A Date With Destiny

Now I 've seen many days in my lifetime, but never one like this. Where do I even begin? I guess I'll start with my walk home. This Sunday evening I left church, after a meeting with the pastor, and began to head to my duplex. All of a sudden, I remembered that I needed to stop by the post office to pick up my umbrella. Weather reports said it should rain pretty hard tomorrow. The sky has been brewing the storm for a couple of days. Fog has covered everything since Friday. Anyway, I drew closer and closer to the post office when I noticed a figure next to the door. I couldn't quite make it out until I was about three feet away. Even then, things looked fuzzy. Maybe I will look into getting some glasses...but I'm still not blind. The figured turned out to be a man. He was red-headed and seemed to be homeless. When I tried to look at his face, I saw that one of his eyes was covered with an eyepatch and the other was uncovered, but white like an eggshell. There's no way I can be blind. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw a leg laying next to him. I quickly realized that it was prosthetic. The pinnacle of this man was the brooding owl on his shoulder. It glared as though it wanted my soul. I didn't want to be rude so I said,

    "Evening, sir. What's your name?"

With a thick Scottish accent he said,

    "Artagan's me name. Spare me a dime and I'll share a mystery hidden behind time."
    "What's that, fella'"

He shook his beaten up tin can. I fished in my pockets, found a dime, and dropped it in. Then he said,

    "Troubles hurt the most when they prove self-inflicted."
    "What's that supposed to mean?"

He sat mute. Then the bird made an awful screeching sound. I ran away to escape the piercing noise. I lost my footing and ended up tripping over uneven sidewalk. I tried to brace my fall but ended up knocking myself out with my knee. All I can remember after that is waking up on a park bench a couple hours later. I mustered up enough energy to sit up. My head throbbed, making the inside of my head sound like a bass drum. I staggered home, opened the door, and plopped down on my bed. These old bones can't bounce back like they used to. I wonder who put me on that bench. Today has been most unfortunate. I didn't even get my umbrella!