FATE

 

I am being watched! You don’t believe me? Well, I don’t believe me myself. I haven’t caught the person, the people, yet but they are out there. Tuesday my car was moved to a corner space even though I had parked in the middle of the block. Definitely I had used my remote to lock the doors, heard the click, saw the tail light blink. After walking from corner to corner, hitting ‘open’ several times, I finally saw my car.
That was last week. Today I can feel cold eyes looking into and thru my heavy jacket. Pedestrians walk past me, looking at me but not staring. They seem normal. But I am not.

Gerry, my teen daughter, asks me to pick up her two library books that are on reserve at the Pratt. ‘No problem, Honey,’ I say, I hope. In the reserve line I wait and feel it again. It’s cold shadow crosses the floor and touches my leg like a quick electric shock. A dizziness comes over me. I ask the woman in front of me, ‘Where is the men’s room?’ She becomes indignant. Her lips curl. ‘How should I know?, Mister? Go look!’  I hurry, barely get inside when the wetness runs down my knees into my shoes.

Three sisters in their black nun outfits look at me strangely. I try not to stare back but my eyes feel frozen. Suddenly they thaw and I blink and blink until they are warm again and the nuns have gone. The books Gerry had asked me to pick up are on the corner of the librarian’s desk. As I approach, the three nuns come from nowhere and step in front of me. The librarian hands  Gerry’s books to the first in line. They nod. The middle one smiles and whispers in my ear, ‘Be careful. You are being watched.’ ‘I know. I know,’ I say to thin air. ‘Ms. Ogelthorpe,’ I say to the librarian, ‘Why did you give my daughter’s reserved books to the ladies of the cloth?’ She looks straight at me with glowing eyes, turns her head and ignores me.

Near the exit door stands a strangely dressed man wearing a long gray robe.  In his left  hand he holds a long wooden staff. At first I don’t recognize the curved metal blade of the scythe. With his bony finger he motions to me.’ Soft words and dull, lifeless eyes, pull me to him. ‘Come, come,’ he says. I certainly don’t want to go with him but my body, my feet follow him. Something hits me hard, terribly hard, in my chest. I cannot breathe. My legs wobble and I collapse, can see myself lying on the library floor. There are no more sounds, no day, no night. There is only blackness.

A tiny light appears in a tunnel that  brightens slowly. As if in a mirror, I see myself following the man with a scythe.