Sightings

(Glimpse the First)

July 10

I saw him again.

I've gone to the police, to my friends, finally to a priest; nothing's helped. My shrink just prescribes more of his boring (and expensive) sessions and refills my antidepressants... he doesn't believe me. No, I said that wrong - he doesn't believe me either.

So I decided to do this. I need to tell somebody about this, after all; so I guess I'll just pack all my fears into a letter to a total stranger. And no, I don't know who you are at all... I found you by opening the phone book at random and pointing to a name with my eyes shut. When I opened my eyes, my finger was pointing to your name.

Lucky you.

So hopefully you won't just ball this letter up and toss it into the circular file... hopefully you'll read this, and maybe know what kind of things I've been seeing. And even if you do chuck this missal, well, at least I tried to tell you. Maybe this is just my therapy or something, I don't know.

So maybe I'd better explain what I'm talking about. You know, that's the funny thing about letters: you can sort of organize your thoughts, maybe make some sense of the bullshit, you know?

Anyway.

You know how people are scared of Death? How people try to be brave, or poetic, or smart in the face of Death... but they just end up with a kind of cold, slobbering fear? Some of the things people will do to come to grips with that fear land them in places like the local nuthatch, or detox, or jail... or morgue.

Well, I haven't been to any of those places (yet). But I've seen Death. Really seen him.

You'd think he'd at least stick to the twitchy little protocols we've thought up for him: tall, rather skeletal, big black robe with hood (thrown back, maybe, for those hot days in the Middle East), trademark scythe, and maybe an hourglass to show us mortals how much time we don't have. You'd think if he's going to go around wasting people, the least the old bastard could do is dress the part, you know?

But it’s not like that. Old Man Reaper, he's got his own dress code.

And I've seen him in a variety of disguises, man, like masks... and I think he likes it that way, dressing up, you know? Kind of like his own sick little joke on mankind. And maybe it's all right for him to fuck with us like that, but, well...

Anyway. Let me tell you how he looked four days ago. The last time he stepped out.

It was late on a Wednesday night, right after Industrial Night at Club Rox. I’d parked on 14th Street, about a block away from this coffeehouse/restaurant called Aligheri's... they've got some good food over there - if a little overpriced - and it's a pretty cool scene, if you don't mind wall-to-wall Goth poseurs. I was walking along, whistling something by KMFDM, trying to deal with the standard-issue D.C. summer heat and humidity, when I saw the bum.