Are we all different versions of Job? I thought the wages of sin were death, but from where I'm sitting, it looks like we're the wagers and sin is how we make our wages, with death inevitable no matter how we live.

I've done a decent job with the Commandments, not because You said so, but because it's what decent folk do.

I’ve noticed the fastest way to get decent folk to behave indecently is invoke Your Name.

So tell me, am I Abraham or Isaac, because I'd rather be the one holding the knife if I have a choice.

The man chain smoked on the park bench several yards from where I'd settled. He looked over at me as I played fetch with his little French Bulldog for about an hour. I had no business in the dog park, really, being in town without a dog.

I just went out for a walk. The hotel had grown too small and the world outside just a little too large; the relative quiet of the Tribeca park was a nice compromise between New York City and me. The fact that it was a dog park was a happy accident. No one seemed to mind me being there, quietly petting or playing with the furry visitors as they came by to pay respects.

This man's dog, though. She was different. She took a shine to me as soon as I shut the iron gate and sat on an empty bench. She was a stout little thing, fifteen pounds of muscle in a seven pound frame. The little critter actually reminded me of the cartoon bulldog from Tom & Jerry in shape if not size. Her front legs were like oversized arms on a bodybuilder, with her rear legs like that same bodybuilder who ignored leg days. She snuffled at me and dropped a ball at my feet.

I looked up at her owner, and he gave a tiny nod. Permission granted to play, from behind a veil of tobacco smoke. I grinned, and tossed the ball across the park and the feisty little bulldog fetched. This went on for the better part of an hour, not a word was spoken, and I lost count of how many times the flare of a Zippo caught my eye.

Finally, flicking away his last butt, the man slid to the end of his bench and turned towards me. He stood, straightening a tan trenchcoat that fell from his shoulders like it'd hung there for years. Watching us continue to play fetch, he spoke in what I immediately clocked as a British accent. I'm terrible with identifying them beyond "British," it could have been somewhere in London or the countryside, I don't know.

"That ain't my dog, bruv," he said. I was surprised to see a new unlit cigarette between his pointing fingers. "Nope. I'm just watchin' 'er for a bit. Thank you for playin' with the thing. Saved me the trouble."

I smiled. "It's been fun. A nice distraction from...everything." I tried to keep melancholy out of my voice, but it always has a way of creeping in around all the edges.

"Mate. It ain't my business, but what brings you to the city?"

"Family stuff." I wasn't going to tell this stranger that back in my hotel room were ashes to be spread at places in the city that meant a lot to someone I cared about.

He nodded, not comprehending, but understanding. I gave him a weak smile as thanks for his refusal to press the issue.

"You notice how that little mutt keeps droppin' the ball just out of your reach every other time she fetches?" I had noticed, in fact. We'd established a pattern: after about four throws, she'd break in the shade, lying with her legs splayed so her belly would rest on the cold autumn concrete. I was comfortable in the crisp air, but several people around us were wearing sweaters or coats. The little Frenchie was obviously getting heated with all the exercise. Every other throw, though, she'd drop the ball too far to my right, almost like she thought I was sitting on that side of the bench instead of leaning on the left armrest. I'd tell her to bring it to me, she'd stare up at the empty seat, look over at me, then kick the little ball so it would roll into my hand. I thought it was a clever trick, but odd that she kept doing it that way instead of bringing it directly to me.

"Yeah, it's strange. Like she forgets where I'm sitting."

The man nodded, grunting in what I assumed was an affirmative.

"It's not that, mate."

She dropped the ball at the opposite end of the bench again.

I looked over that way, then back up to the blonde chainsmoker.

He reached into a coat pocket, handed me a plain white business card. I thanked him, looked at the card, and then back at him. "So, Mr. John Constantine, what kind of work do you do?"

He paused, lit yet another cigarette, and stooped down to hook up the bulldog to a leash. He didn't answer until he'd taken a couple of long, contemplative drags.

"Mate, when you ever need me, call me. I don't know what brings you here to the City, but what I do know? You ain't been sittin ’ere on this bench alone, and the mutt knows it, too."

I should have felt a cold chill, but instead, all I felt was happy.

This month's challenge presented some excellent entries! In the end, I went with the story that I thought was not only excellent, but shaded with the texture of real loss that provides a spooky element of the oh-so-familiar. The supernatural flair of the stinger put it over the top.

I can't simply link stuff anymore (love that for us), so you'll have to decipher the link that follows: dubyadubyadubya dot theprose dot com /post/832722/til-the-cows-come-home-a-drabble

The winner is Mariah with her entry, "’til the cows come home."

