Shortcut

I'm heading to workout, taking a shortcut through an apartment complex that sits between my house and the bus stop. As I turn up the hill and into the back parking lot, I see a woman in her 40's standing by a car, just nearing shouting distance, walking over to me.

"Hey." She yells, waving as if she wants to ask me something.

"Hi." I reply, with an uncertain and wary look of distrust. Whenever someone I don't know randomly talks to me, invariably, the situation is not nearly as interesting as it should be and ends up turning bad.

"Do you live here?" She points at the concrete as if I sleep under one of the cars.

I look down at the parking lot and around at the cars, giving her an eyebrow-twisted and pointedly puzzled face. "No... I have a home." I play as the vagabond, as if I'm lying.

"Oh, so you don't live in these apartments?"

"Uh... no...I live over there." I wave my hand vaguely East over all of the houses standing in a 160 degree arc. I pause, waiting for the punch line. Get to the chase lady, I'm catching a bus.

"Oh, you live around here..." She pauses.

"...yeah..." I confirm, still waiting.

"What are you doing here?" She is brazen, in my face.

"I'm... walking to the bus stop." I raise my hand in the direction of the main parking lot driveway, wondering to myself why I'm even giving her this information, stressing the word 'bus' emphatically, hoping to signify that I'm granting her a service by stopping to speak to her ragged ass while I might be missing my bus. Calm down. Zen. You are a ninja.

"Oh..." She nods. "Okay. Thank youou!" She extends the end of 'you' with a fake smile and mock cheerful neck jerk and begins to walk away.

"Woah! Wait, wait, wait!" I stop her. "Why did you just stop me?"

"Oh, well, you know, strangers wandering through parking lots..." She grins again.

"Um. No, I don't know. What's wrong with me passing through this parking lot?"

"Well, for all I know you could be a terrorist in disguise."

"So, am I to believe your questions were some half-assed CIA, Who's the Mole spinoff? That's not good enough, your questions or your reasons." Now I'm pissed. "Did you think I was going to dump anthrax all over the pavement? Or might I have broken into your little apartment to steal your toaster oven at 7am? That's not a nuke in my pocket, bitch, nor am I happy to see you. What, are you the parking attendant? Now I've probably missed my bus just because I stood here and withstood your silly little interrogation. You're lucky I am in disguise."

She folds her arms up. "Well, you sound like you could be a terrorist."

"Oh, you didn't just fucking say that. You are the one stopping innocent pedestrians, interrogating their reasons for existence. You're the one causing terror. You've just terrorized my whole fucking morning."

Sleep Deprivation Ninja has been called many things in his day but never a terrorist. Ninjas don't dig the whole terror thing. We like to kill our enemies without them, their friends or anyone else even knowing that it ever happened. When a ninja strikes, the event doesn't make the news; people just wonder what happened to that annoying fucking bitch who used to walk the parking lot, harassing strangers.

Breath ninja. Zen ninja. Calm ninja. You're still in disguise.

Ninja vanish.