Blank Pages

His parents old cuckoo clock chimed its ridiculous song. It had hung there since they closed the estate all those years ago, chiming away every hour on the hour.

Five PM. There was something fitting about that—a cruel twist of irony that Tolkien or any other writers collecting dust on his nightstand could make a profound observation on. For him, it marked a division, a separation, like stepping out of his dreadful old office and back into the real world.

Yeah, it was precisely that. He was stepping across the threshold of his old life and into an entirely new one. There was something religious in that, though he had never had much time for thoughts of the Almighty. Another thing those dusty authors likely had a comment on.

He clenched the envelope in his hands, fresh from the mailbox and tattooed with letters that some marketing major had designed to be clean and professional but also hip. Despite everything, he could not help smiling at the notion of some wide-eyed intern pitching the idea to an administrative board while in jeans and a logo t-shirt, using words like “synergy” and “disruption” to a room of stuffy suits and mahogany.

The humor left as quickly as it came. A single breath of hope, if even that, leaving nothing but the crushing weight of the envelope in his hands. In some ways, it was the same as holding his kids when they breathed their first breaths. He could understand yet never articulate how such tiny things could carry a density Einstein could only dream of.

He dug a finger under the adhesive and tore it.

The papers slid to the ground, face down.

He stooped down and grabbed them, noticing for the first time how much his hands trembled. How many sleepless nights had he spent thinking through this exact scenario? A hundred? A thousand? It had seemed constant since that single, all-encompassing, and crushing word entered his life.

How would the kids do without him?

How would she?

Would she move on?

Had she already?

Was this all a curse?

What did he do to deserve this?

Sure, had he been perfect? No. Who could be?

A new thought grasped him. He could just…not look. Throw these cursed papers in the trash and let come what may.

Foolish, stupid. Childish really. That would solve nothing, and he was not a child anymore.

But damn, what he would give to have his biggest problem be getting the wrong toy in his Happy Meal.

He readied himself despite the shaking in his hands. He would look, and then attack whatever came next head-on. He’d be better. If it were better news than he expected, even if it was not great news, he’d be better—time to face it like a man.

And that was the worst part: even if the news was good, news better than even his most optimistic dreams could conjure, he would be…changed. The afterbirth of stepping into this new reality, he knew, would be immune to washing.

An hour seemed to pass as he stared at the blank white page in his hands. Shit, for all he knew, it could have been a decade. At this point, had this not already taken a decade from him?

He looked at the old cuckoo clock. It was funny; he had never missed his parents like he did right now. As the adage said, you never really knew what you had till it was gone, or at least maybe about to be gone.

The minute hand of the old cuckoo clock slid over to a minute past five.

He turned the papers over.

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A/N:

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