This will be the last of my Fall themed short stories. I’m going to start leaning towards the genre that I prefer to write, which is fantasy fiction. Thank you all of my new followers for your support. Enjoy. 1,058 words.
The Beasts of Autumn – 10/09/13
The term, as I’ve heard it used, is cut-flower. Having been separated from your source of life. In a patient state of un-living. Receiving alms from friends with concern as the currency. It’s a gentle and good thing they do, and I’m thankful. Sometimes I forget the intent of their charity and focus only on how I haven’t yet found a magical potion to help forget my old unforgivens. Jeremy hoots about that word and suggests that I look no further than alcohol for my elixir. Alcohol is contemptible, especially this time of year. Especially now, in the mid-morning hours, staring down the beasts of Autumn.
But Jeremy is not a fool. Only half that, and a splash of genuine friend for flavor. He consoles me when I wrestle with the annual thoughts of her, that inamorata I once rightfully and proudly called my wife. Now that I’ve struck the seven-year bell, I wonder if I may still call her that. My wife. Once upon a time, so the fairy tale reflects. When they say happily ever after, they’re not speaking a full truth. Even at its best, even in a make-believe world, sometime one of the two lovers will have to pass away. I want to hear that part of the story, told from the voice left behind.
In this season I have allergies. Something in the fallen leaves sets me off, but it’s never so bad as to ruin a day. When the first snow comes, I conveniently become allergic to driving. A fair trade, since about that time everyone else conveniently forgets how to drive. I make a fanciful display of pumpkins for my home, assorted on stair-step patterned shelves, directly beneath family photos from nine-some years ago. The cinnamon candles I brandish year around suddenly make sense for a couple months, until winter decides to anathemize them again. Nami says I should adapt my candles to the seasons and that it would help me appreciate cinnamon next year when the leaves start splitting off. I would like to point her to any number of mental health manuals which suggest that hers is a bad idea. Something about conditioning and associations. Cinnamon smells like my wife, like my long lost heart. I can hardly notice the scent anymore, but if I sent it away and in several months it suddenly returned, I imagine my reaction would be worse than frightful.
It rains a lot during the fall months, to which I tip my hat and beg welcome. There is nothing quite so stirring as a good long rain. To be enameled by mother and her gentle nature. The beasts of Autumn hush down a little bit more when the rain is here, and vanish completely at the first snowfall. Only during this season of my life do I reflect so piercingly, and at such great sacrifice. My world suffers without her. Friends ask for my company and I decline, both to their displeasure and my own. I think more about the children we never had, and whether they would like the rain or not. Would their favorite color be yellow, like their mother? Sickness makes Heaven seem cruel, and it steals away regardless of whether the new absence would be good for the world or not. Maybe it’s best we had no progeny. I would suffer to think about their lives if they’d inherited her pain.
Things seem to get away from me, foremost of which is time. I could have sworn the leaves were orange no more than two months ago. To think that it has already been a year. What even happened in the meantime? I got laid off work. I picked up something new, thanks be to Jeremy. I went on one date and was soul-sick enough that my stomach caught the memo and helped me vomit once the evening was over. I picked up a pet frog from Nami’s nephew. Named it Jack Sparrow for absolutely no reason at all. I think I went on vacation, but that might have been a couple years ago. Really, I don’t like to track back too far. The territory becomes unsteady. Memories start returning, and they drag other things behind them. I find it’s not worth it. It isn’t worth the price of remembering.
I read that in a book once. The price of remembering. When you’ve lost somebody, you begin to notice such snippets. You incubate them in your chest and rehearse them in your sleep. I know that price, because I barter every August. I barter and pray the cost will drop, and that the year will be a little less lonely than the last. Just another beast of Autumn that makes a parade of my life. In the rare moments that I am transparent with others –and I assure you they are few – such notions make me feel overwhelmingly melodramatic. I am a child, complaining about child-like things. My wife died to a common, albeit crippling sickness. So what if she passed away? My neighbor recently lost her daughter to the sort of actions that result from overwhelming intoxication, fraternity parties and the occasional, homicidal boyfriend. A killing stroke like that is a million miles more devastating than whatever plagues me. But I can’t find it in myself to care. I don’t truly feel for her loss. Not from my gut. Because the worst of my grief has manifested into the image of my greatest hatred. A writhing contradiction best known as apathy. Apathy is cold like a stone and sweet like the rain. It makes me sick, and weary of trying to forgive myself again. Apathy is a beast worse than hatred.
But I let the apathy stay, because I’d rather it remained than pay the price of remembering. I wonder what she’d think of my selfishness? I shouldn’t dwell on it now. That is a paper-thin question better left to steal my midnight hours. I’m going to be awake anyways, what with the rain and my cinnamon candles and my cut-flower spirit. I will remain that way as long as I can. Until finally winter might come and the beasts of Autumn will rest in hibernation, resting dutifully and gaining strength for their return. They are my tourniquet and I expect they always will be. At least they’re consistent.
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