Why Don't I Shut UP?

Part II of "The Seven."
Click here to read part one of The Seven

Fear is an odd weapon in the hands of man. It can give you amazing amounts of strength, heighten your sense to pin-point accuracy, even cripple you to a quivering paralyzed wreck. In my case, it gave me speed. I pumped my legs with a fury and insistance that made me feel nearly detached from my body. It was as if someone was controlling me. Like I was a giant marionette.

The seven are coming

I bolted around a corner off 5th onto Louton Street. The sidewalks were crowded with the normal afternoon rush of faceless pedestrians. Drinking coffee, reading newspapers, all rushing in that murmur of white noise that is the song of the commuter. The chatter today had a disorienting effect, as if I were swimming in the sounds of it all. The pace through this throng of human cattle was too slow for my dread to bear. I was programmed to run but the obstacles before me kept me at a a pace not much faster than a jog.

From behind me I heard the groan of metal followed by a ground shaking crash. I could hear glass breaking and people screaming. Tires squealed and horns honked in protest and alarm.

She couldn't hold the bus back any longer and it had collided with something large. Large enough to make the ground shutter.

I didn't bother looking back. Instead I sidestepped off the sidewalk and into the street. Right into the oncoming traffic. Luckily, at this hour, traffic was at little more than a crawl. My shoes slapped on the slick black pavement of the city street as I sprinted between the slow-moving cars.

My path felt predecided. I was heading in a direction that felt right but I couldn't say where my destination would be. I was being pulled or pushed towards some misfit destiny and I had no desire or urge to stop it. My crazy legs just kept driving me forward. My breath rushed from my lung with the heave and the huff of a thoroughbred.

Bounding through a four-way intersection, miraculously missing a collission with a late model minivan of some sort, my eyes fell on a dirty man standing on the dirty sidewalks infront of an equally dirty little church. The flight of steps leading up to the large scarred double-doors leading into the tiny church were cracked and skewed.

The man looked as if he were in his late fifties, early sixties. It was nearly summer but the man was dressed in layers of filthy, worn out rags. His face was covered with a dark, straggly, food and dirt-strewn beard that was graying at the ends. He stood on the sidewalk with a hand-made cardboard sign raised over his head as he shouted to the crowd.

"It is the time of trials. It is the time of judgement," He cried in a strong southern accent so that his words were drawn. Taaahhhm of traaahhhyaaallls.

"People repent for he is at the door," he cawed, thrusting his cardboard sign. The words on that sign stopped me so fast that the top half of my body nearly over ran my decelerating feet. I stared, my eyes blinking, at the words on the sign.

"There is no place to hide but with Jesus," he bellowed. No place ta haaad. As I looked into the face of the dishevelled homeless man, his dirty, drunken eyes met mine and his religious ranting and raving stopped. I watched in shock as his eye seemed to morph. His bloodshot eyes seemed to become clear and bright and the same shocking blue eyes that shot peircing arrows of bone chilling ice through my chest.

I've been looking for you

The ratty cardboard sign slowly dropped down to the sidewalk and skidded into the gutter along with the other trash so inconsiderately regarded. I followed the words of that sign as it came to rest in the street. The sign read: The Church is your sanctuary from THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS. But in its flight down to the ground a portion of the cardboard folded under itself. I read the sign as it lay in the gutter


I ran past the bum, up the crooked steps and pushed my way into the church. I glanced over my shoulder as I yanked open the huge wooden door. The homeless man was gone. The sign was still there.

posted by Michael Witmer @ Wednesday, August 10, 2005