Short Story: I Remember…

December 1, 2015January 6, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

I remember the ships that hovered over our world in conquest. I remember it as if it had only just happened. Though it was decades ago now, nothing is so vivid in my mind. They came from the sky on glowing trails, like someone had hurled fire-bombs at us. An apt comparison given what came later. The only difference? They never hit the ground. They never had to. They came to a rest, searing heat and all, just above the tops of the tallest buildings.

I remember sitting on the couch, then later, standing in the streets, seeing the giant television in then times-square that revealed we’d been beaten, or rather surrendered– the beatings came later. I can’t remember those. I don’t want to. What I do remember was wandering, guided by my mother’s hand, through New York’s chaotic streets. I’d never known the scent of fear– real, pure, human terror– until then. It was palpable on the tongue, stank like the homeless did, like we all do now.

My mother… she had a gentleness that died with her, as if the world took such a soft creature to protect her from the wrath her child’s generation would bear. Even now, I remain glad that the madness of those first days claimed her. Though I was terrified and alone for a long while, I knew even then it was safer to be dead than subject to the horrors to come.

The first mistake we made as a civilization was existing. That was all it had taken to bring them from the skies over Alpha Centauri, have their forces launched across the openness of space to our backyard. Before the tele-streams and internet died for good, someone had calculated that they’d left their home system for Earth sometime around the broadcasts of Kennedy’s election, hadn’t arrived until the late 2010’s. It led to our second mistake.

I remembered being eight years old…. Christ, it feels like a life-time ago now. Maybe it was. Eight years old, with a gun shoved into my hands. It was a nine millimeter, fifteen round magazine with a thumb safety, and heavy. I remember that much. With that tool came the first beatings from my own kind, to instill in me how to hold it, aim it, kill with it. All because some armchair-genius had calculated the invaders expected our technology to be stuck in the sixties. What a fool.

It was only later that we learned, collectively, that our technological prowess would have never matched theirs. Not in a million years. They didn’t have to speak, or scream, or fire weapons. They simply arrived and the planet was already conquered. When we took up arms in resistance against our governments’ fealty, we spent immeasurable amounts of ammunition trying to kill them. They took full magazines from whole battalions of armed militias, their bodies riddled with holes, but bled not a single drop of fluid from their leathery hides. They were modern-day Khans, each of them, but even his conquest paled in comparison to theirs.

Their tactic was simple. To remember it now almost makes me laugh, but I can’t. I haven’t known joy or laughter, or anything more than fear for decades. I doubt there’s a human that has. As it was explained by a former-scientist just before his untimely execution, these humanoid creatures have some type of reinforced cartilage across their bodies– like the stuff our noses and joints are made of, but so strong it can withstand the force of bullets. They were walking kevlar, and because of their gel-like skeletons and regenerative abilities, nothing short of a nuclear weapon could stop them. Believe me, we tried them all; grenades, bombs, TNT, nothing worked. We learned that the hard way. Every one of them is like a walking terminator. Every. Single. One. Like those terrifying machines, they have only a goal to achieve– whatever it is– and they eliminate anything in the way of it.

Evidently, Humanity’s a part of that goal, because I remember the day their darkest weapon was revealed. As if compelled to by my own muscles, my body, fraught with the peril a rat faces in a sewer– and stinking like one at that– I encountered one of these invaders.

I was in an alley, running for my life after my militia detachment suddenly fell to the ground, began to seize, writhe, foam at the mouths. A few others and I managed to escape, but were split up. I had learned long ago not to scream nor draw attention. Even so, one of them must have sensed me, pursued me. It cornered me in an alley.

They don’t so much walk as float. Though they have two legs, it seems they’re useless. Their arms work though. I’ve seen it, felt it. They drift, lame, wherever they go. Queer-looking face tentacles take the place of mouths above three-fingered, malformed-hands with claws attached to arms longer than their legs. They make a god-awful sound– like someone’s ground metal against a cheese grater in your ear. It’s paralyzing. Both from fear and an auditory pain that seizes your muscles. It’s not even their greatest weapon– the one they conquered us with, or that I saw that night with my own eyes.

