Just A Walk In The Dark

How often do you walk or run?

I don’t walk as often as I should, which would, at my age be about a mile a day.

But I can’t. Depression often has me nailed to the bed, and yesterday I hadn’t gone out.

It occurred to me after sunset that I was almost out of smokes.

I’m going to quit that crap. Quitting smoking won’t save my life, but I may last a few months longer.

But last night wasn’t, I decided, the right time. So I had to take a walk.

That’s pretty stupid considering that my prescription glasses are also sunglasses. And to get to the shopping center, I walk through the woods on a narrow asphalt path and it’s really dark. I can’t see the path and my flashlight quit on me so I’m having zero visibility. I keep stepping off into the grass, which is okay, but in darkness is disorienting. Hard to find the path again because I can’t see. It’s total blindness instead on the brink of functional blindness, but that’s no better. Not in the dark. But, nothing happened, so I made it to the store and I bought a pack.

Inside, the cashier said, What did you do to your hand?

I looked and it was bleeding. No reason, just an open wound. It’s sad, but it happens a lot.

It really wasn’t until I went back into the darkness that I’d got into trouble. Almost at the bottom of the path, back-lit by a streetlight about 40 yards further on, I saw a silhouette which I knew to be out of place.

My mind took a little trip.

I was back in the jungle on a trail. What I was seeing was the shape of was a man, with twigs for camouflage sticking out from the band around his boonie hat.

I reached for my stiletto but it wasn’t there!

I was unarmed. The forward-leaning camo guy was waiting until I was closer. I knew he had a bayonet or a kukri blade.

But just as fast, I saw that he was gone, replaced by a shopping cart!

I haven’t slept since. I can’t. The nightmares would be horrible. Eventually I’ll crash. Until then I dread sleep.

Not much I can do about it, though. When it’s enough, my mind shuts off and I crash.

All future walks, until the trees are bare of leaves, at which time the path isn’t as dark, will be in daylight.

All the stuff I’ve been through, and I’m finally reduced to Don Quixote tilting at shopping carts.

Shoot me.