Thread: My place of Proze and Doze...(comments welcome)

RE Boyo's Place of Prose and Doze - Drive By's Welcome Something I wrote many years ago, definitely influenced by too many Twilight Zone episodes. Cleaned up some text, but otherwise still about the same. ------- Shuffling his feet down the crowded sidewalk, eyes averting all those around him, there was nothing he wanted to see in anyone else. In all of them there was nothing but a reflection of something that he did not want to face. Not seeing the crowd that had gathered at the street corner, lights revolved and flashed in vivid reds and brilliant blues. A body lay in the street at the end of a car leaking trails of smoldering black rubber, the body unmoving under the plastic shroud a faint outline of chalk. Men in uniforms moved about, as he looked down at his feet again, where a penny rolled around the feet of so many others to stop at his foot. Reaching down picked up the bright, copper coin, clutching it in a tight fist as he was jostled about by others moving through the crowd with cameras and notebooks at the ready. Turning away unconcerned like so many others, laughing at it as another unlucky body lying in the street, he continued his march down the cold sidewalk to the address he had been hurrying to. Entering the building, the coin clutched in his hand as he stepped into the empty elevator, pushing the button to his floor. Entering his small unnoticed cubicle to begin another half-days work. Alone in his small island of privacy within the loud room, he flipped the coin in short gleaming arcs. It fell resoundingly into his wide palm, it looked strange against his flesh the glimmering coin dropping as a cold drop into his warm skin. It was different in some ethereal way, not like any other penny he had ever seen, taking another from his pocket looked at both and found the one from his pocket dull, almost lifeless. There was something about the shiny looking coin, as if some inner life had been breathed into it, which gave it a mark of distinction. A uniqueness that was not noticeable in the other one that lay lifeless in his hand. Placing the dead, lifeless coin in his pocket, kept the shiny one between his fingers where he felt it cold, almost calm against his skin. At each step he felt different. With each flip of the coin his attitude freshened, youth flowed again through his limbs, rejuvenating his soul. As if he was brought back from the dead to the living. Out of the corners of his eyes he noticed the others in the office eyeing him, as if in only a half hour lunch some significant change had come over him. They eyed him with something akin to envy, almost a new understanding or notice of him, like he had always dreamed everyone would of him someday. He would be the new thought in his friends lives instead of the casual acquaintance he had always turned out to be, or the victim of numerous blind dates gone bad on both ends. Now all would look at him and see his inner self, bright with new confidence and esteem. A dream come true for him, now no one would pick on him. While he flipped the coin in the air, before eyes that darted about to catch the stares of the others and slowly follow the spinning arc of the bright coin. Putting the coin in his pocket with one last look he was back to work with a fervor few had never known he possessed. It was a new beginning, one he had always wanted to take but had somehow never gotten around to finding. All afternoon the secretaries and others of his department came to him with his usual work but in a different way, they either stayed a little longer chatting about irrelevant things or had a look in their eyes. There was little he didn't notice then and as the afternoon wore on he became more acute to it all instead of deafened as was his norm. On the way back, the trains not as crowded when he stepped on them always finding a seat and when he felt like giving it up on the long ride there was a nice looking woman who would take it. They chatted easily, how he found the words he will never know but they came to his tongue like pearls of wisdom, the right words at the right time, and they all worked. He had two tentative dates before he returned to his meager apartment, which as he entered looked to be cleaner than when he had left, the dishes not as numerous or as dirty. Always he held his penny or kept it next to him, whether because of it or his new attitude he felt better than he could remember. Its life seeping into his own, the shine in the penny rubbing off on him. Dinner tasted better when he ordered out, so much for so little, he though as he sat on his bed looking at the penny hoping he could get the promotion that was up in his department. On his way to work met again one of the young women he had seen on his way home the day before. She invited him out after work, he who had never so much as been able to talk to another so easily was invited out. In high spirits the whole day met the young woman after work for dinner and drinks ending up at her place and spending most of the evening there. Hidden away from prying eyes in the bedroom. Leaving he flipped the coin on his way home walking through a neighborhood that he never would have dared at any other time, now he felt as if he could take on anyone. No one approached or challenged him as he whistled his way home not even afraid of the footsteps that he might have heard behind him and would have jumped at a few days ago. Whatever it was that he felt changed and challenged inside him kept up its flow for time, he rose promotion after promotion through the company meeting others who liked him as he was. One woman who he would never talked to before