Free Falling.

I had a girl up in Chicago three months ago. Flaming red hair, and big lips that curled up around a big laughing smile. That's how I thought of her, even when she was crying...raindrops, sizzling and popping in the campfire. It doesn't matter why it ended, it did, and it was my fault.

I left the city about four hours after it happened. It only took an hour to gather my things...mostly t-shirts, jeans, books, dvds, and other essentials. The ticket was easy to book online, and not as expensive as I'd expected for the last minute. Then it was forty-five minutes on the Red Line, twenty on the Purple Line, and a few long blocks of walking to Union Station.

It was freezing, the wind never failed to live up to its reputation, pushing me the entire way. Dragging my gear down the street, standing on the platform, waiting, shivering, fingers going numb...I deserve it, I thought. As the train slowed, paused, sped up, stopped, and crept down the line I realized there was a very real possibility I would miss my train out of the city. I wished for a distraction...conversation...nothing.

Couples on the train mocked my singularity and I thought about sharing the headphones plugged into an mp3 player, the tiny kind that are supposed to stick in your ear, but are like Teflon without the foam covers, so every time one head would move, the other's speaker came flying out...

No music until I reached Union Station, and even then, I knew I was too late as Tom Petty's "Free Falling" played from somewhere. Maybe only my head...and I'm a bad boy, cause I don't even miss her...I'm a bad boy for breaking her heart...

I was able to convince the man behind the counter to exchange my ticket for one on the next train to Champaign at no further cost. There's no direct line to Peoria, that would make too much sense.

That's how I ended up at Steak n Shake in Champaign Illinois at 3:30 AM on a Monday. No ride back to Peoria. Panic hadn't set in, I'd already started to numb to the uncertainty surrounding my future and perhaps my very survival. These things have a way of working themselves out.

I was smoking a cigarette, reading Hell's Angels...since you could still smoke, read, and drink coffee legally in a public place at the time...

"Have you read On the Campaign Trail '72?" a slender old man asked me from his booth across the aisle.

I had read it, in fact, it is one of my favorite books of all time. We consolidated space and struck up a conversation. Names didn't come up for some time, but when they did he introduced himself as Reginald Cadberry the Third, I shit you not. He was pale and boney, cloudy eyes behind a white beard and matching long hair.

We talked for nearly an hour that day. He was an old traveling mystic, a true eccentric, road maps and potholes tattooed in the whites of his eyes and the wrinkles leading away in every direction, forever. He was a liberal, I liked him and he talked about like you'd expect a survivalist hippie to.

We shared an interest in the supernatural and all things out of the ordinary, and the conversation went that direction. Reginald's experiences stood in sharp contrast to my own, in that he'd actually had them. I'm no skeptic, but I've never seen any definitive proof of ghosts or anything beyond this world.

I had my ideas, but Reg knew. He claimed he could see and communicate with certain inter-dimensional beings. Most people would regard someone like Reggie as a bum or a psycho, but after sitting down with him, and listening to his stories, I know better.

Everything he told me was true, and he told me quite a bit more as time went on, but the most important thing he said to me that night in Champaign was just before I was ready to leave. I told him I didn't know how I was going to get anywhere, and that I might be in trouble.

"No way man, you're protected. For the next..." he seemed to focus on something out in the distance, well beyond my scope, "three years at least. It gets murky after that, not bad...I just can't see past that. Use your skills," he told me, "you'll know what to do."

People ask me how I can drive a taxi. It's a dangerous job, no doubt about it. I see weapons, drugs, prostitution, and god knows what else every single night I'm behind the wheel. Drunk drivers, idiots on cell phones, deer, all just dying for a head on collision with my cab...me worry? Never. I'm protected.