2013 by tore56789 (GOS) All rights reserved.
Help from Beyond
Star light, star bright, what do you spy tonight, my little extra terrestrial friend. The man in his forties thought, laughing softly, as he coughed up more blood, suddenly become more lucid to his surrounding! Do you spot a man lying dying, after some ghastly crime...?
He had always considered himself a poet –heck a writer –as he planned to make it all the way to the stars. His way of thinking was –watch out Stephen King, because Peter O Riley is about to steal your spotlight away –force you right off that highway of success!
He would have too, if his cards had played out differently, if his wife hadn’t gotten cancer –he caring for her deeply to the end, all those six years ago.
And after that, licking financial wounds, costs accumulated from medical bills, he had fallen into a life of teaching –at the first grad school –in the small northern USA town he resided.
So with all that, how did he end up here, staring at the stars lying on his back, spitting up blood on a Halloween’s night? And not only that, but conscious of teenagers not too far off discussing what they were going to do with him, because all were drunk, stoned and rammed into him in a truck doing crazy speeds from a side road. He even understood from an earlier conversation, the driver – under age –had no licence, and had taken the vehicle because his dad was scuttled drunk.
He wanted to yell, but found getting breath hard. Again not good –as it could mean he had burst a few ribs -ribs weren’t a nice thing, been sharp like daggers when fractured, they could wonder about up to no good.
Again, he looked to the stars, thinking, what hope had he of getting rescued on a lonely road like this. With his town, he reckoned, sweet F all! The kids had also pushed his ford well in, with the power of their truck, and parked down a spell, so it wouldn’t draw attention –so their truck would be the only one visible to passer bys. They then had dragged him out, when he was unconscious.
Even on the road at that hour made little sense. For a man who did little but read and watch TV –after school terminated. Yet here he was! Encouraged to go out on a date –associates of his had arranged. A lot wanted him to move on –bury his wife for good. As a man cannot live on memories alone, so they told him –not that they could ever fathom what it was like, certainly not in the later stages of her illness!
He turned his head to look towards thicket opposite, where what he thought was a wild bush earlier, had morphosized into a human shape, dark, large and ominous. The shape did not make sense! It was too defined to be something created my nature, as it watched him seemingly from above the thicket! He assumed it had to be large; certainly over six feet – and pray he wanted to think it was a tree, something told him it was anything but!
No one knew their death, if they did, there would be a lot more living souls around. Not boarding planes, skipping trains; doing things intuition advised against –like going on some stupid date on a Halloween’s night –of all the crazy thing he could have done, when his own intuition told him to refrain. He was thinking he liked that, even lying dying, he was still the poet.
Suddenly he saw his wife. She was just standing there, like in the time it had taken him to blink. “You look a pretty mess, Peter,” she said with a smile.
