A dreary day. I headed out for a pack of smokes. Streaks of rain obscured the road. Keeping my head down, I hopped over a brownish puddle into the intersection.

A horn piercing the air, a flash of light. I felt the vehicle clip my shoulder, felt my shoulder screaming from the impact as I tumbled to the ground. Landed on my ass, mud covering my jeans. The black van just kept driving, the sweetish smell of gasoline in its wake.

Stunned, I scampered across the street. On the opposite corner now, I looked around. Didn’t seem like any witnesses had seen the near miss.

Then I noticed it – a brilliant blue butterfly, resting on my shoulder. I brushed at it – yeah, this shoulder was gonna hurt for a while. Should probably see a doctor. Still, the butterfly persisted, landing on the back of my hand now. I took a closer look. Brilliant neon blue, but with spots of obsidian black peppered across its wings.

For a moment, the butterfly sat perfectly still – then it was adrift, fluttering up and across the intersection in a meandering rhythm, dodging raindrops falling around it. It came to rest in the outstretched palm of a figure who still haunts me to the day.

Clad in a black trench coat that seemed to flow from his gaunt, hunched frame, the figure’s open palm was mottled and grey, with skin the color of decay. This only accentuated the vibrancy of the butterfly’s wings – that brilliant blue matching the lifeless orbs of the figure’s eyes. I stood transfixed, caught in the gaze of this otherworldly being across the street.

And then in an instant, I saw everything. The van hitting me full-on, throwing me backwards, my skull split open on the pavement. My mother crying over a casket. My desk quickly filled by someone else, my houseplant slowly withering and dying of thirst.

Or: decades later - the stage IV diagnosis. Terminal lung cancer. My wife watching me die a little more each day. My strength slowly siphoned away from me, reclaimed by mistakes made long ago. My only son, fatherless far too young.

Then a bus passed between us, and the figure was gone.