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Tueday Night Twofer - Closure, Humbled
Support pulseHEAD.com, and get some free money too. (THIS SPACE AVAILABLE)FICTION SUBMITTED BY Ess2s2 AT 2008.11.19 12:53 PM | VIEWED 102 TIMES
CONTENT
Well, this was supposed to be a Tuesday night twofer, but Tim's system wouldn't let me post this in time. So now it's a Wednesday...uh, morning twofer. But because Wednesday Morning Twofer doesn't sound as good, the title sticks. At any rate, enjoy.
Closure
A man crosses the road, and his life changes.
It's not that a car came and struck him, or that he was assaulted or killed, it was no outside force acting upon him. In crossing the street, the man defined a change within himself that had been lying dormant. He made tangible something which--up until that point--had been vapor; nothing more than a feeling. For him, crossing that street was very much the crossing of a bridge, one he could never return to again.
The man looks back and realizes he feels a terrible mixture of regret and relief, of sickness and worth. He knows there is nothing behind him now, and all at once he feels caught on an axis, turning steadily beneath him. He feels this turning point--as real a feeling as that of being in a plane as it banks for final approach--setting him into a new heading. He smiles as he steps onto the opposite sidewalk and a bus pushes through the space he was in just seconds before. He feels the elusive malleability of time and another layer of fear falls away. He wonders, is death an escape, a release, or another form of torture?
His apartment, which sits across that old road, is silent, undisturbed. So it will remain in his mind; silent, undisturbed. The man walks as if on autopilot, his senses exploding with information. He has never felt so alive.
The next day, he fails to show up at work, his friend calls and cannot reach him. His sister finds his apartment just as he left it, silent, undisturbed, nothing out of its proper place. Nothing besides him, he's gone, vanished as if in a puff of smoke. Presumed dead, declared dead.
An empty box is lowered into a hole and upon a stone his name is etched. Closure.
For those who need it.
Humbled
Standing in its shadow, I'm awestruck by its enormity, by its relentless size and frightening immediacy. It is death.
I can do nothing to fight it off, I cannot run. Indeed, it comes at me so quickly that I have no time for any thoughts save one: I realize how small and insignificant I am. I am humbled. So rapidly and unforgivingly does it claim me, I do not have the time to think of my family, or of my regrets, or of what could have been. Nothing but the purest form of humility. And that in itself is a gift, a blessing. To die with a true sense of self, of time, place, and of a view to something larger is a rare gift. It is to be swept into the cataclysm of existence.
I don't even feel the mortal blow. The last sensation I am aware of is a rush, a supernatural feeling of acceleration that surrounds me. Then, nothing.
RATING: 4
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