Today I Looked Death in the Face and Laughed

When I stepped outside today it was cold--colder than it should have been. Although it is really hard to guesstimate just how it's going to feel outside by looking out the window, past history and weather.com suggested mild with a touch of Autumnal crispness. Which made the shroud of debilitating chill that descended upon me bend so sinister it fronted the ominous side.

More ominous still, were the cackling crows streaming in and out of the large tree down the street. They were furious, or scared, or just having a good time, but noisily so and they caught my attention.

Then, in a sequence that could have been lifted from a Peter Jackson epic, my eyes fell from the crows circling above and glanced down the row of trees lining the sidewalk like a colonnade and there, at the very end of a long tunnel like space, in a black cloak which from this distance obscured any recognizable features, was a figure that frightened me to my core, walking swiftly away from me, or was it toward me? It was impossible to tell. The world around me appeared to go dim. The crows went even more nuts, and it felt as if my blood were slowing down in my veins.

Now I'm not exactly a spiritual man, I consider myself a moral and ethical man, but that is not the same and as far as Faith goes I'm a pauper. But I can't shake the feeling that what I encountered this morning somehow transcends normal 'real world' classification. As in i wasn't supposed to see it. I'm not sure what or who the black-cloaked figure was or what they were doing, but whatever it was it was deeply unsettling. And as much as I'd like to forget it, I can't seem to.