My fortune cookie at dinner today read, "Something terrible has already been about to happen to you." I wrote it off as a bad translation, paid the check and got out. The sun was just setting a shade somewhere between blood red and safety orange in the western sky, where else? I was tired and wrinkled. Maybe I needed a shave.

As I walked home I passed an abandoned movie theatre that had burned down a few years ago. Its sign advertised:

CL  T E ST OOD in
E ERY WHICH WAY  U  LO SE

Signs with missing letters have always bothered me, so I hurried on. At the next intersection an old man was speaking to his dog in some language I didn't know--sounded like Russian or Bulgarian. Without breaking stride, he turned to me and said, "Have watch your wound?" He didn't wait for an answer, though his dog gave me a meaningful look. They just walked on, walked on.

I slowed down and turned at the next corner. It wasn't a street, though, just a small alleyway leading to a plain steel door with big big bolts down the right side. OUR CUSTOMERS VALIDATED--and under that, CLOSED. This last one I understood. There would be no validation for me here, this late.

In the alley on the way back to the main street was a crumpled milk carton. There were no missing children on it--STRANGER ABDUCTION would have been too obvious--but the expiration date ordered me to MAR 9. I threw the carton over my left shoulder and started to cross the street, kicking stones.

Then, my mistake: I looked up. HAVE YOU COME BACK YET? yelled a billboard, right over NO ENTRY and DO NOT BACK UP and SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE and SCREW METAL FINISHING and STOP and MANDRAKE'S TOOL AND DIE and I flinched, there were too many signs all too loud on my sight, and there in the middle of the street I lay on the ground and I shut my eyes and for awhile it was better. Then came a bus to run me over; I managed to avoid looking at the radio advertisements plastered all over it; then came the unavoidable scream of the siren--the most hideous and fundamental sign of them all. But at least it would be my last.