Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
You ever start to put your socks on, and notice a hole just starting in the toe of one? But you decide to put it on anyway, because it’s just a little hole. And then, you feel the hole enlarging as you go through the day, until you feel your toe pop through it, so now the sock hole is strangling your toe, and you rue your decision?
Really?
Have you ever been out somewhere, and smell something funky, or bad, and think, is that me?, and then try to smell yourself to see if it is?
No, no, I never have. I was being rhetorical.
Have you ever been groggy with sleep, and almost put the dishwasher soap-pellet in your coffee?
Yeah.
You ever notice that it looks like someone’s been eating at your computer, because there are crumbs around the keys?
Me, too. I wonder who?
You ever hear that a celebrity has been hospitalized or just died, and think, “I thought they died years ago.”?
Yeah, sadly, I do, once in a while.
He studied and struggled with the nature of who he was, because that was the nature of who he was. It didn’t comfort him to realize that, nor that there were many others like him.
That was his nature.
Have you ever been cleaning up a really messy vomit, and get it on you, and feel yourself about to lose it, which makes you laugh, because you imagine it’s like a scene in a silly movie?
Yeah, me, too.
There were more than twenty of them, small, black birds with yellow eyes, hopping through piles of fallen brown and yellow leaves in an earnest search for something, like, maybe one had dropped a contact lens. As he walked along the sidewalk, they flew to keep ahead, but unable to sustain their search because of his progress, they finally all took off.
Except one. One was left behind. Or did he stay behind? Did he — or she — remain behind because they’d become distracted? Maybe it was a young bird who was still learning how to be part of the flock. It could also be that it was a rebel, an old codger bird who said, “I’m not flying because of him,” or a young bird who said, “Let’s see what happens if I don’t fly away.”
Or maybe it was a sacrifice that the others provided, to see what happened if they didn’t fly away.
It was a good day to have a beer, or die, so he thought he’d do one and see what happened with the other.
She flies alone,
unseen
unheard
unnoticed
under the radar,
waiting for death.
Michael Seidel, writer 