“It is Spooky Season, Guys. And the veil is thinning.”
We gathered around the wooden grey picnic table that had always sat to the right of the back stoop. The sun was still up for a little longer which made it warmer out here than in the house where the electricity had died without rhyme or reason. It was too dark to read, too cold to dance, too dead to live in. We tried to make it work. We had forgotten how to spend time any other way. Slowly though the warmth pulled us outside.
We told stories of the old days. Before internet, when we learned how to do by doing, the resources we searched were in each other.
“Uncle Joe, who was the first to make the fudge? “
“I don’t know, honey. I’m the only one who makes it now unless you want to learn.” I do want to learn. I want to pass it on so that in 100 years my kin can feel the way it melts around one’s tongue. I had tried a few times, but it wasn’t right. It was stretchy, or soupy, or gritty, or stuck to the pot, Maybe I tried more than a few.
“Could you also teach me to catch quarters in my hand after balancing them on my elbow? Could you teach me to blow smoke rings? Can I misspend my youth in glorious ways?”
Pop has not heard us talking and pipes up with one of the many quotes that account for at least 30% of all his conversations. They were all on the tip of his tongue, but they didn’t often apply to the conversation in progress. Pop follows that mislaid quote up with his next 30% conversation record…politics.
“No matter how many times you do this, you will not change my mind. Please remember what you can teach me from the old times. We don’t have to live like this!
But he wouldn’t respond. The fuse of the Universe burnt out. The blackest nothing surrounded us all. I felt their hands each grab an arm, we’re together I think gratefully. Just as suddenly, they began to drag me to a deeper pit. When I opened my mouth to scream, nothing came out. The darkness seeped in and stole whatever light was left in me too.
I startled awake, with my mouth still open, and the burn of their grip still tingling on my arms.
