I had a strange conversation with a man yesterday; or maybe it was the man who was strange. He wore a long, black cape with a hood to cover his face. I wondered if he was ashamed of his looks, but I decided not to ask him.

I happened upon him, resting on a bench in the park, and I took the seat beside him. After a brief "hello," we began to talk about the weather. It was a nice day. But I felt funny; there was something riding on my subconscience. A hint of foreboding, a premonition.

The man asked me if I was ready to change into my red dress. I was confused because the dress I was wearing was pale-colored. In fact I didn't even think I owned a red dress. I told him but he only laughed. So I asked him why he wore that silly cape and he only laughed again. He told me that if I were him, I would wear it too, and I thought that was just as silly as his cape. Then I asked him how he'd come to be sitting on that bench. He turned his head and said he'd been waiting a long time. When I inquired further, he seemed to sigh. "Someone to take my cape so I can go home." It was a strange answer. But I suppose both the man and the conversation were strange.

We talked some more about dumb things and it was hard to understand him; his voice was muffled behind that black cloth. I asked him if he could just take off that hood. He said that he couldn't. I asked him why and he laughed. By then I was sick of his laughing, so without another thought I reached over and pulled that hood right off his face. There was this hiss, this rush of air that whispered over me, and I saw that there was no face under the hood: nothing at all. So, for reasons I don't even know now, I jumped up from the bench, so consumed by frenzy and ran out into the middle of the street. Even as the car struck me from behind, washing my pretty pale dress red with my own blood, I thought only of the man in the cloak. When I found myself looking down at my broken body, my face mangled, I wanted only to hide. My eyes fell upon the black cape lying across the bench. I went to it, and wrapped the coarse fabric around my lifeless body, pulling the hood down over my face that no longer existed.

Sometime later a man came and sat down beside me. And after a brief "hello," we began to talk about the weather. 1