Dreamrail

All things considered, I regard myself a lucky man. I have a gift. Some call it a knack, others a quality; I call it tragadar.

It’s always calm when tragadar takes over. The movies have it all wrong. Music blares, people scream, panic sets in, and with amazing cinematography, you have a tragedy. That’s what tragadar is all about: tragedy and radar. I sense it, I’m pulled to it, witness it, sometimes can’t avoid it. Many times I manage to warn the victim or call out to police. Usually they won’t listen.

Just today I watched a man, no a boy really, walk down this long path. He wore a striped shirt, and carried a backpack. I saw his dark hair, and watched as he swept it from his eyes. Along this path ran an old stone wall. It surrounded a large garden to the side of a castle along the Neckar River. It was a beautiful scene.

The boy had wandered down this path, probably a quarter mile from where I sat, when a portion of the wall fell. It toppled in slow motion, and buckled in the middle upon itself. I think the boy looked up. Dirt and brick dust flew high into the air as the wall crumpled to the earth. I waited for the sound to reach me. It never made it.

Nobody else saw this happen. Only a handful of people visited the castle today, and the boy was far from the normal tourist areas. He had walked to a beautiful spot, to his death. I found a guide taking four or five people around the grounds and told him that the wall had fallen. He looked amused, then I told him about the boy. There was no music, nobody screamed.

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The End