Gluttony ate it all.

There was so much death, smoke, and destruction. The loss of billions of lives and all because of this blurry 1980’s photograph.

I blinked as I looked down at the picture, clearing out unshed tears and finally clearly seeing the woman in the blue dress again…

Let me rewind time and tell you how I got here:

It was in the 1980s when I saw something that broke the understanding of my world to its foundations. I was in an Albertson’s grocery store shopping with my mom on one certain day. She had a laundry list of things to buy and she was wandering up and down the aisles while I was free to browse.

Recently, I had gotten into the habit of collecting gadgets and knives that caught my fancy. Case in point, in my pocket I had a yellow micro 110 camera on a keychain. I used it to snap pictures of anything and everything that caught my interest. Currently, the newest gadget that I was inspecting was a yellow watch with digital hands.

I slid the plastic package off of the railing to get a closer look when my eyes were drawn towards a movement to my left. A lady had walked up to the checkout counter to pay for her things.

She was pretty, at least in her twenties, and she stood with an air of calm that I hadn’t seen in many people. When she moved, she seemed to glide, and even her gaze was something else. It was as if she was a thousand miles away and yet she noticed everything. Her eyes studied and scanned everything for just moments. I felt like she was absorbing her surroundings and noticing every little detail.

Let me try to explain why this woman stood out from the other people in the store. Most people live as though they are controlled by what happens to them.

Mothers always seemed to be in a rush. They would arrive overburdened and then stand in a daze while the checker went to work.

Businessmen would clomp up to the counter and immediately act impatient. They would stare at the clerk like it was their fault for making them wait a few seconds. Every customer seemed to follow their own script. It was all a part of what I had seen often in my young life.

This woman was different somehow. She didn’t fidget or bother with her hair. She seemed to even already have the amount needed before they added the final tally up… down to the cent. Her blue dress was simple, yet elegant, and extended past her knees. I had expected to find her wearing heels but instead, her shoes were comfortable-looking flats.

I honestly don’t know what made her stand out so much to me. The more I looked at her the more puzzled I became. What made her different was how she acted, how she stood, and how she observed the world around her. All of these things combined set her apart in my mind.

Her clothes were ordinary… and oddly, without a wrinkle or stain of any kind. Try as I might, I couldn’t begin to guess where she was from. The detached look in her eyes made me suspect that she may have been a lot older than a girl in her twenties.

I took out my little camera and checked to make sure I wound it to the next film slot. While my head was down, I could still make out the lady’s shoes and the edge of her blue dress in the corner of my vision. Her next words stuck in my mind from that moment until this day. It sounded like she spoke something in a lower tone… or as if someone else had spoken in a lower tone next to her. The voice said “Disha tah.” I heard the checkout clerk ask “Excuse me, what did you say?” and the woman replied with “Oh nothing, it is just my time to go.” She replied with a silky voice.

I raised my camera to my eye and framed her center in the shot as she was stepping away from the counter with her sack of items. Her head rotated smoothly like an automatic turret until her gaze met mine. She looked into my eyes, startling me as I pressed the button of the tiny camera.

Then she vanished.

I mean, really vanished. Like, she didn’t just walk away; she just wasn’t there anymore - she disappeared - and no one but me realized this. The checkout clerk was already facing me and waiting for a new customer. I looked both left and right to see if she had fallen or had run away, but there wasn’t any sign of her. She didn’t exist anymore.

I stood there with my mouth open for several seconds before the clerk noticed me and asked me if I was ok. “Yeah… sure.” I said, “Oh, yeah, she was pretty cute wasn’t she?” He said before looking around to see where the woman in the blue dress had gone. “Hmm…” was the last thing I heard him say as I carried the digital watch back with me to where my mom was busy looking for pancake mix and yeast. She noticed the package with the watch inside it, my faraway look, and asked, “Find something amazing?” before turning back and picking up the box she had chosen. “Something like that,” I said with a small smile.

I zoned out for the rest of the shopping trip. I was deep in thought as I gently tested the edge of the plastic watch case with my thumbnail, fidgeting idly. After a while, I even tried to explain to my mom what had happened, first by telling her about the woman - how she dressed and her mannerisms. Halfway through the story, my mom was nodding and smiling with a soft light in her eye. She probably thought that I was just daydreaming about a girl that I just saw. A youthful crush.

When I got to the part about the woman just vanishing, my mother seemed to ignore it, as if I had just told her that the woman had walked away. Perhaps I failed to explain it properly… but no matter how I tried to explain it to my mother, she just responded with indifference.

