EDIT: Whoops. Image 13, by the way.
The wind caught in the park trees. It mingled and danced with the voices of the people relaxing on the grass behind me. These voices frolicked past my hearing as rabbits in spring were supposed to, if you believed the children’s stories. As far as I could tell rabbits were just like any other animal, eating and sleeping, having children and eating, eating and dying. The voices of the people behind me, however, danced and hopped as they discussed the next exciting phase of the lives, just like Disney would have you believe stated rabbits did. Good luck to them.
I looked down to the object seated nicely in my palms. Pages flicked across my vision, flashes of dark ink hinting at words and phrases whose meanings sat sly at the edge of understanding. Some of them stuck, working their way into the rusty cog works of my mind.
‘The Ram advanced…’
“Good book?”
I glanced up, surprised, squinting against the weight of time to study the young man now seated next to me on the park bench. I sighed and rubbed my chin, coarse grey hairs stroking calloused fingers. “It certainly gives me a lot to think about.”
“Oh? A philosophical book, then?” His tone was friendly, conversational and uninhibited, like a curious child. My mind turned back to the book, and the last phrase stuck in the gears. The ram indeed did advance, his stare withering these bones on their steady journey into senility. My unseeing gaze landed on the invisible scene playing in front of me, my memory, a rusted spring, stretched and threatened to snap.
Unfortunately the threat proved to be a bluff.
The scene swarmed in.
The air was still, a thick syrup pouring into my lungs. Sweet oxygen circulating through rivers of cherry red, dispersing into each muscle and gifting my whole body with an unnatural energy. My gaze caught in her eyes, pale green and as soft as the avocado moisturizer she used on her skin. It continued, sweeping down her small, rounded nose that reminded me so much of a small child’s, settling on her lips. Finely shaped and the witness to much laughter, they were now tense and shaking like a threatened kitten. The softness of her eyes was drowning in fear and pain, but my emotions stood as solid, cold pillars. Holding the weight of a devastating accusation, formed not by the trembling, pursed felines owned by my wife, but by my own treacherous mouth.
[i]“What do you mean, Richard?” Her voice was small, quavering. I wished with all of me that I could take my words back, catch them in my fist and hide them away for eternity. Instead they echoed unspoken between me and the woman I loved too much.
I wished I could open my mouth and apologize, to step back into her arms and feel the love I had possessed only moments before, but my jaw was clenched tight with anger. Like a jealous beast, fury stomped and snorted through me until my nerves reverberated with the ram’s pounding hoofbeats.
The ram could scent another’s musk on my wife. Eventually the tension demanded to be used, and my fist found release against her soft cheek. The look of shock in her eyes cut deep through the anger, slaying the beast. Regret washed over me, my mouth dropping open. It was too late for regrets. I had lost her.[/i]
“Excuse me, Sir, are you alright?”
I jolted out of the scene with a start, my breath catching in my throat. My heart was thundering in my ears, forgotten pain jolting my nervous system from its numb slumber. A concerned hand lent its weight to my shoulder and I turned and smiled at the young man, blinking hurriedly to dismiss the tears. “I’m fine. The book brought back memories, that’s all.”
“Oh? Good ones, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I do mind.” I shuffled in my seat to study his face a little more carefully. He was wearing a tracksuit of the most garish blue ever to assault my senses, and his open expression was covered slightly in a sheen of sweat . I wondered if he was somewhat simple in the head, his gaze was so interested and trusting. “Let me tell you this, son. If you have a good thing, don’t let yourself lose it through assuming bad must come with it.”
I watched his expression fold into polite puzzlement. “Sir?”
“Never mind, Son. Some things you have to learn for yourself.”
