Free Read Friday: Destination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Destination Unknown

Authors Note: Not too sure where this one is headed but we'll find out. Overheard a co-worker talking about not having calendars in her house and of course that piqued the interest of my writers mind. I wondered why one would not want a calendar unless it was to avoid being reminded of some past failure. Or maybe they were afraid to see how fast time flew as we all move towards a singular destination. After all, the only thing waiting for us at the end of life, is death, right?

Why anyone would want a calendar I have no idea, life is bad enough as it is without a constant reminder that another day has passed, and that you’ve taken one more step closer to the grave. My mom carried one of those day planners, you know the kind with kittens or some other cute shit on the cover, and all it ever did for her was serve as a constant reminder of the failure she’d become.

After all, we’re headed in the same direction, with the same destination awaiting us at the end. Be you a rich man or poor, a loving housewife or a whore, it didn’t matter. In the end we all died, beyond that it was destination unknown. Some believed in heaven and hell, while others assumed they would come back in a different guise. The only thing we really had to give us hope were our dreams.

For my mother her life’s dreams had slipped through her fingers, her prince in shining armor had arrived astride a Harley, swilling beer and smoking pot, with the occasional side trip courtesy of a little purple microdot. The castle turned out to be a cramped two bedroom trailer that was no better than a meat locker in the winter, and a sauna in the summer.

The walls were so thin the pictures hanging on them moved in response to a stiff wind. They had come with the trailer when we moved in, and one in particular stood out from the others. It was a painting of Jesus with children gathered around him. The title had been written in white along the bottom. Suffer the little children to come to me. It always got me to wondering about religion and belief. From my perspective, if god really did exist, he was one fucked up dude to let the things that happened to children go on. Or maybe he just didn’t care enough to interfere.

To say life was hard would be an understatement, life was, life. School, when I opted to attend, only served to reinforce the fact that I had come from the wrong side of the tracks. While everyone else was wearing Levi’s and Dockers, with Nike, Adidas or North Face shirts, I would arrive decked out in the latest cast offs compliments of Goodwill if Mom hadn’t drank up all the money for that month, or the local rescue mission if she was in her cups.

But who could blame her.

One time, when I was much younger, she told me that when she was a little girl she wanted to be a dancer. All of her friends were hoping to get married to a good man and they spent much of their time planning weddings that had a snowballs chance in hell of ever happening. Though one of her friends did manage to have the wedding of a lifetime, a fairy tale marriage that ended in divorce and suicide. 

She had been different, she told me that day, while she was about one and half sheets short of a full three sheets to the wind, and getting closer with every shot she took. She even tried to prove how good of a dancer she was by pirouetting through the living room. To be honest it looked pretty damned good to a scared seven year old kid worried she was about go off on one of her rampages. Then she tripped over the edge of the carpet and hit the floor with enough force to rattle the walls.

That was the day I learned the true meaning of suffer the children. I suffered because no one else was available to take the blame for not fixing the carpet. I was only seven, hell I was still trying to dress myself right, so fixing the carpet was a bit over my pay grade. 

To be continued!

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Alone: The End

After a bit of a delay I'm now able to finish this little tale. I hope you've enjoyed it so far and again my apologies for last week's delay. So without further interruption let's get into it. Here's the link for the full story if you'd like to start from the beginning. 

Alone Full Story

Alone

 The dead miner stirring from his ageless sleep?

He felt the presence on a purely instinctive level,  something massive yet insubstantial. A yawning emptiness that slowly opened to consume everything in its path.  He moved away, scrabbling across that rocky surface, coming up hard against the wall as the emptiness opened behind him.

As it came closer he reached out with one hand, feeling for the floor that was no longer there. The mine had vanished, replaced by that all consuming void as a single thought whispered through his mind.

Am I dead?

It elicited a sense of sadness, a deepening sorrow as he came to understand that he would never see his daughter again. She would grow up without him to watch over her, maybe she would fall in love, and have children of her own. His wife  Renee might move on, find another not as foolish as himself to stand by her side until death parted them.

But most of all he would miss the warm feeling of the sun on his face. The gentle touch of an errant breeze carrying the scent of the pine trees covering the hillside behind his house. The hard bite of winter’s chill as the snow crunched beneath his feet.

