PROMPT: You relax into your seat, book in hand, as your plane takes off. The stranger sitting next to you fidgets - he has seemed unusually nervous. A few moments later, you feel his hand on your arm. You turn to see his eyes pleading with you.
"I'm not supposed to speak to anyone," he begins, "But I have to clear my conscience."
I roll my eyes as I hear his words. "I'm not suppose to speak to anyone...but I have to clear my conscience." I just got on a connecting flight from Dallas to San Diego. I've got one more flight until I'll be home in my bed after being overseas for a month. Of course it would be my luck to get stuck sitting next to a lunatic. I lower the headphones from my eyes miserably. "Call me Maybe" just shuffled on my ipod and the character in my book is about to commit suicide, but I guess this crazy guy next to me has a more dire situation than myself.
"What's up?" I reply. His body is shaking. I can see his lips parting to tell me something but only raspy sounds escape. He turns his head towards the window in defeat, unable to forms words from his current anxiety. He is dressed in a brown fedora with holes that look like they have been there since the 1940's. Small wispy brown curls escape from the fedora positioned to the right side of his face. I can only see a portion of one of his eyes. His right eye looks puffy, like tears may have just escaped. A man with dried tears on his face is disheartening. Have you ever seen a man cry? The wrinkle lines near his eyes are deepened and weary. I cannot read the concern in his eyes. But something about them is odd. I want to know more. I need to know what is weighing so heavy on his heart. Curiosity has taken me with fascination into trying to figure this man out. I set my ipod and book aside.
His facial hair is unruly and ungroomed. His lips look as though they have been chapped for days. Many miles, must have carried him into this seat beside me. For miles, fear has followed him but as I watch him squirm in his chair beside the window, his anxiety has subsided momentarily.
"What's up?" I say again. This time I press my hand onto his forearm and he quivers with the touch. "I can't. I can't say." He loses himself again in the window. "I need to tell someone. This needs to get out but it can't go anywhere. It will bring ruin to someone if it gets out. Can you keep a secret I can't hold this in my heart any longer?" He pleads. I look into his eyes and see a simple desperation from this man. "I promise," I tell him. "I promise."
"Ok, a few years back I was on my honeymoon with my wife. She looked beautiful, riding shotgun next to me in a pair of cut off shorts, barefoot with a ratty Beatles tee hanging loosely on her frame. We had been married for one full day and I couldn't be any happier. She was fidgeting with the radio station as I veered off the interstate on the exit ramp to pick up some McDonald's. In McDonald's, she told me she was going to use the restroom and to order her a double cheeseburger. A man named Harry, a man I recognized from my past, shook my hand with too firm of a grip, and whispered into my ear, "I will never forgive you."
"She never returned from the bathroom," he explained. He grabbed my arm, not violently, but I could tell he was worried. He needed something to hold on to as he swallowed back the tears that were choking his voice. He continued, "And Harry, I knew him as a kid. We went to the same school together. He was always dirty. He never came to school with lunch or a different pair of clothes. He carried his books in a wal-mart bag. I was different then. My wife doesn't know about how I was. She can't know. On a Tuesday afternoon when we were both in fifth grade, I convinced Harry's two friends to pin him down and hold open his eyes. I spit in them and laughed. Class resumed, after recces ended, and the day continued. He sat on the opposite side of the class as me and I would scowl at him, to make sure he was scared and wouldn't tell anyone about our little secret."
"I looked for her. And I looked for Harry. In the bathroom, all I found was a note that said, "I never forgot, and now you won't either. 22 Two Field Acre Rd San Diego, Ca 92107 tomorrow, two o clock."
He reached into his front right shirt pocket and pulled out a torn McDonald's receipt that said just that. His fingers traced the words. And his head fell into his hands as he went over the words he had just told me.
"I don't know what to do. I think he's watching me."
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