Theresult stood before me.
Insteadof killing myself, I had to be murdered. No wonder I’d had my meltdown. Icouldn’t commit suicide, but I needed to die.
Isaved the mouse. It didn’t succumb to the poison. It went free.
Nowonder I hadn’t found its body.
Thegirl and I looked at one another in disbelief and horror. We’d both just metthe stark possibility of something we’d been so desperate toprevent in life. And still—it was all for the sake of the mouse.
Suddenly,something that sounded like a low-flying jet screamed above us. The groundimploded beneath our feet. A darkness blossomed, and then we were shoved apartby cold blast of rusty-smelling air. We cried out as the distance between usyawned, and the bright haze turned to ash. I never saw my ghost again.
16
It’snow been a year since I was stabbed to death.
Ican’t stop crying and bleeding all over myself.
Ididn’t want to die. I wanted to live. I wanted to be with Nora and havepicnics with her on the summer grass. I wanted to ride horses. I wanted to bereunited with my people. I wanted my mom to finally come to her senses, andlove me as her daughter. I wanted to find a great place to sit, drink tea, andread for hours. I wanted to help weak and small things. I wanted the mouse.
Butnow I’m lost in this wasteland of regret. I guess that’s just the way thingsare. And they will be this way forever.
Andyet, today I decided to find a way back into the living world, its love andwarmth and promise walled off from my being. It’s a place where I may neverhave existed to begin with. I’m still going back.
Andeven though it’s going to hurt a lot, and make me feel even more sad and tired,I’m going to keep looking for the mouse.
There’ssomething I need to ask it.
TheWalking Man
MattBechtel
Notall ghosts are dead.
There’sthis guy who walks around my neighborhood. I see him when I’m out running, andI run all the time. I call him “The Walking Man,” because that’s all he everdoes — just walk, slowly down the sidewalk, apparently to nowhere.Although that’s being kind of me, because honestly, he doesn’t walk well; hisleft leg is mangled, deformed, and encased in a massive brace, so I should reallycall him “The Limping Man.”
Butthat seems mean, because his leg is the least of his problems.
Theleft side of his body is burnt, covered in scars that make his skin look like ahalf-peeled beet. Particularly his face. It’s harder to notice when his hair getsshaggy, but he looks like a Batman villain when he’s cleaned up and it’s cutshort.
Butthat seems mean, because the burns aren’t his worst problem, either.
TheWalking Man is … not well. I don’t know how to put it more delicately thanthat. He’s not all there. He barks at himself — or, at least, I hope at himself— as he shuffles down the street, his eyes typically locked on hisunderperforming feet. On the days he’s particularly agitated (when I assumehe’s off his medication), he punctuates his shouts by throwing punches at thebreeze. The saddest part is that he can’t even clench a fist with his lefthand, so he swipes at whatever demons are tormenting him with a pathetic claw.
I’veeven seen him off the sidewalk a few times, pacing across an empty churchparking lot or some random family’s back yard. I’ve almost stopped my run totry to get him help or to alert a homeowner that there was a potentiallydangerous person on their property.
There’sa home for the mentally handicapped on Hope Street, right at the bus stop twoblocks up from the Y and three blocks down from the little mom and pop liquorstore. I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out whereThe Walking Man lives.
I’llcome clean and admit that, no matter how un-PC it is of me, I’m not comfortablearound the mentally disabled. I know it’s not their fault, and I know they’renot bad people, but they just give me the heebie-jeebies. I think it’s becauseI know that there, but for the grace of God, go I. I’m an athlete and strongand healthy and bright, yet the only difference between The Walking Man and meis one genetic imperfection. One chromosome a tiny bit off. That’s why wheneverI see him, whenever I pass him running in the opposite direction as he’sstruggling his way up the sidewalk, I look away. I check for foot trafficcoming up behind me, gaze across the street, or even follow his lead and keepmy head down until I’m clear of him. In other words, I do pretty much anythingto avoid acknowledging him.
Itusually works, but every so often, it doesn’t. With how much I run and howoften he’s out walking in the same neighborhood, the law of averages dictatesthat there are times when our gazes catch one another. And it’s when we share afleeting glimpse as I race past that The Walking Man really, truly, scares me.
Hiseyes are like the un-boarded windows of an abandoned house — dark,reflective, and clinging to the feint memory of who used to live within.
Myleft leg acts up whenever it rains. It’s from an old injury, and it’s been thatway for so long that it’ll literally start to ache the second the sky darkensand I can smell the atmospheric change of an impending shower. Fortunately forme, the bus stop I mentioned (the one right in front of the group home) is a perfectplace to pause for a stretch. All the pedestrian foot traffic passes in front,so I’ll sneak behind it for a few lunges and hamstring stretches to keep myselfloose and my leg from cramping up. It was on one such drizzly day that TheWalking Man left the house at the same time that I had stopped.
