Matrimony by the River

"I don't know what time it is," I whined; "How many times are ya gonna ask me?"

"Until I get an answer, that's how many," my dad yelped.

"Well there's a clock over there," I pointed at the wall.

"Yea, so?"

"So what?"

"Are ya....."

"No I'm not gonna go look, and I've had enough!" I walked out of the little garden patio to the café and headed home. "I don't understand these people," I thought to myself.

"Like, he wanted me to leave," I surmised. "Anyway,"..

Talking to myself got pretty boring so I went to my friend Gary's house, and we watched TV. His friends Todd and Sean came over. They were discussing the Bible.

"It has two good books in it, the psalms and proverbs," said Sean.

Gary said it was a sexist book where it was a patriarchy and women were demeaned.

"I am on the last page, the spirit and the bride say, come drink the water of life freely, that's me!" I smiled, nobody ever believed me.

Todd said the origin story didn't match the jesus story, cuz if god made eve from adam's rib, then how come jesus was born from a virgin. The whole thing didn't make sense. I laughed and headed out the door, knowing that the miracle and mystery of life would never be solved, just accepting it was all you could do.

The way I was living today, I didn't need people ordering me around, like my dad. If he wanted me to leave, I'd leave. I figure, that's the best way to get someone to go, treat them like you- know- what.

Thinking more about it, maybe that's how they were treated, or it is masking pain. You never know unless you ask so I went back to where my dad was sitting, still at the same table, in the same seat.

"Dad?" I asked, he peered up from what he was doing on his phone, and said, "Oh! Didn't notice ya there, what's up"

"I was thinking about the why behind the way you treat me, and I thought it must stem from the way you've been treated in life." He looked ahead, and his eyes did this strange cross-eyed thing, and he kind of chuckled and almost threw up on the patio tiles.

"Dad!"

"Yea, uh there's something to what you're saying, but.."

"Yea? - I'm trying to understand."

"Listen, why don't you just piss off."

"Yea, you think you have some entitlement on me when you don't, ha ha."

"I can stay, I can do what I want, and you're just gonna have to accept it."

"Yea, if ya wanna be a real sleeze,"

"Okay, I'm out." God I couldn't understand that guy, just trying to get rid of me, again.

I stopped by my mom's house, and she was ironing. " Sometimes you just have to give people their space," she divined.

"Yea," I went for a walk in the woods, all the way to my sister's across town under the overpass and everything.

I thought back to the memories of how much I had been through, and I realized the common denominator in all the memories, in each one, save a few, I was the one suffering. But why? I asked myself. The only logical explanation was that I actually enjoyed it and attracted it.

Everyone has their cross to bear, you hear, but I didn't want to spend my life like this, knowing that I would die someday, and even sooner, not be able to walk, or have pain.

My story needed to be told.

Then I disassociated from the subject and went to the space station at the end of the highway overlooking the airport.

"Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life here." The rocket took off, straight up and up and up and the noise was tremendous, my home gone, becoming a little speck in the distance that I waved goodbye to.

"Ok! Ha ha", I looked at my cat Tiger Eyes I had bring along. "Will you play this homemade board game with me?"

"Meow,"

The End

Epilogue: later that night, we landed on Venus and walked around in the heat, and aridity.

I wanted to take a picture of earth from Venus, but the capsule's camera would not download the necessary software, and we ended up just taking a picture of the moon.

I procured an image of Uranus, and Jupiter, but was not able to catch Saturn or Neptune, their orbits being then presently on the other side of the Sun.

We sailed around aimlessly, and felt normal and secure, safe and not at all like it was on earth. We were free! Me and the cat, bouncing this way and that on our little spaceship, saying," Here we are, universe!"

"Meow!"

Later that year: we stayed out there in the spaceship. We took up an orbit around a star 5 billion light years away, and watched the light show out in space. We had enough food because we had a garden whose plants regenerated, so there was always enough to eat.

Any gravitational pull was swung around and torpedoed out into space unknown, perpetually in one direction, never to be seen again.

I busied myself by inventing various hand- powered tools, the design to be shared with anyone who came our way, actually we were getting eager to return, so we did.

The same, when we got there, people runnin around, doin their thing, unless they could get someone else to do it. Who would win, the getter or the receiver? Hm, good question.

I went and tried the key to my door, it worked. I came in and sat down, what a trip! I fell asleep listening to the music I once listened to, and the next day went to visit my dad.

"Oh! You returned! - you shoulda stayed out there." I laughed and walked away.

This would not be my life. I worked and got a job as a receptionist, saved money and moved to another state.

The End