I saw a strange man today, and it bears discussion.
Finishing
at a job, I drove to Highpoint for a quick dinner before my next
appointment. Leaving my car, I saw a man in the distance. He was
unremarkable in appearance, jeans and a shirt, a slightly unkempt look
about him. Yet somehow I felt drawn to this strange man and his
activities. He seemed distant, like his mind was haunted with terrible
thoughts, and he wasn't quite there. His eyes looking down, yet
nervously glancing left and right. What did he have to hide?
I
found myself following him into Highpoint, the back entrance, though
that isn't strictly a pertinent piece of information. He walked slowly,
but intently, dodging people and looking away from them as he advanced.
If I could have seen his eyes, I wasn’t sure if I would have seen
fear, or just a dead, blank look.
Expecting something more
profound, I disappointedly saw him turn into Grill’d, and stop a moment,
perusing the menu like one might look down from a cliff, deciding
whether one should jump. Yet after a moment, it was as if his resolve
steeled, he pursed his lips in a stern grimace and his eyes fixed firmly
on the man behind the counter. Was he here for that man? To kill him?
To EAT him?
I felt odd stalking a random stranger through
Highpoint, but I couldn’t help myself but to get close enough to hear,
as he asked the person serving “One vegan ‘cheeseburger’ thanks,” – he
accented the “cheeseburger”. He looked more confident now, certain of
what he was doing, but I could see him quickly turning to wipe a lone
tear that suddenly escaped from the corner of his eye.
He was
assigned a table and took a seat, awaiting his meal. I simply stood,
not far away, watching. I think he knew I was there now, but he didn’t
care. It was like we had an understanding. I could tell something was
off about him, and he knew it too – perhaps he felt somehow relieved
having someone who was at least trying to understand who, or what he
was.
Many minutes passed in silence, he simply sat, I simply stood. There was nothing to be said at this point.
Then a different man swept past holding a tray and upon in, the thing
requested. Seeing it the man’s re-found strength clearly wavered a
little. But he closed his eyes, held his breath and went for it, a
large bite into that monstrosity. I tried to shout out, to tell him to
stop, to save himself, it wasn’t worth it! I needed to save this man
from himself, to tell him there is hope, that he doesn’t need to do
this, but I was frozen in place, was it terror? Horror? Fear? I
didn’t know.
The man kept going, he was committed now, bite after
bite after bite, the burger quickly devoured, like a man hacking his
enemy to death on the ground long after he was no longer a threat. But
who was the enemy, the man, or the burger?
I wanted to close my
eyes, but I felt I couldn’t take that away from this poor man, that I
was there, that I saw and understood his plight may be the last slight
relief he had before the end.
He stopped with only a fraction of
the burger left to go, and it was as if a trance had been broken. He
looked at the burger, looked at his hands and the horror became real.
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His eyes filled
with tears as he gasped for breath. Finally, a terribly cry escaped his
mouth, the cry of a man who had damned himself by his own hand. He
clasped his face in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably, perhaps for
minutes, perhaps for hours. I don’t know, I could only stand and stare.
And then he stood up, wiped down his face and simply left. As he
walked past, he looked me in the eye, but I could see there was no man
behind those eyes any more. All he had, whatever that may have been,
was lost now. He was an empty shell, he looked me in the eye without
any recognition that I had been there for him that entire time. He
looked away, and left.
As I stood there, still frozen, still trying to comprehend what I had seen, the realization struck me.
The entire time. I, was that man.
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