Sigul shows

Fiction

Why does he still haunt my thoughts? I remember how sad I was when I first saw the man at the tracks. Looking deeper into the Sigul I see him sitting and waiting for what looks like hours, then time seeps to speed up and I see the clouds race across the sky and the sun rise and set in only a few moments and yet the man at the tracks does not move but I can see he is becoming thinner I think he will die soon, if not from starvation then from a lack of will to live. I realize now that he wasn't looking for me but desperately clinging onto whatever he saw through those tracks. He wants to die. I start to turn my head away unable to watch a man starve to death in time lapse then I see an eye. An eye that I spent the happiest years of my life looking at a blue eye that has one brown speckle in the bottom. This brown speckle is surrounded by blue a blue that is soft like the sky with flakes that are hard like steel. I start to see more and my heart leaps at the thought of simply seeing by beloved's face once more but it is a boy's face that holds this eye. He is not alone but with a girl. The boy looks to be around sixteen and the girl a few years younger. They are brother and sister, it just seems to fit how they walk together approaching the man at the tracks. She has blue eyes as well but they seem to be composed of steel even though her heart is soft. It is her that urges her brother on towards the man at the tracks. View from above blond curly hair hand made clother and a purse, feeding nursing leaving

I was not sad because I saw him because I thought he was a hallucination. I was simply unhappy with my life. That point in my daily commute when I crossed the tracks seemed to be important to me somehow. I wonder just how long he has been looking for me and what does he want to do with me? It would be a welcome relief to see another person. The years I have spent here have been in utter desolation.

A visit from the man at the tracks

Story continues

I keep staring at the Sigul and the lines that make it visible to me start to separate and become more distinct. It raises up from the ground and it starts to flow. The shape stays the same but the material inside starts to blur together in its movement inside the tube. It lifts from the ground and starts making it's way to me. The lines start moving faster and faster, what started out as very disguised lines, then streaky lines turn into a silvery blur similar to mercury but more solid and metallic as it is changing colors and moving towards me it is also rotatiin vertically giving it the impression that it was waiting there for me to see it. It was so large that it was raised above me even thouth it was hovering at the bottom of the hill. Now it is shrinking and condensing at the same time moving up the abandoned blacktop that just a few moments ago I was remembering what it looked like when I saw it fresh. It is front of me now and I see my face reflected back to me, I smile at my appearance. Then it gone and I am looking at a man I haven't seen in over 10 years, or so I think but who knows how long it has been. It was the man at the tracks. I see him ant that feeling hits me again that he is looking for me.

Winterlude2

Fiction

The rise I am standing on is the old tunnel that lead the the 10,11,12 loop. The patches of broken asphalt were once well maintained. I can make out the stout concrete curb and side walk once beautifully maintained. The crape myrtles that once adorned the parking lot have now gone feral and help screen my home from outsiders. Are there others here like me? I try to think of it but I can't see anything. It is like looking into a hole. The back half of the building was the service entrance and poorly made. But the dining area was a well built showcase of the view. It is this half of the building that remains intact. The building was adorned with rock work and the rest was windows. The high ceiling with the large cross beams still stand. I used the beams as the ceiling of my upstairs. I don't really use it as an upstairs more like a fair weather pad. It was converted into a rock igloo. To look at it compared to what it was a person wouldn't know someone lived here or more particularly under it. But my eyes widen I see my daily tracks, paths I have made encircling my home, signs pointing for all to see that I am here come and get me. They are faint I have not been totally careless but they are signs none the less and they rise from my field of vision. Now I can see them like the image in a magic eye puzzle and it is a shape. It is the shape of the sigul.

Winterlude

Continuation of the old story


How crafty you are dear FuzZ. I am still able to see myself so I know that I make it this far. Sometime after the crash. Was it so hard to deal with the reality that I landed into that years have gone by unnoticed. It appears you have beaten me once again dear FuzZ.

