Short Stories By Duane L. Martin

 

Author’s Note: I wanted to take a small break from writing my current book to write another short story, which in this case turned out to be more of a fairy tale.  I didn’t know it would be that when I started writing it of course, as my writing always tends to evolve organically into whatever it’s going to be.  I hope you enjoy it.

*   *   *

It was a tree, much like any other tree.  It had roots that delved deep into the ground to provide it with not only nutrients, but a strong defense against the raging storms that would pass through now and again sending biting winds whipping through its branches.  It had leaves, bark, the occasional hole where an insect had burrowed in and made itself to home, and it even had a nest where a pair of squirrels whose love hate relationship often seemed to be more hate than love had made their nest and loaded it with whatever nuts and other scraps of food they could gather for the long winter ahead.

This tree however had something that its brethren lacked, for you see, it wasn’t always a tree.  It had little in the line of remembrances as far as its former life was concerned, for it had been nearly two centuries now since the change had occurred, and the life of a tree is after all incredibly boring.  Day after day of complete and utter solitude, with naught but your own thoughts to comfort you.  You become your own companion, and you begin to look for things of interest to entertain yourself, or to hold your interest for even just the briefest of times.  A lost bird of a species never before seen was a rare treat indeed, though it usually had to settle for the small, brown variety that often frequented its branches.

Regret is a horrible thing, and to live with it for nearly two centuries with no one to hear the lament you feel in the depths of your very soul can become unbearable beyond words, as was the curse he’d brought upon himself the day his betrothed was buried.  They were to be married but a few days after a pair of spooked horses and an out of control wagon laid her down in the street, her body trampled by falling hooves and wooden wheels.  The night they buried her, he wept on her grave, curled into a little ball as his heart pounded in his chest.

At the stroke of midnight he rolled over on his back and stared up at the sky through bleary, tear soaked eyes, and with a shaky voice, he made his plea to the heavens, or to whatever greater power would take pity on his broken soul.  His plea was a simple one.  He wanted to be with his love forever.

It was on this night that a small little fellow happened to be wandering past the graveyard.  He was a queer little man, not more than three feet tall in his boots.  He had a rather bulbous nose and his larger than normal ears, one of which had a large, gold earring dangling from it, sort of stuck out a bit more than one would expect.  It was he who heard the man’s plea, and it was he who granted his wish.  Puffing his churchwarden pipe furiously a few times, he suddenly stopped, and then pulled in a long draw of smoke, which he then released in a lengthy exhale.  The wisp of smoke extended farther and farther, working its way out into the cemetery until it slid up over the man’s face and into his nose.

Coughing, the man sat up and wiped the tears from his eyes.  The smoke had to have come from somewhere, but he couldn’t seem to locate the source, and now that he’d sat himself up, the air suddenly seemed clean and fresh.  He did seem to sense a rather earthy smell that he hadn’t noticed before, but other than that, everything seemed as it should.

The little man smiled to himself and then continued on along his way, while the sorrowful man laid back down on the grave of his love, and eventually cried himself to sleep.

The next morning when the man awoke, his whole world had changed…because he himself had changed.  It wasn’t his heart that had changed, or his way of looking at the world.  This was a far more tangible transformation.  He was surrounded by dirt, but that was all he knew.  He couldn’t move, and knew nothing about his surroundings other than what he could presently sense.  He was in the ground, surrounded by dirt…and he was no longer human, though truth be told, he had no idea what he was.  He only knew that the arms and legs that he’d once used to dance with his betrothed at their pre-wedding party no longer existed.

Weeks later, it suddenly became all too clear to him what had happened, and what he had become.  As his green stalk broke through the surface of the ground and emerged into the sunlight, he now knew what he’d dreaded to even consider up to now.  Somehow, he’d transformed into what he now realized was an acorn, and he was now growing into a tree.  Unable to speak…unable to breathe in any normal way, he couldn’t even curse the gods for allowing such a thing to happen.

Seasons passed, and as they did he continued to grow, both in height and girth.  His trunk widened, his branches extended toward the heavens, and his roots dug deep into the ground.  It took many years for them to reach down into the coffin of his love, and when they finally made contact with the remains of her body, he wept silently, for it was then that he understood the true nature of his transformation.  He’d brought it upon himself through a wish that was uttered not as much through desire, as it was through sorrow and desperation.  His wish had been granted, and once again he could lay his roots upon his one true love, though after so many years of decay and decomposition, there was little left to comfort him.