I remember sometimes doing things, even at a young age, and not remembering why I’d begun to do them or how. It was as if I simply materialized into the middle of an action, forgot everything about it. They have this way of doing that to you; making you freeze, drop your weapon, lie. For years, we thought we were gaining ground on them, and had received numerous reports about their deaths. We’d heard the war-stories of units that felled them in battle, and even I suspected the scientist’s words had been erroneous, that they could be killed.

How wrong I was. How wrong we all were.

They were lies; every story, every battle scar, ever supposed death of an invader. They’d fabricated the memories in the militia’s minds, used them as walking surveillance drones. They kept mental links through some kind of ESP, allowed them to spread their stories through the militias. Those stories flared into hope for victory, spread like wild-fires around the world. My best friend, the only person I trusted, was one of their plants. What she and I shared… it was the closest thing to joy left in the world. Even still, we could never smile. All of it was lies.

It’s been decades since they first came, and now all hope is lost. We know now what happened, even though we can’t remember how, or why we missed it. I remember hearing from a medic after a patrol that a person will sometimes forget the moments before and after a traumatic experience, sometimes including the trauma itself. It just sort of gets buried in your mind, so impossible to cope with you literally can’t. You fabricate things to put in its place, or else lose time altogether. It has something to do with an electrical overload in the brain that doesn’t allow memories to consciously form.

All I know is what happened after the raids. As if in a flash, we went from believing we might one day win, to knowing there was never been a fight to begin with. They simply appeared– walked in the front door as it were, and we were disarmed. Not a single one of us took up our weapons to fight. We couldn’t. We’d been brain-hacked, mind-controlled not to.

Now, I stand jam-packed with three-hundred other humans in a cage no bigger than a dozen feet squared, like cattle on a killing-floor. I don’t know where we are, or where we’re going, but I remember how we got here. I remember smiling and joy and happiness that once made days of sadness and sorrow worthwhile. But now all I know is despair and the sickly putrescence of two-hundred-odd other bodies smothering me. I forget my name, my friends’ names, even my home. But somehow, I remember my mother’s gentleness. I miss her. I miss the warmth of summer sun, and of childhood– what little of it I had– and the taste of fresh-water. I remember all of the good that came before the bad, something I cannot forget despite the doom we all face.

Maybe one day there will be hope again. Maybe not. All I know is that I remember it….

Short Story: The Ferryman

November 10, 2015January 6, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Ferryman

The door to the great oven hung open sideways. It looked like an old-style pizza-oven were the pizza’s man-sizes. The interior was a beige, glazed brick that gleamed from the reflections of the outer, florescent lights. Its exterior was plated steel painted a bright, industrial-grade blue with a panel of knobs and big, round buttons of various colors. Above them glowed a small, red-light beside three, darkened others. The white-paint was cracked, half-flaked away to form half a T and “and-by.”

The red light reflected off the white-tile floor that was shined to a high gloss and caricatured the room in its finish. The light taps of dress-shoes and the intermittent squeak of bearings sounded from a door. A gurney crossed the threshold with a somber glide as the steps half-shuffled, half-hobbled behind it. The withered, old frame of Richard Frost maneuvered the gurney into place before the open, oven-door.

His half-hobble worked its way around to the side of the gurney, pulled the white sheet off his charge– a young man who’d partied a little too hard, died of a cocaine overdose. He laid, stark-naked with his eyes closed. Were it not for the obvious discoloration of his skin, no-one would have suspected the man was a corpse ready to be cremated. They might’ve thought him sleeping the best sleep of his life. To Richard, indeed he was.

Richard hobbled to a door beside the oven, stepped in to discard the sheet. He was the last man in a four-generation lineage of crematorium proprietors. For more than a hundred years The Frost Crematorium in Bacatta had stood sentinel to ferry its dead along the final voyage, while the city rose and fell time and again. Like his father and grandfather before him, Richard was raised a future ferryman. He was not given the options nor opportunities of his one-time peers. His future had been burned into stone from the moment he was born.