The emptiness grew behind him, expanding to encompass everything his world had become, replacing the mine with its frozen caress. The sweat on his brow chilled his flesh as the cold slowly wrapped him in its embrace.  He was thankful he’d kept his heavy coat as it now served to protect him from the encroaching cold.

It made no sense, yet at the same time it was perfectly logical. This deep, on the devil’s doorstep, the temperature should be over a hundred degrees. But it had changed as that emptiness opened behind him, and the cold loneliness of the grave wrapped him in its mournful embrace.

He felt its touch on a purely instinctive level, coming as a  faint tickle at the base of his neck. Slowly it climbed the back of his skull, numbing his flesh at its chilled touch, and he became aware of another presence.

Something as old as time itself that regarded him with a frigid indifference. As the numbness of its touch spread across his body his memories stirred as this essence rifled through the files of his past with calloused indifference. He saw his life flashing before his eyes, and knew then that death had come to take its due.

He saw himself as a child sitting upon his grandfather’s knee as he wove the tales of miners of old, who viewed the world around them as one filled with the creatures of legend, and the magic of unlimited possibilities. Then he was a young man, focused on his studies, having shed the wonder of childhood and all the beliefs it entailed, as cold hard facts replaced the myths and folklore of his early days.

He saw his bride to be once again as she walked down the aisle towards him, surrounded by family and friends as two loves were joined into one. He saw the birth of his daughter and his heart filled with sadness when he realized he would never see her again.

Light filled the chamber behind him as his memories cascaded through his thoughts. His shadow was long against the loose stone and blasted walls of his grave. He saw his tool bag lying next to the boot protruding from the ground and crawled towards it.

With every step more details came into focus. He recognized the pattern on the bottom of the boot, it was a red wing just like he wore and that spark of recognition set off a chain reaction that washed through him like the rushing waters of a dam suddenly released from its prison.

He recognized the coveralls as well, they were similar to what every other miner wore, but with one small difference. The tiny plastic butterfly attached to the zipper tang that opened the bottom of the pants leg.

“They’ll protect you daddy,” his daughter whispered in his mind as a chilly tear traced a wet path down his cheek. She had attached one to every zipper tang on his coveralls, a talisman of her own making to protect the one she loved.

The guys had ribbed him about them when they first saw them, but the kidding died down shortly after, when he explained what they meant. The atmosphere becoming somber as they waited for the cage to take them down into the bowels of the earth.

Into an eternal darkness where no one’s future was assured.

As the light grew he came to understand what love truly meant when more of those tiny plastic butterflies came to light. Behind him death waited as it waited for everyone, it had all the time in the world, but his had run short and when he felt that chilled touch on his shoulder he knew it had run out.

Upon your birth a voucher was issued, a chit, a token much like the ones the miners of old used to mark their loads. It was something we all carried our entire lives, slowly counting down the seconds, the moments, until death lay claim to our soul. For some that timer was short, while for others it was long.

His had wound down to the end and the sorrow that overwhelmed him at the sight of those sparkling butterflies filled him with a bitter remorse. He’d always promised to come home to her, now he was going to break that promise.

The hand on his shoulder tightened as it pulled him back towards the light that now filled the mine around him and painted his long shadow upon the shattered wall. Other shadows appeared around him as a babble of voices intruded upon his consciousness. Other hands grabbed him and he expected to find his grandfather and two of his uncles who had passed away when he turned towards the light.

Instead the bright light of a work lantern blinded him, and he held his hand up to cover his eyes.

“Are you okay, Pete?”

“Yeah,” he answered, startled to find his crew around him, “yeah. I’m okay.”

“Can you walk?”

Pete nodded silently as his eyes adjusted to the light and he looked around for his tool bag. It sat on the ground to his right, the boot that had been next to it now gone.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Arnold said as he pulled him towards the opened shaft, “make way people,” he shouted to the others who stepped back to clear a path.

As he was led from the mine he looked down at his coveralls, noticing that the small plastic butterflies were gone. A child’s talisman used in exchange for his life and for the first time in his life he came to understand that sometimes magic did exist, and the power of love, and belief could be enough to defeat even death. 

THE END

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