Five
Originally published in Calliope Nerve, now closed.
***
He marks time by the cracks in the sidewalk.
One.
Two.
He steps on a crack and backpedals. Start over.
One.
Two.
His feet stamp the ground rhythmically.
Three.
Four.
He stops. Freezes. This is where it turns to dust and disappears.
Through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Maybe someday, he will make it to five.
One.
His face is smashed. His nose is bleeding. A stranger looks over him and smiles. A stranger in his home and heart, and yet this shadowy face exercises ownership over his very soul.
Two.
His mother is bruised and beaten, cut and battered. The stranger turns her green eyes red with blood, though never with anger.
He can’t take it.
The gun is there. On the shelf. He pulls it into his fingers and aims, sure of himself. Sure he is just.
But those eyes. Like pits of black fire they turn on him and pry the gun from his fingers.
Start over.
One.
They are both beaten and trampled, mother and son. The weak and the weaker. By a stranger.
But the green of her eyes does not pay the rent.
Two.
He does not fold. He keeps his head down but does not bow.
Three.
Days drag on, but he hangs onto their coat. And the sidewalk only stings a little.
Four.
He stops. Freezes. This is where it turns to dust and disappears.
Through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Maybe someday he will make it to five.