He stood behind a long, metal table filled with coffee cans of charred screws, bits of blasted pace-makers, and random, metal joint-replacements that dated to charges from the very first ferryman; his great-grandfather Thomas Frost who’d built the crematorium before the city had been even half what it was today. After his death relinquished the business to his son Elliot, he was cremated himself in the very machine that his son later was. Richard’s father had replaced it in the late 1980’s for a new, less-pollutant model, and as his father and grandfather before him, was later cremated in the small room beyond the “parts storage” that Richard currently occupied.

Richard stared out the small window above the table with empty eyes. His vision was fixed somewhere on the distant horizon of Hershman Cemetery and Funeral Parlor’s hilly, tombstone-laden grounds. His work had forced him to this macabre overlook multiple times a day for longer than he cared to remember, and in his old age, it had happened far too often for far too long.

Long ago, when the view was considerably less-expansive, the wide, airy sprawl of the cemetery had given him a reserve to last through the morbid days of work. But some point after his father’s death, perhaps even before, he began to see it with new eyes.

They were darker, grayer than before. All he knew of in the world was the grief of death, and the sound of the ferry-bell as the oven doors slid closed. His only friends had been the corpses and cadavers in their various states of vacancy. With their occasional, twisted or gnarled appearances, he’d had little choice but to become numb to the terror of mortality. So disillusioned was he, that life had never seemed to sparkle as it should; its luster forever soiled by the specter of death that loomed around its every corner.

He heaved a sigh in his usual, lethargic turn, hobbled back for his charge. In truth, he wanted his mortal coil to shuffle off with him. He had wanted it for longer than he had not. It had infected him with a loneliness that kept the luster ever the more soiled. He had never married, was too afraid to grow attached, then watch death claim his lover. For much the same reason, he never fathered children. The thought of ferrying this theoretical spouse or his possible children kept his desires steady, at-bay.

While he’d taken lovers in his youth, he’d been alone since his father’s death with only a few others at the crematorium to handle the business-end of things. Even so, they worked independent of him. The ferry-times were scheduled through-out the days on a sheet of paper, renewed each morning in the small room down the hall. It housed his other charges that waited patiently for their spot on the next outbound ship.

One of the few things he did enjoy about the dead was their patience. Richard had long ago learned of the virtue. It was necessary, expected of a ferryman of his repute. The ferries would have to be properly timed. Otherwise, the families would receive chunks of fat, chips of bone in their urns. Such cases were the gravest disrespect to the families and the dead. Patience was needed to ensure every last bit burned to ash. Only the metallic, medical implements were left behind, too heavy to be vacuumed up during the process, and too solid to burn otherwise.

With his slow gait, Richard angled to the front of the gurney. He gave a heave of his arms against the inner-pan that held the corpse. It slid along its tracks, crossed the mouth of the fiery furnace, hung half in and half-out– just enough to be supported by the oven’s bottom, but not enough for the door to close. As usual, he backed the gurney up, stepped around its side to wheel it back into the “waiting room” down the hall. It was a few moments before he returned, found the dead man as he’d been left.

With a final heave of tired and shaky old arms, Richard readied to ferry the young man across the divide. The door shut with a heavy squeak and a loud click of its lock that sealed it. Richard thumbed the green button, caused a yellow light to come on beside the red. The lettering had flaked off entirely, but the faint discoloration of blues spelled out “engage” above it. The next light wouldn’t turn green for at least two hours, nor would the last button be pushed until then– its lettering and imprint long gone, but the words “disengage” clear in Richard’s memory. The fourth, final light had never lit, and for that matter, he wasn’t sure it ever would. The gleam of yellowed, white-paint was still intact, plainly read-out “Fault” for those supposed times when the ferry would break down. It never had, and likely, never would.

A loud, mechanical fan spun up to a steady thrum. The sound of gas-jets emitted behind the door. Richard sighed. He hobbled back to the window, ready to begin the two hour stare that would give way to another push of a button, and another packing of dust in an urn.

For the second time in his life, his view of the cemetery changed. It wasn’t a visible change, nor was he sure why it happened. Perhaps this was merely the nexus-point of universes, or perhaps a pot of water had finally begun to boil after years of watching it. In any case, he felt certain of the change. He was ready. He wasn’t sure how, but he would die soon. He welcomed it with a thirsty gaze that had settled on a particularly grand tombstone of a mourning angel.

