A Walk in the Park

I met the man in the gray suit again, but it wasn't a dream. It was in real life.

Since I hadn't been sleeping that much, I've taken to going for walks at night. I'm sure that it's dangerous, I know I could get mugged, but I don't have anything else to do. So I walk.

Last night, I walked to the nearby park. There was a fountain that sprayed water during the day, but was now off. From the glare of the streetlamp, I could see pennies and nickels at the bottom of the fountain. As I was looking at them, I could feel someone standing behind me. I turned and there he was.

He looked the same as in my dream. I still can't properly describe him, except that he was wearing a gray suit and a gray hat. I can't remember what his face looked like and I did not dare not look into his eyes.

"What's happening to me?" I asked.

"You are the Endmaker," he said. "You are making their end."

"Whose end?" I said. "Who did I kill?"

"You cannot kill what does not live," he said. "They are not alive, not as you know it. You are merely ending their existence. And the gun is the means to the end."

"The end of what?"

"The end of fear," he said. "They fear you now. They cannot escape you. One by one, they will be drawn to you and you will end them. You are their extinction."

"Why?" I asked. "Why me?"

The man in the gray suit raised one hand and placed it on my shoulder again. I became sure that the thing under his glove wasn't a hand, but something else, something that merely looked like a hand; that this man wasn't a man at all but something that looked like a man and talked like a man, but was something so vastly foreign, so immensely alien that I could never hope to comprehend anything it told me.

I couldn't stand it anymore. I backed away from him and ran back to my house. I took a single glance back and he was still standing there, his hands to his side, looking at me as I ran.