Let’s Take A Walk

Posted by

0

“So listen, I’ve been thinking, and I think I know what we need.”

“What, like a new coffee table?  Mine has a lot of stains, since you keep on forgetting to put down a coaster.”

“Nah, dude, not like that.  I mean what we need as a race!  As part of humanity!”

“Ugh, one of these again…”

“I promise that it’s really good.”

“…fine.  Okay, tell me.  What do we, as members of the human race, need?”

“We need something to tell us when we’re almost there!”

“…what.  You mean like GPS?”

“No!  Well, kind of.  But for tasks!  Goals!  Achievements in our lives!”

“I’m really feeling lost here.”

“Okay, well, think about this.  Haven’t you ever wanted to become a best-selling author?  Or a famous actor?  You know, some big dream like that?”

“Of course I have!  Everyone has.”

“Well, so why’d you give it up?”

“I mean, I dunno.  It’s tough, isn’t it?  You try and you try, and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere.  Eventually, you just stop.”

“Yeah, exactly!  But don’t you wonder sometimes?  What if you were almost there?”

“You mean like I was about to make the big time?”

“Yeah, exactly!  And maybe you were just one book, one gig away!  But you don’t know, because you quit before covering that last little step.”

“Ah, I see.  But if there had been a voice to tell me that I was almost there-“

“Then you would have pushed through, and you might be famous by now!  Or rich!  Or successful in life!”

“Hey!  I think I’m doing okay in life!”

“Oh, okay, sure, but not amazing, right?  Because we give up too fast!  So we need someone to tell us that we’re almost there!”

“Or even better, a progress bar.”

“No, not a progress – actually, wait, hold on.  That does work better.”

“So it’s agreed.  We need a progress bar for all of our goals in life.  I’ll draw up the paperwork so that we can submit it to God for his signature.”

“Come on, dude, you don’t have to be sarcastic about it.”

“I’m just saying – it’s a cool thought, but it’s not just magically gonna happen.”

“Whatever.  I thought it was creative.  Anyway, it’s getting chilly out.  We should probably turn around.”

“But what if we’re almost there??”

“Almost where?”

“I dunno.  Whatever our walk goal is.”

“Just for that, I’m not gonna use a coaster on your coffee table tonight.”

The Best & Worst Days of My Life, Part II

Posted by

0

The doctors told us that the chance of it happening was low.  Exceedingly low.  She’s a very rare type, they’d tell us.  The organ in question is very sensitive, easily damaged, and doesn’t last long after death.  These organs, of this type, almost never came on the market.  Sarah was at a high spot on the list, but the list meant almost nothing.  Most people left it through death, not through a happy ending.

And then the call came…

As soon as the doctor told her, Sarah had me on the phone.  “They found one!” she all but screamed, and I could hear her excitement as clear as day.  “I’m going to get the transplant!”

Of course, we were a bit concerned, as well.  This wasn’t a minor surgery, after all.  Sarah was going under the knife, and sometimes, we knew that patients didn’t wake up.  And yet, we were determined.  We were the perfect couple, with the perfect story.  We were going to make it.

That was yesterday.  The happiest day of my life.  Of our lives, perhaps.

And now, today, it was all different.

Once again, I looked down at the note in my hands.  I had read it so many times, I probably had the words committed to memory.  But still, I couldn’t stop myself from bringing my eyes back to those lines, hand-written on the sheet of loose paper.

Andrew,

I’m so sorry.  I know you deserve more than this.  More than what I could give you.

But I have to go out, to see the rest of the world.  There’s so much more that I want to experience.  When I met you, I thought I wouldn’t have any chance, and you were my breath of life, my touch of the outside world.

Now, though, I can go see it all for myself.  And I can’t pass that up.  Maybe one day, we’ll meet again.

Love, always,
Sarah

I crumpled the note up in my hands.  For a long time, I just sat there, on the empty hospital bed, staring off into the distance.

How ironic, I couldn’t help thinking.  The best day of my life, immediately followed by the worst.

The Best and Worst Days of My Life, Part I

Posted by

0

I stared down at the piece of paper in my hands, sitting on the edge of the bed.  I could feel my suit wrinkling, crease lines forming in the fabric, but I didn’t care about it.

