Baked Scribe Flashback : Walking Yesterday’s Roads
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Gregory sipped the wine and gazed out the window at the ocean raging below. They could hear the sound of the surf crashing against the cliff, a constant buzz underneath the conversation which had been ongoing, all night long.
“You remember the Christmas party? Emory asked, already laughing through a mouth full of dinner roll.
“Which one?” Leona asked, starting to giggle herself. “The one where he got into an argument about Faulkner with a seven year old? Or the one where he insisted that Peter, Paul and Mary were actually the leaders of a Satanic cult?”
Emory was now laughing so hard that his face had become close to the color of a tomato. He put a hand out on Gregory’s elbow to steady himself and catch his breath. “I forgot about the first one. No, this was the one where he got so off-his-ass drunk that he ended up stripping down and running out into the snow, insisting that he was going to find a twenty four hour nude bowling alley.”
“I remember how it took us over an hour to find him,” Gregory said as he swirled the wine around in his glass. “I had to drive him to the hospital myself, he almost lost half of his toes because of that.”
“He was the only one, you know?” Leona said. “He was the only one who realized what was happening the second those ships dropped down out of the clouds.” Her voice hitched and her eyes were starting to glisten from the tears. The others didn’t voice what she was clearly hinting at. Of all of Stanford’s friends, she had been the most vocal in ridiculing him for what they had all seen as crazy ravings and paranoid fantasy.
The whole planet had been taken in when the ships arrived. When the communications from their leaders had been broadcast out over the globe, everyone had believed them in their benevolent intentions. It had all been a smokescreen of course but no one had seen through it.
None of them, save for Stanford.
Towards the end, he had been harder to get in touch with as he progressively fell further of the grid. They never knew for sure if he had gotten involved with the terrorist groups who had tried to rise up against the visitors. They didn’t know and didn’t go out of their way to find out, even though they all suspected that it was true. When the warrant for his arrest had been handed down, they had disassociated themselves with him, claiming ignorance to the authorities but also cutting off their friend for good. Gregory had tried to tell himself that this was just as much for his protection as theirs.
Stanford’s body had been found a week later.
Even this, they had written off as just a close friend meeting the end which he had likely brought upon himself with his own actions and poor decisions. If Stanford had been there, he would have been raving about how the visitors were likely behind the killing, about the folly of still referring to them as “visitors”, even though they were clearly here to stay.
Their only saving grace that evening was that the dead couldn’t say, “I told you so.”
They did it for him anyway, punishing themselves with their memories, flogging themselves with the guilt that they all felt but never actually vocalized to each other.
“We couldn’t have done anything,” Leona said, half as a question, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else.
“Nothing we could have done.” Gregory echoed the sentiment as he lifted his glass for another sip. They toasted each other, ensconced in their own seeming confidence that the statement was true. The wine went down smoothly, the scent and the tannins obscuring what they were actually ingesting.
Society was on the brink. Security forces had descended down from the ships and were now corralling the citizens of Earth, crowding them into camps and jails. There had even been some public executions.
Stanford would have been the one to push for action, the scream for the need to do something, anything other than the pathetic self-doubt and fear which they now hid behind.
Tonight wasn’t about dwelling on their own depression though. It was about looking back, seeking, through their reflections, a way to make their final moments as pleasant as possible. This should have been a celebration, not a reason for despair.
“I miss the trips out to the bluffs,” Gregory said, “We used to take the kids out there every summer.” His family was gone now, caught in the rubble underneath the school which had been bombarded for being a suspected safe house for insurgents. He should have been there as well for a teacher conference, but had been running late and his life had been spared by mere minutes.
“Tuesday nights,” Leona said. “Sid and I … it was the only night we actually had together…” She trailed off. Sid had been killed in one of the worker’s riots, quickly put down with violent precision.
“I’m going to miss the three of you,” Emory said, including Stanford, despite his absence.
“I just don’t understand how things could have gone this far,” Leona said. “Why didn’t anyone see anything sooner?”
It was a moot point. There weren’t any answers to be found anymore and even if there were, they had chosen the path to take and it was too late to turn back. Leona swirled the wine in her glass and took a long drink, as if willing the effects to come on faster.
“I’m surprised I can’t taste it,” she said.
“No reason why you…” Emory trailed off as his mouth slipped open, as if on a hinge. He swiped away the drool that was starting to form with the back of his hand and shook his head. “Is this…” He wasn’t able to finish the sentence and his head nodded down slightly, as if he was falling asleep.
Leona was crying now and reached out to take hold of Emory’s hand. Gregory took hold of the other, gripping it tightly, thinking that there might have been a response to the touch but it was hard to know for sure. It was getting difficult to see or hear clearly. He blinked and jerked his head up. Leona was laying her head down on the table, reaching out for his hand.
All he could think about was how dry his mouth felt as he began inching his hand towards hers. His field of vision was beginning to narrow down to a fine point. He felt like he was looking up from the bottom of a deep well. In the depths of his awareness, he felt the touch of Leona’s finger against his, already cold. He slipped away, escaping the horrors of their future, wrapped in the memory of his past and the faces of his wife and children. Taking one last, short breath, he allowed his eyes to droop shut one last time.
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