His daughter used to say his best pieces shimmered, shimmered like the pond behind their cabin under the moonlight. She’d dance out there, when it shimmered. She’d glide and twirl and spin under the gaze of the stars. “A show for the aliens,” she called it. A choreographed performance. A work of art.
She lived in the city now, with its trains and buses and denizens scurrying like rats when the lights turned green. There were no stars here at night – only smog. And grease. There was plenty of grease thickening the air from the fast food joints for all the scurrying rats. No time for artisan food. Only grease. Grease and oil to fuel the machine, to keep the gears turning as an old man found himself swept up in maw of the industrial behemoth.
The pen ejected out of his pocket and cracked open when it battered against the pavement. He reached for it, bloodied fingers stealing away from the hammered segment of his skull, but it was just out of reach. The tips of his nails barely scraped the oozing ink, pooling around the cap and slowly trickling into the crack of the sidewalk. His own dark red blood mingled with it, danced with it, writing his last symphony for no one but himself to hear.
Had the clouds parted, had he been in the countryside when this happened, the moon’s glow would have made the pool shimmer. And she would have danced. She would have twirled and spun to the music.
Scott Waldyn is a Writer, Social Miscreant, Gamer, Beer lover, Author, Managing Editor at Literary Orphans and occasionally Mr. Comedian to all the wrong people. He leads a quiet existence until his brain flares up and paints colors over a black and white reality.