A Stranger Story

What are we doing here?

Why do we do the things we do?

If you ever find an answer, please tell me.

I would love to know.

These questions always make me remember this horrible little story that I once heard about this guy a few towns over.

His name was James, or maybe it was John.

Shoot, I can't remember his name right now although I guess it doesn't really matter.

I'll just call him Julian for now.

Julian was a pretty simple guy with really simple tastes.

He'd go to work at a grocery store in the daytime, and at night he'd drink alone at home.

Whenever he could afford it, he'd also smoke a little dope from time to time but I'm not really here to judge.

One night he was drinking beer on his porch like he usually did and a stranger walked up his driveway.

This stranger was dressed in an expensive suit with a hat that looked like those worn by an old american evangelist.

I can't say for certain what was said that night but I've heard that Julian chased this guy off his porch and threw a barrage of beer bottles at him as he slowly walked away.

One person even told me once that at least one of the bottles broke against the back of the stranger's head and he didn't even react to it but that's just gossip.

The strange part starts the next day when Julian didn't turn up for work which was odd because Julian, being the creature of habit that he was, in the past would always call ahead if he didn't turn up for a shift.

Sensing that something wasn't right, his manager went over to check up on him, only to be told by Julian that he was gravely ill from behind a locked front door.

Although he must have thought that it was odd, I can understand as the manager probably thought that Julian was trying to prevent his sickness from spreading.

When he then didn't turn up for a week, and the neighbours didn't see him leave his abode, the police were called in.

First they tried knocking but there was no reply, they rammed the door in to find Julian hanging from his ceiling fan and the decayed remains of three naked, tightly bound women dead by his feet.

To this day nobody knows who those three women were, nor why Julian did what he did to them.

Not a lot got out about what actually happened to those women, but I did hear that they were at Julian's since that night that the stranger visited him.

Was it just a simple coincidence?

I don't know, who am I to say?

A better question should be why did Julian do what he did?

And what, if anything, did the stranger have to do with anything?