Category: Shorts

            Either his eyes or the bottles stared accusation at him in the mirror, the light was too low for him to be certain. He swirled the remains of the amber liquid in his glass, watching it spin around the melting ice. He should have done more.

            He was alone, which was how he wanted it. He needed time to cradle the broken pieces of his heart – a heart he didn’t know was capable of this level of hurt. Besides, there was no one left to tell him it would be okay, anyway. Everyone else was gone too.

            There were so many things he wanted to tell him. Thank you. I should have listened more. Sorry. I wish I had been better. I should have been there. I love you. The time for that was past. He couldn’t change it, but there wasn’t a price he wouldn’t pay for the opportunity.

            He hadn’t been home in months; hadn’t even taken the time to call. In this day and age where it was harder to be out of touch than it was to remain in touch, he hadn’t had the courage to pick up the phone. He shook his head at the simplicity of his failure.

            He had questions too. Was he proud of him? In spite of all his flaws, had he turned out okay? He was too far past the point of no return for greatness, or even decency. The character deficiencies too deep, but had he turned out okay? Had he come close? 

            He signaled the bartender for another. That was the goal, right, to be better than our fathers? It had been a high bar to reach, in hindsight, impossible. It was one he hadn’t realized he needed to reach until it was much too late.

            He’d resented so much for so long, fought against the feeling. He understood now it was love, but how did they ever say it? How could they? They were men of silent action, not words. 

            Had he known how much he loved him? How important he was? How he was the standard of everything he’d wanted to become? How much he needed him? How do you convey need to your father? How did you?

            How much time had he wasted? How much of it had he known he was wasting? Too much was the only answer that presented itself. Tomorrow was always on the tip of his tongue before he pushed it to the back of his mind. 

Regret and guilt blurred the eyes staring back at him from the mirror. They mixed with the tears he felt in his heart and the emptiness masquerading as hunger in his gut.

When it was your fault, how did you find the glue to put the pieces of your heart back together? He would like to have asked him that as well, but he never would have known the question if he hadn’t left.

He would have told him to keep putting one foot in the front of the other. Right now, he didn’t feel like walking.

He stared into the glass looking for a different answer. 

The heavy sadness of two hollowed out eyes stared back.

            At the crack he ran hard. He turned his hips to the right, put his head down and went. He could tell by the sound he was going to need to give it everything he had. He could hear the voices of his old coaches telling him to get to the spot, to just go. They’d said if you weren’t going to run hard and play your heart out, why bother playing.

            The grass felt good beneath his feet, firm and level. He trusted it, knew he didn’t have to look down to make sure he didn’t step in a hole or that there wasn’t a dip like the fields of his youth.

            He hadn’t cared to look then, he’d just loved the wind on his face and the desperate race to a spot – the further the better. He loved the nervous feeling in his chest. He wanted nothing more than to make the few folks in the stands applaud.

            Now there was the collected gasp of 50,000 people sucking in their breath from the edge of their seats, eyes trained on him as he raced backwards. He didn’t feel them. He was focused on the spot. He never felt so alive as he did when he was on the run, chasing. It heightened his senses; filled up his heart with a joy he’d never been able to explain when they asked him why he ran so hard.

            He looked up, losing sight of the ball in the cloudless blue sky for just a moment before finding it again without breaking stride. He had a chance. That was all he ever wanted.

            His right foot hit the dirt of the track and he knew he had three strides before the wall. He could hear Thompson yelling ‘fence, fence’. He didn’t slow down. He couldn’t. He knew what was riding on this.

            He took another step and braced himself, leaping hard off his right foot and stretching out his left hand toward his target. He was almost parallel to the top as he slammed into the wall and felt the ball tip off his glove over the fence. The crowd roared before everything went black.

            In the locker room later each man came over to shake his hand and tell him what a great effort it was. More than one said it was the most amazing thing they’d seen on a ball field.

            Thompson came up last. “I don’t know why you do that to yourself Jim. It was amazing, but it’s only a game.”

            “Nah Tommy, it wasn’t.”

            “Sure it was. They’re all just games.”

            “No, they’re more than that.”

            “What’re they then?” Thompson asked shaking his head in disbelief.

            “Everything.”

The gun held to his head was his own. The desperate face in the mirror also belonged to him. The hand holding the gun was his as well. It hadn’t been a good day. Again.

He’d tried again to put it all into words, to make her understand how much he needed her. Again he’d failed, and she stayed away. Was she afraid of him

Sweat beaded his pale forehead as it had as he strained to communicate with her in the half-light of dawn. It was now mid-day and he wondered if the panicked, frantic look in the eyes staring back at him from the mirror had been there this morning? Maybe that’s why she stayed away.

She would come and go. Flitting in on a breeze, carrying newfound energy, hope and inspiration and then disappearing just as fast on the next wind. 

He never knew she was gone until the morning after she left. Her departure always sent him reeling to the point where he had to call out of work the first day she was gone he was so sick with anxiety.

After she left he would get up early, hoping to find her waiting for him at the table. Each day eroded his hope until it was replaced by doubt, fear, and worry that she would never return. 

When he could smell the desperation on himself, she would reappear, and, if he was lucky, stay for two days before riding back out on the wind.

But now he couldn’t take it anymore. The hunger that gnawed at his insides, causing the desperate stink, was too much. The years had worn him too thin, so he had gone for his gun for once feeling certain about his direction.

Convinced she’d deserted him and prepared to face down his failure his finger closed in on the trigger. His hand trembled and his body shook. He was desperate to be free of her whimsy.

But still he wondered if she might come back. He paused. A bead of sweat descended between his eyes, which crossed as they watched it descend to the tip of his nose. 

He watched as the bead dangled on the tip, a wavering bubble. Without sensing it, he lowered the gun to his side.

The plop of the bead of sweat landing on the countertop broke the silence. The sound of the gun going off, destroying the mirror, shattered it. He snapped back into focus.

He couldn’t remember who had made the quote about introducing a gun into a story and if you did so, it had to go off. Well, his had gone off, maybe that was progress.

He looked at himself in the shards of remaining mirror and shrugged at the broken image. He put the gun under the sink and went downstairs to see if she had returned.