As far back as I can remember, his presence has always been with me in some form or another. When I was young, his role in my life was very subtle.

Early on in my childhood, I began having vivid, recurring dreams of myself standing in a quiet open pasture. I stood there looking head on into the sunlight coming from what remained of a vibrant orange sunset. Approaching towards me, from quite a far distance was this faint shape. From where I was standing, all it looked like was a tiny black dot. Each time I had this dream, the distant shape moved closer to me. Pretty soon the unrecognizable shape gradually began to form into what looked like a walking mushroom coming toward me head on. As the shape made its way closer to me, I began to strongly anticipate this figure’s arrival. When these dreams first started, I felt nothing in regard to what I was seeing. It was just another dream I had no control over. Now things were different. Everyday all I could think about was the next time I was going to sleep and possibly find out the identity of this figure. Finally after many, many sleeps I discovered the identity of the figure in the last installment of this odd repeating dream series.

There I was standing in the same open pasture, watching the same sunset as the figure made his way into full view, standing in front of me. The figure simply wore a grey suit, perfectly shined shoes and a beige yellow lampshade over where his head should be. The figure said nothing, but stared deeply into my being. Even with the lampshade on, I was aware of the intensity of his stare. Through this act of staring, he learned everything there was to know about me. There wasn’t much to learn since I was just a child but there was still an odd sense of connection with this man after he finished staring at me. His arrival felt like a homecoming to someone I’ve known my whole life.

Since that series of recurring dreams, twenty one years later, the strange lampshade man still sticks with me. In waking reality and in my dreams. In crowded areas like the mall, I’ll find him sitting by himself at a far distant table in the food court, studying my every move. Even in school when I’m taking notes, I’ll find a pre-scribbled doodle of the lampshade man in the corner of my notebook paper, next to my notes on the quadratic formula or the Industrial Revolution. No matter where I go, all I have to do is look around for the beige yellow lampshade.

Starting in my early teenage years, I began eating breakfast with the lampshade man before my daily activities. He would wait for me every morning at the table in the dimly lit kitchen with two bowls of oatmeal, banana slices and bitter tasting black coffee. He never touched his breakfast but it was the accompaniment while I ate mine that made the eccentric nature of his presence in my life more acceptable during those dark and lonely 6 a.m mornings.

It took me eleven years after I first met the lampshade man to finally talk to him. In those eleven years that passed I was abnormally comfortable with his presence and felt as if there was no need for an unnecessary pestering of questions. However, eleven years passed and the simple question struck me as I sipped the remainder of my black coffee.

“What is under your lampshade?” I asked.

    He stared once again, deeply into my soul as he did when I first met him. For the first time in our history together, I felt a sense of terror as the long dramatic pause slowly dragged its way on through time, second by second. After what felt like an eternity of silence and panic, he spoke up.

    “You’ll find out soon in time, my son,” he said in a gentle, soft and slightly raspy voice.

    We ate in silence for the rest of the morning.

    Two years after our first brief conversation, the lampshade man started handing me notes while we ate breakfast together. He didn’t hand me a note everyday, but it would occur about four or five times a week. These notes he would pass me never said much. Often times the notes contained just a poorly scribbled number. 13, 7.4, 90, and so on. There is no telling what these numbers meant. How many years I have left? The answer to a math problem I’ll see in the future? The age in which I’ll fall in love? He never explained these numbers to me and although this phenomenon is bizarre, oddly enough I don’t feel the need to ask. It is likely that the answer to my inquiry is the same answer he gave me two years ago when I asked about his identity. It is something that I will find out in due time.

    I wasn’t always fond of the lampshade man. There was a point in my life where I resented him. In the back of my head I knew that I was the only one who could see him and it never used to bother me until my senior year of high school. Looking back, a lot of the anger toward the lampshade man was just unexplainable, adolescent angst and I sincerely regret that period of my life.

    The worst thing I ever did to the lampshade man happened during one of our routinely breakfasts. As I mentioned earlier, senior year was an angry time for me. I was suffering an identity crisis, a wavering depression and God knows what else and the lampshade man’s presence in my life infuriated me. The way he sat there and said nothing, the notes he gave me, everything he did made my blood boil. I woke up that morning in a pissed off mood which led to what I did to him that morning. There I was sitting at the table staring at my bowl of oatmeal because I was too furious to eat while occasionally glaring at the lampshade man in between sips of coffee. The lampshade man then, reached over and handed me another one of his notes.

    “I love you,” the note said.

