Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

30

The Recluse

Longing drove him out of the house for the first time in ... well, he couldn't remember. He lived alone, stayed home, had made arrangements for the groceries to be delivered and for the kid across the street to take out the trash and cut the grass.

Books, radio, and painting filled his days for many ... well, a long time. The windows in his upstairs garret afforded the best view for his palette, and whenever he was so inclined, he could listen to the radio to find out what was happening outside. At first that was all he needed.

Although he knew the current date, that didn't help him calculate the duration of his solitude. He'd forgot when it started, when he'd withdrawn. However long it had been going on, his isolation had become suffocating.

Behind the panes of glass and distanced by static radio broadcasts, he needed out of his aloneness. To see the trees again, the houses and people, up close. To smell flowers and perfume and even the paper mill. To feel the warmth of the sun and the embrace of the wind. To touch the sturdy metallic body of a car and the flesh of someone's hand.

He might've chosen to go out in broad daylight, but he had reserva-tions — mostly fears. Too much too soon. The risk of failure and a devastating return to seclusion warranted a deliberate and gradual re-encounter. And so he ventured out in the middle of the night, in the middle of a great storm when he knew no one else would be about.

The cold rain and the gusting wind made themselves familiar right away. And the violent thunderclaps and jagged lightning bolts made 31

their re-acquaintance no less forcefully. Everything he'd come out to see and feel and breathe was overwhelmed by the storm, and he fled, back to the safety of his rooms.

He convinced himself that he hadn't failed, and in the following days, he debated whether to stick with the original plan of easing back into the world or pluck up the courage and jump in and swim in the fullness of experience that had grown so remote. He chose the latter.

The day he chose was bright and sunny and very warm, so he knew it would be busy, especially since it was near the noon hour.

His house, set back from the road a bit, gave him a chance to take everything in slowly as he made his way down the stone path from the porch to the sidewalk.

A large pine had come down during the storm. Thankfully, the neighbor's fences were intact. They could be difficult — the neighbors, that is. A crotchety, old skinflint with the lungs of a mezzo soprano on one side and a snooty young couple, the woman with a DAR-birthright, on the other. Picking through the splintered and sappy debris of the old tree that had warned of its demise for years, he reached the front gate.

Out on the sidewalk, he turned and headed down toward Main Street. The clapboard-sided Catholic Church hadn't changed — still a couple of vacancies in the cemetery. The fire station was still dwarfed by the hideous drum-studded cell tower.

He smiled at two teenage girls walking in the opposite direction.

The smiled back shyly, but once they'd passed they giggled loudly.

If he wasn't mistaken, one was the pharmacist's daughter. The other? Looked like she belonged to that house down the street where there were always so many cars.