Kin

by Kealan Patrick Burke

And if the ground didn't get you, the coyotes would, or Papa would see to you with his blade and carve the sin from your soul, the skin from your skull.

he felt like a shadow of himself, the sad result of a life only half-lived.

Everything is preplanned, a fact that might not upset humankind as much if they were let in on the secret, if they were offered tantalizing glimpses of what the future holds. But no such previews exist, and so man flails blindly through the dark, hoping to avoid the holes through which he has watched so many of his fellow man fall.

Those forgotten youths, bursting with love and high on the promises they intended to fulfill together, as one, forever and ever amen, smiled up at him, attempting to convince him that happiness did exist, while at the same time torturing him with the truth that he would never know it again.

Living is hard; Death is easy. And there are no answers on either side.

Despite the man's apparently flawless dress and perfectly manicured appearance, his socks didn't match. It seemed significant somehow, as if he was being shown the man's true nature, a glimpse behind the facade at the frightened and slowly crumbling creature that cowered behind the armor.