ALL THAT WAS LEFT BEHIND

Nimbled Fingers

He slammed the car door shut and took a moment to stare out at the scene before striding towards it. His back ached with each step like a terrible fire seizing up every second. A heavy dreadful sense in the atmosphere leaned in on his chest, pulling him closer.

            The tiny shop in front of him was a run down little building, complete with a series of rotting pumpkins and squash sitting in their drying muck. He walked past it all from the parking lot, taking in the frozen plants and scattered garbage over the ground.

            He stepped inside the convenience shop to hear the jangle of bells strung above the head of the door like a miniature symphony of meaningless sound.

            The old woman peered into her circular spectacles at him, fluffing up the puff of swirling white hair on her head.

            Just as she opened her tiny mouth to speak, he interrupted.

            “A friend of mine ordered some wood here for me?”

            She nodded, and tapped the counter with her knobbly fingernails. He remained by the door as she asked: “Fire wood?”

            He shook his head and scanned the cluttered shop for the first time. “No,” he said, and glanced at the piles of old newspaper, fire starters and endless boxes of packaged food. The smell of thick coffee and stale food clung to his skin like a disease. “No, more like building material.”

            The old woman nodded, and directed him out to the back. “It’s the only pile of wood out there, not many people come out here,” she said. “You have a good pickup truck for all that?”

            He backed away, giving a nod and a grumbled response before exiting the musty store. He wandered out around the building, noting the shingles scattered all over the gravel. He didn’t give the place too long before it just collapsed all around the old woman’s feet, just like life often did. Everything eventually rots away.

            The hum of another car pulling up the lot from behind him was heard, the only sound ripping through the fragile air, shattering it like a thin sheet of glass.

            There it lay; the stack of long planks of white wood. They all had odd dimensions, some unfathomably small and seemingly insignificant, others quite larger than his own height. All measured with extreme precision, he presumed. Every detail was already planned out time and again, every angle refigured.

            When the car door opened from behind him and the slow even steps didn’t disappear behind the clang of door chimes, a pit formed and hardened in his throat, like a knot of his dread.

            He sighed, letting the air escape in a frosty puff. He ignored the footsteps behind him, and headed up to the pile of wood, lifting and heaving three long planks over his shoulder. Just as he got it balanced in a rested spot on his shoulder, the voice split through his ears, blistering his brain like a bolt from the blue.

            “Are you going to do it right this time?” it sneered with its low grumbled voice.

            He paused for a moment, staring out at the cluster of dying trees all twisting together in a woodsy clump, before continuing on his way, deciding to ignore the jeering body of anger behind him.

            “Hey!” it barked out into the cold, heating his head with the stressful tension it shot at him. He froze.

            “I wouldn’t walk away from me if I were you, Jarrod.” He heard the metal tab of the revolver click into position. The eager way it all snapped into place, in such an efficient fashion, almost made his mind dissemble into its hard individual mechanisms.