Glass Horizon

The Event.

His dark, wrinkled eyes wore through Sam's with a pained stare that Sam Ward himself couldn't begin to decipher. Motionless and stoat, the little man stood quite alone in the narrow, shaded street.

"What are you doing out there? Come inside" he pleaded, but of course the little man couldn't hear him, couldn't see Sam either. "How did you get out there? It's not safe you know. Go! Go away!"
Not a shift nor twitch to indicate he had heard Sam's cry.

The little man touched at the dark window before him and Sam could see so defined the bumps and creases in his odd tanned hands. Knobbly and worn, like a relic of forgotten times. Why was he out there? Sam wondered.

Sam took in the man's strange clothes. The tatted and mismatched fabrics of his khaki shorts and blue collared shirt. How strange it was, and with a small pocket on the left breast. What purpose did such a tiny pocket serve? So quaint and peculiar. His outer jacket was worn and grey, a hood on the back of it. Sam at that moment remembered a jacket he had worn once as a child like that. But what reason were the hoods at all? Perhaps when it used to rain, he thought. He couldn't remember.

Sam took a step nearer to look at the funny mans hands still raised at his window, then looked up to his eyes again and still he stared so vacantly at his own reflection. Sam imagined the man was looking at him.

The bridge of his beakish nose danced with brown dots planted there by the sun, creases by his eye imbedded by years of youthful expression. Sam had nearly forgotten what a freckle was.

Sam wondered what it would be like to feel the sun again. Oh! And the rain on his skin. He wondered too if he would have such crevices lining his own face one day. He remembered his mother and father and the crows feet that lay in their own laughs.

He couldn't remember what their faces looked like any more but Sam remembered his mother's wrinkles, the ones by her eyes, and the ones deep in her cheek when she smiled.

The freckled man's arms dropped to his sides in what seemed like defeat.

Why wouldn't he come inside? Sam thought again. Or at least go away from his window. Let some other poor sod have the burden that this old man's presence seemed to carry.

What on Earth would someone be doing outside. People didn't go outside, people couldn't go outside. The logistics of the situation seemed vastly outweighed by the spectacle of it, so Sam didn't ponder on it any longer.

The old man suddenly turned away from Sam and seemed to look at himself in the black windows of the building opposite. The sudden movement made Sam step back, and before he could figure out what he was doing, a small black gun appeared in the hand of the old man. And before Sam could even say a word, the old man was lay limply on the tarmac, face toward the sky now, with a glistening new tunnel through his temple, a pool of velvet blood forming beneath his head. The walls were too thick to even hear the bang that Sam imagined the gun made when he pulled the trigger. The funny old man seemed significantly less funny now that he was laying down, eyes wide to the sun and nothing but a carcass.

Sam's window suddenly went black. The pixels had been switched off to the ghastly view outside. Thank god. He slowly turned around, and without taking his shoes or clothes off he got into his bed, pulled the blanket, and closed his eyes. Sam thought he wouldn't go to work today.