The Fifth Friday
The fifth Friday of the year meant nothing to anyone other than Dillon. He’d designated it as his right of passage day. He never assigned an actual date, other than the fifth Friday, and he never explained what event had happened or what he’d achieved on that momentous day.
Everyone who knew Dillon simply accepted that each year, on the fifth Friday, Dillon would be unavailable.
What constituted unavailability depended on who you were and what your relationship to Dillon was. In most cases, and to the average person, Dillon seemed to simply be non-existent on that day. It was almost as if there never had been a person named Dillon.
When his friends discussed the phenomenon of his sudden non-existence and equally sudden reappearance words like alien abduction, ectoplasmic dissolution and the fourth dimension always creeped into the conversation.
Once, one of Dillon’s friends suggested that, perhaps, Dillon wasn’t mortal, but rather an alien himself transplanted from his own planet to spy on the earthlings and once a year he’d have to return to make a report.
Another friend suggested that, since the disappearance on the fifth Friday began when they were all in high school, maybe Dillon had a relative who was mentoring him in some special way. That idea, obviously, was met with derision by the remainder of the group of friends.
But the relative idea seemed to stick. It was thought, in fact, that Dillon could possibly have a wealthy relative who required a day each year of family time to keep Dillon in the will.
Twelve years of fifth Friday disappearances had elapsed. On the thirteenth Dillon not only didn’t disappear, but he called each of his friends and asked them to meet him at the local bowling alley.
Not only was everyone shocked to hear Dillon’s voice on the phone, but the idea of meeting at a bowling alley seemed to everyone to surpass all levels of credulity.
They all did, however, assemble as a group as requested.
Upon arrival they discovered an empty bowling alley except for Dillon and one other person who seemed to be very young and very old at the same time.
Dillon asked all to take seats, but did not introduce the other person, who remained standing to the side of the alley as Dillon picked up a bowling ball and guided it along the path until it hit the pins in a perfect strike.
Everyone remained silent and watched as Dillon repeated the feat twenty-three consecutive times without pause.
As he prepared for the twenty-fourth time Dillon turned to the unknown person, they nodded to each other, then Dillon threw the ball down the lane.
All eyes were riveted on the ball as it repeated the perfect strike. Everyone was so focused that they noticed nothing else. But, once accomplished, Dillon turned to his friends and acknowledged their applause.
At that point there was a sudden, and unusual, sense that the other person was gone.
Everyone, but Dillon, looked around the now empty space that only minutes ago had been occupied.
Dillon joined his friends and accepted their congratulations, but offered neither explanations nor acknowledgements of any other person there that day.
In future years, on the fifth Friday of the year, Dillon always invited his friends to the bowling alley for a friendly game, but never disappeared again.
The End
4/16/19
www.brucelevine.com
A Perfect Sleep
“See the joy of getting up early,” she said, pointing to the clock. “It’s only eight-thirty…”
“There’s no joy in getting up early,” he answered, sarcastically. “Nine-thirty is normal, ten is better.”
She laughed because she knew he meant it. He never liked to get up earlier than ten o’clock if possible and only got up earlier when he had to. There was even a period that, for ten years, he had to get up at six and he did that, but only because he absolutely had to.
They were both night people. His idea of the perfect go to sleep time was between two and five a.m. He’d actually told her of a period that he’d slept from five a.m. until one p.m. every day and he loved it; he thought that was the only perfect sleeping period of his life.
She watched him working at his computer, struggling to keep the blood flowing through his veins at what he thought was an ungodly hour.
It wasn’t that she loved being up early, but she felt like she was getting so much more done when she did. And today she seemed to be doing that. She’d already finished most of her morning To Do checklist and was on to the next project.
They both had extensive To Do lists daily and they tried to get through everything, but usually ended up carrying things over to the next day. Not because of any lack of effort to complete the list, but because there never did seem to be enough time in one day to complete everything they wanted to do.
Maybe she’s right, he thought as he checked another thing off his list as done. Maybe he would finish everything today – it would be a first… Maybe getting up early was a good idea even though it wasn’t intentional, even today. Today their dog had awakened them earlier than usual. No particular reason it seemed.
He sipped his coffee and wondered if he should go back to bed for a little while. No, he decided, that would defeat the whole purpose of getting up with their dog and starting the day. He’d actually thought of going back earlier and resisted.
The clock chimed nine.
He sat, focusing on his To Do list. He wondered whether completing it was worth feeling his eyes heavy with the desire to be in bed, still sleeping. If he had allowed himself the perfect sleep he would be getting up in about a half hour anyway.
He picked up a pencil and started to write at the bottom of the list – SLEEP…
Now all he had to do was get through everything above that single word and then he could check off the final item for the day.
He’d gotten up early today and was getting a lot done and he was glad about that, but it was not a perfect sleep day.
