Almost Over

July 20, 2012 at 4:59 pm · Filed under Bad Stuff, Dark Side, Politics, Random Thoughts, Some truth to it, Stories ·Tagged Almost Over, Charles L. Mashburn, http://kellieelmore.com/2012/07/20/fwf-free-write-friday-pixar-prompt/, starting over, story, the end of things as we know it, writer

Kellie’s Free Write Friday this week was another one that made me think. I hate it when she does that! But I came up with a little something. It’s heavy—for me, anyway—but then, it’s a heavy kind of day.

Almost Over

Once upon a time there was a good man, who hadn’t always been good, but he’d always had some good in him, and the good seemed to grow larger as he grew older.

Every day, he’d write good things and share them with anyone who cared to read them. He wasn’t trying to change the world or anything, he just wanted to give people hope in a world that was changing rapidly, and not changing for the good; or so it seemed to him. He didn’t care if people read the things he wrote, but he thought they would feel better about things if they did.

One day, he realized he was spinning his wheels; not spinning his wheels like when a pickup gets stuck in the sand, but like when a race car is spinning its tires on the asphalt, and smoke is billowing into the air, and there’s no one there to watch. There was just a lot of smoke, noise and the smell of something burning, which he thought might be the world around him. And around him, he thought, the world was surely on fire.

Because of that feeling, he thought maybe he shouldn’t write anymore, but then, he thought he probably shouldn’t write any less either. He knew his words meant something to somebody, even though he couldn’t be sure who. But he had a sure feeling that because of the things he wrote and shared, someday the winds of hope would come up and blow the smoke and smell away. Maybe a gentle, cleansing rain would fall too, and the sound of it spattering on the asphalt would drown out the bad sounds. He hoped maybe if he kept writing good things, things would get good.

Because of that hope, he went on writing the good things about hope. Writing was his job he figured, so he figured writing was what he should do if he was going to do what he should.

Until finally, he realized none of it mattered, and what little did matter, mattered very little when you finally realized it. The crows were circling when he realized this, and he realized they were circling because he’d realized it was almost over. Not over, like the end of it all, but the end like this was all of this part of things, and the world would be starting over from scratch soon.

 

Kellie’s prompt:

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