    This is what set me off. This is what ignited the fuse. I stood up dramatically, knocking over my chair and began screaming. A lot of my screaming was incoherent because this was the first time in my life I had ever unleashed my anger. For my whole life, I bottled up everything and now it was all just spilling out like blood coming from a cut jugular. I kept screaming and screaming about what his purpose was in my life and why he never talked to me. I punched holes in the kitchen cabinets and broke a lot of the dishes in sight. Still, in the midst of my enraged tantrum, the lampshade man continued to sit there quietly, analyzing and focusing on my every move. This inflamed me even more and in a blind moment of passionate anger, I lunged at the lampshade man knocking him over in his chair. I sat on top of him and repeatedly slugged him in his silent lampshade head. He made no noise of pain, he just layed there and took what I gave him. After the majority of my anger drained out of me, I got up off of him and walked toward the kitchen table. He sat up and leaned against the wall, still continuing to study my every move. In a lingering, mild state of anger that was still trying to escape, I grabbed the hot bowl of oatmeal on the table, walked over to the lampshade man’s body and poured it down the top of his lampshade, into the hole that leads straight to his unidentified head. He winced in pain but continued to stay silent. I dropped the bowl, grabbed my bag and walked out the door, not even helping to look back at the final result of what I did to him.

Throughout the whole rest of the day, I did not see the lampshade man once. I didn’t think much about it, it was understandable based on my actions during breakfast. However, when he was not at breakfast the next morning, I grew concerned. I had been eating breakfast with him for years now and now he was just gone. Where does someone of his nature go when he isn’t with me? I ended up brushing it off for the first day but by the end of the week, he still was absent in my life and that is when I began to panic. My state of panic was followed by an enormous sense of loneliness. I realized that with the lampshade man gone, I had no one. My lifelong battle with introvertedness left me with the lampshade man as my only friend, if you could even call him a friend. But it didn’t even matter now though, because he was gone. And before I knew it, weeks were passing by and the lampshade man still was nowhere to be found. My life began to feel like it was over and everyday I struggled to find meaning or a purpose to go on any longer. All I wanted was for the lampshade man to return.

I was sitting at the table eating breakfast by myself when the lampshade man finally returned. That day marked one month of him missing and most likely the lowest point of my life until he showed up. I was sitting there sipping my black coffee, trying to get some food into my system but I couldn’t do it. All of a sudden, I began to sob uncontrollably. Tear after tear streamed down my face and into my coffee mug. I started to shake violently which led to an awful spell of hyperventilation and dry heaving. The dry heaving caused me to throw up my black coffee all over the hardwood kitchen floor. I collapsed onto the cold hard floor, fading in and out of consciousness while laying in my own black coffee-stomach bile vomit. Helplessly I layed there, contemplating my existence and wondering who would even care if I were to die right there. Almost as if the lampshade man was watching me the entire time, the back door opened and in walks the lampshade man after his month long absence. Looking up at him from the ground in my pile of vomit, I saw in horror the true essence of what I had done to my lifelong friend. The lamp shade man’s appearance was different. He still wore the same grey suit but he looked rustled. His shoes were no longer shiny and he wore his tie loosely with the top buttons of his collared shirt unbuttoned. But the sight that stuck out the most was his lampshade. His once perfect, beige yellow lampshade was now covered in size varying blood stains splattered all around his lampshade. I stared at him in a state of speechless horror at what my actions had done to him. All I could say was sorry but my apology was meaningless The damage was already done, the pain I put him through could never be taken back. I realized that morning how selfish I really was.

    The next morning, I was surprised to find the lampshade man waiting for me at the table like old times. I was happy at first but then grew apprehensive at the thought of what might happen because I was still unsure of his feelings towards me because of what I did to him. I sat down and nervously sipped my coffee, afraid to look at him and be reminded of the permanent damages I brought to him. A few minutes of silence passed before he leaned forward causing me to flinch and spill a couple drops of coffee on my shirt. My shock soon subsided as I realized he was simply passing me one of his breakfast notes like he always used to do. I opened the crinkled up paper to a note that read:

    “The past is the past, now is NOW.”

    I reread the note about a dozen times while a blissful state of relief came over me.

    It was that morning I came to the conclusion that the lampshade man would be a  mysterious phenomenon that would stay in my life for the rest of the undetermined time I have left. I am an adult now and there are still a lot of things that remain a mystery about this strange man. The notes, his purpose in my life, his constant quietness, everything about him is something I don’t think anyone has ever seen or heard of before. There is no question that the lampshade man is a being not of this world. He very well may be just an illusory figment of my imagination with no actual meaning or he very well may be a real alien esque being that the human mind can’t conceive of or understand. Regardless of the theories I have came up with, whenever I am confused or frustrated by his motives, I always remember the words he told me years ago. For my sanity, I have to believe I will find out when the time is right. Until then, there is nothing else I can say or do except go with the motions and live out my life, with the lampshade man over my shoulders and patiently waiting for the answers that will one day be bestowed upon me.