The noise of the place is surprising. It's two in the morning, but a scream echoes off concrete walls and mirror-polished floors. Laughter, whispers, and passionate grunts and breathing spill into the hallway.

Someone who looks like me stretches on a thin mattress, hands resting behind his head as he stares into nothing, waiting for sleep that slips by, uncaught, elusive, dreaded.

Steel bars stand sentinel against a life spent in a shotgun’s flash.

He is the me that almost was.

I alone know how close I came to the cage, and how close another man was to the grave.

September's theme was "A Day in the 80's," and the winner is VictoriaLunar's entry.

Which, sadly, it seems I can not post a link due to new spam policies.

Lovely.

https: // www. theprose. com / post /831739

We come now to a place that was once a mechanic's garage. The whole block was purchased by a man of means, and gut remodels have been completed in all the old brick buildings except this one.

This one has become storage for things unwanted.

Bare concrete is occupied with stacks of dusty furniture, a broken hydraulic lift, and rat-nested boxes of magazines or books and receipts from forty years of businesses that occupied this side street off of the main drag.

A meandering path is cut through the forest of yesteryear's calendars and filing cabinets, and it opens into a clearing lit by a cracked skylight.

In a pool of starshine, glowing as if center stage beneath a spotlight, she lies.

Oil-stained concrete gives way to a bare, yellowed mattress.

Bare, yellowed mattress gives way to a bared, stained girl.

Bared, stained girl gives herself away so easily.

He took her, those months ago, when she strayed off the beaten after wandering away from the Greyhound bus station. That logo leers in her fevered dreams between his visits; she sees a silver, sleek running wolf in her deepest moments of need, and she prays for just one more beautiful release.

Thoughts of home fade when memories seep from her veins, and she is weightless as she floats into the warm oranges and reds of sweet surrender. Not even her worn, dirty crimson hoodie can comfort her as much as the poison that flows so sweetly.

Silver, slender fangs bite into her, but she welcomes the peace as she is consumed one fix at a time.

In a pool of starshine, glowing as if center stage beneath a spotlight, the savage beast of a man claims his prize.

We now draw the curtain, leaving the hunter with the hunted, in this place that has become storage for things unwanted so far from the gaze of grandmothers and woodsmen.

He walked past her again. It almost felt like he was walking through her. She cried out to him, begged him to stop, but this was going to be another day of the silent treatment.

He slammed the door and headed to work. She stood at the window, watching him back away down the driveway in his new truck. He refused to talk to her about the purchase; he just showed up one day several weeks ago, the dealer sticker still in the window.

He hadn't spoken to her in over a month.

She looked out at the neighborhood. It had gotten to be fall without her even realizing that the weather had cooled. Leaves gathered in silent blankets, warming the earth.

She felt a chill, and went back to bed.

______________

She'd been sleeping more, lately. It was unusual for her, but she'd somehow slipped into a deeper darkness than she'd ever experienced. She'd been depressed before, but this was different; black days didn't begin to describe it. She'd sleep, she'd awaken. He'd ignore her as they watched television, when she actually joined him downstairs.

Most nights, he'd fall asleep on the couch, a highball glass with remnants of an ice cube giving testimony to how he'd spent another one of his evenings. The empty Glenlivet bottles were lined up in a windowsill.

The ghostly green was absurdly beautiful in the setting sun.

One night, seized with a frustration that words wouldn't cure, she grabbed one of those empties and flung it at the wall.

Finally, he looked in her direction, eyes bleary, a gasp on his lips and a trembling tumbler in his hand.

A rorschach of whiskeystains colored the offwhite sheetrock. Little divots formed where the bottle struck and shattered; verdant shards rained to the hardwood. A glass garden bloomed on the kitchen floor.

She didn't speak, but wailed tears of sorrow, anger, and sadness.

She was angry at mourning the loss of the two of them; she was angrier at his apparent lack of concern for their love slipping away.

He just looked at that rorsharch on the wall. A study of himself, painted in single malt.

She went back upstairs, crying herself to sleep.

______________

Winter came, and nothing improved between them. He started missing work some days, and those bottles began to line the floor beneath the window.

She refused to clean up after him.

She sat down in the chair opposite the couch one day when he slept past his alarm. She reached out to turn off the television, but it smoked and smouldered under her fingertips, and it died on its own. She snatched her hand back, expecting a shock, but she felt nothing. Where it had been blasting on about some winter storm on the Weather Channel, now there was only silence and the smell of ozone.

She just sighed.

One more thing gone wrong.

She tried to wake him, but he wouldn't stir.

She couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in the bed with her. His only trips upstairs were to dress, and even those stopped when he moved everything he needed into the guestroom.

