Life's Unknown

He sat with his back to the sun, its rays shining through the southward facing windows. He wasn’t precisely basking; the sun wasn’t strong enough for that today. It was more sun than he had seen in a good number of weeks though. That was the problem with this part of the country; the sun seldom shone for weeks at a time, with nothing but rainfall and more rainfall. So the sun was a welcome change from the monotonous overcast that had been clouding his mood without him realizing it. Not that he was exactly cheery in the sun. In his mind, he had abandoned emotions like cheery as altogether childish. But the sun was a welcome change. 

He thought about many things. He was in that time in his life where he felt he had to make all the right decisions and make them now, otherwise his life would be irretrievably wasted. It wasn't for lack of options or dreams about his future that he worried over such things. He could imagine his life taking many different paths from where he currently was, some of them extravagant, some of them easy. All of them unknown. He always tried his hardest to look at the future as something other than this amorphous beast, waiting to lure him in and pounce. No, that's a little too extreme. He didn't view the future as something so hostile. He didn't believe the future gave any sort of a damn about him. He just wished it could be a little more forthcoming. 

Taking another sip of his coffee - he was in a coffee shop this day - he couldn't help but smiling a little as he watched the couple at the next table over. An elderly couple. It was as though they were sitting there, denying him his pessimism. Laughing in the face of his uncertainty. Here were people who had lived their lives. They had seen what they would and what they could. Perhaps they had regrets. Perhaps not. But their lives had gone on. They sat there now, in this same coffee shop as him, but for them it was a fundamentally different coffee shop. For him, it was a place where he wasn't sure why exactly he was there. He wasn't sure why he was anywhere, for that matter. It seemed to him that there was no good reason for him to be doing anything, but he made himself go and do things nonetheless. So here he was. 

For the elderly couple, it was an escape. They had wanted to come out somewhere lively. Perhaps by surrounding themselves with other, younger people, they felt a little more of their vitality. By seeing people with their lives ahead of them, they could feel a little more content with where their lives had taken them. The kindly old man, sitting with his wife, felt the loss of his life more acutely, it seemed, as time went on. He had seen wars. He had lived through peace, or what you might call peace. The current war was to him altogether a different matter. It had nothing of the feeling of war. It wasn't a battle that could be faced with guns. There was no clear enemy. Much like his current battle. The old man had prostate cancer, which to him was nothing that great. Disease was never like an enemy. It was, after all, a part of you. His body had apparently had enough of him, and was doing what it wanted now. He couldn't stop it any more than he could stop war. At least in war he could shoot his enemy. 

The man's wife smiled patiently as her husband got up to use the restroom. He had that slow deliberateness about him that came about with age. Or perhaps it was disease. Or was there a difference? She had lived with him for a great long time now. She knew the man, she felt, just as she knew herself. His pain was hers. His joy hers as well. Not that there was much joy anymore, except in seeing their children and their children's children. There was joy in life, if not their own. People came and went, and lives always came again. That was how life worked, at least for the gentle old woman. Her husband had wanted to come out this day, and it seemed a good idea to her. She knew it did no good to stay where they were every day. She felt the weight of their time together. Even with how long they had been together, there was nothing she wanted more than more time. 

The young man had watched the old man get up as well. To him, the deliberate nature of the man's movements were something beautiful. Or perhaps beauty wasn't the right word. To him, the man's movements spoke of life, even if they were the consequence of age. The old man had lived a life that left him needing to move carefully. The movements bespoke a use of his body. Like a well worn book, that you know had seen the touch of many hands, or the familiar creak of a door that you frequently used. While you mourned the wear, you also admired the life that the wear spoke of. The young man shivered, noticing that the sun had gone again. The usual overcast returned, threatening rain. 

The coffee shop was a very lively place, after all. Decorated for the season, it shone with tiny lights, lining the room. Five days off from the culmination of the holidays, there were many a diverse people in the place. People visiting and getting out to see the city. This shop happened to be on a street iconic to the city, with tiny shops and pedestrians that outnumbered automobiles. The street ran east to west, shining with the wet that the sudden deluge brought. Huddling against the cold rain, people started gathering into the shops to escape the wet, adding to the warmth and noise within the shops. Smiling and laughing and cursing and dripping, they went inside and forgot the rain while they could.

Coming out of the restroom, the tired old man made his way back to where his wife was waiting for him. He noticed the young man sitting at the table, and the people entering the shop to get out of the rain. He couldn't remember it raining when he got up from his table, but that was the nature of the weather around these parts. Sunny and then at once cold and raining and wet. Perhaps it was because of his slowness that he was still standing even when he reached his table and he noticed a man altogether different enter the little coffee shop. Huddled but not exactly hurried, the man walked in behind all the other people entering the shop. It wasn't exactly any one thing that stood out, but the old man couldn't help but feel the man who just entered was suspect in some way. 

