Date: 5/7/2005
Location: Orange Line, toward New Carollton.

Today, I encountered a class of person on the Metro that I will henceforth call the “Jerker.” This is the type of person that sits there on the Metro seat next to you and moves their body in ways that you are not supposed to move. He had a baseball cap on, backwards, and earphones that led somewhere down in his ordinary backpack.

This particular gentleman fooled me with his normality, so I decided to sit next to him instead of behind him with an obese Chinese woman. As soon as I did and started working on my Sudoku puzzle, out of the corner of my eye I see him begin shaking rhythmically.

Jerk. Jerk. Shake. Jerk. Jerk. Shake.

I told myself, “He’s just listening to music through his earphones. He has to be.” Which he was, hopefully. But his jerks were too… jerky and too…convulsive. He even looked at me a few times, and the look I caught out of his eyes was a quiet desperation, tinged with a reeling madness. I hope it wasn’t catching, whatever he had.

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