Nick the Prophet

He talks into fire.

He must find people and places sympathetic to his plight.

Now think for a moment, about the possibilities and implications of the following hypothesis: What if all those crazy people talking to the air, no one, no where…What if someone was there, in the air, of which we were unaware? Hmmm..

He used to come in, grab a box of matches, and go directly to a table in the back. He’d order coffee no matter what time of day, and whoever got it usually didn’t charge him. Sitting there against the wall, he’d go blank for a little while, then he’d light each wooden match, staring into the flame, and hold conversations with whatever was talking back from the other side. Sometimes he would run out of matches, so he’d go to the bar and get more. Sometimes he took multiple boxes.

We let him stay for an hour or so, if the restaurant wasn’t busy or if it was cold out. Eventually, he’d become agitated and one of the managers would ask him to leave. He wasn’t threatening, but a threat nonetheless, as he could have easily accidentally started a fire in the building at any time. Eventually, he wasn’t allowed back inside. One day, before he was 86’d, I heard him say, “I can’t tell them that! Nobody ‘ll believe me!”

With each match-stroke, sulfur flashes to fire, flashing off his eyes, his mouth an ‘O’ shape. The flame creeps quickly down the match’s bulb, providing a doorway, for a time, for communication to the other. Every extinguished match, simple, wooden matches from a restaurant in Central Denver, is hope lost. Each successive match struck, friction igniting the spark igniting the process, is contact re-established. The spreading reaction signals that, for the moment, hope lives again.

He hears the wind laugh at him, sometimes, as he walks the city streets, alone and rudder-less. He so desperately needs the wind to be silent. He even begs. The wind pays him no heed. The wind offers only resistance.