Hazy days

The last few months had seemed even more of a grey, shapeless soup than anything Vix could remember his life resembling before.
Ever since the wormhole experience had hit him back in April he’d just been dragging himself through each day, the only highlights being cups of tea and the occasional good piece of music found either in his own collection or through one of his online sources for aural enlightenment.
He hadn’t had the energy to leave town on Sundays anymore, and he had greatly missed the company of Mr. Friend throughout all this time spent meandering around in close orbit.
He also felt as if he had nothing to report to the world, so his blog had gone into temporary hibernation.
And even if summer had crept in on him, Vix hadn’t noticed the shift in the world around him, which had left the grimness of a chilly winter and was now turning into a warmer, smiling place.
That was until one morning he’d woken up and gone outside to get some food from the supermarket.
As he stood in line waiting to pay - pre-counted coins in hand – he noticed that a little child was staring at him.
Not that he was unfamiliar with the situation. Kids always found him particularly interesting, and they had the ability to undress his soul in seconds. They could make him feel as if his nervous system suddenly was running on the outside of his skin, and doing so quite effortlessly. Just by radiating their kidness.
That’s why he avoided them.
But this little girl was special.
She just kept looking at him with a stern expression on her face, as if he’d broken some major rule of hers, and was about to face some kind of punishment.
From a two year old.
She just sat there, securely fastened in her stroller, giving him the evil baby Eye, while her mother was busy putting her purchases on the conveyor-belt of the checkout till.
He felt very guilty, and it psyched him out completely.
His mind started rushing, looking for whatever it was this little power-being was seeing inside him.
As his flickering eyes tried to find a spot in the room where they could rest and be safe from being looked back at, he realised it had become very warm inside the room.
He found a temporary safe-haven to stare at in a mirror mounted on one of the walls behind the checkout desk.
Not that he liked mirrors very much.
It was then he saw his own reflection for the first time in ages.
A thin, colourless male in dark, far too wintery clothing was standing in line in the supermarket. In one hand, he held a shopping-basket with less than ten basic items in it. In his other hand – a closed fist – he clutched a handful of warm, sweaty coins.
He looked like a cross between a zombie and a soldier who’d just survived landing on the shores of Normandy during WW2. But more like a pencil-drawing of such a figure than a real person. Like a drawing that someone had changed their mind about and tried to erase from a wet notebook.
He looked like a grey, charcoal shadow put in a shiny, summery world painted by Van Gogh during the last months of his life.
Vix looked back at the little girl.
She had a healthy-looking skin-tone, a pink and red flowery dress and bright green shoes.
He had nothing of the sort.
Vix thought it rather scary that he had turned monochrome, but reckoned it was down to his poor diet and lack of sunlight through the winter, and that it was fixable somehow.
Then - without warning - the little girl, while keeping her stare firmly on Vix, slowly opened her mouth and hollered, in a loud, shriek:
“BAH!”
The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.
The girl kept her stare, now bundled with a triumphant little curl on her lips.
Her mother turned around, shushed her and sent Vix a quick apologetic look, although it shone through that she couldn’t agree more with the kid that he’d definitely deserved getting “BAH!”-ed.
Vix didn’t know where to turn. The Judge-Dredd-gone-dwarf-in-flowery-dress with her lethal-muscle-in-mum-disguise blocked the exit, and other people had queued up behind him. And he couldn’t just jump through the mirror on the wall, like in dreams.
He tried to sink through the floor.
No good.
He had to pull himself through this one.
It was a question of keeping his stare directly focused on infinity and ignoring the signs bombarding him from every angle.
Still, he knew that this was a warning.
Then he had a strange revelation:
It struck him that he himself was the problem.
That whatever had attempted to communicate with him from this gallery of strangers had its roots inside him, but only surfaced in the outside world.
That he was talking to himself through others.
Yes, that was it.
He was the one who had to re-think matters.
He was the one who had to change.
“Eight-fifty, please.”
The girl working the till stared blankly at him.
He’d been so lost in thoughts that he’d put all his stuff on the belt and put down the empty basket without noticing.
The kid and her mother were nowhere to be seen.
He quickly put the coins in the machine, grabbed his food and left.

Back at the Shelter he wrote some notes.
A day like this demanded it.
After he finished the notes, he sat down in his chair and listened to some music.
Things were changing.
Possibly, something had already changed.
Time would tell.
The image of the little girl wouldn’t fade away.
He wondered how different his own life would have been if only he’d been that kind of child.
With that kind of power.
Fearless.