It didn’t matter.  Nothing else mattered.  Just the words on that sheet of paper.

I reached up and rubbed one hand across my face, hoping that somehow, when I reopened my eyes, things would have gone back to the way that they were.  That she’d be back…

With a couple fingers, I absentmindedly twisted the wedding ring around my finger.  That was a habit of mine, one that I’d had for many years.  I guess I still wasn’t quite used to wearing the thing.  Our marriage hadn’t exactly been… traditional.

I wondered whether I should just take the thing off.

I could still remember our wedding, now several years previously.  It hadn’t been super well attended, of course – there are only so many people that can squeeze into a hospital room, even the largest one.  And with Sarah still needing to be constantly hooked to all of those machines, well, moving her really wasn’t an option.

But despite that, we still managed to squeeze as many people in as the room could hold.  More than was recommended, probably.  And even though Sarah had to struggle for each breath, I could still see her eyes shining as she pulled away her oxygen mask long enough to repeat back the priest’s lines.

And her eyes never left mine.

What a weird story, huh?  Guy visiting a hospital falls in love with a patient.  Sounds like one of those crazy stories that you read on the internet in a forwarded email.  But I promise you, that’s what happened.

And Sarah loved me back.

(If you’re paying attention, by the way, you probably caught that past tense.  Just read on.)

Living like that, as we were, was definitely a challenge.  But somehow, incredibly, we made it work.  I’d head over to the hospital after every day of work, and we’d laugh away the hours, me perched on the edge of her bed, one arm around her shoulders.  We’d compare our meals (mine from the cafeteria, hers from the nurses), and sometimes, after I slipped the nurses a folded bill or two, they’d close the door on our room and give us some time alone.

And throughout it all, we never gave up hope…

The Three Wishes, Part II

Posted by

0

This is a continuation. Part I is here.

This question, so innocuous, definitely produced a response from the genie ahead of me.  He stopped dead, spinning around to glare at me.  His eyes were wide, and his look was so intense that I took a half-step back before I caught myself.

“Want to be set free??” he repeated, nearly screaming.  “Are you freakin’ mad, man?”

Faced with this onslaught, I cowered back.  “I saw it in a movie!” I stammered, too terrified to say anything but the truth.

For a moment later, the man glared daggers at me.  Then, he took a deep breath, clearly attempting to calm himself.  “Ahhhh,” he sighed as he let out the breath slowly.  “No, please, please, for the love of God, do not set me free!  And don’t even joke about that!”

I was confused.  “Wait, you don’t want to be set free?  Why not?  Isn’t this a burden on you?”

The genie opened his mouth to reply, but then paused, wagging a finger at me.  “I’ll tell you after you make a wish,” he replied.

Right.  A wish.  I had three, right, so it was okay if this one wasn’t perfect?  I racked my brain.  But something made me pause.  “What about phrasing?” I asked.  “Are you going to always grant it in some twisted way?”

The genie threw up his hands.  “No!” he all but shouted.  “Just wish!  I just want them over and done with – I’m not going to waste time screwing them up for you!”

I didn’t know if I could trust the man, but what other option did I have.  “Okay,” I began.  “I’d like to never have to worry about money again.  Just have, like, a trillion dollars someplace.  No one knows, but I can just pay for whatever I need without ever thinking about it.”

“Oh, you humans,” the genie chortled, more to himself than to me.  “Always thinking about money.”  He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.  “Granted.”  And a moment later, he handed me a black credit card.

“Okay,” I said, after tucking the card away carefully.  “Now, why don’t you want to be free?”

We had come to a bus stop, and the genie took a seat on the empty bench.  He looked up at me for a second, waiting until I sat down next to him.  “Look, this isn’t my world,” he said.  “And I don’t even know all the details of this whole ordeal.  Our universe is entangled with yours, or something like that, so occasionally we get yanked over from ours to yours.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but yours sucks.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be offended at this slight to our universe.  I mean, it wasn’t terrible!  But the genie was still talking.

“And anyway, when we come over, we’ve got a bunch of energy buildup, that we figured out we can discharge through wishes,” he continued.  “So that’s where the wishes come from.”