Every time I look at my home I see Robinson Crusoe's hidden home. I always thought that he was so paranoid but you have somehow survived a great tragedy and all that is left is you then you become a bit selfish about yourself and your self preservation. My home isn't quite as hidden as Crusoe's' but it works for me. Unlike him I have seen nobody for my entire tenure in the pump house. Standing on the small rise between 9 and 10 I survey my home and think I have done pretty good for myself. How did I know to come here. How did I know it would give me shelter, food and life.

Before the crash

Sitting outside the pump house I gaze across the upside down L shaped lake. Sitting at the bottom end of the L my view holds two portions of the lake. The first part is directly in front of me. The other part I can see over the earthen damn to my left. It is a man made lake, with the sole purpose of providing irrigation water to the golf course. The earthen damn is covered with grown up brush. Across the lake directly in front of me is a small patch of young pine trees that sit back from the edge of the pond . These trees serve as a screen for a rough access road to that side of the lake. Behind that the North Carolina woods take over. Directly in front of me at the lakes edge are a couple of willows trying to make another go at life after being cut back. There are also several Silver leaf native grasses that screen me from the outside world driving by on the road above me and to the right. The grasses are bushy up to five feet but the seed heads reach up to fourteen feet. The purplish seed head rests on a long stalk of light green gently sways in the wind and the coarsness of the bunched up leaves below create a gentle rattle that captures my attention. This is the place I hold as a secret refuge.

I have to believe that this is going to help me
Am I meant to share
Am I meant to survive

I feel the fun part of my life has ended. I still have joy everyday through my children, but it is not a complete joy. I feel estranged from my wife. Sometimes I think she just ran out of love

I fight the fight. Now I write for the FuzZ

It kills me being out of love. Like a gas station out of gas. I want to be filled up but I have to fight for a gallon. Just enough to barely keep me going. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in my broken childhood again.

I've let myself get out of control. Everybody is fooled- Nobody knows.
Work is a joke- I am on autopilot just like everybody else, but it is killing me. I try to turn it off I can't I say that I do turn it off but, I lie.

I would move into the pump house if I could. Becoming a true hermit with my own little cave. I can see me making it into a home.

The FuzZ has gathered forces. Depression and Shannon have joined forces on the other side. I didn't want to talk about S and I said I wouldn't but this is the pump house log- just another one of my little lies I guess. I must focus on more important things like balancing myself, I must think out my emotion or I am lost.

I look horrible- I feel the same. It is hard to pinpoint what is to blame. While watching an A&E biography on Bruce Lee I start to observe myself. Thirty Two with two kids a job a wife all happy. At a shim short of six foot the 240 lbs I wear shows. Lounged into the corner of the couch I look down at the white furry basketball that is my stomach and the chicken legs that connect to it. Who would be happy to come home to this.

I am now afraid. Before I was overwhelming full of optimism but now I fear the worst. Will I be unhappy, will I freak out. I can't imagine what is going to happen but I am filled with fear. I cant put my thoughts together, there is so much to think about. When I have some focus it feels like I am just holding on and my brain feels like a tiny bit of butter trying to be spread over a piece of burnt toast.

Midnight Light 2

Seeing the light gives me hope. Hope of returning. I already know that is not true. Standing up I walk over to the glow. I look into it and see my home. A home that I have only left for a few hours. In the pre dawn light of that world I see the gas station. All is as it should be. A car passes by and I look to the right following its course, but I can't see it anymore. Instead I am looking at a row of dilapidated buildings surrounded by old junk that litters this world. I quickly look back and the soft glow of red shines upon me. I want to crawl into the hole where this light comes from but, it is embedded in the tight framework of the crossing guard post. It is only big enough for a bird to squeeze through.

