Saturday, December 09, 2006

This morning...

...the winter is waiting outside your front door, summons in hand. You don't realise this at first. You peep out and see what looks like a normal enough day, a bit shabby perhaps, but nothing to be afraid of. Then you step out of your building and he lets you get three steps from the door before he comes up to you and says "Mr. ____________?" "Yes, that's right." "I have something for you, sir."

And then he hands it to you - the cold you've been dreading, white and crisp and official, like paper. And you wish you'd never left your house today, you wish you'd hidden away in your house, under a quilt or a pile of old clothes, but it's too late for that now, too late, and he would have got you eventually anyway, how long were you going to stay locked up in your apartment and he's off already, no doubt to find his next victim (yes, yes, you know it's his job - but a victim is what you feel like) while you stand on the sidewalk, feeling all the warmth seep out of you.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

(even though I know it probably means nothing)
Lovely, lovely post.

Anonymous said...

If that guy was just a postman, there's an awesome piece in All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren that goes similarly ...

It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door ... but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with envelope in your hand, you feel there's an eye on you ... The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him ... There's the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know

The ramblings of a shoe fiend said...

'And then he hands it to you - the cold you've been dreading, white and crisp and official, like paper.'

i loved that

Anonymous said...

but then there is summer, spring, autumn.

spring would be a beautiful woman and she would gift you wild flowers.:)

Falstaff said...

tangled: Thanks. And why would it mean nothing? Trust me - there are no limits to my insecurity. I hoard validation the way squirrels hoard nuts.

dufusmaximus: Nice. Now there's a book I have to get around to reading.

shoe-fiend: Thanks

anon: Maybe. Though that could be worse. If a beautiful woman ever does bring me flowers I'll probably die of shock.