In the Dark of Night – Part 18
A few weeks ago I finally realized what it will take for me to become an author: It’s gonna take longer than I want it to.
I work full time with frequent mandatory overtime baked in. When I get home from work, I am so exhausted that any attempt to do something productive is dead on arrival. Further, I already must rouse myself an hour prior to leaving the house due to physical therapy requirements. In essence, I have made a faustian bargain with my employer: the days I work for them I am not allowed to exist. In exchange, I receive a three-day weekend and well above the average pay for my useless education and antiquated job experience. It’s not a great deal but it’s the best of the bad options available to me.
Due to our collective nightmare, my son is home on the days I am not at work. Remember that faustian bargain I made? Well, COVID altered my deal. Despite my prayers that it would not alter it any further, COVID simply does as it will with no respect for any of us. I had intended to use the quiet hours of my son’s education as the springboard to launch my career.
That has not panned out.
Instead, I find myself in the position of trying to aid my son in his own education and entertain him at the same time. I must point out that I lack both the training and the temperament for such exercises. My performance has left much to be desired. You see, despite having me for a father, my son is a social butterfly. He is the belle of every ball; the center of every conversation. Everyone loves talking to him and he thrives on their attention.
I don’t offer that same attention. I’m an old man trapped in a less-old man’s body. I like quiet. I thrive on listening to music while I work on tasks with only myself for company. I frequently go the entire afternoon without saying a single word. My son gets visibly upset if he isn’t in close proximity to other people he can talk to. I don’t understand that mentality. So, I get upset with him getting upset. That, in turn, makes my son upset that I’m upset with him and can’t understand why he’s upset which in turn makes me upset and you see where I’m going with this.
For too long, I carried guilt about the realities of the time-slurried mush that our lives have become.
No more. I will be an author because I’m too stubborn to know when to quit. It’s just gonna take longer than I want. I just have to make my peace with that and keep on working.
Story time.
In the Dark of Night – Part 18
Despite my protests and exasperated pointing towards the crater and the meteor within, Officer Davis cuffed me and threw me into the back of his vehicle anyway.
It was small and petty but so was he.
Anzi and Atomo were buckled up in the front seat. It was almost worth the vindictive restraints to see the poleaxed look that had washed over him while considering the young lady and the metallic silver ‘bird’. He had stammered and fussed with his belt. He started and stopped a sentence so many times that he might have been a landed fish. Anzi, one eyebrow raised, had leaned against the passenger side of the police car and allowed the swarthy constable to stew in his own dismay.
At last, he decided that ignoring the situation would be for the best. He huffed, his moustache puffing out like the walrus he resembled. With one hand he’d made a frustrated gesture indicating that she should climb in. Anzi wore a smug smile as she did as he had commanded. She went slower than usual to be sure Atomo wouldn’t hurt itself on either door or buckle. Even though it was likely indestructible, Anzi continued to show deference towards all things feathered. Officer Davis fell into the driver’s seat like a boulder and blasted off with his sirens blaring. He hadn’t even bothered to buckle up. The tires kicked up a rooster tail of gravel and both Anzi and I were jostled by the abrupt change in speed.
Atomo, without missing a beat, hopped lightly from Anzi’s flouncing arm to her lap in seamless silence. Once there, Atomo began the most ruthless mental warfare known to man. With deliberate care and glacial slowness, they began a series of bodybuilder flexes. The feathers began to wrap gently around the wings in an unnatural fashion until they no longer resembled wings at all. Instead, they were now offensively muscled naked arms, bulging and veined like real muscles would be as it went through stance after stance. I bit my lip so hard I could taste copper. My ribs creaked with suppressed laughter, but this was Atomo’s time to shine. Anzi wore the most smug, vindictive smirk I had ever seen as she watched Officer Davis break out in a flop-sweat.
The chicken-esque legs now mirrored the overtly muscled not-wings. Atomo looked like a second-place bodybuilding trophy come to life. It was merciless, maintaining eye contact with the increasingly frantic police officer the whole time. Officer Davis did his best to pretend he wasn’t seeing a still-beaked tiny silver muscleman staring him down but he was breaking down fast. The sweat spread around his ill-fitting uniform, his forehead slick with his agitation. A few minutes later his uniform looked like he’d taken surgical strikes from a squirt gun.
Halfway to the station, he finally hit his internal melting point. Abandoning all pretense that Atomo was anything other than an inhuman sentient being egging him on, he barked out a harsh demand at Anzi who was now clapping appreciatively for each new pose.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
Atomo, mid-rear lat spread, answered the question in Anzi’s stead. The tinny Austrian-American-Robot mish-mash filled the whole car with its ridiculousness.
“I am a bird. Caw.”
His brain broke. A trickle of blood leaked down one nostril while his pupils flared wildly. Whatever shreds of sanity remained to him cast about for any respite from the tiny silver impossibility before him. I could see the decision to sweep what had just happened under a mental rug wash his panic away. For the remainder of the drive, he acted like Anzi’s lap was empty.
I stomped my feet and howled my mirth into the silence.
Anzi looked down at the silver miracle with an honest-to-goodness smile of appreciation her face as she stroked the head ‘feathers’. Atomo turned to me, popping their pecs in a celebratory fashion, before they began slowly morphing back into the semblance of a bird once more.
It had been a small and petty thing, but then so was Officer Davis.
Whatever else was about to happen, one small set of wrongs had been flexed back into balance.
Posefully,
The Unsheathed Quill
