A stutter-step style second guess and he’s back on track. Questioning things leaves him exhausted. But long walks on the brink of winter are calming and give him time to clear his head. One week more and the snow will fall, another week and the rain will come, then more snow. But on these nights in between, when the air rests a finger on the trigger and the grass stands at attention, the whole world holds its breath for fear of a change, afraid to shutter. And the slightest movement perpetrated by your moving feet, or even the fog from your mouth as it dissipates into the dark around you, is almost an offense. You can sense the piercing eyes of mother earth, and the silenced night birds as they spectate your journey and debate intervention. He saw a deer once. It barreled its way from behind a near brush in its startled state. The world had been so still that nature had forgotten its own existence. He had become a piece of that vast and ever expanding puzzle and had melded so seamlessly with the rest that they hadn’t realized he was there.

He was going to die. Sixteen years old and he was slated for expiration in less than a year. Cancer. He had woke a month earlier and saw the angel of death perched upon his bed post. Watching him with its tired and saddening eyes as he rose from rest. One warning. One sign. One step till the end. So many unfulfilled ambitions, undiscovered talents, hidden agendas. In an exhaustedly bored indifference it had informed him of his impending death. How little your life can mean when spoken in the words of angels. Nothing else can make you feel so trivial. There were no second chances or redecisions, no cures or escapes. It was the darkest stain of ink upon the unreachable pages of fate.

One dew-soaked morning he had tentatively climbed out of his window, and, hiding his skin from the biting cold in black cotton and fleece, he headed toward a better view of the rising sun. Hiking up the mountain, he witnessed the promise of birth in a robin’s egg. And the reminder of death in the decomposition of an unscavenged sparrow. He understood how unimportant his life would be. A passing. Standing at the peak he thought about the days he would miss. It was a new feeling of exasperated helplessness. He would never be given the opportunity to grow old. A life without a chance to procreate. Ten months is not long enough to have epiphanies and reach maturity.

Taking a deep breath of that chilled damp mountain air, he let it back out in a volumous display of his anguish. He screamed to the world that would soon cast him aside, at the people who would soon forget where he had stood and what he had said. He screamed until his lungs pushed their last contents through his throat and then he drew back another chestful of fresh air. Again he let it out in one long stream of angry sound.

His knees buckled and collapsed, his body fell. Hands and spine came to meet the ground as the sun rose to meet the sky. Tears streamed from his eyes, but he paid them no attention. Laying there, on that wet grass, with his eyes watering and his throat burning, he thought about the nights with the silent and motionless cold, the nights when he was the only thing that seemed alive. When it’s all over, he would be swallowed by the opening soil, his body would be eaten by the hungry insects, his blood would be drank by the parched roots of the trees, and he would finally be a seamless piece of that puzzle. And maybe in a decade his eyes would open and view the world that he left so long ago, and then he could be as a leaf caught in the wind, going wherever he is most needed. For his mother earth will tell him all he needs to know, and she will show him all he needs to see. And the deer will not run in fright when he is near. For he will be joined with them.

—

Asa Thomas Metcalfe was born and raised in the small town of Proctor, VT. He has been writing short stories since the age of seven. His piece “Give Me a Name” was named Best Super-Short Fiction in 2008’s Litchfield’s Literary Review. He is currently studying English at the University of Maine at Machias.