Years passed, and throughout those years he held a silent vigil over her grave, with none to keep him company save for the random bird or squirrel that would take up residence in his branches.  Even the bugs that gnawed little holes in him here and there were a welcome respite from the incessant loneliness.

In the spring of the one-hundred and ninety-seventh year after his transformation, there came a day when a beautiful young girl came wandering through the old cemetery.  She had tears streaming down her face.  Tears that left black trails in their wake as they washed away the mascara that she’d so carefully applied earlier that day.

His heart went out to the girl, for only those with no heart and no empathy at all can see a young girl in distress without feeling a sadness that reaches down to the soul.  Almost as if she were drawn to where he stood, she veered off the path and came directly toward him, which sent a tingle of excitement from the tips of his branches, all the way down into his roots.  Was he to have some actual human company, after all these years?

In the early days, a few of his love’s relatives would come to see her graves, but they’d dissipated as quickly as leaves would on a flowing stream.  He’d barely broken through the surface when they stopped coming, so none were even aware of his presence, and even if they had been, none would have mourned him in any case.  He had no family of his own aside from the kindly inn keeper and his wife that had taken him in when his own family had died of the pox.  Since he’d simply disappeared one night, everyone assumed that he’d run off in a fit of grief, and as such, they’d all assumed he’d simply return one day when he’d worked through the anguish he was feeling.  Sadly however, that was not the case.

When the girl reached out and touched his bark, a shudder ran through him that she could never perceive, nor understand.  It was the first human contact he’d had since before his love had died so tragically, and it awoke something in him.  A feeling of humanity that had long since been forgotten.

She slid her hand down his trunk slowly, and then turned to sit down on the ground, leaning her back up against him.  He could feel her shaking as she pulled her knees up to her chest and sobbed quietly. Desperately he struggled to move his branches; to wrap them around her in an attempt to provide whatever comfort he possibly could…but alas, it was no use.  His curse precluded him from such things, and as such, he was left helpless and frustrated.

When she got up and wandered away that afternoon, his heart was left broken once again.  He didn’t know why she’d been so sad, though she had muttered something about someone she loved who’d run off with some other girl, and then she cursed him in ways that were unheard of from girls back when he was young.  Whatever happened, it had left her feeling much the way he had when he lost his own love two centuries past.  He knew this not from her words, for no words would ever be enough.  Rather, it was a feeling she radiated like an aura that penetrated his bark and seeped its way down into his very core.  Their losses were of a different nature, but the hurt they left behind was one and the same.  Now she was gone, and that connection they shared was something he’d never experience again…or so he thought as he wept in silence all throughout the night.

He was surprised when she returned the following day, this time with a sketch book.  The redness in her eyes was enough to tell him that she’d spent the whole night crying, but there was something more to her now than the sadness that had filled her only hours before.  There was…hope?  Yes…maybe that was it.  There was something hopeful in the way she looked at him.  Not just hope, but a desire to be strong in the face of adversity.  To move on with her life rather than allowing the man who’d hurt her so cruelly to take away her desire to live and be happy.  This was her way of denying him the ability to hold such a power over her…and so she sat.  She sat and she sketched throughout the day and well into the evening.  She looked at him as though he were an old friend, taking in every detail, which she painstakingly recreated with the gentle strokes of a dexterous hand.  It was like therapy for her, and when she went home that evening, she propped her sketch book up on her night stand and stared at it as she fell asleep, for she still had much work to do, and she would need her sleep in order to complete it.

Day after day she returned, and she’d even taken to chatting with him as she meticulously sketched out every last detail.  She told him about her childhood and the trouble she used to get into with her friends in high school.  She told him about her parents and the way they used to argue over even the smallest things because they’d let all the stresses of life destroy the love they once had for each other.  She told him of the love she once had, and how it had been so cruelly destroyed by a man who simply didn’t care about how badly he’d hurt her when he left…and the tree wept silently for her.

