Deja Vu

The steel grey clouds overhead framed in the ominous storm below as I ran from my sister’s apartment through the freshly fallen snow.

Something overwhelmed my senses. Smell, sight, sound and temperature combined into a pattern that hadn’t experienced in years.

Déjà vu.

There in Technicolor Dolby Surround Sound and then gone in a flash of nothingness.

Places that I only remember in distant memories appear in front of my very eyes and then fade from my vision. Hazy memories dot the horizon but I can’t reach them. People that are long gone seem to be there but then are blown away by a strong gust of December wind.

The problem with Déjà vu is that you can’t place why you feel like this has happened before. You search your insides to find a clue but there is none. It always feels like to me that I ‘dreamt’ what is happening before my very eyes, like I have some sort of special talent or gift to see into the future when I fall asleep. But this one was different.

My Déjà vu was wasn’t Déjà vu at all, but a similar feeling inside. But instead of it being a mystery to me, I know exactly where it came from. It happened to me before in a completely different way; in a different place, time and circumstances.

We sat outside that night by a fire. I wondered why we weren’t inside, considering the weather. Wind pranced through blustery snow and white trees, darting the few remaining leaves from their bonds and emancipating them into flight. I stared at one leaf as it hung in the air for what felt like an eternity. My over-active imagination wondered if it was built by some squirrels, the Wright Brothers of the squirrel world.

He was drinking a beer. So was I sort of, the bottle was killing my hands from the cold so I put mine in the snow at my feet and didn’t really touch it. I was kind of upset that I was out there in the first place. Couldn’t we drink beer in the house by the portable space heater? I figured I would give it five minutes and then go in.

After three minutes, we started the conversation that saved my life.

What was exactly said, I’ll never be able now put into words. We just talked. About everything you possibly imagine. I wish that I would’ve taped the conversation because when it was done, it passed just as quickly as my déjà vu.

It was getting late. He stood up and smiled at me, his gray stubble smirk. He turned and walked away, his dark silhouette casting a shadow for a mile through the old cedar trees and the acrobatic flight paths of snow.

That moment; the wet smell in the air, the cold on my breath, the sound of the hollow wind were clearly the same. But moreover, something appeared just past my line of sight. There stood a ghost in the darkness, an apparition, a figment.

And with that, it was gone.