I saw a man who was dying.
I saw a man lying in a pool of what I assumed was his own blood. He was pinned there by what looked like a giant needle of sorts, much too big to be a sword, a little too small to be called a broadsword. Not the right shape for either of those either. When his eyes caught mine, he gave me a cheerful hello, as if it were not him bleeding out on the sidewalk of downtown.
“Hello there, good fellow”, he said to me, a cheerful wave that accompanied it too, “I’m glad you can see me.”
I walked over to lean on the wall near the place where he was dying, all casual, never taking my eyes off of him. He was very polite, and let me do my thing before speaking again: “this is quite the predicament I’ve gotten myself in.”
I was inclined to agree, so I nodded. He chuckled (or gurgled, I guess). We looked at each other for a while, and I watched the blood leaving his body drain slowly into the sewer graters beside us. That must hurt, I thought, though not speaking out loud because I was looking at a dying man who no one else could see.
“I don’t suppose you could help me out?”
I contemplated the ambulance. Maybe the police. If I knew any supernatural agencies, I would have been dialing. But I shook my head. Just to double check, I approached him. I took a step into the pool of blood with my bright white shoes and came out of the blood with bright white shoes.
I was looking at a dying man, and I could not embrace him.
Not that I would, to be fair, it would look pretty insane.
“Worth a shot, my friend. I’m glad you can hear and see me nonetheless.” I kind of stared at him, blankly. The kind of stare where you know the answer but there’s no question.
He was looking quite pale, and I was in a hurry to nowhere, so I knelt close to him. He looked familiar, but not in the way where I might recognize him. It was just the word, ‘familiarity’. After I glanced around to check that there was no one there, I reached out to the needle-thing. To my surprise, I was able to touch it. Cool, metallic. Almost painful, to a certain degree. I gave it a couple of tugs. Nothing too intense, I didn’t think it would’ve made a difference, I did, after all, see the amount of blood on the sidewalk.
Then I got the feeling that he was about to go. Not in a hurry, but just, he needed to go soon.
I looked at him, then at the giant needle-thing. “If you wouldn’t mind, my friend”, he got out between gasps, “that would be most kind.”
So I pulled on the protrusion much harder, but I guess I was not kind enough. When I looked down at him again, the sidewalks had drunk deep of his blood, and no more blood was flowing from him. He was silent, silent.
And I knew he had gone away.
I dusted my hands off on my pants, and stood, wary of the sideways glances that people gave me, but all too busy or concerned to ask. I had no particular journey, no real place to be, so I waited for the bus.
I waited for the bus beside the body of the man who had died and boarded the bus while looking at the man who had died.
Then the bus ran over the body
Of the man who died.