Spring turned into summer, and summer transitioned seamlessly into fall.  It was the second week in September when she came to him with a gleam of excitement in her eyes.  He wasn’t sure what she was so excited about, but it all suddenly became clear when she held up the sketch book to show him.  She asked him what he thought of it, though she knew she wouldn’t get a response.  He wanted desperately to tell her that it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen…and to tell her how much he’d grown to love her as well over the past several months.  He knew that the days were getting colder, and that soon she’d no longer come for her daily visits, and again he wept, for she was his only link to humanity, and the man he once was.  She’d given him a gift…the gift of feeling.  The gift of experiencing love, just one last time…and soon she would be gone.  She’d leave him and return to her life, and he’d remain right where he’d always been, standing like a sentinel over the grave of a love that was long since lost.

She sat down and leaned her back up against him, and the longing he felt to hold her…or even just to be able to look into her eyes so she’d know the love that he felt for her was tearing him apart.  He cursed the day he’d ever made such a foolish wish, and in a rage he demanded to be set free…only there was no one there to hear his cries.  No one but her.  No one but the one he’d come to love as much or more than the girl he’d once loved so very long ago.

With a yawn, she pulled off her sweater, rolled it up and used it as a pillow as she laid down on the ground facing him.  Silently she reached out her hand and traced her finger down the cracks in his bark.  He’d become so special to her, and yet she knew as well as he that the cold weather would soon separate them, and unbeknownst to him, that thought broke her heart as much as it did his.  She’d grown to love the tree more than anything she’d ever loved before.  It had been her friend and her companion through some of the darkest days of her life.

A thought suddenly creeped into her mind as she lay there right on the edge of sleep.  Grabbing her sketch book, she drew a simple little self portrait of herself sitting on the ground next to the tree, and then she drew a little thought balloon between them with a heart in the middle of it.  As soon as she was satisfied with her work, and too drowsy to make it any better than it was, she smiled and showed it to the tree.  The moment he saw what she’d done, he wept once more.  What he could still sense as his heart, even though it didn’t exist in his present form, hurt in a way that he’d never experienced before.  Not even the loss of who he’d thought had been his one true love had caused him pain such as this, and it was then that he sensed something emanating up from his roots.  Something he didn’t understand.  Awakened by his anguish, she spoke to him for the first time since he’d last seen her nearly two centuries ago.

You have stood watch over me for long enough.  You must go to her now.  The love we shared is eternal, but now you must go and find the happiness that you’ve denied yourself for so very long, and live the life you were always meant to live.  She needs you my love, just as I needed you.  I can only hope that in the coming days, you’ll forgive me for leaving you.  Perhaps one day we’ll be together again, but for now you need to live…for both of us.

Silence filled his being, as did the knowledge that she was now truly and forever lost to him…and again he wept.

Nearly an hour passed before he could bring himself to look down at her once again.  She’d bumped the sketch book with her hand when she turned over, several minutes earlier, and he stared at the heart she’d drawn between the two figures longingly.  He did love her, and now he’d been freed of his curse by the words of his past love.  He no longer needed to stand sentinel over her, for now she was truly gone from this world, and it was time for him to live again.

When she awoke, she felt a hand on her side.  It took a few moments for her still sleepy mind to realize that she was no longer alone, and with a start she spun over to see who’d so rudely imposed himself into her personal space.

He laid beside her there, bare to the world, just as a newborn baby that had finally left the warm comfort of the womb.  Immediately she noticed that the tree was no longer there, and then as she looked deep into his chestnut eyes, she suddenly knew why.  Reaching out to pick up her sketch book, he held it up and pointed at the heart she’d drawn between the two figures, and then he smiled at her.

Her mind reeled for a moment as she tried to process it all, but then suddenly, before she even knew what she was doing, she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him to her lips.  She didn’t need an explanation, nor did she need to deny the truth.  He was her tree, and it was her heart that he would now stand sentinel over…and he did stand sentinel over it until the end of his days.

They lived a full life together, and in the end he was the first to pass.  In her grief, she planted an acorn on his grave and watered it with her tears.  They found her body there the following day, and buried her next to him.  In his will, he had one final wish that was never made known to her.  It was a wish that the funeral director carried out personally when he planted an acorn on her grave, and then instructed his groundskeepers to care for it always.

