Excerpt
from "A Tale of Two Psyches"
Sid sat upright in his bed in a dramatic jerk,
his cheek-length hair falling in front of his face in parts
and sticking up in other areas. He looked around the room,
waiting for his invisible audience to acknowledge his despair.
Then, he looked to his window through which the sun was
reflecting off of tiny particles of dust floating in the
air. It was past 10 o’clock in the morning and the
sun had already reached a 60-degree angle in the sky, exuding
its warmness and forcing Sid to wake.
“Why does it have to be sunny today?!”
He forced out with his parched and grumbling voice. It had
been cloudy the last few days and the small college town
had experienced drizzling rain off and on. Today was Sid’s
day to stay in and perhaps get some studying done. If it
was sunny, he often thought, “I feel like I should
be doing something productive. If it’s raining, I
can just do nothing.”
He violently threw himself backward into his
pillow, causing more dust particles to join the others in
the sunbeam. As Sid’s eyes crept open, he could see
his ceiling. There was a small area in the corner of his
room on the ceiling and part of the wall that had slowly
been taken over by a colony of dark-green mold spores.
Sid sniffed, though he didn’t need to,
and thought of very old people. He thought of his grandmother
who was still living, but in serious pain. He thought of
how it might be nice to just let it all go. He didn’t
think about cleaning up the mold, but rather, the college
senior thought about letting it grow and letting it destroy
that part of the property he was renting for $275 a month.
The tired young man reached out for the strings
that controlled his blinds and released the holding mechanism.
The blinds came tumbling down. He groaned as he rolled over
and placed one foot on the ground while the rest of his
body remained in the bed. He cracked a smile as he let his
weight pull himself down off the bed and to the ground.
He landed with a thump and said, “OWWWE.” Sid
did not hurt himself, but he thought it would be fun to
pretend hurt.
Ruhe T. Gutes
Rural Montana
intellectualprop2002@yahoo.com
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