Levitation
(a shortened story based vaguely on things said, read, thought and overheard quite recently)
A tiny young things takes her place on the small stage that's been tucked into the corner, barely elevated, she steps to the mic...
"I love my friends.
No weirdness is the only base.
Jeeze, i count on those little bastards always."
...a pause, calm quiet, then a casual applause as lil' Ms. Lady Sarah explains... her xxx's and those ooo's... dear.
He's too often told himself that he really shouldn't read emails when he get up in the middle of the night to take another bite from the triple chocolate muffin he leaves propped on his bedside table when earlier he'd run quietly away from his lonesomes... a bite of dark chocolate, maybe downstairs for a un-tensing, one-third awake tug on a smoke... those last few too tightly held onto vices that will surely kill him just as, if not more quicklyer than all those long left behind...
He levitates... floats just up the hill and drifts 'round yet another sharp corner; first street to the left... quite a bit further left from what he'd call his center.
...just over there, he watches from above as she stands in his bedroom doorway. He sorts through to show her his medals of valor that he'd won in that war. Tossed casually, quietly, possibly a little bit bashfully, a self demanded attempt at diminishing, not being, but ever yet a little vain gloriously onto his own nondescript bedside table, that matches the rest of his decor. Is it maybe the Bronze Star, or Silver... He shows her his deep loving red Purple Heart as her's skips that beat she's no longer lost looking for... she's happy, and he knows it... and how easily convinced they've become, that he's happy too.
As he descends back into surprising comfort of his lumpen bed, now merely some left behind converted and poorly designed futon sofa, sheets covered in crumbs and stained with those bits of dropped chocolate; he's reminded. One's given very few chances to experience the gloriousness of this level of insane. Like he did maybe a little bit later than, most leave it behind earlier in life when they feel the need to get on with it... To rediscover it now, what, a blessing? Most certainly he's left with two un-choices...
...after too many years spent definitely not deliberately but dithering, perhaps a little more wisdom, but more likely just a well worn out but extremely useful ennui, after this night's flight of fancy, simply... he'll make neither those choices... if only to see in which direction these non-decisions will take him. To experience this floating another chance to keep flying, at this age... a blessing... once more.