Perhaps it was because the young man was sitting with his back to the windows and the door that he didn't see the man enter, couldn't see as the man reached into his coat and pulled out a gun. The old man saw, and before he even knew what was happening, he was moving for the young boy sitting at the next table over. It was a spryness the man hadn't felt in years, movement born of pure reflex. He knew all at once what was happening, and moved before he had thought. The old woman didn't know what was happening either. Sitting in the same orientation as the young man at the next table over, all she saw was her husband looking passed her and seeing what she didn't. Before she could register what she saw as terror on her husbands face, he was moving, diving really, toward the young man next to her. It was then that the first gunshot ripped through the air. Deafening, it took the woman some time before she thought to huddle down and cover her head. The young man had no indication of the events about to transpire except that suddenly the old man was rushing to him, as a sound louder than any he had ever heard slammed into his head, blanking his mind. He couldn't understand what was happening, but the old man was on top of him, covering him, saying "I've got you. I've got you."

It all happened so fast, and so slowly at the same time. "12 people died that day, several others severely wounded." No one expected it. How could it be expected? A man who, for his own reasons, feels to take the lives of those he doesn't know, fighting a war that no one was aware they were fighting. Regardless of what those people had done with their lives, or what they were going to do with their lives, it made no difference to the bullets that entered them. To the man who shot those bullets. It was all unfair and unknown. No one can really know the life or thoughts of another. They can only live as they do.

Reviews

[Jake]

I read this and wonder how so much meaning can be packed into so small a work. Truly astounding how you created so salient a tale in so few words. Nevertheless, I noticed several things I would like to point out.
You mention that the man is huddled, but not hurried. How are these things correlated?
"A slow deliberation that came about with age." The 'about' appears superfluous.
"Tiny lights, lining the room." I do not think the comma is necessary.
Overall, a well-written story. Its shortness helps it to drive its point home. You do good work, Brandon. Keep it up. And thanks for the reviews on Chasing Ghosts.

[Philip Muls]

Very well written. You really bring us into the minds of the older couple. The will to live but also to feel young again. And then the unexpected twist. I feel it is really two stories and maybe they need to be intertwined a bit earlier, just my feeling. i would appreciate it if you could review mine.

[DayDreamer]

This is amazing, wonderfully written and I love how even though it's written in third person you can still connect with how the characters are feeling and what they're thinking... Some character depth would be good but having said that, it is only a short story so it might not be necessary.
The ending is good but I agree that it could have a bit more to it, maybe more description?

Thanks for reviewing London Dream by the way :)

[J.Michele]

Wow, I am speechless! An exceptional read and you are very talented. I loved it so much :) Keep writing!!

[Brandon Forry]

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words :) I'm also glad that you liked it. I certainly plan to continue writing.

[Robert Parlange]

Welcome to WritersCafe.

Try this for the first sentence:
He sat with his back to the sun, its rays shining through the southward facing windows.

A sign of the times, I suppose, but there seems to be a lot of mass shooting stories on this site. I can understand why it is in young people's psyche. We had the Nam.

A shame really. One horror for another.

Keep writing. You are very talented.

[Brandon Forry]

Thanks for the welcome.

I don't know if anything else I put on this site will be as morbid or sad in theme. This is just something I needed to get out, and I wanted to share it as well. It seems hard to reconcile the idea of war with the shootings that are going on right now, but that seems to be the way of it. It's something so far removed from our daily lives, but it's there all the time in the news and it does affect people, some in the worst way. It's all different, but it's all the same. I like how you put it, "One horror for another."

Also, I agree with you on the first sentence. In reading it a few times again, I was wanting to change it, so I think I will. To any reading after this review, this has been revised.

[Robert Parlange]

Don't worry about being morbid. I tend to dwell on the dark side of life. I paint what I see.

[Brandon Forry]

Yeah, I admire that, and it's something I think I've been reluctant to do. Maybe even afraid to do. Writing this story was different for me. I'm learning not to worry about what I write or how sounds. I'll write what I do, and there will be people who like it people who don't. Anyway, thanks Robert.

[Robert Parlange]

A long time ago, a good friend told me that once I started writing there will always be people who "Just won't get it." Don't worry about them. Write what you feel; not what you know.

[Brandon Forry]

I think I could use a good dose of that. I'll have to digest those words for a bit.

[Brandon Forry]

I don't know how weird it is to be the first to review my own work, but I suppose I might as well. Let it first be said: I don't like the ending. I feel it's a bit botched. I leave loose ends on purpose, but still don't know if that's what I wanted to do, or if I'm just taking the easy way out of writing about death. I think the ending could be more well rounded, at least with some sense of whether or not certain people lived or died. I also think I could have wrapped it up in a much more poignant way. Like I said, it just feels botched, even to my own ears. Maybe I'll change it (and if I do, I'll make note of that).

I also want to say that I've been reading altogether too much Hemingway of late, which has greatly influenced the style and delivery of this story. I, for one, like the characters, but also feel they could have had more happen to them than only what transpires in the span of this story. I know one of my shortcomings is character development, which is why I wanted to try the genre of short-story (and hence the reading of Hemingway) but still feel there is something to be desired from the 4 characters of this story. I don't know if I want to say more about them or not.