“But you don’t want to be free because…”

“…because if you wish that, it discharges all the energy – but uses it to bind us to this universe!” the genie finished my sentence, a little heat in his words.  “And really, all I want to do is get home.”

I nodded.  I could understand that.  I felt as though I’d been trying to get home for far too long.

After a long minute of silence, the genie clapped his hands down on his knees.  “Anyway,” he said, finally breaking the quiet.

“Second wish?”

The Three Wishes, Part I

Posted by

0

The genie wasn’t how I had always envisioned them in my head.

For one thing, he wasn’t big and blue, with bulging muscles and those metal bands around his fat wrists.  Instead, he was wearing a tee shirt, the logo faded to obscurity amid what had to be years of occasional stains, and a pair of faded and scuffed jeans.  He looked more like a surfer than a magical being.

If he hadn’t appeared with a clap of thunder in the middle of the antique shop, out of thin air, I would have never pegged him as unusual at all…

Currently, he was staring down at me with a rather pained expression.  He was quite tall, so he could pull off a very imposing downward stare.  “Well?” he demanded.

“Well what?”

“Ugh.  Come on, haven’t you mortals figured this out yet?”  The man rolled his eyes, looking around at the dusty antiques surrounding us without much interest.  “God, I always end up coming through in places like this,” he complained.

Was mortals an insult?  Not quite knowing what to say, I instead gestured towards the front of the shop.  “We could go for a walk outside if you wanted some fresh air?” I suggested.

For the first time, the genie actually looked vaguely interested.  “Sounds great,” he replied.  One hand gestured back behind him as he strode forward.  “Don’t forget to grab the lamp.”

I reached out and snatched up the lamp (a rather hideous thing, I was just trying to buff some dirt off the crest to see if I recognized the name), sticking it under one arm as I hurried after the genie.

“Ahh, that’s better!” the man announced with considerably more appreciation as we exited the shop.  I had been caught by the elderly little storekeeper, and ended up having to fork over four dollars in wrinkled bills before she let me leave with the lamp.  She had insisted on wrapping it up in some old newspaper, and it now sat at the bottom of a small shopping bag.

Every now and then, the man walking in front of me would send a glance backward towards that bag.  They were casual, barely even noticeable, but I saw them.  He was definitely attached to the lamp.

“So how does this work?” I finally spoke up, after two blocks.  “I get three wishes?”

“Yeah, exactly.  Then I get to get out of this stupid dimension.”

“Are there any restrictions?”

The genie shrugged.  “Heck, not really.  I’ve heard them all, but most of them are totally possible.  You can’t mess up the laws of physics too much, but other than that, go nuts.”

I didn’t have much experience with genies, or wishes, for that matter.  Most of my wishes had dwindled down in my mind over the years.  Instead of looking forward to achieving world peace or fame, I simply looked forward to the end of the day, to maybe affording that nice jacket I’d seen in the department store window.

Not something that requires divine intervention.

We were still walking, and I tried to think of what I knew of genies.  Unfortunately, most of my experience came from when I’d had to sit through Aladdin four times with my niece’s kid.  And that wasn’t quite the most modern available reference.  I couldn’t think of any other alternatives, though.

“So,” I finally ventured.  “Do you want me to wish for you to be set free?”

Have you heard? I wrote a book!

Posted by

0

I wrote a book!  A novel, actually!

Check it out here:

This little project started 9 months ago, when I participated in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.  However, just because this story was written, that didn’t mean that it was ready to be shared.  Not yet.

But now, after nine months of tweaking and editing, I feel ready for it to be published.  Fly, little novel!  Go out into this big, scary world, and make a few people chuckle!

For anyone who wants to read what this book is about, just continue.  Trust me, it’s funny.

”All I wanted was the perfect wedding. No bitter mother, no pothead father, no crazy sister or lecherous brother-in-law. No surprises. Nothing going wrong. Not happening.”


Danielle Jansen, newly engaged bride-to-be, knows that there are signs suggesting that her wedding won’t turn out perfect. 

