Missing Person

This morning during my run, I passed a young man sitting cross-legged under a pedestrian bridge near my house. He smiled and said "hello." I returned the salutation. He asked if I knew how good it was for the body to sit cross-legged. Before I could respond, he said he knew I cared about my health, and that I should consider adding wheat germ and a type of juice I didn't recognize to my diet. He slurped from a Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup filled with what-appeared-to-be water. He said I was a good soul who loved the Lord, and that my progeny would be "warriors." He didn't know why he was saying all of this, he said, only that God was leading him. He was a prophet, he said, though his family didn't believe him. He told me his name. He told me to remember it. If there was anything I took from the conversation, though, he said he wanted it to be that “the trumpets have sounded." "I've never read the Bible because I'm not ready," he said. But God walks with him and demons flee the presence of the Almighty, he said.

He got up and began walking with me. He said he was sorry to tell me this, but a demon was inside of me. I asked how to rid myself of this demon. He said to pray. And to drink a lot of water. He held up his Dunkin' Donuts cup and told me I wouldn't believe what "the government puts in our water." He then got up in my face. I mean close. He pointed at me and began refuting the demon.

He then said he had to go. Had to keep walking. If anyone asks, I was to say he was wearing blue, not the color he was actually wearing, and that he was headed south, even though he was actually going north. He pointed east when he said this.

He turned and started walking west.

He yelled over his shoulder not to ask any more questions; to just remember "the most important thing." "If you could only take one thing with you when you left your house in the morning, what would it be?" he yelled.

When I got home, I Googled his name.

I found him.

He’s a missing person.