Opening his eyes and looking out the
window to spy falling snow and twinkling lights brought joy to his heart, like
very little could. Christmas was always a wonderful time of year for men like
him. What kind of man was he though? What was his name?
Trying to remember caused pain to shoot
from the middle of his head. There was something rotten at the epicenter of
that agony. What it was remained as lost as what to call himself. The last thing
he remembered was it being summer, and a requested betrayal. He was pretty sure
there was a hammer involved.
When he stopped thinking about it and
took it on faith things were better. He thought that was how it was supposed to
be. Eschewing the idea of dressing, he walked through a house he could not
remember. He was sure it was not his own. He was equally sure the emptiness and
silence were new. Why would his house have so much that appealed to younger
women?
Upon exiting the home he felt warm,
which made no sense due to the snow drifting down. Still, the world seemed
right. It seemed at peace for the first time in he did not know how long.
Everything was good until he bumped into a barrier that felt like glass.
He pressed his hands to the cool surface
keeping him in this hell. He was about to pray for guidance when a giant hand
gripped the sky above him. What could only be the hand of god lifted the home
and the yard as the flakes slowly lessened. The world turned upside down and
shook around him.
Still he remained rooted to the earth.
He did not slide from side to side. The only difference in his world was the
wind, and how the snow flew up and began to fall back down again. It landed on his
skin in flurries.
The pain returned, driving Father
O'Reilly to his knees. His eyes closed, and he wondered, in that moment, why he
was spared. Then he opened his eyes and he knew.
If not for the hand, retreating into the
clouds, he would have thought it all a dream.
Instead, he understood the truth without
knowing. Not snow, but refuse was falling into the yard. O'Reilly mourned the
dead; friend and foe alike.
Of course he knew Chester was dead, but
the discarded crab shells reminded him. A broken stiletto fell and he knew
Nicole's fate. An empty bottle of Old Crow and he understood that his friend,
Jack, was gone. Newspaper flittering past told O'Reilly that Peter had gone the
way of the dinosaurs. An undelivered letter and O'Reilly knew that a mailman,
unknown to him but important to the prophecy somehow, had also passed from the
world.
The tumor in his head throbbed and
O'Reilly shut out the world with his eyelids again. Everyone was gone. Everyone
that mattered to this silent war. Everyone except the children, and the women,
and the prisoners. Everyone except the enemy and O'Reilly.
He knelt, a man with terminal cancer and
a mission. A man saved by the enemy for reasons unknown to him. The enemy was
legion and he was alone, standing against the incoming darkness. Or, rather, on
his knees against it, as a man of prayer and faith should be. He uttered the
only words he could think of.
"Father, why hast thou forsaken
me?"
Tear slipped from his closed eyes. The
rotten thing throbbed in his head, pulsing out pain and power. He wondered how
he could survive alone in the night. As if in answer to both words and thoughts
the streetlights came one. Nobody saw how good it was.
#shortstory #novel #author #writer #writing
No comments:
Post a Comment