I live on the edge of town, quite close to a little motel, which is clean but very simple, and happens to be the only one in this little village of sorts. There are only five or six rooms in the whole building, one of which is basically a permanent residence for a strange old man.. he's really intriguing, at times a bit frightening.. He often sits in front of his room with a beer in hand, watching people enter and depart from the supermarket, of which he has a very clear view. This is alright, I suppose, he's very old, and probably lonely..

One particular incident was kind of comical, and interesting as well. We went into the supermarket under his watchful eye, but when we came back out, his shoes were sitting there, devoid of his feet. It looked like he'd simply vanished, because the shoes remained in what appeared to be the exact same location as they had been when they contained his feet. Of course, I'll never actually know if he did disappear.. so it's a possibility, I suppose..

That wasn't so much disturbing as comical, but.. today I returned to the grocery store with my dad, and he happened to park in a spot beside a vacant room, the one directly beside the strange old man's. I looked over instinctively, and there was a rag doll, a plain white, faceless rag doll, hanging by it's neck from a coat-hanger.

That in itself wasn't quite so strange as the doll's clothing, which happened to be some deep red, human-sized lingerie with a black lace trim. At first I thought, wow, that's disturbing.. than I pondered, pretty much until about fifteen minutes ago, and came to another conclusion. It's disturbingly profound. I mean, a faceless doll that looks quite like a tiny prostitute, or something along those lines, hanging by it's neck. I'm not quite sure what it means, but I have a few ideas floating around in my head. My favourite of these floaty thoughts is that perhaps he's making a statement as to the way we've bastardized the innocence of children, to the point where some of them are used for a sexual purpose. I guess it's also possible that he likes that sort of thing, but I'd rather not go there.

I also hear rumors that he's clinically insane, an alcoholic, and that he calls the doll his girlfriend. Despite hearing that, I find myself wondering if he's actually a lot more sane than the rest of us. Some people are scared of him, I'm more interested than anything.. I'm kind of wondering what will happen to him if someone gets really upset about the doll hanging there..

"If you don't get in line, we'll lock you away.." - Dave Matthews