The Grey Man

There once lived a man who'd forgotten how to dream. His home was full of neatly arranged boxes in which he packed all his troubles and ticked them off as he plodded soullessly from day to day.

A series a tedious daily, pressing routines tolled on the man’s very sanity and settled on his face in deep lines and crevasses. Food became another task and music faded into the background until only the clanging of alarms signalling a change from one state to the next could be heard.

His heart grew weary of from hopelessness.

On a day like any other, as he sat at his desk stamping relentlessly at his accounts in his now tiny living space, the ground tremored violently with ominous intent.

The house was torn in two as its roots shook forcefully with more, even mightier rumbles. The boxes, stacked high, collapsed all around crushing and pinning him to the ground. The things he worked hardest for now would end his life.

Suddenly the earth split violently pouring steam into the air and threatening to devour the man and all his labours.

With just seconds to live a miracle came over the unfortunate soul. The smoke cleared, the noise subsided and in the moment before he vanished, the sun touched his face, birds serenaded him, and the colours of the brightly lit day became real.

 Smells rose bringing back memories of loved ones, ones loved and the pure joy that was all but a distant past.

Hot baking bread; cinnamon loaves, the warmth of his mother’s kitchen as she sang joyfully to him, the grass of a thousand fields under bare feet, the tree of his first kiss, the popcorn of the broken down cinema that once shimmered with stars, his first car, the first touch of naked flesh, poured out of the recesses he'd hidden them in.           

As the ground gave way the man screamed in horror through tears of pure regret but there would be only one miracle that day.