One such sign? As soon as she’s engaged, her parents can talk about nothing but divorce. Next, Danielle finds that her bitter mother has hired a wedding planner without her knowledge – and the theme appears to be Damnation & Hellfire. And just to put the cherry on top, her insane sister shows up to her bachelorette party stumbling drunk – and claims that she just seduced Danielle’s husband-to-be. 

When Danielle’s boyfriend proposed, she warned him about the chaos that would shortly follow. He didn’t listen, but she did warn him. Because the old saying really is true: you don’t just marry your partner – you’re stuck with their entire family…

If the link above, doesn’t work, you can get to it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N552OEM

Tell your friends!  Tell your family!  Tell your enemies, if you think they’ll buy a copy out of spite!  No Kindle?  You can read this book in your browser!  But please, help me continue to provide a brief moment’s entertainment by supporting me in this purchase!

"We are NOT taking the wizard."

Posted by

1

“Ugh,” Clara groaned, her eyes almost as sharp as the dagger currently twirling through her hands.  “I can’t believe we’re bringing this guy.”

Maria glared at the female rogue, although she could sympathize a bit with the complaint.  Clara was tough to get along with, her personality almost as pointy as the dozen or so blades secreted about her person.  But even for Maria, the man was quickly wearing thin.

“We need a wizard,” she brought up, for what felt like the millionth time.  Her white cleric’s staff was shifting a little as it leaned against the tree beside her, so she brought it down to prod at the fire.  “And he’s the only one in town.  We’re lucky to have him.”  The words even rang true to her.

But what else could they do?  It was true – they needed a wizard.  The eight-legged corpse that the damn man was currently squatting upon was proof of that…

Maria shivered at the thought of their most recent encounter.  A Sepulchral Assassin!  She thought that they were little more than legends, the last few of them surely confined to their broodhives!  But this one had come crawling out of the darkness, head reared, claws flashing, its eight legs flying over the ground.  Charging at them out of the darkness.

Maria’s healing spells were useless against the Assassin.  Three of Clara’s knives sank hilt-deep into the monster’s carapace without visible impact.  The beast was almost upon them, rearing to strike-

-and then it was engulfed in wizard’s flame.

The Assassin had collapsed a moment later, keening noises coming from the burning heap as its sealed shell burst open under the onslaught of heat.  The wizard had saved their lives.

But still, Maria thought to herself as she looked at the man, there was something not quite… right… about him.

Perhaps it was his hat, pointy and foppish and leaning off to one side like a fool’s cap.  Or maybe it was his lumpy and doughy physique – he clearly relied more on his mystical arts than on his physical prowess.  He had become winded after less than an hour of hiking, and Maria feared for the rest of their journey.

But the aspect of the wizard probably putting her most on edge was his drink.

The man had summoned it up as soon as they made camp.  “Need it, ‘s for my powers,” he had mumbled to the pair of women as he hastily gulped it down.  “Full uh’ magic bits ‘n stuff.”

Maria felt zero inclination to try any of the drink.  It was as thick as paste, contained strange lumps, and it glowed.  Not a good combination in a drink.  But the wizard seemed to enjoy it, squatting atop the burnt carcass of his kill.

Trying to think of more ways to reassure her companion, Maria opened her mouth, but her words were cut off by a horking noise.  Slowly, as if fearing what they would find, both of the women turned to their companion.

The wizard’s cheeks were bulging and his face was flushed.  With a mixture of annoyance and pity, Maria watched as he coughed up a large chunk of his glowing drink, spitting it back down into his cup.  “Drank too fast, ‘uh guess,” he managed to get out between wheezes.

Maria could see Clara rolling her eyes beneath her hood.  “He is not sleeping in our tent tonight,” she muttered.

The Regression Chambers

Posted by

0

I stared up at the board, looking at the different times available.  How long did I want to enter the chamber for?  An hour?  A day?  Maybe even longer?

The robot attendant, a faceless white automaton, was somehow still watching me.  I could feel its gaze on me, that kind of implacable patience that can only be fueled by silicon circuits.  I ignored it.  I was used to being watched by robots.  They were only there to serve, after all.

I knew that some people went in longer.  My friend Lev had once entered the chamber for an entire week.  When he had staggered out, limping and bloody, he insisted deliriously that it was the best experience of his life.  But he also had to get immediate attention from the med-bots, fixing up his injuries before he bled out.

