The Reckoning
I crossed an elephant and a rhino and wound up with a creepy Columbo character clocking his victim with a block of ice in the swimming pool. A cavalcade of murderers who always get caught. And over there, Hamilton Burger, the cocky DA, who always goes after the wrong suspect and loses. In the parking lot, rockhounds selling gems under pop-ups, discharging politics, certain all the customers agree with them. One guy doesn’t, and lets it be known. Hot again, all of a sudden. Springtime again, random thoughts splattered on the page like a murder victim, no hope whatsoever we’ll ever catch the perpetrator. We flee the scene of our crimes without a second thought, without realizing what we’ve done. Maybe we’ve done nothing. Maybe we’ve hurt somebody’s feelings, or scratched a car door, or dropped a tomato in the produce section and put it back. We zip through stations, stopping along the way, closing our eyes, grabbing a bite, turning the music way up loud. Wait. What was that? Wind rustling through the trees, a bird, waves crashing, babies crying, a leaky faucet, somebody crushing a bag of chips because they got the wrong ones.
Remember when you showed up early, and the others not only didn’t show up early, they didn’t show up at all? And you sat waiting for something to happen, and it didn’t, but then you got up and walked around the block, stopping outside where a couple of strangers were sitting, reading the paper and having their coffee and cigarettes. There was a reflection of flowers and a distant place and time. But when you turned to face the source, you saw something altogether different. How? And yet, there it is, so clear, so obvious, but nobody sees it coming. You do. Should you tell someone? Call a cop? Your neighbor? Your wife? Or keep it to yourself to file with the other crimes, to one day face the reckoning. You see things, you hear things, you make a mental note. We’re God’s processors, taking it all in, storing it in memory to be retrieved at a later date. Nothing is forgotten. It’s all in the record books. Anything you think or feel can be used against you. Or for you.
Running blindly through time, eyes closed, hands outstretched, now falling, unafraid, into the abyss. It only hurts when we land, so let’s not land, let’s just keep falling deeper and deeper into the unseen unknown, embracing the sound of bells and the clack clack clack of wheels on tracks, the juggernaut racing out of control deep into the darkness.
