Life Imitating Art

Tonight, I'm going to do what I've always maintained I wouldn't do: I'm going to post a piece of my latest work. I wrote it some months ago and it's relatively unedited. There's nothing there to give the game away, so there's no real problem. I just had to, that's all...

...And yet, as he stood back, something flew out of the night, landing upon the road. It skidded and clattered for a few seconds, then stopped after hitting the kerb a couple of metres away.
Jael could see that it was an empty, scrunched-up Coke can. On a windless night? Jael knew that it must have been thrown – or kicked.
He looked into the dark, sensing something: a presence. Someone was there, watching him. He knew that he was being watched. How had he not noticed?
Jael stepped back into the relative obscurity of the shadows. And waited.
After a while, it was clear that whoever had been watching him was gone. But not before a voice had spoken to him. A voice that he did not recognise, though he knew that it was not human.
“Kamal,” it said, the voice falling like a whisper into his ear...

Fast forward to 7.30 p.m., October 31, 2007.
I was making my way back home along Commercial Road, just up from The Dolly Peel, though I hadn't been there for a drink. It was a quiet night, quite still, apart from a party of youngsters and an accompanying adult trick-or-treating further down the road. I stopped at a convenient point, checking for traffic before crossing to the other side. Suddenly, something clattered along the road towards me, something metallic, hitting the kerb a few metres away. It looked like a scrunched-up Coke can. I looked at the buildings at the other side of the road. There was no movement, no sign of life anywhere. I waited for a few moments, half-expecting to hear a whisper in my ear. Not even a laugh or a bang from a firework. Just silence. I looked at the can again, then back across the street. Nothing. After a few more moments, I moved warily on, looking back a couple of times down the still-empty road before turning off into the next street.

This happened.
On Hallowe'en.