The Red Man

T T T

The Red Man

By: dad

He was a strange man, devilish in appearance, hauntingly

devilish, who would visit me in my dreams. He was a bad man,

I knew, because he was red. Red with black holes for eyes. I

suppose he tried to enter my soul.

Sometimes the red man would suggest that I kill my

girlfriend. In detail he would explain that I should wait for

her to leave work, as this would be late at night, and drive a

knife into her neck. I should put her in the car and dump her

into the river. And this is odd, because I don't have a

girlfriend. Other times he would demand that I steal the

kittens out of my grandmother's closet, as though my

grandma would have kittens in her closet. No, the dreams, nor

anything he ever said, really ever made sense.

He must have been babbling just to keep me busy while he

whittled away at my logic, at my sensibilities. I know that

whenever I would wake up from these dreams, I would have lost

the memory of whole segments of my real life. Some of my

childhood, for example, would be missing from my mind; large

pieces of growing up, usually times that were fun. I

couldn't remember any of these. Probably he kept them

for himself.

I've been getting sick these last few months. I

think I might die soon. And, no doubt, it is because of the

strange red man casually striding around inside me.

WTF?