Choice and Chance (Part 5)
Why, hello there! Miss me? It took me a little while, but I’m back to writing and editing. To catch up with this portion of the story, click here.
Without a word, the boatman dealt the cards and started the game. He remained quiet through most of it, but he seemed less focused on the cards. Ted tried to take full advantage of his opponent’s spaciness, but didn’t feel to confident about the outcome of the game.
“What was her favorite flower?” the boatman asked.
“Whose?” Ted asked absentmindedly.
“Michelle. What was her favorite flower?”
Ted stopped, his mind blank, even though it was his turn to play a card. It was odd hearing someone else say her name, and so innocently, that it threw Ted off guard. Luckily, his opponent was in no hurry and didn’t rush either the game or his answer. But no matter how much Ted tried to think about his wife, he had no idea what her favorite flower was. He vaguely remember her favorite color as yellow, but they seldom had any yellow flowers in the garden. Except marigolds.
“Marigolds.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
Ted looked up in time to catch a glimmer of disappointment on his opponent’s face. Ted frowned slightly and played what he card he thought was best. They continued in silence with Ted gaining more and more cards. He felt more confident, but a fighting worry that he would get cocky and lose still gnawed at his conscience. Play it like your Poker games, he thought, and you’ll be fine.
Memories of his last Poker game came back in a haze. Then came flashes of the beatings, the moldy basement, and the weight of the hand holding his head underwater while his lungs marked the milliseconds like an extremely precise bomb before exploding into darkness.
“You won again,” the boatman said a little too cheerfully. Ted was breathing hard and fast, and he swallowed hard to try and calm himself down. He stood up and tried facing the water, but the dock swayed with his sudden movement and almost sent him into the darkness at his feet.
“Careful,” a somewhat panicked voice called out from behind him. The jolt of shock at almost being dropped back into water caused Ted to sober up and he sat back down at the table and grabbed his cards.
“I counted those already,” his opponent said, but Ted ignored him and counted them again. There were some high cards in the pile that he didn’t remember playing, but he took them anyway and then gathered the remaining cards to shuffle.
“Are you all right?”
The question seemed clear enough, but Ted wasn’t sure how to respond. “I—” he stopped and took a deep breath. His hands were shaking as he put down the deck. “I just had a flash back to how I died. Or how I think I died, I don’t know.”
Author’s comments on post 417: Another cliff hanger, but there will be answers next time…whenever that is…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 2:05 pm and is filed under End of Childhood, Fantasy, Fiction Prose, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.