bad vibes

Early on, I knew it was going to be a weird day. I sat in front of Stumptown on a cold, windblown morning that felt more like early November than late August, steeling myself for a hard day of delivering stuff by bike. It was early still, when I took the first sip of the essential triple-iced americano. Even though the air was crisp and the sky was overcast, I ordered my caffeine on the rocks, anticipating the arrival of the summer sun. It was an uneasy wait, made harder to bear by grey-skinned street urchins milling about.

The presence of these sleestack-like raggamuffins gave the cold wind and grey sky an ominous quality. It also made me think of something that Anne said at the flower cart late last week. She'd claimed that all of the psychics were leaving town because they could sense that something terrible was about to happen. At the very least, something was creating some very bad vibes.
At the time I thought nothing of it, but now I reallized that her fear was becoming an acute reality. A chill rattled my spine as a group of the walking corpses shuffled by. Their heads oscilated back and forth, one cyclopitic evil eye surveying the landscape, looking for something that only they could detect. They could smell it like the musty smell of a flophouse mattress or a dirty Raiders coat.
It was not the first or the fifteenth day of the month, but somehow they knew that it would be a good day to be downtown.