The park was empty, just the way Willow liked it. His only companions this morning were the Canada geese who had stopped to rest on their early migration back north after their annual Florida vacation. That's how he thought of it: a Florida vacation. His mother had gone to Florida, but she had never come back. He imagined her flying overhead, honking at him, her voice harsh as the cry of the speckled geese waddling around the boat pond. He sat on his bench and watched the geese pecking at the lumpy brown earth, tattered from the snow and ice of winter.
Rubbing his hands together, Willow looked around the park in satisfaction. Today was a good day. The voices hadn't come at him yet, with their whispering and taunting, driving him to wander and fidget and talk to himself, just as they drove other people away from him.
In his more lucid moments, he knew how he must appear to them, and why they shunned him. He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid. In fact, his mother once told him he had an IQ of 150. Near genius level, she had said. Near genius level…well, fat lot of good it had done him. His meds-when he remembered to take them-couldn't entirely block out the voices that reminded him who was after him. The CIA, the FBI, and occasionally aliens who posed as joggers or young mothers-or sometimes even their kids.
Paranoid schizophrenia, that's what they called it. They could call it whatever they wanted-they could call it a pig in a poke, for all he cared.
Christ, he needed a cigarette. He rummaged in his pockets, but all he found were bits of string and fast-food wrappers. Chicken McNuggets, his favorite. He liked to keep things in his pockets because it helped to keep him warm.
He rubbed his hands together again and looked up to see a man approaching him.
"Hey, got a cigarette?" he called out.
The man smiled.
"In my backpack-but I left it in the woods."
That struck Willow as odd, but he shrugged.
"Shouldn't leave it there. Someone might take it."
"Come with me, and I'll give you one."
"Okay." Suspicious, Willow frowned. "Hey-you don't work for the FBI, do you?"
The man looked surprised. "Good heavens, no-in fact, they're after me. Don't tell them you saw me, okay?"
Willow winked at him. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."
"I knew I could count on you. Now, how about that cigarette?"
Willow got up and followed the man toward the thicket of woods on the other side of the jogging path.
Behind them, the geese continued their search for scraps to eat along the banks of the pond. When the sound of strangled gasps came from the wooded area, they didn't even look up.