Richard knew of more ways than most to invite death’s call, had seen enough of them to know which were the simplest, most peaceful, and which were the most violent, messy. Self-inflicted shotgun blasts were bad, but nowhere near the level of carnage of an explosion or a fire-victim. The latter seemed the most fitting; fire. Perhaps he would ferry this young man off, prepare his ashes, then ferry himself. It was the most sensible. Why leave another soul to ferry the ferrymen? He would simply pull up his moors himself, sail off across the divide ne’er to return.

A peaceful determination set itself upon him, relaxed him more than anything he’d known. He knew how to bypass the oven’s safety notch. All it would take is some duct-tape and an arm-pin, like the doctors put in broken bones. Then, a press the button, and he’d crawl into lay down, close the door behind him. He would let the fires ferry him over the sound of the departing bell that screamed even now as the oven’s primary mode engaged.

He closed his eyes, smiled. When they opened again, he turned for the door only to have his heart-stop. Before him stood a suited visage of his burning charge. He gave a throaty terror-moan, stumbled backward. The young man frowned at him. Richard fell to his rear, grabbed for what he could, came up with a metal hip-joint.

“Wh-what d’you want?” He moaned in a high terror. “Who are you?”

The ghostly visage of the young man stepped through the door with a sad click of his tongue, “Poor Richard, you know only of life’s pains.”

Richard climbed to his feet, back-stepped with the heavy hip-joint raised high, “G-get back! I’m n-not afraid to use this.”

The man took slow, somber steps forward, came within arm’s reach. Richard’s arm came down, brought the hip-joint with it at the man’s head. It passed through his head and torso, only dissipated them with waves like a smokey mirage in a small wind.

He gasped, back-stepped further, met the room’s far-wall. The young man cornered him, placed his hand on Richard’s shoulder. A cold rocketed through him.

“You’ve ferried the dead for so many years, you’ve become them,” the young man said. “You were born, yet never lived. What fear afflicts you so?”

Richard squeaked, cowered, “Wh-what d’you want? I’ve nothing left for the dead nor the living.”

He frowned deeper with a tilt to his head. The cold hand fell back to its side, “I’ve only a wish to understand, poor Richard. Why fear life so much that your only reflection is in the dead?”

“I-if I speak, w-will you go? Will you let m-me go?”

The young man stepped back, “You fear death, and you fear life, yet you wish for one in place of the other. Why?”

Richard wasn’t sure an answer was buried somewhere in the dead man’s words, but eased out of his cower, rose to his slumped posture. “A-are you a ghost?”

The man turned away, motioned Richard after him, “Follow, and we will speak.”

He headed from the door as a man might, the only difference was that of the smokey opaqueness that conjured him from the ether. Richard’s curiosity thirsted for understanding; had he gone insane? Was he hallucinating? Was he, in fact, now dead of a sudden malady that claimed his physical form? He had to know, hobble-shuffled along the room with his right hand sliding along the table for balance. It fell to his side at the door while the apparition sat in a chair across the room to stare at the ferry. Richard was cautious, but worked his old bones to the seat beside him.

“You are the ferryman,” the young man said as Richard settled. “And you’ve known no other place but that divide between life and death. Why is that?”

“Wh-why d’you wish to know?” Richard managed.

The young man sank in his chair, the wispy edges of his shoulders slumped, “I’ve known nothing but the world. In my short years– less than a quarter of your time upon this earth– I’ve seen countless countries, loved many women, and perhaps through them, fathered a few, bastard children. I’ve driven fast, expensive cars, and sailed across tropical waters for unimaginably beautiful islands where debauchery is a national sport. In all of them, I never had the slightest sense that I was ever destined for anything. I merely enjoyed the journey I was on.”

Richard watched the young man hang his head at the polished floor, his ghostly visage invisible to it. He stared at the reflections of lights where his body should have been.

