The sunseeker (standard:travel stories, 1902 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Feb 22 2017	Views/Reads: 2171/1482	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Everywhere they go, the same tourist shows up. Who is he?

They first saw him on the shoreline of Larsen bay on Kodiak island, off
the south coast of Alaska, walking along as if he'd been there a 
hundred times before. He looked completely out of place, dressed in a 
yellow hawaiian shirt with bermuda shorts, mirrored sunglasses and a 
pair of flip-flops. With it being the tail end of autumn, and winter 
gearing up to replace it, people wore coats and boots, and clothing for 
cold weather. It seemed he didn't notice the cold at all, and Mr and 
Mrs Perry just watched as he walked along and disappeared up wooden 
steps. 

For the rest of their Alaskan holiday, they didn't give him much further
thought other than that isn't it strange how some people will wear 
T-shirts in winter, and leather coats in summer. Some people can be 
odd. 

Jaqueline and Keith Perry, 47 years married lived in Northhampton,
England, and on their walls were many framed photographs of the two of 
them in various locations around the world. Smiling at a national park 
in the Congo with gorillas in the background. Grinning at the Rhongphu 
monanstery in Tibet. Smiling against a backdrop of a ship making its 
way slowly through the Panama canal. 

However, since their Alaskan trip, they had been on several other
excursions, and in each of them, they had seen the same man, the same 
tourist, dressed exactly the same, like he'd took a wrong turn in the 
Bahamas or Benidorm. Somewhere, at some point on their holiday, there 
he was. 

In New Zealand they had went to see a prestigeous rugby match, a
semi-final between North harbour and Hawkes bay, and who should be 
walking up the steps further along to their left? 

He had disappeared through an exit, but it was Jaqueline who had noted
that nobody else was looking at him. 

In Guatemala, at the Tikal Mayan ruins, further ahead, they saw him
sitting on steps where he would stand and walk up around a wall, out of 
sight. 

Keith and Jaqueline were fairly sceptical about things supernatural, and
had simply thought it was coincidence, but that could only stretch so 
far. 

At a mardi-gras festival in the Phillipines as they were watching a
parade, who should walk on past, and in so doing, give them a glance? 
The stranger had wound his way into the fabric of their minds and they 
had found themselves talking about who he was and whether it really was 
a coincidence that he appeared at some point on their excursions. Any 
subseqent holidays would harbour the slight apprehension of him 
appearing again. 

Keith thought, however, that if he should see him, then he would maybe
approach, but was dubious about that. Talking to strangers was 
something he rarely did, so the thought was not appealing, even quite 
prudent, perhaps best left alone, but he could see Jaqueline doing that 
if he could not. Either way they knew they couldn't let it prevent them 
from any further holidays. 

They had told friends, and Jacqeline had sought answers from a doctor
who offered her no answers. Even a local psychic she had found 
advertising on a library notice board had left her baffled. The man was 
a manifestation of her guru and was showing her the path towards 
self-realisation, trying to make her aware of the spiritual path she 
must undertake for inner peace and pure knowledge leading to the 
opening of her third eye which in turn would unblock any negativity 
within her chakras. Thank-you, that'll be £50 please. 

Their friends also couldn't offer any answers, and they had heard the
word 'coincidence' a lot, perhaps enough for them to believe that it 
really was. It is possible to flip a coin and land on tails a hundred, 
a thousand, a million times in a row? or roll a die, and keep landing 
on the same number? 

So back on holiday they went, on a Mediterranean cruise, and it was
towards the end of their ten day trip that the ship was slowly moving 


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