No more laughter

This has gone beyond funny, spooky, or “the willies.” At first I thought I was reading too much into this, and you're probably thinking the same. Tanya, sorry about this afternoon – but I can't accept laughter anymore, this really isn't funny to me anymore. I'm... scared. Plain and simple.

I saw him again and this time it was him.

Treading down the busy Granville sidewalk, headphones on, mp3's rolling. I kept my face to the pavement because... well, I suspected that I could avoid another instance like this by simply avoiding faces.

I suddenly felt compelled to look up, completely uncontrolled torque of my head. And ahead of me, meters ahead of me, barely even visible in the clustered crowd, I caught his face. And I swear to God, I stopped. I couldn't move, Completely immobile, I could feel shoulders aggressively bumping into mine.

And the lookalike, well, as he came closer he began to look directly at me. Smiling the entire time. And not one of those smiles a passing stranger gives you when you've been staring too long, but a “I know-you know” smile. A vicious, maniacal smile. A smile I hope to never see again.

I stood there for a while looking straight ahead at where he once walked. No more faces looked like his so I finally got moving. It wasn't until I got to work that I noticed the freakiest thing at all. That I had spent the last 20 minutes listening to the public sounds around me. My iPod had completely shut out, I checked and the battery had died, but a) I charged it the night before, and b) I distinctly remember listening to it before shit went down. I remember it was Nina Simone's “Young, Gifted, and Black” but for some reason it just shut off without notice.