It wasn’t until the fifth time that I tried to explain what had happened to my mother that she seemed to get a little exasperated.

“I understand she left,” my mother snapped. “She was more than ten years older than you, and she just looked at you. You can’t fall in love from just a few moments like that, son. You need to let her go. There are plenty of other girls in the world for you to meet someday. Just give it a rest, please.”

We shopped the rest of the time in silence as I simply tried to replay everything repeatedly in my head that had just happened. I ended up running to the stationery aisle and grabbing a notepad and pen to jot down all that I could remember while it was still fresh.

Neither the store clerk nor my mother approved of the fact that I had used them before paying. They almost accused me of attempting to steal them, even though I put everything up on the counter and paid for everything with my own money. In order to console her, I recounted to my mom that during the prior week; I saw a thirsty girl open a can of soda to drink while she walked around the store. I figured it was ok for me to do likewise with the pen and notepad since I knew I was going to buy them.

My reasoning seemed to mollify my mom… but she still seemed to have reservations about it as we drove home. It all ended with her telling me not to do that again or she would have to tell my father, which would result in a spanking.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I just kept rereading my notes and writing everything that I could about what I had seen. Early the next morning, I was laying in my bed when my mind started to get heavy and empty.

Something was wrong. I strained and reread the words that I had written on the sheets of paper before me.

I felt as though I was having parts of my mind being taken from me. Every time I looked at the words that I had written about the event, the feeling stopped for a moment. I fought it. I kept reading my notes until the feeling vanished altogether. Once it left I found that I could remember everything that had happened the prior day. I shook my head, unable to figure out what had taken place.

The following week I went to pick up my developed photos. One photo stood out above all the rest… it was the photo of the woman in the store that had vanished. Actually, half of the woman in the photo. It is as if someone cut diagonally through her body, starting at her left temple, and down to her left foot. You could see the movie rack behind her in the shot where half of her body should be. It was the creepiest photo that I had ever taken. She was looking right at me with the one eye that still existed.

On the back of the photo, I wrote the date when it happened and the words “Disha tah”. This was my proof that I wasn’t crazy. Proof that she had existed.

That happened a little over ten years ago. Ever since that day, I have become super-observant and a bit of a writer with a tendency to watch people closely and write down my observations. I was always looking for another person just like the woman… or better yet, the actual woman herself.

My life after the age of 10 got quite interesting as my family moved overseas to different countries for work. During this time, I experienced unique and varied cultures. I learned new languages, traveled a lot, and experienced different lifestyles and worldviews. I became a third culture kid, at home wherever I was. It wasn’t until I was living on my own back in the States that I experienced another incident like the first one I had so many years ago.

I was 20 years old, just a couple of years after I graduated highschool, and out living on my own. I was riding my bike through the park in the early afternoon when I heard the fated words again. “Disha tah” was spoken in exactly the same tone and rate as I had heard it said before.

The sound had come from my left just moments after I rode over the small park’s wooden plank bridge. Several small bushes hid the source of the voice. My heart rate increased as I thought of what was only moments away from happening.

I desperately needed an answer to what I had seen so long ago. I pumped hard on my pedals and jerked hard on my handlebars to drive my bike to the left and down a small incline. It was a short hill down to the small creek that ran through the park. Down near the waterline, I spied an old metal and wooden bench where a well-dressed old man in a coat and a hat was sitting, facing away from me. Several pigeons were in front of him, cooing at his feet. He appeared to have been feeding them for a little while. In his lap was a crumpled paper bag and he was in the middle of brushing his hands off and rubbing them together before he tossed the bag to the side.

I knew I only had a moment to get his attention before he would vanish forever, so I yelled out “Hey, mister!”

As I yelled, I tumbled on my bike when my front tire hit an unexpected wooden plank. They had installed the plank as the initial stair step, leading down to the edge of the water. Had I ridden my bike further, I would have seen the steps and chosen to avoid them. Instead, I sped down and hit the step at a steep angle.

Falling oddly, I had the presence of mind to try to grab at the bench to stop my head from hitting it. Meanwhile, my bike was out of control. Instead of grabbing the back of the bench, my hand came to rest on the stranger’s shoulder just as he turned his head to see who was calling out to him. I barely touched him, just the lightest of touch, when everything became the strangest shade of blue I had ever seen.

When I say everything turned blue, I mean everything. I was blinded by a clear and deep penetrating blue that filled my vision.

“What?” I tried to say aloud but only ended up hearing the words in my head. “Oh, no…. Oh, no…” -I immediately thought.

I was finally getting the answers that I had sought for so long.