He had a head full of demons - and they always had questions. “WHY?” was the loudest. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he do that? Then came the endless parade of shoulda-coulda-wouldas. How and When appeared less often. The devil, he suspected, wasn’t nearly as interested in details as people liked to believe. Only if they served his twisted purpose. He’d noticed a behavior pattern emerging among his aging contemporaries. A desperate need to relive the same dreams they’d spent entire lifetimes chasing. They were all old men now, though some refused to accept it. Maybe they’d simply avoided the physical cruelties of time. Maybe they were more stubborn than he was. Or maybe they were too damned blind to see the world in front of them. His own relevance had risen, dwindled, and changed shape more times than he could count. Most days he just wanted a nap. Another cup of coffee usually sufficed. He didn’t miss the hangovers, though he occasionally missed the feeling that induced them - that ...
He'd been trapped in his house for five years. Not imprisoned exactly. No court had ordered it. No chains held him there. His own body had simply staged a quiet rebellion and won. A series of health problems had reduced his world to a few safe pathways through a three-bedroom house in a respectable neighborhood with a respectable yard. He had once traveled the world. He had stood on foreign streets where he could not read the signs or understand the language, and somehow had felt less lost there than he did now standing at the bottom of his own staircase. The stairs terrified him. They waited every morning like a dare. Go ahead, old man. Climb. One wrong step and they would finish what time had started. So his life became measured in reachable things. The bathroom. The kitchen. The chair beside the window. The distance from the couch to the front door on bad days. The slow geography of decline. His wife still worked. Still moved through the world with purpose. They loved each othe...