She was a heavy sleeper, and the depression she'd slunk into forced her to stay in bed most days.

"We need help, babe." She said, hoping he'd engage her.

He just rolled over, curled away from her, shivered, and continued to sleep on the couch.

"I'm going to leave if we don't try to fix this."

Nothing. He reached for his blanket on the back of the couch, still sleeping.

She knew it was a lie. Despite all this darkness, she loved him still.

______________

Time was a slippery thing to her in her depressions.

When the snow began to melt, the man from the bank came. She refused to open the door, but looked out the peephole at him. He left an orange flyer above the knocker.

She went back to sleep, and the tears took away the worry.

She awakened to the ear-splitting noise of reversing alarms on a truck.

A Uhaul sat in the front yard, but she was too tired, too sad, to care anymore.

She slept again.

______________

When she awakened, everything in the house outside of her bedroom was gone. Echoes greeted her creaking steps down the stairs, and she cried out in fear, in shock, and in such incredible, aching remorse that she felt her heart shatter just as a windowpane above the kitchen sink did.

He'd left her bedroom, and moved out around her.

She collapsed in the living room in a heap, wails filling the air and blackness coloring her world.

______________

She felt like she was being torn apart.

Sleep disappeared, and dreams were replaced with the sound of Latin being spoken downstairs.

Latin?

It echoed throughout the emptiness of the house below her. Inside, she ached. Physical pain tore through her, and she screamed, despite trying to listen.

The Latin stopped, and the clinching in her gut relaxed.

She stumbled to the stairway, and looked down into the living room.

Strangers gathered, surrounding a priest.

He looked at her.

At her. He smiled.

It was the first real contact she'd had since...

And memory flooded her.

______________

Images of she and her husband.

He was driving, she was holding his hand.

They were just going to the store; a beautifully mundane ritual.

He said something and she laughed.

And then it happened.

______________

The priest spoke to her.

"Hello, Melanie."

She didn't reply.

"These are the Murchisons. They own this house now. They asked me to bless it before they move your bedroom out, and they move their family in."

"Mine," she managed to croak, tears flowing.

She noticed the couple cringe, and the man, Mr. Murchison, she presumed, shivered. They were young; they reminded of her of how she and her husband looked back when.

"GET OUT!" she managed to yell, voice cracking through tears.

The young woman began to cry.

The priest just continued to smile, and he took a step closer.

"Melanie. You need to go Home. You need to let go of this place."

The Latin resumed, and the last thing she heard:

"Go with God, Melanie."

"Amen."

And she let go.

The house disappeared from around her, and sadness was a distant whisper.

______________

A tractor trailer blew through the red light.

It hit the passenger side of the car at somewhere around fifty miles an hour.

As the noise died away, so did she.

The winner of August 2024 Drabble Challenge, "First day of School," is a piece submitted by toddbeller: https://www.theprose.com/post/828200.

This piece captured the nostalgia of when I moved schools. I was in one system for second grade, and then a completely new one for third. I vividly remember befriending strangers in both places the way that only young children can.

It was never love in the traditional, Hollywood sense. Hell, it wasn't even love in the way we discuss family, or pets. It was love in a platonic-could-maybe-go-physical-but-probably-not way, as, truth be told, so many friendships could go, but usually don't.

I can definitively say we never fucked, nor had intention to fuck. So there's that, stated plain.

Was it love? I'm not sure. All I'm certain of is that it's over now. (Thanks, Roxette). It was certainly a mutual respect, an enjoyment of each other's virtual company, an appreciation of the world building we'd done. We gathered 'round the shared campfire and swapped stories, and we held each other's attention without fail.

Our words loved one another, and we loved one another's words, even if technically we didn't love each other.

God. This is getting away from me, and I'm starting to ramble. It's raw emotion today, I think, and the typing helps process it.

I will try to summarize how I feel more succinctly:

She's dead. The words she left behind are the only words that will ever exist from her, and it's in this echoing silence that I know what a gift our strange love-adjacent thing was. The old memories of her hurt in ways new to me.

I'm getting on in years enough that friends have started to die, and I never thought I'd outlive them.

She shivers when he touches her.

There’s no warmth in his embrace; there is power. His strength is concrete in a silk suit, and she's helpless to stop his hands from roaming what's his.

She is stripped one button at a time, but she was bare all along.

The pool of her clothes is a reflection of her complete surrender.

"Are you sure?" His whisper holds no promise of tomorrow, only night everlasting.

Her love for him is the hill she'll die on, but she’ll never know the grave’s cold comfort.

She becomes his crimson bride, and sunsets become memories.