Fading to Consequence
At one point in his life, he sat in the finest upholstered chairs. Stacks of paper, waiting for his signature, sat high enough to block his view of the door. The number of analysts and aids at his beck and call, too numerous to count, but now his old age accompanied him and nothing else. Now, he belonged to the tribe, one of the forgotten…
He walks down the street, he has lost his glasses. He only hopes that the crunch back in his meager hovel was some old cereal and not those very glasses. He could have never picked them up, even if his glasses had just been right there on the floor.
He has degenerative disc disease. A bad back, one that modern medical technology could very well fix. Tell that to the hospitals that keep turning him away. “It’s not profitable,” they keep saying.
He raises his hands and waves them as quickly and as frantically as a geriatric can manage, which is about as exciting as watching a worm crawl across the pavement after a rain storm. He even moves to stand in the way of all the people walking down this street.
No one makes eye contact with him; no one speaks to him; even when one of his waving arms threatens to smack them, they don’t even sigh in annoyance. It is as if he is already gone.
Here he is, after having once sat in the oval office. He wonders how he ended up in this terrible situation as he watched youths walking down the street with so many expensive gadgets. He wonders how he ended up this way when, around nine in the morning, the streets are swarmed with pricey suits driving fancy sports cars.
His mind is a shambles, but when he feels helpless, he thinks back to one moment. He thinks of a time when, with a wave of his pen, he murdered millions of the oldest Americans. Now he is one of the murdered. The forgotten. Written out of history at the moment of a broken back, a stroke, or many another type of debilitation that finally removes EVERY American from the workplace.
He cries to himself, not the tears rolling down the cheek type of crying. He cries so hard that his whole body shakes up and down with each new wave of pain and sadness.
After all this physical degradation, surviving only on handouts in the form of senior citizen discounts, and nearly losing his mind, he wonders what drove him to make the decisions he did.
Now collapsed to the ground, he looks up at the smog filled sky. The sky brings him a moment of clarity. He thinks to himself, “What if I could take it all back?”
His eye lids slowly descend. “What if, right now… I could blink, and when I open my eyes I’m there. There. In the Whitehouse. I could make the decisions again, the right way.”
His eyes close…
Darkness descends upon his reality…
“Mr. President, Mr. President. Proposition 187 is ready for you to sign into law…”
He smiles, and the vision of reality returns to him as he leaves that world of horror, forever.
He walks down the street, he has lost his glasses. He only hopes that the crunch back in his meager hovel was some old cereal and not those very glasses. He could have never picked them up, even if his glasses had just been right there on the floor.
He has degenerative disc disease. A bad back, one that modern medical technology could very well fix. Tell that to the hospitals that keep turning him away. “It’s not profitable,” they keep saying.
He raises his hands and waves them as quickly and as frantically as a geriatric can manage, which is about as exciting as watching a worm crawl across the pavement after a rain storm. He even moves to stand in the way of all the people walking down this street.
No one makes eye contact with him; no one speaks to him; even when one of his waving arms threatens to smack them, they don’t even sigh in annoyance. It is as if he is already gone.
Here he is, after having once sat in the oval office. He wonders how he ended up in this terrible situation as he watched youths walking down the street with so many expensive gadgets. He wonders how he ended up this way when, around nine in the morning, the streets are swarmed with pricey suits driving fancy sports cars.
His mind is a shambles, but when he feels helpless, he thinks back to one moment. He thinks of a time when, with a wave of his pen, he murdered millions of the oldest Americans. Now he is one of the murdered. The forgotten. Written out of history at the moment of a broken back, a stroke, or many another type of debilitation that finally removes EVERY American from the workplace.
He cries to himself, not the tears rolling down the cheek type of crying. He cries so hard that his whole body shakes up and down with each new wave of pain and sadness.
After all this physical degradation, surviving only on handouts in the form of senior citizen discounts, and nearly losing his mind, he wonders what drove him to make the decisions he did.
Now collapsed to the ground, he looks up at the smog filled sky. The sky brings him a moment of clarity. He thinks to himself, “What if I could take it all back?”
His eye lids slowly descend. “What if, right now… I could blink, and when I open my eyes I’m there. There. In the Whitehouse. I could make the decisions again, the right way.”
His eyes close…
Darkness descends upon his reality…
“Mr. President, Mr. President. Proposition 187 is ready for you to sign into law…”
He smiles, and the vision of reality returns to him as he leaves that world of horror, forever.
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