Maybe tomorrow…
The End
4/16/19
www.brucelevine.com
A Second Chance
Once in a lifetime
If you’re lucky
You get a second chance
At love
How it happens
Why it happens
No one knows
But the powers up
Above
Life’s twists and turns
Run parallel in the universe
Fate and destiny hold hands
To bring loved ones together
Dearly departed team up
In Heaven
Guiding what appears
Happenstance
Improbable
Impossible
And yet volatile passions
Transcend eternity
Until the ultimate moment
Of consummation
A deep breath
Of longing
Brought together
Like lightning
Illuminating the sky
In a flash of brilliance
That will last forever
Towering over
Time and space
No longer a momentary
Ember
But
Transformed into a glowing
Fireball that consumes
Every fiber of the
Lover’s beings
Granting them love
And happiness
And an ending that will last
Forever
http://www.leaves-of-ink.com/2019/04/a-second-chance.html
www.brucelevine.co
The Note
The note was sent. The date was set.
Jamie felt that she would be betraying everyone. She’d always been the popular one, the one everybody turned to in good times and bad times, as the saying went. She felt that she had to go, even though her heart wasn’t in it.
What kept her from simply going? Was it, she wondered, that if she went she’d, in some way, be betraying herself? And Jamie had a very strong sense of self. She knew who she was and liked herself, had always liked herself.
Even as a young child, when she seemed different from the other kids, Jamie went about things with a confidence that the other children seemed to lack. But that confidence didn’t manifest itself in negative ways as it might have, but positive in all directions. Alone or with other kids Jamie seemed to be happy – content when alone by herself and happy to join in with others, especially as she, for whatever reason, was usually the center of attention.
It wasn’t that Jamie didn’t enjoy being the center of attention either, she certainly did, but she didn’t need it. She simply accepted that there was a certain magnetism to her personality, or whatever it was, and everyone gathered around her.
Now she had the dilemma of choosing. All of that was far behind her and her life had moved on in so many ways. She still had the same personal attributes that put her in the same position whenever and wherever she went, but going back, as she saw it, might not be as happy for her as it would be, she knew, for everyone else.
She read and re-read the note repeatedly. The date was set. If she procrastinated much longer the choice would be removed, it would be too late.
She looked out the window at the clouds rapidly floating across the horizon, as if they would tell her what to do. They played with her fantasy of ideas, somehow forming patterns that she imagined were scenes being played out both ways. She watched and then saw a group of clouds bunching together with one in the center. Was that her and everyone she’d known gathered around, she wondered? Was it a sign? And if so, was it a good or bad one?
Jamie sat and watched the clouds for several more minutes before putting the RSVP to her high school reunion in the return envelope with the declined box checked.
Like the clouds, Jamie now felt free of any fetters, free to choose her life’s path and going back or looking back could only be exactly that, going back.
She sealed the envelope, put a stamp on it and set it aside to take to the outgoing mail box.
Jamie was happy.
The End
4/15/19
www.brucelevine.com
Fiction?
Jason picked up his pencil for probably the hundredth time that day and put it back down every time. It wasn’t a case of writer’s block because each time he picked up his pencil he wrote something; it was that nothing he wrote really interested him.
Each idea seemed exciting until he put the first few paragraphs on paper and then it seemed to fizzle out. Nothing he wrote wanted to go beyond those first few paragraphs.
Jason never knew how he wrote or where the ideas came from. It was, he often said, simply that he wrote whatever fell out of his pencil – literally, as he wrote everything long-hand with a mechanical pencil using soft lead.
He also had said that his characters would push him around and that it was as if they were living the story and he simply took it all down like dictation.
Today though, it seemed like everyone had moved away and Jason felt as if he was living on a deserted island. He looked out the window to reassure himself that he was still living in the same place and had not been transported by one of his characters who had actually come to life.
Normally he wouldn’t have worried about a day or two without writing, but this new manifestation put a new perspective on things. Was he becoming one of his characters? Had they taken over his life to the point that he no longer existed as the human entity he always thought he knew? Or was he too a fictional creation creating more fictional creations?
If any of this were true then who was the ultimate creator?
Jason spent the remainder of the day absorbed by the question. He didn’t eat or drink, but remained transfixed. He had to know the answer, but couldn’t figure a way to prove anything and every probe remained a transitory illusion.
As the clock chimed midnight he wondered if he, like Cinderella, would revert into some other form of being, like the horses returning to being mice.
Perhaps that was all there was, he thought, as he decided to give up and go to bed. Tomorrow was another day.
Jason’s last thought as he fell asleep was that, if he awoke in the morning as himself he’d try to write down his experience. And if not, he wouldn’t have to worry about it.
The End
4/14/19
www.brucelevine.com
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