By: Kazuo Hirotsu

     Now you have to listen to me. It wasn’t my fault. I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, honestly. I can prove it. Just listen.

     That night I’ll admit I was a little tipsy, but only a little. Not enough to mar my judgment or skew the world as I saw it. Nothing was spinning, at least not yet. So I left the club, feeling calmly ecstatic since resting in the breast pocket of my red button down was the number of a real hottie. I mean, she was drop dead gorgeous. Black satin dress, chestnut rivers of flowing hair, and striking blue eyes were what she flaunted, making all within viewing distance aware of her every feature. She was hot enough to make even a happily married man of twenty five years fawn over her as if time had rewound itself, taking him back to the days of a high school teenager drowning in a sea of his own hormones.

     But enough about her; this is about me. I left in my red button down and black slacks, phone number safely tucked away, and while I leaned on the wall of the establishment, I called a cab. Even though I wasn’t smashed out of my mind, I knew I’d be much safer in the hands of a sober driver, and being that my friends were either drunken beyond all recognition or already gone, it presented itself as my only option.

     And it was then that he staggered into my life, the wino with a slight limp. In the meager lighting, I could ascertain little of his features besides his dingy threads and scraggily gray hair, but some details made themselves very apparent. His limping leg was stained red with blood, his hands were drenched in it, and flecks of blood dotted his wrinkled visage.

     My first guess was that he had gotten in a drunken fight, but that was until I caught a glimpse of those hardened brown eyes. They contained such a determination uncharacteristic of your average hobo that I instantly tossed that theory. Then I came up with my second conjecture: did he attempt to steal some crack off a dealer? But I was given no time to speculate, for at that moment, he saw me.

     Now when I say he ‘saw’ me, I don’t mean he merely glanced in my general vicinity and went about his merry business. Those cold, soulless pools of hazel fixed on me, studied me, as if he were some noble predator ascertaining whether or not I would prove to be worthy prey. And then he came after me.

     Naturally I was scared shitless. I bolted down the other end of the alley, more sober than I would have liked to been at that moment. Now I’m no professional track star, but I figured an old wino with a wounded leg and a limp wouldn’t be able to effectively give chase, right? How wrong I was. I was barely thirty feet from the club’s entrance before he pounced on me. The bastard effin’ pounced on me! Like a tiger or some other great beast of the wild. I yelped and rolled, trying to toss him off me, but the drunk was a tenacious little man, and he fought me with every fiber of his being. He clung to fistfuls of my shirt and bleached hair like a demented chimpanzee, and his movements were about as erratic as one as well.

     After fighting him for as long as I could, I gave in. I just couldn’t fathom how it was possible for an aged wino to have so much power and endurance in him, but I figured since he had no weapons on him, he couldn’t possibly cause me any permanent damage. Once he had me on my back however, things went from strange to worse.

     He bent low, low enough to place his foul mouth full of rotting bicuspids next to my ear, and whispered something even fouler than his breath. I say ‘something’ because, to be honest, I had no clue what he had said. But somehow, I knew it was dirty. Dirty beyond measure. And not of this world. Then he rose, only to dive at my neck with those rotten chompers.

     I hesitated no longer and pulled my butterfly. Three quick jabs to the chest and one to the throat rendered the wino lifeless. I shrugged the limp corpse off me and stood, only to find the cabbie I had called dialing hastily I number I guessed all too well. But I stayed where I was. Then you showed up. And here I am.

     Now I’m not saying whether or not I’m guilty of murder, or whether or not that old wino was an intergalactic drunk, but I think an autopsy might have some answers for us. And even if it doesn’t, how else could you explain what happened? How could someone as wasted and haggard as he outrun a man in his prime? Or wrestle someone almost double his size into submission? And what he whispered, despite being a famed linguist, I know it to be not of this world. I tell you officers, there’s too many mysteries out there, and I’m tired of guessing.

      Now if you’d kindly return that number I mentioned earlier, I’d like to make my call.