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Addict
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: canadian in taiwan
Posts: 165
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Kevin Mann
THE LONESOME MOURNING OF KEVIN MANN:
(Pockmarks began to dot the dusty road, and soon the dim morning was all static, raising the hair on his neck and arms. The lightning would start in soon he knew, and bring with it the rains. Not a single car had passed him by all through the night as he had lay curled in a spot of grass under a lonesome tree; just off the road, but certainly close enough to have been awakened by a passing car. The tree hadn’t offered much for shelter, but then, it hadn’t been raining at the time. Hunger gnawed away at his thoughts as sure as it gnawed away at his belly, and he struggled to remember the last time he had seen a car on this forlorn road. He struggled to recall just how long he had been hiking this same long, and (evidently) long abandoned highway. He struggled to remember…
What he did remember is that things had looked more or less the same along the entirety of his journey. Tall and bent-limbed trees were sparsely scattered on each side of the road, smooth gray trunks showing in places beneath a carpet of rich spongy moss, and making a thin but endlessly deep forest. Occasionally an unnamed river wound its way into sight, followed the road for a time, finally curling off towards its own destiny, of which he knew he played no part. Once though, on one of those days that the river had chosen to companion him, he had caught a fish, a small one, and managed a fire. He was almost out of matches, and so the fires had become few. He celebrated his good fortune by rolling himself a cigarette and, upon completing his meal, reclining back and enjoying a puff; letting the curling smoke fill the expanse between his eyes and the far away stars, observing the clouds as they paced unhurriedly across the night sky. That was the last meal he had had, and had been the greatest meal in all his life.
Soon the pockmarks turned to puddles, then the puddles to mud. The wind rose around his eyes, and he made his way stoop shouldered headlong into it. He wondered if turning back would make any sort of difference. Was anything closer in one direction than in the other? The last man to pick him up had dropped him at a fork in the road, turning his old red and rusty truck up the smaller road and disappearing into the hills, leaving a fine tail of brown dust in his wake. Maybe if he were to turn back, find that fork and follow it, maybe he could find that beat up old pickup again. With the rusted wheel wells and broken mirror. Maybe if he could find that old truck once more, if he could find that worn out and tired old Chevy, maybe he would find that old man as well. Maybe the old man would offer him a light and a place by the fire. Maybe even a morsel! Maybe that old man could tell him what it was that lay at the end of this endless road, and explain to him why he needed to travel it. Maybe that old man with the time worn face, and the smiling creases in his eyes (those timeless gray eyes that were so intense with youth and passion!), would offer up a piece of conversation and perhaps even ask some in return. Wouldn’t that be grand! But if there were anything that this young man had learned in his years, his years so few and empty, it was that the future always lay ahead of a man and never behind. So onward he marched. The rains came harder now and the road became heavy and difficult. His jacket, torn in places, clung to him and weighed him down. For the first time in a long while he found himself truly mourning for his shoes. He struggled through the mud, and he struggled into the wind and rain, his hair plastered across his forehead and dripping rain into his eyes. He struggled with his chin low and his shoulders rolled up over his ears, arms and hands pressed close to his body to preserve strength and heat. He struggled thus whilst somewhere beyond those clouds the sun must have been reaching up towards its highest purchase. In the distance a bird sang a delicate song into the day and, after a moment, was replied to or rebutted as another took up to return the call, he made the effort to look ahead and found only the desolate sameness staring back at him. Finally, as the sun began to pull the dusk over his eyes he stopped, right there in the road, too leaden with despair to move another step. He sat down, let himself settle into the mud, then set to doing the only the thing that had thus far eased his mind of his melancholy, rolling himself a cigarette, and taking great care to keep the paper dry and clean, which he managed to achieve as best a man could under the prevailing circumstances. He lit his smoke (with great relief from the first match, for only six now remained), and waited for the night to come and take him. In time the night came; first to kiss him softly; then to reach out and hold him; and finally, under the incessant rains, to envelope him fully in the cold embrace that only the deepest of nights could offer. As the inky blackness shrouded both the land and the boy, the lightning finally started in, and sleep evaded him.)
Kevin came to with a start; the dream had shaken him. There exist no words to properly capture how he felt that morning, he was a man full of joy and full of sorrow. Kevin made his way to the window to watch the last finger of sunlight disappear and get swallowed up by the approaching hurricane; before long, the storm was raging and the winds were raw and livid. He sat alone as he usually did, musing the private musings of a life he no longer understood, and a man he no longer knew (if, that is to say, he had ever truly known the man to begin with). Outside his window trees were bent over double with their leaves like fingers caressing the earth below, returning a loving touch to the mother that birthed them. The river had already swelled and spilt, and what had once been a mighty green park, now was a brown and heavily sedimented lake. A few birds, daredevils or suicides, flew open winged along the currents, gliding on the wings of the storm. With great joy he watched as below the winds buffeted the surface of the river, creating white caps where there should be none; and above, the brave birds danced a chaotic number. With great sadness did he watch as an angry mother nature wreaked her havoc down upon him and us. Upon all and one. Occasionally a furious streak of lightning would shoot from the sky, illuminating the otherwise gray-black day, and then shaking the ground as it left behind its resonating and baritone companion. Presently, as he observed the power and creativity of the storm, he understood his dream; the old man with his ageless eyes; the fork he could not follow; the desire to turn back matched only by his unerring desire to move forward; the unending road, the ceaseless journey; all at once he was struck with a painful lucidity. He knew now what he must do. With a lightness in his soul that matched his step, and with a heaviness in his heart that matched his visage, this man full of joy and sadness, marched himself into the storm, waded though the brown park, and sat himself down at the present and temporary riverbank. He sat there a long time with the rains falling heavy upon his head and shoulders. He sat there a long time with water dripping from his nose and chin. He sat there a long time, a man alone and full of private musings, a man full of joy and full of sorrow. If you were to have looked down upon the river just then, you would have seen a man at equals with the violence of the storm; a man with invisible arms whipping all about him yet with an unwavering calm at the eye; a man seemingly untouched by the winds that touched upon all else with a brutal lack of prejudice. If you were to have looked down upon the river just then, on that day, while the storm raged about all and one, you would have seen a man at the end of his ropes, at the end of his wits, and at the end of his life. But, as it happened, nobody was looking down upon the river at just then, nobody was looking down upon the river at that time, on that day; and as it happened nobody saw Kevin Mann draw his pistol and shoot himself. Amidst the chaos of the storm, nobody heard the shot ring out. And Kevin Mann died then as he had awoken that morning, alone and full of private musings; a man full of joy and sorrow. There are some who may say that Kevin Mann left behind a life that no one would mourn and, moreover, left behind no one to mourn him, but I know that this is not accurate. For I mourn for Kevin Mann and, perhaps now, so do you. For Kevin Mann was every man, every storm, and every struggle. May he rest in peace.
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My cat's breath smells like cat food.
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