Speculum Free

It’s chasing me. A little person with wings. And I’m terrified to death. Everywhere I go he’s there, watching, hoping to catch my attention and I just can’t afford to find out what they want from me. I’ve been outrunning it for months now and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold it off. No one else sees it, so I fear it may not be of this world. Something from beyond. Perhaps I can escape my fate long enough to catch some nice disease and die by my own accord. If I die at the hand of something unreal then what will my friends and family think. I can’t kill him; I can try but I do not believe for a moment that I stand a fighting chance against a tear of God himself. 

I think that’s where they come from, angels. God weeps and they come down to take away the sadness. But they’d never admit this fact, crying is for women, children, and men with low testosterone.

There’s nothing good an angel can do for me. I’m already happy. I have a good job, my car is nice, I’ve even been laid a few times. This is the good part. The last angel I knew of told some young girl she had to get pregnant. Poor girl was only 13 if I remember, and maybe times were different, but it just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not fair to do that to someone. Make their life all important before they even have a chance to drown in lust and obscurity. I don’t need that. I don’t want to be painted or sculpted. There need be no dissertations on my actions. I ought to do nothing more than live to a ripe old age and die of some partially natural causes alone in a house I refused to leave after becoming senile.  

I won’t be like Mary. I won’t let you do that to me. So, I figure the second coming will have to wait on another victim. I don’t understand religion enough to succumb to it anyhow. Maybe there was a time I did believe. But to come out of nowhere and disturb the life I’ve created without it. It’s just not right.

I don’t want to believe.

I’m not ready for an angel. 

Angels are for the good guys. And I’m not there anymore. But it won’t let me be. I’ve begun to think my only option may be to live under the water, I don’t think it could reach me there and afford getting its wings all soggy like. 

But even then, I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to know what it has to tell me. But what if it’s not what I need to hear. You can ignore God all you want, but you cannot deny him. Even I know this. I don’t know much. But I know whatever the call may be, I’ll have no choice but to grab it wholeheartedly and run into the Sun with it. 

I don’t want to live under the water forever. Just for a bit longer. I need to get my fill, because I think this has a chance to be my last visit beneath. 

And so, I choose to run. Run like the wind. Run! Get away from being boxed in by fate. Control my own story. Find the angels all on my own. I don’t think I ever stopped running either. I’ll never stop running. 

Looking back, I believe I might have been better off taking what the world would give me. In fact, the angel only wanted to warn me of a way to save my 100 yard soul. It wanted only to let me know that a man would be waiting for me near the bus station I would go on to board one afternoon. Instead, I brushed past him, and the man would of course end up being hit by the bus…

I never really had the attention span for religion but standing there next to his bible that once fit snugly in the front pocket of a cheaply made jacket, I remembered some of the few lines that had stuck with me and seemed to mean much of anything. I looked at his body, mangled and lifeless as it were. Then I looked up for the angel. And he no longer looked at me. And then finally at a penny next to the man’s outstretched left arm… Rather pale for someone living this close to the equator, and fingernails roughly six days too long… I thought to take it, but I suddenly understood my chronological placement in this story as I saw it sat tails side up. Jesus wept...

In the summer of 1984, a man was born. Only in such a summer could Tom Somb have come to be. And this man then came to be Tom Somb. Tom was an angel, a patron, and a grifter all the same. My God, he was human. He was born with little intelligence and did his best to keep it that way. In his eyes, intelligence wasn’t all that attractive, let alone important. I often think he may have been a genius, my God. Tom spent the days in longing for what others called home, in search of a mother’s smile. In search of somewhere to go. He got along quite nicely, hell, the others were happy to give. In spite of his boredom, I reckon he decided he might as well live. Tom likened to shortcuts, always keeping that Bible close by. It doesn’t even seem fair that tomorrow he dies. And so, Tom rested up, for all the tomorrows in a day. Of course, not before he started to pray. “My God...”.

The morning came as I’m to understand it often did. Tom set about his day with nothing on hand but his Bible and a sack of loose change. The coins weren’t for spending per say. And he spent them still. They were his fate controllers. At every fork in the road Tom thought it might be appropriate to let the flip of a nickel decide what life he might live. I think this was a bit of an unconscious experiment in divine intervention. The coins had done him no favors in life, the head of a penny kept him from the alter once upon a time and then the tail end of a quarter sent him to the bar. The crimes he’d committed might be blamed on the change he once received from a vending machine that looking back, he should’ve known not to trust. The coins were an easy way to live, and they helped give depth to his heart. One realized while flipping a coin what they truly want... what side they are secretly hoping lands facing up in their palm. A man needs regrets like this, opportunities missed, to callas his soul. And Tom Somb had his regrets. But it was all in the plans.

Today felt peculiar. The air was light, the light was full of air. The trees were dancing, and the coins were buzzing. Today was perfect. Tom had 88 cents on him at the beginning. 25 were spent on a cup of coffee. The coffee was abysmal of course, Tom hated coffee. 50 cents went towards a bologna sandwich. A dime went into the jukebox. Tom loved Elvis Presley. He liked his funny dance. It made so much more sense than anything else. A penny was thrown into a fountain in exchange for a wish, a sacred pact. Tom wished for some rain; the flowers were looking drab. With 2 pennies left Tom stumbled upon a homeless man asking for donations, it was his lucky day... the fates exclaimed tails from the heavens. Down to his final coin, it was time for Tom to go back home and begin again. He reached to tuck his pocket in promptly, and by chance it would seem, his final coin fell out of his pocket. It rolled calmly, past the homeless man, past a bushel of apricots, past a formerly owned left shoe made of leather, and past an empty Heineken bottle off the curb. A mere penny, near worthless to most. Rusted and such. Now lied alone in the middle of the street. From roughly two meters away Tom could see it landed tails. So, like any sensible man of faith, Tom Somb stepped in front of the oncoming bus. Leaving him but a rusted crippled coin of himself. No family, no friends, no will. The only thing of any worth was that damned Bible, laying open in the middle of the street to where it had been bookmarked. Proverbs 16:9 - “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps”. My God.