He watched the crows.

Shuffling, fluttering, pecking. They ignored him. He was no more there to them than they were to him. Like shadows, in Plato's cave.

It wasn't always crows. For him, yes; for others, no. Maggots, vultures, he'd heard it all. Pretty soon you stop comparing notes, because it's just so damn macabre. Sometimes he wondered if that's why there was such a line, dividing them. Maybe they were the clowns, that laughed rather than cry. Flighty, witless fairies rather than bedraggled rodeo clowns. It was as good of a theory as any.

One two three, I found in you what I found in me.

Maybe they weren't laughing. Maybe they just ignored the Sybil. Turned it off.

Inside out, I cannot hide it, looking right through me.

His eyes picked out an attractive woman. At first blush, it was shallow: he might save the one he found pretty. It wasn't. It was survival instinct. Genetic mandate. Like visual traps -- like the way most women can't avoid looking at a baby, or men looking at hips and breasts. Or maybe it was shallow, and rationalizing it was not was simply Thaler accounting, to distract him from what was happening. Was going to happen.

The time is wrong, the time is right--be careful who you kill tonight.

The train pulled up. Stopped. Vomited passengers like a steel snake who had gorged itself. He watched the new passengers cram themselves into the coffin. The crows followed. Some perched on windows, others flitted through walls as if they weren't there. Which, they weren't; not to the crows, at least. A lurch, a hissing, and it began moving. Silver had become black, a murder of crows, covering it.

He looked over, saw the uniform on duty looking at him curiously. Of course. He had done the unexpected. A lone man, neither coming nor going, and so the camouflage of the mundane no longer covered him.

Now I've reached the living end, pointing fingers to defend

He approached the policeman, and shrugged. "Too crowded for me. Got a smoke?"

He needed one, now. He'd also seen the telltale square crease in the other man's pocket. As he lit the cigarette, he sifted through the other man's thoughts, blurring his own features, softening them, erasing them, until he had never existed.

One and one why don't you see

He hadn't tried. He'd tried before. Most of them had. It never worked, because of causality. Because they were just shadows, on the wall. You had to get out of the damn cave to see what made the shadows. Blocking the light to alter the shadows did nothing to the fire that spawned the light. They all learned, sooner or later. Maybe some, the learning turned into clowns.

And I'm guilty, and I'm guilty, and I'm guilty, and I'm guilty