Lev was hardcore, there was no doubt about it.  I knew that, deep down, I aspired to be like him, but there was no way that I could manage to survive an entire week.

I stepped up to the counter, finally making up my mind as much as I knew I ever would.  The robot had its face on me.  “Have you made up your mind, sir?”  it asked.

All of the robots had a slight but unmistakable British accent.  No one really knew why; Lev insisted that it was the quirk of a long-dead programmer.  It was a quirk that we were prepared to live with.  No one was able to fix it. No one made things any more.

Lev insisted that this was the problem.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t think that I was ready to make any decisions like that.

“I have,” I replied to the attendant.  “One day, please.”

The robot didn’t respond, but there was a slight clicking from behind it, as the electronic circuits in the chamber rerouted themselves to the new pattern.  A few second later, the heavy, pressure-sealed door beside the attendant slowly opened with a hiss of released piston steam.

I took a deep breath.  The location and the time was always randomized; there was no way to tell where I would pop up.  I quickly ran through my preparations, my skills that I had mastered, hoping that they would be enough.

Lev’s lessons once again rang in my head.  We realized too late that we were stagnating, he insisted.  He loved to give these sermons, stomping around and waving his arms.  We didn’t know that, by giving ourselves everything that we wanted, we were stopping our forward momentum!

I wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but Lev was really insistent on this part.  We had lost our innovation, he claimed.  We were content, and so here we stopped.

And this, he went on, was why our ancestors had built the chambers.  It was a way to escape, to get to a time and place where we were no longer protected, no longer cushioned by attendants to provide whatever we needed.  It was a chance to return to the fire, the crucible in which we had been forged.  I didn’t know what this meant, but Lev loved to repeat it.

I could almost hear his voice now, as I stepped up to the huge, heavy door of the chamber.  “Return to the crucible,” he would say, his aged voice cracking slightly.  I was returning now, as I had done so many times.

My heart in my throat, I stepped through the door.  There was a hiss immediately behind me as it closed.  No retreating.

I stared around at my new surroundings.  I was on a beach, I saw.  There was no sign of man.  The surf was gently lapping at the sand, and I could see palm trees nearby.  The air smelled of fresh salt.

I grinned.  This, I could deal with.

Remember, I thought to myself as I picked up a stick and began sharpening it on a rock.  No safety net here.  No med-bots.  No one to help if I got into trouble.

This made me feel alive in a way that I’d never felt before.  And I couldn’t get enough.

"We are just simple farmers."

Posted by

0

Of course, we didn’t put up much resistance as the raiders came rolling into our little town.  They didn’t even need to fire off a shot, although they did so anyways.  One of those idiots was leaning out the side of their stripped-down Jeep, firing an AK-47 up into the air like he was Rambo or something.

What an idiot.

We, of course, instantly had our hands up.  What are we going to do, fight back?  We’re farmers, not mercenaries!  And it might be the Wild West out here, society collapsed and every man for himself, but we have a healthy respect for many things still.

For example, none of us is much inclined to replace our internal organs with chunks of hot lead…

They had two cars – the Jeep, as I mentioned, and what looked like the world’s most battered SUV.  The thing was missing its roof, for god’s sake!  Four or five raiders in each car, all of them armed to the teeth.  I suspected most of it was for intimidation – ammo’s as precious as gold out here – but it did the job.

They came pulling to a stop in the dusty little town square, right in front of our big communal town hall.  ‘Course, it’s also a schoolhouse, church, and meeting room, seeing as how it takes a lot of work to put up a building when it’s all done by hand.  The gasoline’s long gone, or being hoarded for plowing equipment.

I came strolling out of the hall as soon as I heard the gunshots.  “Howdy there, folks,” I greeted them politely as they all came piling out of their dirty cars, doing my best to ignore the guns.  “What can we do for you here?”

The leader was pretty clear – he had a red bandana and a pair of those old Aviators sunglasses covering up his face.  “What the hell does it look like, old timer?” he shot back at me, his voice filled with barely controlled rage.  “This is a damn raid!”

