Ethereal Stories: Mister Fog

As far back as I can remember, He’s always been there. When I was at the park with my parents, he was standing on the hill, when I was looking out my bedroom window, he was under the lamppost at the end of the street. He was very small because really far away, but I knew it was him. Mister Fog.

I don’t know at what age I gave him that name but it stuck. When we were in the car, I saw him several times along the way, always standing, always in grey, always far away. He was doing nothing but standing there, at a distance. I had called him Mister Fog because when I squint to see him better, his outlines became blurred and hazy.

One day while I was on a school trip, I told my friends about Mister Fog. The teacher heard me and told the class that I was making up stories. I got angry, I wasn’t making anything up, he was there, standing on the low wall at the end of the park, but everyone pretended not to see him and I got punished for telling a lie. My mother is worried, I had to go see a shrink who spoke to me as if I were a baby and I then decided to stop talking about Mister Fog, but he stayed. When I entered primary school, when Grandpa died, when I entered college… He was there every day of my life. If I looked into the distance, I knew that he would be faithful to the post there.
Which was oddly both frightening and reassuring.

It took me years to realize that he was getting closer. It was really subtle, a few centimeters a year I think. I was in high school when I realized that when I looked out my bedroom window, it was no longer under the lamp post at the end of the street but under the one before. It’s crazy that I didn’t hit it earlier but it was so progressive that it escaped me. I should have succeeded in distinguishing it better but its contours were still so blurred so that day I decided to go see it. I left the house and I walked towards him with a determined step without taking my eyes off him but without realizing it, arriving under the lamppost where he was standing when I crossed the threshold of my door. , he always stood at the same distance from me, at the level of the church square. I tried again to join him but again, without my understanding how he had maintained the distance between us, he was now on the other side of the cemetery so I gave up, contenting myself over the years to see that he was approaching very very slowly and then one day there was the accident.

I was in the car, tired from my day, on the way home that I knew by heart, I mechanically crossed a crossroads. When the light turned green, a blinding light and a horn made me turn my head to the right and there, a fraction of a second before the driver who had fried the game ran into me and everything went black. , I saw him, on the passenger seat, was sitting Mister Fog.

I woke up days later in a bad state, I couldn’t speak or move but I could see him, at my bedside standing by my bed, day and night without anyone worrying about it, nor the nurses , nor my family. Gradually doctors became more reassuring. I slowly recovered my motor skills and day by day, Mister Fog regained some distance, first one meter from my bed, then in the corner of the room and finally in the hallway.

Today I am 82 years old. He’s been standing in the room with me for several years. Although he never answers me, I talk to him like an old friend, knowing that the day he will be close enough to take my hand, it will be the last of my life.