The young man lamented his loss, “All these things I’ve done, and in the end, here I am, reflection-less. The few souls that remember me now will either forget in time, or cross the divide as I will, taking those memories with them.” He looked up at Richard, “I’ve made no mark but that which has taken me from myself. It is all we are given. Less than we should expect. Even so, you’ve the chance to leave one as I did, but refuse. I only wish to understand why? Have you no dreams? Ambitions?”

Richard was stung by the questions. He stared at the wall between the ferry and the room beside it, hoped to recall any long-forgotten desires for the sake of the dead. That the young man had appeared to ask the questions seemed as important as his patient anticipation that awaited a response. So patient were the dead, and at so great a distance was the long-lost burden, he feared the dead-man might grow angry. On the contrary, the silence was welcomed. The dead man evermore vigilant in it, steadfast through its emboldened duration.

Richard’s memories showed the slow progression of his age as his hair turned from infant brown to adolescent chestnut, grew longer, shorter, then grayed to white with age. The sun rose and fell on a million lost moments in time against a foreground of grammar schools, chocolate malts, and giddy, boyhood pass-times. The light gave way to darkness in mirrors and windows of the aged man as he was passed the title of ferryman. It was with a slow deterioration, like that of his youthful skin wrinkled by time, that he saw himself slump into his half-hobble, half-shuffle hunch.

Richard began to reply, his mouth unable to close fully as his distant stare filled with tears, “I… I remember as a boy… I wanted to see the castles of Europe.” He broke his stare to meet the stoic gaze of the young, dead man, “I clung to that dream for longer than your life, but I could never go.”

He nodded, “Was it a matter of station? Poverty?”

“No… only my own fault. I could never justify leaving my work to wait for me.”

The young man sighed, “Poor Richard, you know as I do we dead are ever-patient. You’ve given so much to us– all the respect any burned man or woman could ask for– and yet you’ve never asked for anything in return.”

Richard was respectful, but earnest, “Young man, what could the dead ever offer me in return?” The young man understood, averted his gaze. Richard continued, “I’ve ferried you dead across your divide my entire life, known nothing but to see you go across that fiery sea, emerge as ash on the other side. Through it all, I’ve never wanted for food or shelter. It would be gluttonous to ask for more from anyone– alive or dead.”

The young man returned his gaze to his marine guide, “Would you not accept a gift were it given?”

Richard thought heavily on it. When he replied, a question gleamed in his eyes, “It would be rude of me to refuse any gift. It is simply not in the nature of a man like myself.”

He reiterated, “You mean to say you are most grateful of any gift you receive?”

Richard hesitated, “Of any gift but that which allows me to continue this perilous existence.”

The dead man frowned, “Poor old man. You’ve been afflicted so heavily by the burden our circumstance has forced on you. Would you not grant us all forgiveness– past and future– for snuffing the flame which warmed your soul?”

This time, Richard couldn’t hesitate, “Young man, I would never blame the dead for what I’ve lost enduring their final journeys.”
Suddenly, the room lit up in front of Richard, nearly blinded him. The young man rose from his seat, stood before him. As his vision returned, the light faded to reveal a dozen more apparitions. He recognized them all as they frowned with guilt: these were the dead in the waiting room, the ones that still lay in their refrigerated cabins down the hall. There ferry-bell had yet to ring for them, but even so, they were here.

Richard’s eyes widened. His jaw slacked. He saw a dozen pairs of eyes swell with tears, a dozen mouths upturned at him with remorse. The young man stood before the specters like him that crowded the ferry-room, spoke with his tone harmonized by the others’ voices, his own louder than the rest.

“Poor Richard,” they said together. “You have our deepest sympathies, as we would yours. It is now that we gift you with that which is most precious to all, and that which we no longer have; time.”

The light flared again. The group disappeared. Richard was stunned in his seat as the ferry-bell sounded again, much sooner than he expected. Either his visit with the dead had lasted longer than he knew, or something had hastened the ferry’s pace. He rose to his feet to as the machine’s thrum died out, threw open the door, confused.

The man’s corpse had been fully burned, its ashes ready for collection in the other room. Even so, what had sped along the process? For that matter, what had his soon-to-be passengers meant about time? He stared in at the glazed brick in the vain hope to understand. A flicker of orange suddenly appeared to the right of his vision.

