300 – Page 2 – Picking Up Roots

Spent

It was all spent. Dripping from him onto the floor. He fell to his knees as the weakness overcame him. There was nothing left to give; no greater depth he could plumb. What there was in him had been given.

He let himself slide from his knees to his back so he stared up at the ceiling. The only thing keeping his soul from the sky was the roof of this place. He was satisfied he could rest now.

It had been a difficult mountain they had climbed. It was a group effort; everyone giving everything they had. It wasn’t a competition to see who had given more, but one of his tenets was that no one would out work him. He also taken on the emotional responsibility of the group; turning himself into a sounding board for all the anger and fear – charging himself with turning those emotions into the positive energy they would need to finish the climb.

All of it fell from him now. It was a relief to have the world fall away. He felt his shoulders unclench. He felt light. It was good. His breath flowed slow and smooth. That was interesting. He hadn’t realized how difficult it had been to breathe in the last month.

The voices of the others – the noises of the room – faded. The ceiling beckoned. He wanted to touch the sky. A pair of eyes and then a face came into view, then another and another. The group was around him now, looking at him.

His just calmed heart began to hammer in his chest. With his eyes he begged them not to say the words he could see in their faces. His mouth wouldn’t form the words.

“We still need you.”

He didn’t know how to say ‘no.’

Dark Shadows

In the shadows of the moon our sins reveal themselves. The darkness presents the illusion of safety, allowing us to be ourselves; to let loose that which we keep caged up inside. We dream our biggest dreams in the night.

Phin was no different from anyone else. Bored by his lack of engagement during the day, he took to the streets at night. He roamed the city, from neon awning to neon awning in search of his true self.

This self was the one he dreamt about during the day. The one who was smooth in his conversations, tough in his walk and talk, with an income that put nothing beyond the reach of his grasp – someone people were interested in.

Every night he strutted through the city, shoulders back, king of his world. Confident that around the next corner, at the next bar, he’d find the culmination of his dreams.

With his head back, looking up at the stars, he failed to notice those with no time to dream, watching him from the shadows, their desperate eyes waiting for the right moment to strike.

On a dark night with no moon, when the blackness was its own shadow, they struck. Phin was pulled into a dark alley. They knew enough to avoid the head, but their pipes and kicks danced a hard number across his torso.

Their agile fingers whispered through his pockets, taking what little was there. Their anger roused by his lack of substance their boots rained down on him again.

Even if he could have moved, he would not have. He stared up at the darkness and thought about how now someone would be interested in him. Police or medics, it didn’t matter. He’d tell them little. That would keep them on the hook. He smiled.

A Good Life

They clung to life. The only strength left in their body was channeled into the desperate grip of the fingers that held fast to this world.

Theirs was a life of the greatest opulence. They had wanted more and more, so they had taken it. It had been easy for them to look past the adage “of whom much is given, much is expected.” They’d been too busy enjoying their lavish life to think about what might be expected of them. They had never stopped to understand that no matter the great amounts of wealth and things they accumulated, they would still end up in the same place as those whose backs they broke in their efforts to accumulate more.

They had spent their money on age-defying tonics and treatments, doing everything they could to ward of the ravages of time. It came for them sooner than most.

None of the tinctures and remedies could touch their soul, and the soul is what keeps the ultimate score. As their luxurious extremes grew, their soul blackened as each day slipped away.

It began as small cracks in their façade – a hitch in their step, a cough, a moment of blurred vision – but grew with the passing of time. The cracks became deeper faults. Their hair fell out, they lost the vision in one eye, and were always ill.

It should be said, they were not bad, just oblivious to the destruction their opulence caused the world around them or within themselves. They never calculated the cost of their excesses; never understood the sum of everything always ended as nothing.

They never nurtured their soul, and it left them. Their major mistake– the one of so many – was to believe living the ‘good life’ was the same as living a good life.