“A raid?”  I raised my eyebrows, tried my best to look surprised.  “Friend, I’m afraid that we’re nothing but simple farmers, doing our best to survive.  You won’t find much of value in our little town, although we’d be happy to provide you and your friends with a hot meal.”

The man jabbed his rifle at me.  “Watch it, old man!  You might have white hair, and get respect around here, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

I shrugged, but kept the slight smile on my face.  I knew that my words carried the ring of truth, and as I waited, I think it began to sink in to the leader of the raiders as well.

After a long, uncomfortable minute, the man jerked his head at a couple of his associates, also toting their own big guns.  “Go poke around,” he ordered.  “See if you can find anything worth grabbing.”

The men looked a little angry that they had to do this menial labor, and I saw one of them open his mouth to complain, but the leader raised his gun threateningly.  The other fellow hastily closed his mouth and they went trooping off.

I placidly watch them disappear into the fields around the little gaggle of buildings.

With his men dispatched, the leader turned back to me.  “Now, why don’t you take me inside this building of yours,” he said, his tone making it clear that this wasn’t a request.  “And no sudden movements, or I’ll cut your spine in half.”

I shrugged, not rising to this threat.  “Follow me, son,” I said gently, and headed back into the town hall.

We pushed through the doors, moving towards my study.  The man was still hefting his gun when I glanced back at him, despite my disarming smile.

Inside my study, he poked around, sidling up to the large plant in the corner.  “You farmers sure like your plants, huh?” he asked, prodding it with his gun.

I winced.  “I wouldn’t agitate it, if I were you,” I warned him, but the man was having none of it.

“Agitate?  Screw this damn thing!” he bellowed, lashing out with one foot at the base of the large plant.

The foot didn’t come back.  With lightning speed, the tendrils of the plant lunged out, wrapping around his ankle.  The sudden jerk threw the raider off balance, and he went tumbling down to the floor, the gun knocked from his hands by the hit.

I slowly strolled over and used my foot to push it further away from his grip, just in case.  The plant had already managed to advance up the man’s legs to his thighs.  He stared up at me from the floor.

“Please, old man,” he begged, confused and disoriented.  “Please, it hurts!”

I turned away.  The plants injected a mixture of paralytics and hallucinogens that kept their victims from fighting back, but it still wasn’t too pleasant to see.  Instead, I bent and picked up the fallen gun, and then strolled back outside.

Out in the circle, the other farmers were already emerging from their fields, carrying the rifles of the other raiders.  They looked at me, and I just shrugged.  “We’ll put them in the back with the others we’ve collected over the years,” I said.

“And the vehicles?” asked another farmer.

“Drain them of the gas, and then we’ll burn them outside of town.  No point in keeping them, they’re useless to us.”

The men just nodded and turned away, no one hurrying much.  We weren’t in any big rush.  There was never any danger.

We were just simple farmers, tending to our crops.  But in exchange for us nourishing them, they watched out for us in turn.  It was the great circle of life.

Events In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Posted by

0

Sure, I’ll admit it.  The car is a gift to myself.  It’s not a necessary component of my daily life.  No, it’s a moving declaration of my mid-life crisis.

And hey, I deserve a mid-life crisis!  Come with me.  As I roll down the streets of my memory, let’s examine all the places that I’ve royally botched things up.

Ah, here’s college.  The good ol’ alma mater, where I spent every night partying.  Which, as it turns out, probably wasn’t the best idea.  My grades were all right, sure, but I still lagged behind my classmates, and not just from the resulting hangover.  They went off and got jobs at fancy law firms.  I ended up back home, pulling double shifts to afford my crappy apartment.  Hah.  More like compartment, if you managed to squeeze inside.

Of course, then I met Jill.  Love of my life, from the moment I laid eyes on her.  If I hadn’t been back at my home town, back working at the front counter of that little shop, I never would have met her when she came strolling in.

I can see that some of you in the audience are perking up.  “Maybe this is a love story,” you say.

“Maybe this will all turn out smiles and happiness in the end,” you whisper to each other.

“Perhaps he’s just showing us how far he fell so that we can see how high he rose,” you exclaim hopefully.

Sorry, folks, no such luck.  We’re still dropping.

