Get Ready!
Chris was closing up the bar at the Milky Spigot, the year is 2030. Collette, six years old and the youngest of Chris's four daughters, dangled her legs from the top of a stool. She had red curled hair and had lost interest in the plastic lighters her Uncle John built into little log cabins on the bar. Lake Michigan sat on the other side of the parking lot. All the lights went out in the town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin after 10:45 and it was 11:30.
Uncle John tried to tell the six year old about his own daughter, who was twenty and lived in an apartment above a former bowling alley in Detroit. She lived with her boyfriend, Fed Wilsen, who wanted to get his nursing license. Collette fell asleep hunched over on the bar stool.
Finished cleaning up, Chris flipped out the lights and came out from behind the bar. With some effort he picked up his daughter, Uncle John noticed the sinking ship tattooed on Chris's forearm.
Walking to the car, Chris struggled to get a cigarette to his mouth without waking the girl. Uncle John tried to help by lighting the cigarette, but one of the men shuffled too far. Fire sizzled up and stank, as Collette's long curls burned. Chris grabbed at the flame, putting it out, but burned his hand on melted hair. Collette screeched and flailed like a snared rabbit.
Standing in the car's headlights-- Chris knelt consoling the girl as Uncle John cut off, as delicately as he could, the burnt hair with his pocket knife. After, while Collette shook and sobbed against the headlights, Uncle John looked off toward Lake Michigan and put a lock of melted hair in his pocket. The exhausted little girl fell asleep in the back seat as Chris and John drove to their cabin at the edge of town in silence.
Does hypothetical grief cut deepest?
ReplyDeleteSelf fulfilling prophecy certainly does. Something about cabins made out of plastic lighters and setting a young red-headed girls hair on fire fits too well. Too well indeed.
ReplyDeleteonce a strong proponent of free will, i see not how it is possible to escape the confines of such a finely crafted, described, and most well predicted future. my only hope is that Collette's real "Daddy" is as much a part of her life as her, what im guessing must be, adoptive one and her loving uncle.
ReplyDeletethis future put forth here so knowledgeably by Senator is what i can only describe as the post modern. and for that i tip my hat, and pray.