introduced herself and began settling herself with him until they were married, when they were he inherited some property from his out of touch brother. Moving there it was secluded and perfect for them to begin raising a family, the acres of land were far enough from town to be secluded and beautiful untouched by the hand of man and close enough to be secure. With the lucky penny always at his side its face was slightly worn from his constant rubbing of it, but its face still stood out after all these years. Standing on his porch one day staring off into the trees thinking he had seen something, knowing he didn't, taking a few deep breaths of the fresher air. Behind him a hand fell softly on his shoulder, he knew her intimate touch and taking her hand in his kissed her fingers. Are you happy love? How can you ask that? She answered surprised, you know I am. Turning to her with a smile he kissed her sweet lips and pushing back her long hair then kissed her earlobes, I was just curious... I'm pregnant, she simply interrupted him. Happy beyond words he reached down and kissed her hands again as she looked demure, he raised her chin and gave her the longest kiss ever given to her. How long the months of term passed by as he worked from the house always with her not wanting to leave her for a moment, driving into town to get her what she craved when he could. Before the time arrived he had a hint as to when it might happen, he had others but not as strong as this, packing her suitcase he was right and drove like a fiend to the hospital where she gave birth to twins. Boys who he treasure and loved with all his heart, on their birthday he sat them on his lap and as he rubbed his coin had them make birthday wishes, at times he made them come true and on rare occasions they simply did. When he had taken his sons to visit a relative of hers he had become bored and drove back into the city and back on the sidewalk where he had walked that fateful day where he had seen the aftermath. It was then that the penny had come to him of its own volition, had become his mindless rubbing piece, the face faint now and worn but still visible. Gleaming as it had when he first picked it up all those years ago, he held it before him as he drove and looking at it did not see until the last moment the car before him. Slamming a foot down on the brake pedal with a surge of fear and adrenaline running through him, settling uneasily in his stomach he stopped and stared open mouthed at the stupidity before him. Feeling smaller and turning off the street, the stopped car was gone, leaving in its wake a momentary terror and his empty parking space. With luckily an hour left on the meter, parking the car in the space he got out and walked back down the street. Buildings which had been tall when he was younger and working for the company as a featureless employee, a company he was now part owner of, those same buildings were now taller as he strained his neck in the darkening of the late afternoon. Feet followed aimlessly the pavement now smoother and more crowded with the trampling of numerous feet, unwittingly following backwards the very steps he had taken here years ago. Making his way through the tides of pedestrians down to the small deli, which was no longer there, where he had eaten lunch, a day that kept in his memory. It was change brought on by a simple penny on that afternoon that had brought him all he had, a penny's worth of wisdom had brought him a dollars worth of life. Clichs he had always been fond of, especially when dealing with pennies, which he used over and over again. A few times he had spoken of his obsession with his penny to his wife and she tittered in her loving way and kissing him on his forehead patting his shoulders and saying, whatever makes you happy. Older and wiser he felt it was but a symbolic gesture of the penny's effect on him, it had to have been a change inside him waiting to come forth. He could have consulted mystics and seers that dotted the alleyways and out of reach hovels in the city, but why bother he always said to himself. What I got I had brought to me from hard determination and nothing more, it was his answer to himself that built as he rubbed the penny. Returning down the street he flipped the coin between his hands and in low arcs from his palm always catching the shiny penny. Standing on the corner where he had found it rolling to his feet he stood once more and while he waited for the light to change and flipped his coin. As he did thoughts which had had brought themselves from his self's inner depths came and with one long toss he brought his hand away and the penny dropped. It bounced once at his foot as he stepped into the street its brilliant reflection in the corner of his eye as he stepped across the roadway to where he heard the scream. It was as if the scream came from behind him, turning his head saw the looks of terror on their scattered fear-ridden faces, hands going before them to shield themselves from what was going to happen. A loud and long sound echoed in his ears as he turned and the darkened object struck him with a sudden push that threw him hard into the street. There he watched the penny roll with a metallic shrug across his field of vision to disappear beyond, as a feeble arm reached for it while it rolled into the gathered crowd around him. Once more the white chalk marred the dark surface of tar, enclosed an inanimate body reaching outwards with limp fingers for something eternally beyond its reach. Somewhere beyond all things a boatman laughed to himself as a figure came to his boat without the simple and required fare of all souls who pass beyond life. A penny.