A voice sounded, that of the young man as though a whisper on the wind, “Accept this gift with the humblest gratitude we can give.”

The orange, “fault” light gleamed bright in the center of Richard’s vision. In almost forty years the ferry had held strong, ready at the beck and gentle guidance of its masters to transport their passengers across the divide of life and death. Now, as though he’d been outright told, Richard understood. The dead, with all of their guilt and respect, had given him the only thing he could never take for himself; time. It would take time to call the repairman, time to deduce the problem with the machine, and time to repair it. It would take even more time then to ensure it was up to snuff, ready to sail again.

In that time, Richard knew, he would not be present. He closed his eyes against tears that welled there. They slid down the once-numb surface of his cheeks with a stuttered breath, his voice a whisper, “I accept your gift.”

Short Story: The Meek Shall Inherit

October 13, 2015January 6, 2018 ~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The Meek Shall Inherit

Robert Crumb was born on the east-side of Bacatta, Michigan; a city once plagued by gangs, corruption, and economic depression and desperation. His life began during the worst of it, during what some had begun referring to as “The Fall”– not the autumn kind, the hitting-your-ass-on-the-ground kind. Bacatta had done so famously, and stayed that way for many years. For most of those years, Robert attended school in the central, downtown district that was later abandoned and overrun with the destitute and criminal. It was during these years that he met the future of humanity that would eventually form those aforementioned societal slack-jaws.

Robert’s troubles began at Levin Elementary school, long ago established by a family of farmers whom hoped to help the blossoming city find its feet. For Robert, all it did was cause him grief, especially in the form of Phillip O’Dell.

Robert was a small, geek-ish sort, whom followed the rules to a T, but understandably, lacked the formal press-and-dress of his more-fortunate peers. Even before the nicknames rubby-crumbs, crummy-rubbert, and bread-boy, Robert’s old, hand-me-down clothing doomed him. His mother was a seamstress by trade, and his clothes were old, tattered, and worn. The few that weren’t, had been out of style for decades.

By contrast, Phillip was a brick-wall of a boy; nice hair, new clothes, and lots of friends. Robert learned these things quickly, as Phil flaunt them in his face whilst singling him out. Even despite the obvious downturn for Bacatta, Phillip’s Dad made a killing at BPD. Robert didn’t mind; the divide between them was cosmetic, skin-deep. But Phillip did mind, and he took great pleasure in making everyone else mind it too. Crummy-rubbert stuck, lasted all the way through middle-school.

The few friends Robert found poked fun at him, however lovingly, but ever a pacifist, he took it in stride. Phillip despised it. He lashed out, bigger and meaner than ever. He beat Robert regularly, his words broken through fists of adolescent fury, “Crummy rubbert… poor family…. too broke to care…. about their broke son.”

Phillip reveled in the glory of others’ suffering.

Despite these routine “meetings of the minds” Robert trudged onward. He sank deeper into school-work, his few, minor friendships, then eventually, depression. All the while Phillip’s family grew richer, defended his worst troubles, and ignored the lesser-ones.

As high-school approached, Robert and Bacatta were worse than ever, but something changed in them both. Roberts’ father, an accountant for the city on a dismal salary, took a high-paying position at a company called Bio-something– Robert never really cared, he was just happy for dad. It was only after Bacatta began to pick-up, and thus its inhabitants, that Robert saw the true shift: Phillip, an ever-present threat and nuisance, suddenly shrank into the background. What were once daily encounters became weekly, then monthly. Soon enough, Phillip O’Dell descended into obscurity altogether, taking crummy-rubbert with him.

Twenty years after “The Fall,” and near half-a-decade since Robert had thought of O’Dell, he’d become a man. Without constant torment, he’d made it through High-school with high-grades, and even a girlfriend or two. He garnered promising scholarships from both in and out of state colleges, left home to attend Oakton State University’s Bachelor of Sciences program to study Computer Science; for there were few things Robert always loved more than computers, games, and math.

