the mystery of the man and the mist

2045 hrs 22 Jan 2024 

He started walking. Didn’t think. Just started. He looked up and saw the road. It felt familiar. But didn’t register as a place. He looked as far as he could. A dense mist galvanized his vision. He saw something at the end, but it was masked by the viciously growing mist. He turned ever so slightly to look at the other direction. The bitter cold mist swirled and came out of nowhere. It was strangely comforting, as if beholden by a familiar soft embrace. “When?”, he thought, trying to formalize something from that time. Nothing. It was like a dream he just woke up from, which was going away faster, now that he tried to recall it. He barely saw the shadow of a man with a red scarf on his left hand. He started waving to the man. The man looked away. Feeling the fang by the ignorance of the stranger, he shouted with all his might. The mist, a perfect adversary, was now picking up pace, and screaming back into his ear. He started to put his hand down, when his eyes were blocked with red. He quickly stepped on the cloth which had slid down and was being taken away by the cruel mist. He picked it up and instinctively started wrapping it around his hand. After tying it up ever so tightly, he recognized it to be the same one the shadow had. He realized he had been there before. But when?