LIFE AND SEX AND DEATH

A lonely little analogy about everything and nothing

The old guy had reached his goal. It had taken him above seventy years to do it, but there he was.

He was on the precipice.

Right on it, teetering, the void in front of him.

Behind him lay the vineyard, mile after mile of vines that stretched back to the beginning. Some had luscious bunches of sweet grapes in clusters hanging from them. Other were in their infancy, waiting for another season or two. Yet others were withered and old.

A bit like him really. Withered and old.

And he had struggled through the vineyard on paths he didn’t really know for above seventy years.

Sometimes he had barely been aware of the clusters of grapes. He had forced his way along the paths that lay between the vines, purposelessness in every stride.

Other times he had seen them and smelled them, but left them untouched, until tomorrows that rarely came. He had walked past them. He was, after all, on his way to the precipice.

And he stood there, at last, old beyond the many years that old books said were allotted to man, and feeling it.

He looked down.

Down into the chasm.

Down into the untold depths.

Down beyond the range of his eyes where the distance blurred everything into a fog.

On an impulse he reached behind him, fingers searching for a bunch or two of grapes. Suddenly he needed them. Or even a solitary grape. Maybe even one wizened by winter frosts.

Just out of reach, his fingers clutched on fresh air as he fell forwards. He fell forwards and into the chasm. The bottomless, endless chasm. Into the fogs, grey then darker until they were solid black, and he knew no more.

His grasping fingers were empty.

Far, so far away, a baby cried and cooed, and started its journey through the vineyard.

Mewling, it saw the grapes.

They frightened it, like all fears do, like all loves do, like all life does. So it struggled through them, growing older, seventy odd years from the precipice and slowly moving forwards.

© Peter Rogerson, 27.02.17

Reviews

[emmajoy]

What a chilling story.. reminds me of Victorian drama, examples of how not to..

You're created a rough and wretched path through a life of meandering through everything: both straight and curved lines of harvest fine or fail..the ripe fruit, the discovery that life has its immense quandaries. Until that fall into horrific nothing makes room for the next in the queue to , repeat the process. Analogy indeed.. hope my words don't mar your exemplary style and content.