As he stepped from a cab along a side-street, a voice at-once both sparked his memory and chilled his spine. He glanced sideways to see a homeless man, haggard, emaciated, and begging for a few paces down the road. Even beneath countless layers of dirt, grime, and mottled head and facial hair, Phillip was unmistakable.

For a moment, Robert stood transfixed by the shell of a man that had once been his bully, his tormentor. For most, this would be a moment of triumph. For Robert, ever-the-pacifist, it was one of sorrowful epiphany.

During high-school Robert learned of Bacatta’s true underbelly, its true history. What had once been a high-grade metropolis had been forced to poverty from the loss of a major company and supporter of its economy. Robert’s own father had been part of this company– pharma-something, he’d never bothered to remember– and it went down in flames after a major scandal with its Board of Directors.

Even now, the city was still picking itself up. Part of the revitalization also included cleaning up the police-force’s corruption, but only now– as a college-going man bound for a nearby-cafe– did Robert remember Officer O’Dell, Phillip’s father. The connection wasn’t difficult; Officer O’Dell was a corrupt cop, the kind that took kick-backs for anything he could to keep his family glitzed and glamoured in otherwise dire times. Phillip’s own disappearance even made sense now. But to see him slouched against a brick-wall in Oakton, ragged, torn, and destitute, broke Robert’s heart.

Robert weaved through the crowd toward Phil, his feet compelled forward through the stream of noon-day passersby that flowed around him. He stood before the broken, homeless.

He raised a hand, rasped a word, “Change?”

Robert’s eyes filled with a melange of emotion that Phil must have missed.“Ph-Phillip? Phillip O’Dell?”

The broken man’s eyes rose, widened, “Robert?”

He gave a single, slow nod, “What’re you doing here, man?”

Phillip’s lower lip trembled. He slid up the wall, shaking his head. Tears edged into his eyes, “Are– Are you–”

“Real?” Robert asked with a step toward him. “Yeah, Phil, it’s me.”

His withered, husk of a body heaved a sob, “My god!”

Robert’s heart split in two, “Hey man, it’s alright.” He put an arm around him, “You hungry? C’mon, my apartment’s just down the street. I’ll fix you something.”

Phillip sobbed the two blocks to the apartment building, his clouded mind wracked, and his body directed solely by Robert’s firm grip. The stink of an adolescent life on the street permeated the otherwise smoggy air and filled the hallway to the apartment door. It only subsided long enough for the meal that Robert cooked in silence, his movements slow, thoughtful. Phillip’s tears followed their tempo with a pervasive trickle, ceasing as the two sat to eat.

The silence had its fill between them, gorging itself on the profundity of the moment. Phillip’s mouth trembled. His hand failed the weight of the soup spoon. It clamored with a perilous ring that gave way to Phillip’s rasping voice.

“Wh-why… why would you…”

He trailed off. Robert knew where he was headed, “What happened to you, Phil?”

His head shook, flung tears across his cheeks, “I don’t even… I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you have family? Someone you can stay with or– what happened Phil?”

Phillip O’Dell swallowed hard, choked on the bits and pieces of his life that he could recall. His voice split into occasional, hacking coughs. “Dad was … one of the cops they busted. They put him in jail– he’s … still there. Mom, couldn’t handle the pressure of work, ‘n me, ‘n… dad. She…. she showed herself out not long after.”

“You’ve be alone all this time?” He nodded. “Then how’d you end up in Oakton? Your family were locals.”

Phillip gave a wracking cough into his hand, his withered figure still trembling afterward, “I ran away… just ended up here. I’m … not sure how anymore.”

“Didn’t you ever try to … get help, or find work? I mean, have you always been—”

“No. I … I was an angry kid, Rob, you know that,” he replied, avoiding Robert’s gaze. “I hated people… lower than me, how could I… react to being lower than myself?”

“So all this time you’ve been living like this?”

He nodded. “I stole for a long time. Got caught. Ended up worse-off.”

Phillip descended into a heavy fit of coughing that shook Robert’s chest, frayed his nerves. He tried to word his sympathy, his tone shaky, “Phil, I’ve gotta’ admit.” He wrung his hands. “You were a mean kid, but… some kids are like that. I’d’ve never thought– this isn’t right, man, you need some help.”

