Nothing You’d Be Interested In Reading

Searing pain.

It ripped into the morning uninvited and unexpected. He lay there, willing a softness to arise like osmosis from the sheets. A half a moment’s respite was all that is needed to get the jump. Just a quick head start and then,

running…

running…

running…

For the rest of the day he’d be on the top of his game, faster than orphaned leaf on the tip of a storm cloud. Just three lousy seconds of peace. But they never came and he resolved to spite the agony with a calm acceptance. A warmth that only mothers and rocks know.

“I love you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

So it was.

Opening his eyes, there was a thin sheaf of sunlight spilling across the floor like a dog guarding a door. Turning to the curtains his eyes caught the right angle and are flooded with the stuff. Blinded for a moment, his mind seized the opportunity and bolted.

***

Dark outside, the lazy current of the lake shrimping the shore. He’s on a large front stoop, sand stretches out to the sounds of fraternizing. Clinking and clanging behind him, his father emerges from the caustic darkness of the cabin with two glasses of an undisclosed drink in hand. Setting them down on the small wooden table, his arms reach out and sweep the young boy from the floor.

Suspended in the air momentarily, he is weightless and has a sense of what boundless safety feels like again.

The wind, noxious, vomits forth, launching droplets of spittle onto his cheek. And then down suddenly, rushed to the shelter of father’s lap. Drink in hand, his eyes strain towards the spaces to which they are pointed. The soft, tenor purr of half understood information in his ear urges him on as a mountain crumbles under the weight of unseen footsteps.

From the left, a dark streak of light cuts into the walker and his breath catches along side his mortality. Certainly the walker is he, the wounds received fatal. He can’t breath for excitement and terror and his hands reach out and find one large finger.

It is enough.

***

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a migrant napkin. Rubbing his eyes awake again, he unfolded it and read.

“We are on a human journey and the journey is to be human.”

His hands found the remote and chided the television into similar wakefulness. His eyes, acclimatized to the room, trained on the images bouncing back and forth.

Sarah Palin had resigned.

Quiet for a moment, he carefully refolded the napkin and placed it back in his pocket. Turning he walked slowly towards the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, hopeful for one more chance.