Sightings

He was sitting at a traffic light on Rhode Island Avenue. I pulled up, looked over at the car... and then he pulled the tortoiseshell shades from his eyes. He pinned me there for an eternity or so, then sped off, into the city, with a screech and a stench of rubber and asphalt. I only pulled forward when I noticed people honking at me.

Of course, the red Stealth was next seen on the evening news, through a remote camera on the I-66/Beltway interchange. Seven-car pileup. Multiple fatalities, Medevac helicopters descending on the cluttered street like orange and white condors, picking the meat out of their steel shells.

I saw him on a street corner, passing a little vial to a shaking man. Of course, I couldn't pass that way on my way back; there were bright yellow streamers marked CORONER DO NOT ENTER and POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS in the way, and beyond these was a sheeted figure in an ill-covered pool of vomit.

I saw him in a blue uniform, EMT stenciled in large yellow letters on the back; he was looking up from a small, heavily bandaged body after a fire in a restaurant. I guess whoever it was didn’t make it, because the EMT looked up at me with a grin that could etch meat from bone.

And now I understand.

He wants me to watch. Kind of a mortal voyeurism, if you will.

And about twenty minutes ago I got a phone call. The voice on the other end was iron and bone:

"See you tonight," it said. Click, dialtone, and I cradled the phone in a numb haze, and figured that this little note will be the last one.

And in a couple of minutes, I expect to have a rather singular date.

So let me close, and mail this. Before he comes.

Lucky me.