#onetakeseries

He was continually overwhelmed by how uncaring the cycle of life was, how seemingly aloof it was to the whole thing, the death and dying and babies being born and all that. Life didn’t care what anyone did. It was moving on whether we liked it or not. He took a long inhale on his cigarette and exhaled into the dusk air, its chill just making inroads into the evening. He never smoked before now. Couldn’t imagine it, really, back when he thought life paid attention to what it did. Preserving his lungs didn’t seem so important now, not with so much uncertainty ahead of him. So much unknown. That was it. The unknown. He had a past. Everyone did. But he faced a blank future. Maybe the others were lucky. He hadn’t moved all that much in the last year, maybe a state or two south when the weather looked more forgiving. Possessions were now almost completely utilitarian, useful in their totality. Or they were left behind. There was no other way. He once tried to keep a soccer ball with him. He even drew a face on it with a pencil he kept with him. A poor man’s Wilson. Tom Hanks would not be impressed. Neither would Jenna. He could at least smile at the image of trying to keep the face up each couple of days after the weather washed it away or smudged it out of existence. Futile. So he just left it back in Virginia. With everything else life wouldn’t let him have anymore. He saw fewer people each week, each month. He used to take stock in this in some perverse way, like some dark but necessary Darwinian fantasy that would propel him to survive long enough to start over somewhere else. He now wondered where that was. And if he would even care by the time he made it there. Florida, he heard. That was where he could go and start over. Funny how things hadn’t really changed that much after all.