The trees eventually grew to be tall and strong, and their branches intertwined with one another.  They became known as The Lovers’ Trees, and couples from all around would come to declare their love for one another beneath their boughs.  No one knew why the trees had been planted on the graves in such a way, nor did they know the story behind the love that was shared between the couple that were buried there, but it didn’t matter.  The love they shared was eternal, and for generations to come the symbols of that love would inspire new love to grow and flourish.

In the end, no one lives to see the legacy they’ve left behind, but what greater legacy could one hope to achieve than to inspire the love in others?  This was the gift they left us in their passing.  This was their legacy.

 

 

This is another piece I did for a randomly generated writing prompt with my writing group.  Six items were selected at random, and we had to use at least four of those items in our piece.  Below are the four items I selected, followed by my piece.

Prompt: An aging explorer, a roadie for an old rock band, a set of dice, and an apartment.

*   *   *

The flashing lights were a familiar site for Jacob.  They flashed in a variety of colors as the low frequencies of the music shook the walls of the club.  He always hated coming here when he was in town, but the old classic rock band he roadied for was about as exciting as a rectal thermometer and just didn’t draw the hordes of eager groupies like they used to.  Every so often he’d get to skim through the leftovers, but lately there hadn’t even been a main course, so whenever they were in town he’d stop by the club to see what the local scene was looking like.

“Damn it, looks like every slick in the room is hittin’ on the girls at the bar,” he muttered to himself, though it was so loud in there that even if he shouted it’s unlikely he’d have been able to hear himself over the thumping din.

After a cursory scan of the dance floor, something caught his eye.  It was an old man who looked about as out of place as a Satanist in the front pew of a church.  He wanted desperately to find someone to warm his bed for the evening, but something about the old man was pulling at him the way a desperate child pulls at their mother’s skirt when they want to beg for a toy they saw two aisles over in the department store.  Finally, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything until his curiosity had been sated, he walked over to the old man and smiled at him for a moment.

“Hey old timer.  Mind if I sit down for a minute?” he asked.

“Dunno.  You’ll have to ask Joe here,” he said just barely loud enough for Jacob to hear as he indicated the seat next to him, which was currently unoccupied.

“Uhhh…ok.  Hey Joe, mind if I sit down?” he asked the empty seat politely.

“What’d he say?” the old man asked.

“He said I could have a seat,” Jacob said as he sat down.

“Who did?  Who were you talkin’ to exactly?”

“I was talkin’ to Joe.  You told me to ask him if I could sit down,” he said with a confused look.

“Joe who?  Ain’t nobody there.  It’s just an empty seat.  You blind or somethin’?” the old man asked with a mischievous grin.

“Ha ha, very funny,” Jacob said irritably.  “Look, I was just curious…you don’t look like one of the regulars around here.  I mean, you don’t exactly fit the profile, ya know?”

“So you’re sayin’ that because I’m old, I can’t score myself some young stuff?”

“Nah, I didn’t mean…well, yeah…somethin’ like that.  I mean, this just doesn’t look like your kind of a scene.  I was just wonderin’ what brought you into a place like this?” he said.

“Was supposed to meet my grandson here, but he stood me up from the looks of it.  So what do you do young feller?” the old man asked.

“Name’s Jacob,” he said, extending his hand for a shake.  “I’m a roadie for an old rock band.  We’re just passin’ through town, so I usually stop in while we’re here to check out the uhhh…”

“Local wildlife?” the old man finished for him.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.  What about you?”

“Name’s Alistair Hargrove.  I don’t really have a profession.  Well, not a specific one anyway.  I just sorta wander around lookin’ for stuff.”

“Stuff like what?” Jacob asked.

“Stuff ain’t no one ever seen before, and stuff that ain’t no one knows about.  Like these for instance,” he said as he pulled a handful of dice out of his pocket and held them out for Jacob to see.

“Dice?  So what?  Everyone’s seen dice before.  What’s so special about those?”

“What indeed,” the old man said, narrowing his eyes slightly.  “Are you really that curious?”

“You know, oddly enough I am.  Couldn’t tell ya why exactly, but for some reason I really am.”

