A Father's Worth © A.R.Curry
His eyes opened. Darkness riddled his vision, what little outlines he could make out were blurred by his tiredness and he found himself quickly engulfed, wrestling his fatigue—his anxiety. Yet nothing else agitated him; nothing forced his nerves to push back against his current state of pestilent exhaustion and so, growing content with the stillness of the dark, he let them flutter back shut. Let sleep re-inject itself. …Falling. Everyone he loves vanishing, vanishing into the swelling distance above. Black birds swooping, pecking, cawing all around. Swarming in a dizzying twister of rage, ripping at his cloths, at his flesh. Falling. Down, down. Darkness. Helplessness. Everyone he loves, gone. Black birds swooped them away. Pecked them apart. Cawed, without answer, at their leftover bones. All around, all around, they still cawed. Darkness…. When does the fall end? His eyes sprang back open, at once becoming blitzed by the rush of sudden obscurity. Yet he lay, uncertain of the offbeat awareness tugging at his now alert mind. Wind whistled long, drawn-out notes as it blew flakes of snow against the nearby window. He could feel the subtle vibrations of his wife's breathing as she basked in pleasant dreams and even hear the soft snore of their dog on the other side of her. All was outwardly well, bar for something else, something odd, displaced and hanging in the empty air as if the very darkness threatened to envelop his soul. He sensed an unusual, unsettling quietness. A silence that paradoxically made a distinguished noise of its own. He thought it seemed to penetrate those sounds, which to him, were amplifying with his growing cautiousness. The creak of ice freezing the façade of the small apartment; the deep roar of the furnace kicking in. Grasping the cross round his neck, he contemplated. What is it? What doesn't feel right? That feeling of someone watching, stalking, planning, dropped down on him as if he were at that moment being assaulted. In the darkness he heard a static, a rustling and a sigh, a yawn and a faint whimper of his dreaming baby boy through the monitor near the door. Each sound crackled with distinguished decibels. His ears having settled into a deer's exclusive audible frequency. Sitting straight, he tossed the blanket to the side leaping from the bed and blindly slapping at the darkness for his metal bat. The immediacy of a fear for his son's well-being had arisen. The darkness engulfed him further yet flickered dreamlike as if intruded itself by another shadow moving swiftly behind him. He spun, but saw nothing. Stillness had resumed. Wearisome, he abandoned finding the bat and took a deep breath; closing his eyes momentarily in preference of his own solitude. The air gave the impression of being heavy, smoky even, and he thrashed about within himself rather he was conscious or not. Stepping forward, indecisive to what was happening, he listened guardedly. Sleep still sat on his eyelids which had yet to properly adjust to the darkness but he saw and heard enough now to manage his way. The dog's tranquil snores faded off behind him as he stepped out into the hallway. Muffled squeaks beneath the carpet told of his progress and so he understood not to let his guard down, that the risk was too great. His son's room was only down the hall and an impetuous itch tugged at him to lunge towards it. Yet he refrained, not wanting to lure the intruder, if there were in fact one, exactly where he didn't want him to be. It took tremendous effort to collect himself, but thinking over and over of his family proved worthy. He steadied his advance and concentrated on defending what no one had the right to threaten. The floor still squeaked below and as he inched forward the melody of winter likewise sustained it's chiming against the apartment windows. He worried for his wife looking back to check while still shimmying ever-so quietly along the wall. God protect them , he thought and began a silent prayer. Visit
this house, I beg you, Lord, When he finished, a shadowed figure burst from his son's doorway bobbing back and forth like a buoy tormented by the ocean. A shockwave of sorts channeled down the hall knocking him against the wall and to the ground. The shadow, empty, soundless, but with an immense aggression followed close behind evading his wild grasp as it passed over him. Fear suddenly tore into his chest kicking and punching as he erupted back to his feet.. The short distance to his son's room stretched into a corridor of trepidation that ended with no comfort. The room sat empty, now vacated by the flickering shadow; and the crib sat emptier, with no son to cast a shadow. He turned and ran back into the relentlessly extending corridor, hearing his steps below pitter patting across the floor but feeling nothing. He felt as if he floated with adrenaline through the apartment until the plank came to an end and he plummeted horror-struck into a marsh. The front door sat wide open with the yellow lights from the apartment hallway casting in. He began to hear the excited chatter of approaching wings. Hundreds of pairs. The room commenced a merry-go-roundish spinning; around and around the couch and TV swirled, the pictures of happiness falling from focus and the ever swinging pendulum within their prized antique clock seemingly slowing to a listless stop. The vase of fake daffodil flowers, the scattered Fisher-Price toys, all around and around dizzying him with insanity. Images of black birds swooping, pecking, cawing all around riddled his mind. I've failed as a father, he thought, and a sickness tore into his stomach.
