An hour ago. That’s all it was.

And I have, as you would, tried the whole time to make myself believe that I didn’t see it.

Because it’s impossible, right?

Isn’t it? Impossible?

Of course it’s impossible. But if you tell me that you have seen the impossible, I will believe you. No questions asked, I’ll believe you.

I’ve posted some truly weird stories here, and if you’re brave enough, or patient enough, scrolling my archived posts back to 2019 will prove it.

There’s weird shit back there. And stuff that still gives me the shivers every time I remember that I was right there.

Like that time I saw two people who couldn’t be, but were.

A woman slightly younger than myself and a young blonde teen who was so far out of grounds in this world that I could only describe her as fey, something more of an ethereal faerie than a human. Detached, serene, uncaring, unaware.

At the time I described how they took a long time at the self-checkout section of the grocery store yet came out with nothing bagged or any apparent purchase. They seemed to time their exit with mine, and they should have been long gone by the time I got through the cashier lane and my purchase was finished. I’d have to say, it took them an extraordinary amount of time in their checkout, and worse, while I was waiting in line, nobody else seemed to notice them, as though they weren’t even there!

Outside it only got worse. As they were in front of me walking west on the concourse, I heard the woman speaking, and not in any foreign language I had ever heard. To me it was shocking; a gibberish, or more precisely, ancient, something humans should not be able to do. When they slowed their walk and the woman seemed to realize that I could hear, she spoke English. The girl never reacted. She was as one who understood none of it. I could have thought that she was mentally deficient. And I suppose under any other circumstance, I would have, yet that sense of the uncanny, a human body occupied by something else, never left me.

What had I just seen, and what the bloody hell had I heard?

All I knew was that I hoped never to see them again.

I didn’t write about it, but I did see them again. About 6 months ago. Same. Different. As if the girl had grown some, but a mistake had been corrected or compensated for. The woman spoke only English. She knew I was there but never saw me, yet somehow knew who I was. Accepted it, but then disappeared. I have no idea how. Perhaps in a crowd. But I can’t remember and I don’t think I’m supposed to.

Are there life forms on this planet which can take human form, yet are not human?

I’ll tell you what: I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I wonder what price there is for learning such a thing. Stories go back to well before written history, things passed on in tribes and families, of things best left alone. Things that could steal men away from their families by seduction, entrancement. Things that came in the night to steal healthy infants from cradle or pallet and replace them with dead ones birthed by inhuman creatures.

It’s unlikely. I mean…isn’t it? Surely, God would never have created such things. Right?

What we find worthy today of nothing more than folk tales, those things can’t be real. Right?

It may be that, however terrifying, no matter how humbling something is to contemplate, that we don’t know everything.

And maybe we know even less than we think we do.

Because today I saw something that defies everything I have ever reasoned to be possible. The scariest part is that I believe without a shred of doubt that I was meant to see it. Because I shouldn’t have.

Let’s take it from the top:

In my neighborhood live two little people. Often they’re seen together, a couple, a man and woman whom I think are pretty cool. I’ve always greeted them in passing, and they always say hello, and they smile, and go on talking with each other in an animated and sweet fashion. I’ve thought several times about how very cool it is that they found each other and found love. They’re quite a couple to see. They make me feel better when I see them.

Sometimes I see the man alone. I wonder if his wife is okay, or whether someone yelled an insult from a passing car, and what if she limits herself because of it? Little people get abuse all the time what with the litany of “munchkin” jokes out there for cruel and unimaginative morons to pick from.

Today the guy was alone. I had just seen something I would not ordinarily write about: an ancient woman of Asian origin who used to smile and nod in passing, but now walks out of distance from me. I don’t know if she avoids me, I don’t think so, but then, she lost a dog she used to walk and a cat that used to follow. She seems alone. Lonely, perhaps unable to convey her feelings to anyone. Because we treat the elderly much the same as we do little people: with contempt and cruelty.

I saw her coming north on the sidewalk, and with neither of us particularly quick in pace, I reasoned that she would cross my path, but she didn’t. I turned and looked back, and she was gone. I stared. There wasn’t any place she could have gone, and even if she had reversed direction, she should still have been within eyesight.

She was not. This baffled me, but it wasn’t particularly weird enough to be of note. What happened next, was.

The guy, the little person, crossed the intersection toward me so that he could continue to walk on a sidewalk, as it ends there on the side he had approached on. I waved, but didn’t speak. Sometimes we do that. It’s cool, nothing negative.

I crossed to the foot path, toward the shopping center. I stopped to let a family of 3 walk on ahead, continued with my cane and the pain, and for whatever reason, turned to look back. The little man was further up than I thought he should be, and that caused me to do a double take. He was running, and kicking ass doing it. But as I watched, he did the thing I believe he wanted me to see:

A bush of lush green leaves, five feet wide, four tall, sat next to the sidewalk on his left.

He did something.

Something I could never have expected, yet he held my attention from 60 yards away. And I saw it clearly. My eyes did hurt, but nothing was wrong with my vision; the lighting conditions were perfect. No glare, no occlusion. That happens once a day near sunset.

And this man, this little guy, he executed a perfect jump against the bush with both feet, his legs together, all of him parallel to the ground, like Neo jumping off the wall when showing Morpheus his kung-fu skills, and landed back upright, both feet on the ground. The branches and leaves of the bush never moved!

It was impossible. It is impossible. Nobody does that. You would just jump into the heart of the bush and land with your legs deep in the branches.

To hell with physics, gravity and everything, he did it and I saw it.

For an hour, I tried to convince myself that no, I had not seen it.

Yeah, that didn’t work. I saw it. The impossible, the bizarre, the terrible wonder of mysteries that humanity never gets to explain. Yeah, it’s frightening. How many times have you witnessed something you still can’t explain? It’s probably more times than you will admit to in public, and to yourself.

If he, as I believe, meant for me to see it, then it worked, I’m terrified. But what is the consequence of such a thing, and will I treat him differently?

No, I don’t forsee any lasting effects, no harm was done, and I will still smile and greet him in passing. It’s a shame that humans are so cold that this man and his wife or girlfriend always seemed surprised and thankful when I spoke in greeting or enquired how things were going.

Being part Irish, I could say that the folks might be magical, ancient beings whose like were here before us. I could call the woman and her teen companion paranormal beings, perhaps shape-shifting faeries. And the man, he could fit descriptions of leprechauns. Or be elven or dwarven in nature, and maybe I could even get away with it, but the fact – the truth is, I don’t know.

I cannot put labels where there is no honest basis to do so.

In the end, for today at least, all I can tell you for certain is that human arrogance prevents us from learning things we have no right to discount. It keeps us at each other’s throats in a world entering the most dire period in human and natural history.

We think we’re so smart.

We are not. To be wise, we have to first accept our stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, then try to put them behind us.

It’s too bad humanity never got that.