“Tell ya what.  Why don’t you come back to my place with me where we can talk without all this noise, and I’ll tell ya what’s so special about ‘em.”

“Come back to your place?  You’re not uhhh…,” Jacob asked, tilting his hand back and forth in the air in front of him.

“Yeah, I’m a little shaky,” he said as he stood up, his joints creaking like an old gate as he moved out from where he was sitting and stood there waiting for Jacob to join him.  “You comin’?”

“Yeah, sure…why not?” he said with a shrug as he got up and followed the old man out of the club.

As it turns out, they were only a couple of blocks away from the old man’s apartment.  When they walked in and Alistair turned on the lights, Jacob stopped in his tracks for a moment and just stood there absolutely dumbstruck as he tried to take in the massive assortment of junk, curios and other oddities that the man had collected over the course of his lifetime.

“Oh my god old man, you weren’t kiddin’ were ya?  Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Ohhh…here and there I suppose.  You wanted to know about these though, didn’t you?” he asked as he pulled the dice from his pocket and held them out for Jacob to see.

“Yeah, I guess so.  What’s so special about dice?” he asked.

“Look close at it,” he said as he handed him one to examine.  As Jacob rolled it around in his fingers, he noticed that it wasn’t in fact just any plain old dice, as he’d first assumed when he saw them in the flashing lights of the club.  It was actually made out of what appeared to be ivory, and each side had a tiny little sigil carved into it in between the pips.

“Where the hell did you get these?” he asked as he handed it back to the old man.

“Found ‘em in a grave in Africa that the locals said was cursed ground.  That was back just after World War II.  Well I was young and stupid back then, so naturally I just had to dig up the grave to see what was in it.  I found these in there along with some other assorted beads and such.  Aside from these, all that was in there was some junk and a rotten corpse…but these things here…these were somethin’ special.  Came to find out later that the villagers had actually killed the poor guy for usin’ black magic.”

“Black magic?” Jacob repeated, wrinkling his brow in disbelief.  “They killed the poor guy over some nonsense like that?”

“They did indeed, and it’s a good thing they did.  These dice are dangerous.”

“Dangerous?  Dangerous how?” Jacob asked.

“Well by themselves they ain’t dangerous at all.  Even if you roll ‘em in pairs or whatever…nothin’.  You roll all six at once though, and that’s when things start to happen.  Bad things…,” the old man explained.

“Bad things like what?”

“Dunno if you ever learned about it in your history classes, but after I got back home from that trip, I was sittin’ in my apartment killin’ off a bottle of bourbon that I’d been workin’ on for a couple of days, and just out of sheer boredom I rolled all the dice, just to see how’d they’d roll.  You know how you do…”

“Yeah.  What happened when you rolled ‘em?” Jacob asked.

“Well the next mornin’ I woke up with a screamin’ case of the shits.”

“You sure it wasn’t all the bourbon?” he asked with an amused look.

“Might have thought so, except it wasn’t just me.  There was a worldwide outbreak of dysentery that very same day.”

“You’re shittin’ me…”

“Everyone was shittin’.  That was the problem.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, but a few days later when I was sittin’ there all dehydrated and miserable with a burnin’ butthole, I picked up the dice and rolled ‘em again for no particular reason.”

“And?” Jacob asked.

“Suddenly the dysentery outbreak was over as quick as it’d begun, but there were three major earthquakes that day that killed over a hundred thousand people.  Not only that, but one of ‘em triggered a volcanic eruption.”

“Oh come on, that’s gotta be a coincidence…,” he said dismissively.

“I thought so too, but the thought that maybe it wasn’t just kept eatin’ at me.  It was another year though before it finally ate at me enough to give it another shot.”

“What happened?” Jacob asked again.

“Massive forest fires, all over the western part of the country started up the same day.  They said it was lightning that caused ‘em, but I know the truth.  It was the dice.  Thing is, I guess you can see that I ain’t gettin’ any younger.  I was gonna pass ‘em on to my grandson, but you’ve seen how reliable he is.  He’s about as worthless as tits on a boar hog, and I ain’t got no other livin’ relatives, so I guess I better find someone else to pass ‘em on to.  Someone who’ll at least try to make sure they never get rolled ever again.”