Phillip’s coughing fit ended with sobs, “So many things I did… I deserved this. I’ve… regretted everything I said and done for so many years. I took out my own self-hate on you.”

“Self-hate?”

He choked back a sob, “I was never happy. Dad was a drunk. Mom was… always cheating or fighting with Dad. When it came down, I wasn’t sad. I was angry. That’s when I was at my worst. I saw you so happy, even with all the struggle you– I-I couldn’t break your spirit. And It broke mine.”

Robert shook his head, “Phil, it wasn’t like that–”
“Yes it was, Rob,” he interrupted respectfully. “I know I hurt your feelings, but it wasn’t nearly what it could have been. I’ve seen that on the streets; kids who didn’t… have what you had. They let guys like me get to them, force them down. I’ve never regretted anything more than what I’ve done to you. I’ve beaten myself up the last half-decade for it– if I’d stopped, thought about it for even a second, I’d’ve had to recognize it was me that was the problem. And I wouldn’t’ve– wouldn’t’ve ended up… like this!”

Phil sobbed again. His chest heaved. He coughed phlegm into a frail, shaky hand. Robert watched, lost for words, searched for someway to calm the mass of sorrow across the table.

“Phil… Phil, listen man. If you were given the chance, I mean really given the chance to change things, would you?”

Phil’s face wavered, “Rob, I’ve got felonies ‘n I haven’t–”

“No, Phil, that’s not what I’m asking,” he interjected. “I’m asking, would you accept help?”

He seemed to consider the question for a long moment. His tears stilled, though his chest rose and fell with piercing wheezes. “Yeah. Yeah, I would Rob, but … I can never forgive myself for.”

Rob interrupted, “Look man, sometimes, we can’t forgive ourselves because that’s not where we need it from. Sometimes, we need it from the people we’ve wronged.”

Phil’s eyes glistened he struggled to follow, “What’re you talkin’ about Rob?”

Robert explained with a slow, rhythmic tongue, “Look Phil, like you said, I’ve had a lot behind me to help hold me up all these years. I can’t be angry with you now. And I was never really angry then. But I do understand now. I can forgive you, but I can’t just do it. Otherwise, it won’t mean as much to either of us.”

Phil’s face was blank, a result of confusion, “What’re you saying? That you forgive me?”

Robert’s head tilted sideways, “Kind of. Look man, if you’re willing to work for it, I can forgive you. But there’s a lot there, and the only way it seems worth it’s if you agree to make it worth it.”

“How?”

“Get yourself together man, I’ll help, but… well, think of it this way: You agree, and at the end of that road, you’re forgiven. In the meantime, you’ll clean up, maybe find some work– something you wanna’ do with your life.”

Phil’s tears returned, a visible thirst on his lips, “You wanna’ help me?”

He grimaced, “Phil man, I hate seeing you like this, but I gotta’ know you’re really different– inside I mean, you know? What’s the point if you might turn ’round and be the same way again.”
Phil understood at last, “You can forgive me, ‘n you wanna’ help, but you wanna know I won’t end up the same.”

Robert nodded, gave a half smile, “Yeah.” He stood from the table, Phil in front of him, “It won’t be easy, but… well, neither was what happened. It was a lotta’ years, man.”

Phil nodded, hope gleaming in his eyes. Robert gave him a tight hug, lingered to foster hope. He pulled away, hands on Phil’s shoulders, and gave a sideways tilt of his head, “Go shower up, there’s a trimmer under the sink. I’ll find you some clothes and we’ll go get’chu a haircut. You had enough to eat right?”

Phil’s mouth quivered with a smile, “Rob, I don’t know what to say…”

“Just go shower up, man. You don’t need to say anything.”

Phil half-turned, hesitated, “I think I understand why they say meek’ll inherit the Earth, Rob.” Robert’s brow pinched with confusion. Phil smiled, “No matter what you do to ’em– no matter how bad you are, they never lose their compassion.”

Robert’s face sketched agreement as the boy, Phillip O’Dell– his one time bully– disappeared into the man Phil O’Dell.