I could say that it doesn't prove anything.
That he's going out looking for the coincidences, making
them. That a knot on some string is a willed act.
Then he would say that if it wasn't meant to happen,
will or not, it wouldn't have.
 I drink one more beer and think. I only see the echoes
if he points them out after they happen, like falling
stars that are gone. He doesn't hear me say that coincidences
are just coincidences. Adam ignores it, expecting me
to get beyond it myself and remember that the future
holds him responsible for two more deaths.
He has a look of waiting, like when
he checks the stopwatch, plotting the charts, figuring
equations. Adam is always there to perceive the event--he
sees it on the sidewalk or hears it on the radio or
feels it in his skin. Then the echo rushes back to
have him sense it too.
He says, "At first, I think I am god. Then I realize
I'm not father; I only have half his power." He slowly
learns to time the distance between repeating events. "I'm
tied to time, I predict the future, but I can't cause
it."
Adam doesn't know why the echoes follow him. He has
a look of waiting, like when he sits all day with the
stopwatch, wondering if today everything changes forever
and frees him from his destiny. Until the echo occurs--on
schedule. From his charts, I see tonight is the full
distance from stabbing to stabbing and half-way to
the next time his car kills a man.
The knife is on the floor. He picks it up and, covers
his mouth with it. In a knife voice, says, "Trap Edison.
I stab red as a dear bat's inside part."
His room is locked and empty. There are only two ways
the echo can reach his senses. If I believe in echoes.
Wings spread out behind him as he hands the knife
for me to use. Adam smiles like one more angel possessed
and I'm not sure anymore. It's no contradiction, his
horns hold up the halo.
The question remains if he's right. I hold the knife
in my hand. It has to be twice in the back for true
repetition, but that should happen anyway--things happen
the way they are supposed to happen. Like the knot.
If I stab him, it was meant to be.
He says please. I hold the knife in my hand. He begins
to thank me. |