“Who’s that gonna be?” Jacob asked.

“Look, I been carryin’ this burden for a whole lotta years now.  I’m tired of it, so how about you do me a favor and you take these accursed things off my hands?  How about it son?  Will ya do it?”

“Me?  Why me?”

“Because I don’t know how much time I got left, and I need to make sure they end up with someone who knows what kind of power they contain.  Someone who’ll at least try to make sure they’ll never get rolled again, because you know what’ll happen?  If I die, the authorities are gonna come in here and clean the place out, and you know as well as I do that some idiot from the coroner’s office is gonna roll these damn things the second he gets his hands on ‘em.  That’s why I need you to take ‘em and make sure that doesn’t happen.  Will ya do it?”

“What makes you think I won’t roll ‘em?” Jacob asked.

“I’m sure you will.  You’ll be sittin’ around someday and curiosity’s gonna get the better of ya…but I promise ya kid…if you do roll these damn things, you’ll only do it once.  Now, will ya take these things off my hands for me so I can die in peace when Old Scratch comes a lookin’ for me?”

“Yeah…I guess,” he said as he reached out and took the dice from the old man.

“Listen, somewhere down the road when your time’s comin’, you make sure you pass ‘em on to someone you can trust.  You hear me?  I mean it now,” the old man said, looking at him with such a dead seriousness that he suddenly started to realize just what a heavy responsibility it all was.

“I promise old man.  I’ll find a nice safe place for ‘em where no one’s ever gonna find ‘em.”

“Doesn’t matter where you hide ‘em, there’s somethin’ about these dice that wants to be found.  You gotta hold on to ‘em and make sure they’re in safe hands.  Now…I think I still got a half a bottle of bourbon sittin’ around here somewhere.  Why don’t you sit down for a spell and I’ll tell ya about some of this other stuff while we polish it off.”

“You know, I gotta get up early and…ah screw it.  Why not?” he said with a grin as he shoved the dice in his pocket, moved a few knick-knacks aside and sat down on the dusty old couch.

 

Author’s Note: Thanks to my writers group that I’ve been a member of for quite some time now, I’ve been forced to write things that are completely out of my normal style of writing.  It’s good to gain this sort of experience as a writer, because in the end it’ll only serve to make you better at your craft.  In this particular piece, I tried to bring out the absolute torment that one feels when they love someone that they’ll never have.

*   *   *

It’s dark.  It’s always dark now.  The sun comes up, makes its lonely journey from one side of our world to the other, and then disappears once again until it repeats the whole process all over again the following day.  It’s been like this since time began, but only now do I understand the emptiness of such an existence.

I didn’t used to be like this.  I thought I was happy…fulfilled even, but I was only deluding myself.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to living in such blissful ignorance, but alas, those days are over for me.  They have been since I first encountered the part of my soul that’s been missing for all these years.  The day I met her was both a blessing and a curse, for never could I have imagined that one of such flawless beauty existed, and yet from the very first moment I laid eyes on her my soul has been in a perpetual state of despair…for she belongs to another.

The heart can be a cruel and jealous creature, for I hate this man as much as I envy him, and yet I can’t hate him, for his slight against me was never purposeful.  In fact, he knew nothing more of my existence than I knew of hers before that first, unforgettable encounter, and yet a jealousy rages within me that I struggle to control.

“If I can’t have her, then no man shall!” my jealous soul calls out, and yet I could never deny her even one brief moment of happiness, for to my knowledge at least, she is happy…and so I remain silent.  Not that I could ever truly believe that she could desire someone like me, but the heart cares not for such petty insecurities.  The heart wants what it wants, and it’ll hear no arguments to the contrary.

So…I wait.  I wait, and I pretend that my soul doesn’t cry out in pain each and every time I see her.  It’s difficult to maintain such a facade, but such is life.  I suppose all that’s left for me is to accept things as they are.  To be satisfied with seeing her eyes light up when she smiles, or to bask in the gentle softness of her voice.  Her mere presence radiates a warmth and a joy that’s almost unbearable for someone who sees her as the completion of his very soul, and yet is so cruelly restrained from expressing those feelings.

