David Rich
Stories (2)
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Ethereal Beauty
I tossed and turned as the clock’s glowing display somehow penetrated my closed eyelids, never letting me forget that time was the opponent in my attempt to sleep. I had gone upstate in an attempt to escape the everyday madness that was my everyday world; a reprieve from what I called my life. The nonstop voices, a constant disturbance of my sanity from vibrations and chimes that alerted me to conversations that came in flurries of unimportant attempts at humor and reactions built on one another, pulled at me, and stretched me from within, tight with unease. All of this and more had brought me to the bungalow, far from the bustle of my usual surroundings.
By David Rich4 years ago in Fiction
Bridge of Hope
He was 120 years and 104 days old, and in his third century, on the first day of August 2002, a Thursday. He was also the oldest living resident of San Francisco, sitting on a bench along the Embarcadero, the boulevard that ran along the bay, looking towards the bridge. His name, Benjamin Brooks. The bridge before him, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, his bridge, the bridge he had looked upon every day since its construction began in 1933 and had fallen in love with at its completion. When it was completed, a few years later, he celebrated. The Golden Gate Bridge, The Other Bridge, as he called it, opened six months later, and despite becoming world-renowned, the bridge before him, the Bay Bridge, he felt a connection to. He had worked near and eventually would come to live by its western half, the San Francisco side, for most of his life. The Other Bridge he rarely saw. On this day, he was out early, embracing the quiet. The break of dawn was his favorite time of day. Where he sat, his bench, also a favorite. The sun across the bay was just starting to peek over the East Bay hills, rising, its rays landing on his aged face, warming him with both the expectations and the potential of an undetermined new day. He had crossed the Embarcadero this early Sunday morning, after leaving his apartment in the nearby old Hills Brothers building, alone, with a walker and a paper bag in its basket containing his breakfast, a banana, a hard-boiled egg, and a small mug of hot coffee. Also, in the basket, an incredibly old and warned leather satchel. A satchel that represented who he had become shortly after the bridge’s completion.
By David Rich5 years ago in Humans