-Failed - And now they'll caw without answer at his bones. To his side moonlight shown in through the balcony door. He began sprinting towards it prior to thinking, the recollection of what it was hadn't occurred to his reasoning, fear propelled him, fatherhood propelled him. Sliding it open, with the metal on metal sounding like two knives sharpening, he leapt into the cold winter night, thrust his bare feet into the fluffy snow composed in its naturalistically ordained way on the balcony and blindly lunged himself off its metal railings. He crashed to the ground with a painful thud rolling into a parked car. But the hurting could wait; he had to catch the intruder. Had to . Not the police, not the neighborhood watch. HE had to. With a wild urgency, he scuttled on towards the door slipping in the snow. A mound of it huddled undisturbed at the outside base against the cold brick of the entryway. This pleased him, with it being the only way out and all, he thought it confirmation no one had come out yet. Then, that no one, appeared. Through the thick glass, a faint darkness came from the distance increasing in size as it approached. Like a burst blood vessel beneath a thin layer of skin, it broadened, growing in size like the very poison of doom. He imagined it as if a giant almost, wholly encapsulating the thick windowpane within the door. He braced himself for the shockwave that accompanied it up in his apartment and watched as its supernatural mass smashed open the heavy door swinging it on its hinges and pouring out a foggy darkness that crashed into him, misting off into a thousand swirls of nothingness and vanishing utterly, entirely, from sight. He didn't blink as the door swung back shut, as it clicked into place. Without his noticing, the thousand shards of glass somehow rewound into their previous condition within the window in an anti-cause and effect sort of way. His hands shook, his temples throbbed; his mouth hung baffled, staggered by what he had just seen. What he didn't see now. Deep, heavy breathes wanted to pour out but a fear contained them; held them somewhere in the vicinity of his chest where the bashing of his frightened heart continued to punish them for their weakness. A soft puzzled voice called down to him. “Anthony…Anthony?” It sounded miles away. He turned slowly and confused, still tormented by his sudden loss. A blurry figure of whiteness stood on the frozen balcony above. “Anthony?” It said again. “What in the world are you doing?” Flakes of snow fell ever so softly about it. The blurriness smoothened out and he saw that it was his wife. In her arms she held their baby boy, snuggled safely with tender love in a thick blanket at her bosom. His own warmth flowed, burst out tingling throughout his limbs as if he were himself wrapped cozily in a blanket... “I, I..” He started not knowing what to say. “You're what? Crazy? Did you really just jump off the balcony? It's 3 in the morning, just come back to bed.” “I'm sorry. I had a weird dream, I, I thought someone had…” A relief overcame him. “Sorry. I forgot something in the car; I got it though—coming right now.” He looked up at her. A tired groggy expression plastered to her face as she cradled their child in her arms. The messy hair and the bags beneath her hazel eyes meant nothing. Radiance shined through and he smiled. Aware of his heartbeat calming, releasing his breathing which also began to return to normal, he continued to gaze up at the two of them. “Well, come on, it's freezing out here.” She said as she turned back inside. He knew she wanted to ask more questions but was too tired and so he watched them go, knowing that things were ok. Abnormal as they were, he thought of them, ignoring the steady flakes of snow falling on his shirtless body, ignoring the numbness of his bare feet on the iced up stairs. Understanding that everything that had just happened was no more than a fatigued mind playing games on him in the middle of the night. And then his eyes twinkled. A smile rounded up his face and he crossed his arms and peered up at the night sky. He quivered a little as he starred at the enormous expanse of stars twinkling overhead. Something had occurred to him. He had chased death, or at least thought he had been, without fear of what could happen to him. He had been completely willing to place himself in harms way. This made him proud, this calmed him, reassured his fears that when the time came, he would do what was needed. A long cut from the fall burned a joyful sensation on his arm. It reminded him how he pushed the door to the side and jumped from a second story apartment without so much as looking. Crazy? Yes. Over the top? Absolutely. But, ah, he thought as a profound weight lifted, nevertheless, reassurance. The greatest reassurance of all. At that moment a new feeling manifested itself. A feeling of relief. Of a new man. A man who now knew without a
doubt, that he's worthy of being a father. |