We don’t always get what we want, nor can we force someone to love us.  All we can do is to suffer through the emptiness, and to hope that perhaps someday…no, I dare not hope for such things.  It’s a fool’s endeavor at best to hope in such a way.  Perhaps in the next life we’ll find one another, for only then will the longing in my heart and the emptiness of my soul finally be put to rest.

 

Author’s Note: This is a short piece I wrote one night after I had a hard time falling asleep.  It’s all exactly as it happened, though it’s told in a narrative form that makes it sound far more dramatic than it actually was.

*   *   *

The room was dark, save for the dim light that was coming in from the outside.  The glow of the city’s numerous lights illuminated the surrounding atmosphere, making it appear lighter than it should be for this time of night.  It was a cold glow that bathed the room and it’s contents in a faded, grayish hue as it filtered through the blinds.

He laid there quietly on his stomach, staring blankly at the window as he examined the shadows painted on the blinds by the large bush that grew just outside.  To his sleepless eyes, It appeared as though it were some random splatter of black paint, slathered upon a canvas by a drunken artist, or an ink spot used to delve into the psyche of a disturbed mind.

It was 1 a.m., and the warm embrace of sleep would just not come to him on this particular evening.  His eyes wandered about the room as his body lay sprawled out upon the bed, face down with his head turned sideways on the tightly folded pillow and one leg straight with the other bent so that just his knee was just hanging over the edge.  His arm hung over the side of the bed where his fingers dragged lazily along the floor as he moved his hand in a nervous swing, scraping his nails along the carpet back and forth in a rhythmic motion near the two dog toys that he had only moments ago laid to rest there after his young border collie had finally fallen asleep beside him.

Though they were several inches away, he began to move his hand forward just slightly, trying to gauge the distance between his fingers and the toys.  They were distant enough that it was unlikely that he would actually come into contact with them through his normal movements, and yet their nearness bothered him to the point that he finally felt the need to move them a bit farther away, which he eventually did.  There, now that that was settled, he could go back to staring at the window.

The fan, which he kept next to the bed to keep him cool at night, was blowing with its usual, droning hum.  He always found comfort in this sound, and he’d become quite dependent on having some sort of a droning noise such as the fan or a hair dryer (in the rare cases that he found himself to be cold), in order to fall asleep.  Sleep never came easily or lasted for very long without it.

This inherent need of his was often a huge source of consternation for his wife, as she would complain endlessly about how the fan always made her cold and kept her from sleeping.  The dog however absolutely adored the fan, and would often sleep directly in front of it, on his back with his legs up in the air, as border collies often do.  Having the dog laying next to him the way he often did made it quite difficult to turn over in the night, and more often than not led to waking up sore in the morning.  Still, his love for his dog was such that he suffered through it without complaint.  Tonight however, the dog was sleeping happily between them, and the man had all the room he wanted to sprawl out languidly.  Unfortunately however, the sleep would just not come to him, no matter how desperately he tried to reach out to it.  He closed his eyes and tried to relax, but soon enough he once again found himself staring blankly at the shadows on the blinds.

His lips slowly parted, and after a few lengthy moments he quickly sucked back the saliva that had collected near the corner of his mouth, lest it escape and fall to his pillow, just as it had done so many times before while he was sleeping.

His eyes wandered the room again, finally falling upon the fan that was steadily blowing next to him.  Reaching out, he slowly turned the fan, which had heretofore been facing his legs and feet, so that it was now blowing more onto his upper body where it would do a far better job of keeping him cool.  Fortunately his wife was already asleep, so hopefully she wouldn’t wake up and complain about the cold again.

Minutes passed, each one feeling as though it took hours to tick away.  It always felt like this when he would just lay there quietly, trying to still his mind as he laid there in the darkness.

“So, what now?” he thought to himself.

As the cool, gentle brushes of the fan’s air passed over him, it was becoming more and more uncomfortable to lay there in the position he was in. Unfortunately, he knew that turning over wouldn’t provide much relief. The simple fact was that he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep.

A few more minutes passed.  His eyes wandered about the room and his thoughts suddenly turned to just how he would describe this scene if he were to write it all down, and what would be the point of it if he did?  Did it even matter?  Perhaps once he’d written it all down, he would finally be able to fall asleep.  After all, it was worth a shot.  Wasn’t it?