Mr. Pools

I always like pushing Mr.Pools around. He always has the best stories...not of treasure won or lost....or dragons slain and robots defeated. His stories were about a life lived well and the lessons he lived to now tell me. His wheelchair hits the same dip it does everyday and...yep..here comes the conspirital giggle it evokes.....making me laugh loudly in response...it gets me everytime.His stories are worth hearing. He tells of a life of crime....a life of family won and lost...where he was the thing people feared to tread near. Of life lived in the grey areas of life...where everything is..well everything. His words...I can even picture the slight twitch of a shoulder as if that could explained by such a gesture...yet somehow it does exactly that. Its those things more than anything else that lend truth to his stories.Lends it gravitas.

But as I finish his last circuit around the old folks home...and wish him a good afternoon...he suddenly grabs hold of my arm. Freezing me in place due to the sheer unexpectedness of the gesture. His eyes take on a light I have never seen in them before...even in his most graphic stories of his...its an ill light...a WRONG light. But I can't look away and his words take a second or two to sink in my ears and register...."There will come a single moment in your life that you can tell is a turning point. You may not know it right then but you can trace all your choices to that one moment. BE AWARE." With that he let's my arm go slowly...and he fades and seems to shrink back to the man I know well.

For some reason over the course of the next several days...he fades more and more...until the natural course happens and he dies.and his words resonate inside me as I attend his funeral and put a carnation on his coffin as it was his favorite. And I slip an ICP CD in his coffin at the wake...because he once showed me his hachet man tattoo.I laughed so hard when I saw it...and to replace the anger I saw building I showed him my own.we both had a good laugh at that.but what was odd is that I never saw the head stone.

Over the next couple of weeks before I head out to college...I seem to see his shadow ahead of me...or his words would echo again in my mind...or I would feel his grip again. Sometimes I even find myself holding my hands like I'm still pushing his wheelchair. It is really beginning to bother me. Like maybe I didn't deal with his death correctly and he meant more to me than I originally thought.Or maybe its his last words that haunt me. I may never know...I push it to the back of my mind as I pull into a gas station.and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end...I try to shake it off but it lingers like a bad smell. I pay for my gas and a Mtn.Dew and some Debbie cakes. You know typical road trip snacks. I was choosing my Little Debbies when the front door to the store burst open and shatters against a display of chips. My head whips around fast enough that I hear it crack. "Give me all the money in the register!".

I am not ashamed to say that I ducked behind the shelf I was looking at...not to play hero just to survive. So I never saw how it happened but a gun slide in front of me....a simple revolver. As I reach for it my sight blacks out and I see two doors. And Mr Pools voice echoes loudly. Almost like this is the place the echoes originate from. I reach for the door on the right and sight is returned but I'm being pushed in a wheelchair...I feel horror but not understanding .... So I reach for the door on the left...and open it and come back to reaching for the gun and put it in the shelf under the boxes of Little Debbies... I look over the shelves...and see the man run out the door with money in his hands....and when the cops came I explained to them about the gun and continued to my college dorm and my life where I ran the states office for retirement homes.

This is what I wish I could tell you I did. That this is what I became and did with my life. But I would be telling you falsehoods...and as much as I have done and seen...and as much wrong I have commitied knowingly and with premeditation....I don't lie. I will side step or avoid it as best I can....but I save the lies for when I really need them...and this is not one of those times. I really wish I could tell that is what happened... But I walked through the right door... Instead of hiding the gun...I picked it up...and felt the heft of it and I felt like I was in a real life videogame. When I rose from behind the shelf and sighted through the iron sight...I pulled the trigger and watched as blood sprayed all over the clerk and the robber slumped over the counter as the blood pooled under him and the counter and floor. I looked at the gun in my hanmd and felt the power running through my veins and my heart and mind...knowing I was changed forever and indelibly. My life of crime was notorious and bloody and violent...and I loved every second of it. I led a happy life...I killed and tortured...maimed...slaughtered...as I saw fit and for reasons I will keep to myself. I stole and I robbed. Every single law I have broken in one form or another.

I loved being pushed around by young man Pools....he always laughs when we hit the bump in front of the old folks home. My body acheing from old wounds and scars. He listens to my stories that I tell depending on which of my old wounds bother me at the time. You can just tell he enjoys them. And he was the only one at my graveside..that actually cared for me. He shed honest and loving tears for me. And I can tell my words bothered him...and my last glimmer of hope is that he chooses the door to the left. The only hope I have and the only thing that I'm am still on this plane for. Maybe he will not become me. Maybe he will break the cycle.

Mr. Pools