Of course, it wasn’t all descent for a while.  Somehow, my bone-brained humor was enough to make Jill laugh.  And what a laugh, man!  Some girls do that little tinkle, a fake little giggle that makes you wonder whether you’re actually dating someone old enough to be legal.

Jill didn’t laugh like that.  When Jill laughed, it came bursting up out of her, rising like a bubble to overwhelm her in a tidal wave.  You couldn’t help but be swept along with her.  Some people write about a contagious laugh.  Jill actually possessed one.

So there I was, somehow making this angel laugh along with my dumb jokes.  I don’t know how I overcame my natural shyness, how I managed to do it, but I asked her out.  And she said yes.

Stop awwing in the audience!  I can hear you, you know.  And it’s not gonna end well.  Just want to make that clear up front.  We’re about to switch over to straight tragedy.

Things went well at first.  Really well.  We connected like, well, like a love story.  We were totally in tune, in sync.  She brought out the best in me, encouraged me to apply for a promotion.  And I got it!  I remember coming home with a huge double handful of flowers, flowers I could actually afford to buy for her, and telling her it was all because of her encouragement.  And she laughed, and swept up the flowers in her arms, and I told her she was beautiful, and we fell together on the couch.

And things were great.  I remember they were great.  In fact, they were great for a long time – right up until they weren’t.

I still don’t know what triggered it.  Nothing seemed to change, there was nothing different.  And maybe that’s the trouble, right there.  Maybe the stagnation was building up, and this was when it finally chose to blow, with no warnings to signal what was about to hit me.

I came home, just like any other day.  Unlocked the door, already shrugging out of my coat, and set my briefcase down inside the front hall.

But my briefcase bumped up against a suitcase that was already there.

That was when I looked up and saw her.  She had her coat on.  There were tears in her eyes.  She didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to go.  But she went.

I told you folks that it was a tragedy, didn’t I?

Sure, she said things to me, things I barely heard.  How she was comfortable with me, maybe too comfortable, how that scared her.  How she was worried she had lost that sensation of new, of being in giddy, head-over-heels love, how she needed to go out and find herself.  How it wasn’t my fault, how I shouldn’t blame myself for this, how she just needed some time alone, she didn’t know how long.

She said a lot.  I really didn’t hear most of it.

That kind of brings us up to now, doesn’t it?  Sure, I’m skipping over a lot of crying and moping and eating crappy food and feeling sorry for myself in my boxers on the couch, but I know you don’t want to hear about that.  And finally, after the millionth luxury car commercial, I went out and bought one for myself, a vain attempt to cheer myself up out of this depression.

Of course, even with the promotion, I couldn’t just stroll into the auto dealership.  So I went to one of those used places instead.  Found a nice ride, arranged to have it checked out, then delivered right to my door.  Nice service.

And the car’s still pretty new, see?  Still got the sticker on the rear view mirror.  Says “Events in mirror are closer than they appear.”

What?  Huh, that’s odd.  Isn’t it supposed to say something else?

Anyway, the seat feels nice.  Leather, hardly scratched.  Turn the key, the engine rumbles right to life.  Sounds good.  The thing’s gonna chew through gas, but oh well.  Maybe Jill was right.  Maybe I’m also doing my thing to search for that spark.

Okay, let’s see.  Hmm, mirror’s off.  Let’s just adjust that-

That’s really weird.

Hold on.  Look at that, in the mirror.  You can see my hand, right?  See the wrinkles on the fingers, how the skin’s a little bunched up around the wedding band.  Gold’s a little scratched, but it still looks nice.

Except I’m not wearing a wedding band.

Never did.

I was thinking about it, you know.  Thinking about proposing to her.  That had been my approach to spicing things up, to getting that spark back.  I thought she was just a little down because I hadn’t proposed yet.  Maybe if I had beaten her to the punch, she wouldn’t have left.

But she did leave.  I never got a chance to show her the ring in my pocket.

But now, in the mirror… there, see?  It’s still there, in the reflection.  Not a trick of the eye at all – there’s a wedding band wrapped around my ring finger there.

“Events in mirror are closer than they appear,” huh?  Well.  I’ve never been much of one for flights of fancy, wild imaginations, any of that.  But this seems promising.

Let’s take this baby out for a spin.