In my sleepy town, in the middle of another silent day, echoing from far away… I could hear random F-bombs dropping… bouncing from wall to wall of the alleyway… getting closer and closer… I assumed it must have been a drunken rage of a fight, or lovers’ spat, or someone in great pain…
Pretty soon, the same expletives were right outside my window, passing like an ambulance siren. I peeked out and saw a crazy, turrets guy leaning into the dumpster down the alley… just staring… he would reach in, pick up some garbage, shake it, and then call it inappropriate, graphic names… eventually, he stormed off down the alley, stopping at other random dumpsters to repeat the operation and finally faded away.
From that moment on, he kept appearing all around the neighborhood. Every time I saw him he was wearing the same uniform… brown jeans, white v-neck tshirt… and violently arguing with himself using loud hand gestures… it was annoying and freaking me out a little that I kept running into him, sometimes several times a day, at opposite ends of town… spooky, even, since he’s a walker (not a driver).
Apparently, he is well known to the merchants and townspeople as “Derrick who must not have taken his meds today.” After a friendly, charitable chat with Mr. Grocery Man, I learned that “Derrick who must not have taken his meds today”…
has…
a…
TWIN BROTHER!! who has the same affliction of the mind… and is also on (or off) the same meds!! – – – – – voila, mystery revealed!
Last night, I started out on my usual nightwalk. Without any thought, I grabbed a random pair of jeans and shirt in the dark out of the closet. As I reached for the front door to head out, I caught a glimpse of what I was wearing…
BROWN JEANS AND A V-NECK WHITE TSHIRT!
For a split second I had a 6th-sense panic thought about the movies “Shutter Island” and “Fight Club!!”
What if this whole time, all these sightings and conversations I had with merchants and people around town were really about ME… What if all this time, “I” was really, in fact, “Derrick who must not have taken his meds!”