Another car approaches the light filling up the road. A light that seems unnaturally bright for this deserted world. The car turns, it is not a car but a truck. A white truck, it is my white pony. It turns across the tracks and I see myself staring at myself. The other world me just looks at me and sees a shadow, like I have done so many times before on my way to work. I see myself look away and then look back. The shock that I first saw on my own face is now gone replaced with a relaxed smirk. The other me is relaxed because he has moved away from the hole and can't see into this world anymore just like I couldn't see the car going down the street before. Looking at my home world I can see the trees are devoid of leaves. It is winter there. It is morning there. I remember that smirk, it was on my face the first time I saw the man in the tracks. That was two years ago. Things in this world show the appearance of late spring. It is past midnight here. Transfixed I keep staring. I stand there so ling that my eyes grow tired, my legs want a rest but my heart cannot let it go. I must return to my family.

Everything I see through the window is special to me. I memorize the gas station. Conneco is written it white light in the bright light of the red overhang. The signs in the windows, advertisements for bud light, camel cigarettes and posters for the NC state lottery tickets. The neon Camel blinks to life stating the price of a pack of smokes. Behind the ads the shadow of the items on the shelves stand up like a black skyline with the darkness of the interior of the store mimicking the night sky. I frantically scan the area looking for something that tells me the date trying to confirm what i thought of the smirk I gave in the truck. I cannot find anything not even something that will tell me the time. The sun is almost up over there when the window starts to grow smaller. I don't notice at first but seeing less of my home pains me once again. Soon I am only looking through a peephole. Staying fixed to my spot searching for something that might help me. Then just like turning off the light on the other side that peep hole it is gone and all that I see is dark. My eyes are watering and I blink hard several times just like when I am trying to wake myself from a dream. Everything goes out of focus. My legs cramp and I lay myself down. Wiping the water from my eyes my vision starts to return.

Laying down close to the tracks I stare into the sky. Lose asphalt and rocks scatter the ground below me. There aren't many weeds here. I schuffle around to ride my back of rocks and simply lie there and watch the stars , eventually falling asleep.

I dream. I dream I am at work walking the course. Following the cart path up a small hill I come to a small group of pine trees. I see the green and know that I am on number nine. I can see the top of the half way house on the other side of the road behind the green. A small family of deer come out of the woods and I stop. The deer look away and i can tell they are not afraid of much but there is something that makes them uneasy. I slowly side step and hide behind some trees. The deer run across the fairway and bound into the woods at the other side. I simply stay hidden in the trees and don't move. I awake.

The sun is out and warms me well. The asphalt is soaking up the sunshine and returns it to me warming my back helping remove the stiffness from sleeping on the rocks. Thirsty I find my water bottle at the truck and take a mighty gulp then stop myself thinking there might not be more around. It is starting to get warm and I am tired. I head over to the abandoned Cotton Square mall to find shelter.

Midnight light

Shivering I wake up. Reaching out trying to find the covers of my bed to keep me warm I grab a fist full of weeds. Thinking that I am in one of those dreams where you think you are waking up only to find yourself in another dream I close my eyes and blink hard. This trick always works to snap me awake. As the chill of the night sinks deeper into my bones I realize I am not dreaming. The sleepiness of my slumber is wearing away from me and I recognise my surroundings. I am laying in the weeds in a elongated fetal position with the rusted shell of my truck behind me. I open my eyes fully and they seem sore and crusty. I chuckle to my self knowing why my eyes feel this way, I cried myself to sleep. A pang of sadness hits me thinking about why I was crying. I roll over and see a faint red glow coming from the directions of the tracks. A glimmer of hope crosses my mind. Rising up to my knees I look harder at the light. Taking in a quick glance of my surroundings I only make out the darkness of night and the darker outline of the Cotton Square mall. The ruined crossing guard posts stand out as a black steel web work reaching into the midnight sky. I really don't have any clue what time it might be. I never learned how to tell time by the movements of the stars. It is only by some weird internal clock that I guess it is some time past midnight. At the base of the black steel web work is the source of the glow

I am once again offered a chance of hope. On my feet now approaching the tracks I want to find my way out of here. The glow is familiar. It is the dull glow of the gas station awning that I left behind. Part of that awning is framed against the night sky on the other side of the tracks and part of it is shinning red. Ignoring the rest of my surroundings I walk up to the post. I look into the light. It is early morning at the gas station, the gas station on the other side.