|
Five Second Fantasies Scott William Carter
The morning he lost his mind, lost it for five seconds and got it back, Gregory Long waited in the Lexus for his wife and daughter outside their restored Victorian house. A light dusting of snow coated the ground, a rarity in Portland, and especially in November. He drummed his gloved fingers on the steering wheel in time to a Chopin piano solo. The windows had de-fogged except for a fringe of white. The snow might have caught many off guard, but not Gregory Long. He’d put the snow tires on the previous night when he heard the weather report. His preparedness was one of his few attributes he allowed himself to feel pride about--allowed, because the only attribute that exceeded his preparedness, in degree, was his utter mastery of his own mind. Yet, it was this discipline, his impeccable control, which allowed him to notice when that very control slipped. So many others would have slumped into the shadows of guilt and misery, blaming it all on fate or the roll of the dice. Not Gregory Long. At 7:35, his wife, Jenny, and sixteen year-old daughter, Anna, emerged from the house, a little late, but not uncommonly late for them. They walked briskly to the car. He remembered that his daughter nearly slipped on the sidewalk as she reached to tie the laces of her boots. "Sorry it took so long," Jenny said when she climbed inside, rubbing her hands together and blowing into them. "Anna lost her boots." "Well, I didn't lose them, per se," Anna said from the back seat. She had been adding ‘per se’ to about half her sentences lately. "I just briefly forgot where I put them." "Not a problem, not a problem," Gregory said. He said this often and meant it. After all, it was his company, a company that through its own growth and not through merger or buyouts, had become the third largest accounting firm in Oregon. If he was a little late because he had to drop off his wife to do a little early Christmas shopping, and his daughter to attend the Catholic high school they paid four hundred a month for her to attend, well, then, they could all wait. What would they say? They’d say nothing, just as he’d say nothing. It was his control, after all, which allowed him to ascend from lowliest beginnings: a high school drop-out who fired the big cannons in Nam and returned to America a listless alcoholic, unable to hold down a job for more than a few weeks, and haunted by nightmares of burning bamboo huts and rice paddies soaked with land mines. It was his control that allowed him to triumph over distractions and temptations, subjugating his fleeting desires, focusing everything so that he could achieve . . . top marks from Oregon State University and a degree in accounting . . . a beautiful and talented woman who said yes . . . owning his own firm. All of it came because he’d mastered his mind. But for five seconds on that rather typical Tuesday in November, on the corner of Broadway and Grand, when a city bus was approaching in the oncoming lane at more than thirty miles per hour, he lost that control. And it cost him everything . . .
Read the rest of the story online right
now for only $1.99. When you click the "Buy Now" button,
you'll be directed to PayPal. After completing your purchase, click "Return
to Merchant" on the last page and you'll be sent to another Web
page that contains the entire story. Or, if you prefer, you can buy
this story from my Amazon
e-store for the Kindle, iBook, or iPhone.
© Scott William Carter. Originally appeared in Surreal Magazine, October 2005. http://www.scottwilliamcarter.com |
