I sat next to an elderly man last night in some cancer ward waiting area, entirely out of place, it was eerily desolate and as procedure goes, there was a long wait time for the one or two doomed souls who were supposed to be there, occasionally a pretty nurse would glance up behind the glass and offer a wan smile to no one in particular.
The old man was uneasy, and I don't think it was because of the lazy drone of news footage playing on the Soviet styled 1990s TV perched in the upper left corner of the waiting room, a dying fake plant chalked with brown dust below it, making this place seem ever so sad and gloomy.
The old man, after loudly clearing his throat to get my attention, finally worked up the courage to 'ask' if he could ask me a question. I was examining my hands when he spoke. Without making eye contact, I replied that he may. He nervously laughed and asked what I was doing in such a place, as I do not have balls with cancer in them and do not look old enough to work there, and if I did, why am I sitting in the waiting room next to him of all places. Keeping with the theme, I replied that he asked if he could ask a question, and he asked "two" questions, and I finally looked at him with the dead eyes of a contract killer.
He sat there frozen like he has seen death Herself, or he remembers what She looks like from a dream, he didn't laugh as I said, "I am a Deathstalker, I hunt werewolves and people who need to be put down".
The old man seemed more pale at that moment, and it looked like he swallowed a huge wad of paper,..."a...a...death...stalker", "you...you..don't look like a Deathstalker."
This brought a grim and faint smile to my glasses-clad face and somewhat bleary countenance, because that's just it, Sir, they only select those who look unremarkable, maybe pretty in the right light but never beautiful, never robust but not a skinny model either, or so ghastly in appearance that flowers will shrink at the sight of you, some war-scarred, fire-scorched abomination, you can't be exceptional or profoundly this or that, you need a calm and cold demeanor, you simply need to blend in, to be indistinguishable from the common citizenry, you need to be a young girl with child-like looks in a chair next to some dying old man who doesn't pay his debts, a girl that no one, an officer, a highly trained agent, a cleric, an average...stuttering, old man sitting alone in some lonely little vampire-like town in a morgue-like waiting room with a pretty nurse behind a glass window reading a fuck novel, a girl that no one...of all these people...would ever in a million years expect to be sitting right here, right next to you, this little girl who looks like a child becoming a teenager...is always the last person that anyone expects to be their grim reaper, to be their murderer.
She's here for you, Sir. You.