[StLee]

After the accident, he was everywhere. He wasn’t wearing a brimmed hat and trench coat like those old comics. He was a shadow of self. When I first saw him, he was an imposing figure. He stood over my lifeless body and just stared. I was certain he was the angel of death, my guide into the afterlife. But he wasn’t. He was me. Watching me. Why would I do that? Why would I enter the paradox into endless cycles of repetitive being by going to that moment in time?

He was me, but he also was not this me. That is impossible. A person cannot be in two places simultaneously. But a person being lodged loose from the lines of time can indeed be in another place at another time in his life. I was a 13-year-old boy bleeding atop jagged rocks. He was an older version of me who could never gain true physical form. He watched. I bled. He moved on. I remained the same.

He kept his shadow for that time and most of other times, but sometimes he changed or was just a different version of me. Sometimes he took on a glimmer of color and spoke, whispered, really.

“Do you want to know when you’ll die?” he would ask the unsuspecting stranger. “I’ll tell you when,” he would lie.

He lied to them all. Never, not once, did he tell the true date. He had all of the information they could use. He could tell them about all things in their lives. But he would not tell them their true death dates. For those who wanted to know, he told them a time far into the future. Yet he manipulated the future and made sure that the date stated was not only not true, but the true date of death of that person would be soon.