Prompts, Scenes, and More

Today was the day. He knew it was coming, the boy was mortal. It had to happen sometime. But oh, how he wished it did not have to happen. He sighed, this is what happens when one loves. It hurts. It hurts a lot. It hurts so much that he wanted to scream, he wanted it to not be so, but it was. He knew exactly how the boy would die. The when, where, why, and how. It hurts.

Crumpling and shoving the list into one of his many pockets, he tried not to think too much and go about his daily business. He collected those he had to, comforted the ones who didn’t deserve it. Like the boy. God, he was so young. Only twenty three. Twenty three years, seven months, and five days old to be exact. He kept count. The boy will only ever be twenty three years, seven months, and five days old. The time was coming soon. One more hour.

He wanted to call. He wanted to tell the boy he loved him, that he was proud of all his accomplishments, and that he is the one he is most proud of in this terribly lonely world where everyone’s always competing for nothing, because in the end they will all end up in his arms, dead. He wanted his love to continue on, and it would. The deep passion of his love overwhelmed him sometimes, but the feeling was an euphoria, his only seed in a scorched forest.

A half hour now. He was getting closer to the spot, moving along. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be early, to actually see the crime that will rob him of his boy forever, but in the end decided he should be there for comfort. God knows he wasn’t there all the time, so he should be there to witness his boy’s last breath of mortality. It was the least he could do. The only thing he could do.

Ten minutes. The anticipation was killing him, ironically. He found his boy weaving through the crowded walkways, pushing past the stumbling drunks and dodging old ladies that received more than double the time he would ever receive. He couldn’t help but feel a bit belligerent towards everyone else on that street. Most of them would live for another fifty to sixty years.

Five minutes, and if he had a heart, it would be pounding against his non-existent chest a mile a minute.  The car was a block away stuck in traffic, and his boy had stopped, helping an old woman who had spilled her groceries all over the ground, tomatoes rolling on the spit-washed concrete. Hurry, he thought, maybe you can beat it. But he knew that was not true. Once a human is on the list, the human stays on until the moment happens. Until he comes and carries them away in the misty substance that he is. Until their soul is stuck wondering aimlessly forever, clinging to memories of their life in a desperate attempt to feel alive again.

Suddenly it was happening, being played out in slow motion like during a dramatic scene in a movie. The car, which was supposed to be stopped, moved. His boy had just stepped onto the street, going to cross it to be exactly one block away from his small apartment. But the car. The driver didn’t see the boy, if one was examining closer, you could see a cell phone in the hand of the driver. His boy. He went down with a yell, and then a gasp as the front right tire lazily rolled over his back, all three thousand five hundred pounds descending on his spinal column, cracking it. Crushing.

There was a horrified “Oh my God!” from the driver’s seat, as the driver quickly sped up to get the tire off his boy, but the driver did not stop fast enough. The back right tire. That was the one that did it, he eyed the evil. The other tire rolled over the boy’s neck, again putting all three thousand five hundred pounds on top of his very delicate spinal cord, and again crushing the bones into tiny fragments, part of his skull grounded against his brain.

He atiffled a sob as he watched the driver get out of the car and hurry over to his boy, screaming for help. He knew the police and an ambulance have already been called, and knew that it was needed. Descending upon the scene, he gathered his son’s soul in his arms, hugging him. A tear trickled down his face.

“Dad.” The soul said, before slipping into a lull in the arms of his father.