5 Minutes of Uncertainty (standard:fantasy, 298 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Dec 06 2007	Views/Reads: 3571/0	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man leaves his bed during the night in search of answers.

The Chair 

It's always after a fit of sleep, waking after standing next to an empty
chair on the shoreline, a satin dress discarded between it and the 
incoming tide, bulging like a stranded jellyfish. I see footprints for 
a while, then none. 

Satin caps the waves. 

I strain to catch sight of a shoulder blade, a neck, a back with all the
regular indentations, but the horribly beautiful moon vanishes and my 
bed becomes ill fitting. It is an endless complaint. 

In the kitchen I drag the kettle to the tap, gaze at myself in the
window and observe a beggar staring back. Some nights I avoid him 
completely, not tonight, we're in this lost hour together. My dog cocks 
his head quizzically and stares up at me, making no effort to come out 
from under the table. Perhaps I'm his strangely curious dream. 

Red stone tiles cool my feet, black pots and pans stand on paint
stripped shelves, wooden picture frames adorn walls, handmade rugs are 
worn and tattered. You'd think me a peasant but for the double freezer, 
the dishwasher, and the multi-functional oven. The contrast is 
ridiculous. I am ridiculous. 

The kettle is not the solution. I flick off the switch, pull on an old
loved sweater and leave the house. 

Out here on the dark moonlit shoreline a symphony stirs in the depths of
a world that is as boundless as love. Where the chair sat only a rock 
stands, crusted and cold. Where the dress lay abandoned, petticoat 
waves now break. There is nothing left but the fleeting vision of the 
unlived hour. The horror of midnight still haunts me. 

It's just the lost hour; an hour when the whispering of a celestial tide
gets me passed those five minutes of uncertainty. 


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