome of any situation he found himself in. Of course, nobody was really aware of this fact at all.

      Anyway, this man braced his nightly mission homeward with high nerves. He seemed to hear a message or a warning in every sound the night had to offer. Each day, the darkness grew more comprehensible, as did his fear of whatever force it was hiding.

      Believe me when I say that our hero’s dementia developed slowly, but arrived with an irreversibly sudden impact. He began to see pedestrians as figments of his imagination: players in a story developed deep within his mind. Where he once might have nodded or said hello to those he passed, he now hid his face, unable to look people in the eye. The countless stray animals, birds, and insects that filled his path spoke a language that only he seemed to understand, as did the trees and flowers.

      Man-made objects represented foreign occupation. He saw vehicles on the road as enigmatic blobs of speeding matter out to get him. Truthfully, there were dark-colored cars with tinted windows that’d loop around him in a sinister fashion, yet they never made direct contact. These happenings produced an extreme curiosity, but this poor soul never had the courage to stop.

      His only freedom came when the front door slammed shut and the lock was twisted into place. He yearned to escape the world that was always buzzing around his neck, prodding and harassing him to no end. The door represented a barrier between safety and chaos. Inside, there was nothing to torment his sanity or test his willpower. This bubble of relative security soon burst.

      As he sat alone in his dingy bedroom, he’d typically write fragments of poems or skim through Irish songbooks, but as the fear grew louder, his focus crumbled to pieces. The wind spoke to him, slamming against the windows with fury. The pipes moaned and hissed. Most of all, he felt the presence of living shadows. Like the cars outside, they never got close enough to attack. However, there were eyes upon eyes that watched him watch the darkness.

      It saddens me to recount the full decline of a man’s mental stability, but there is a purpose to all.

      Now, for the story I’ve been meaning to explain.

      One fateful evening, this paranoid man made his way to a local pharmacy to pick up a prescription of meds and a pack of pens. He was so lost in thought that he appeared to glide there; the walk fused into a blur. He bustled through the store with such haste that he forgot to take his change from the clerk. He needed to get home, the door called his name.

      Stepping off the corner, our man tried to cross the street, but a van lost control and collided with another crossing pedestrian. Continuing forward, the van drove directly into a fire hydrant, causing water to spew forth and flood the road. Several cars hydroplaned and rear-ended one another, creating quite a disastrous chain of events. In defiance to all logic, our paranoid friend came away physically unharmed. Scared for his life, he was overcome with the urge to run home. He also feared looking suspicious coming away from such a horrific scene, so he decided to walk with purpose.

      An assortment of cops sped past him with sirens blaring. Each somehow had the time to slow down and shine their spotlight in his eyes. His mouth got more dry as each police car noticed him, as did the tension in his joints. And then a middle-aged man appeared before him. As they approached one another, our friend was trapped by a putrid odor oozing from this mysterious man in stained work clothes. When eye-to-eye, he was unable to make out a clear image of a face, but the vagrant had no color and was far too bony for his frame. Death filled up in our hero’s lungs, and he darted off towards home, more scared than he’s been on any day in his life.

      As he ran, three identical cars approached him from different directions and stopped at the intersection where he lived. He suddenly felt figures behind him, closing in on him. These entities were moving at the same speed that he ran, apparently waiting for the right opportunity to strike. He got to the corner where his house was and slowed down to look at what was following him. Before his poorly confused eyes were two gray jackets with no visible beings inside, yet they mirrored his movement in every way. He bolted for his door and fumbled for his keys.

      The keys jumped around in his pocket as if they didn’t want to be held, but he was able to calm his nerves and grab hold of them. As his fingers searched for the correct key for the big door ahead of him, his head moved towards his assailants. The two gray jackets didn’t run, rather they shifted to where he was and instantly morphed into dark balls of energy, red and purple. He turned the doorknob and stepped inside, but it was too late. The orbs were behind him, inside the hallway. The door shut and locked on its own.