NOVEL EXCERPT: CHAPTER 88

Stepping into crisp autumn night, a blanket of black sky greeting you, yet not with sadness or fear or galactic mockery. In you breathe the naturally chilled air, as the bookstore behind you beckons for your return—you its lover now become estranged. And suddenly you bloom, feeling your spirit once numbed now enlivened together with the flittering leaves that still adorn the maples.

 

Music from somewhere begins and you are moved; it is the sound of a tune piped to an outside speaker attached above the door.

 

What is there to do with the rest of your days? How long will this theory of existence last? You recall birthdays from long ago, the candles brightly lit on blue and white cakes, colored plastic figurines—age-appropriate for each year—stuck in the tops with a spike extending from the bottom of the feet, just enough to keep them from falling over. But once the wishes were made and the flames extinguished by one or two deeply taken breaths, the decorations were then dismantled and the cake destroyed by mouths eager for sugar fix. The presents always seemed anti-climactic, the rush to tear them into exposure more furious than festive. Do you remember any of them? The presents? Maybe a few: a model airplane, a mystery book, a small red guitar, a board game. But now they’re gone, vanished into thin air by simple mathematics of growing older. Who should remember them anyway? And why?

 

There are photographs. Some taken formally, others as snapshots, the latter’s showing arms in motion, reaching for this, grabbing for that, no posing allowed, and faces smiling, teeth showing white, a tongue sticking out, someone laughing as if they just heard the joke of jokes, another face embarrassed for an unknown reason. These are the best: these are the ones you look at the longest. The formals lay forgotten in boxes or dusty albums or at the bottoms of unopened drawers.

 

Birthdays. Days of one’s birth. Truly there is only one, and it is gone forever.

 

And now the night applauds your presence. This night, like so many other nights, is still yours. All of the summers and winters, springs and falls, the seemingly endless suns and moons, the infinite and countless stars: it is all its own grandiose schematic that makes up your life in and of itself. The dead lay buried in a past made just for them, and sooner than you think you too will join their ranks. The mere thought at first is terrifying, how death means the ultimate Earthly end, that no longer will you be able to look upon an autumn sky and breathe the air that smells sweet as lilacs fresh in bloom. Gone will be the days to witness the smile of children in play, tender legs taking them to and fro faster than the speed of their own voices. Such energy. And this too will pass, for dying itself takes energy. Death is energy made perfect in time.

 

But you digress, stationary where you stand, car keys at the ready to take you home, where manufactured warmth also awaits. And isn’t this the thing, the dance everyone wants to learn? How to survive life into death and then beyond? Some say the steps themselves are easy. The trick is keeping the feet moving, moving.

 

The car starts with a bang under the hood and as you engage a forward motion, you pretend the road is not a road but a tunnel you are whooshing through, your destination just ahead but still very far away. Time seems to lose track of itself. Soon you feel you’re cheating Time and all its ramifications. You’re your own theory of relativity, the greatest dancer of the universe. The car moves sprightly, evenly, and soon it takes on a grander scale, catapulting you into delusions, not of grandeur, but of being no one but yourself. If only you actually understood what such a thing means. Then you really would be someone. Instead, you stop the dreaming and pull into an empty driveway, unlock a weathered door and find yourself inside a house built to withstand the bombardments of Time, but find in its cracks and leaks and visual imperfections it is failing, failing fast.

© 2023 Jeffrey S. Callico