Gone

  I don't know who he was. I didn't speak to him. I try not to think about it too much, who this man was and what he may have left behind. The wondering would drive me mad if I did.

  I was on lunch from from my shitty IT job, wandering the area by my office trying to tune out the pain and ignore the things around me. I saw him standing there, across the street from me. He was filthy, covered in sweat, a look of maddened terror in his eyes. I thought he was homeless from the way he dressed, his disheveled hair, his broken open shoes.

  I tried to ignore him like I did everything going on around me but I just couldn't do it. They were swarming him, formless black shapes swirling in the air all around him, and I couldn't bring myself to look away. The pain in my head increased tenfold and I screamed.

  That's when he noticed me, when the old homeless man looked at me. Dead at me. Ithink, in the moment before they took him away that he knew. He knew I could see them. I saw the fear in his eyes grow as they closed on him, mixing with regret and possibly pity, and he seemed to be silently begging me to help him. Pleading for my help.

  And then he was gone.