When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
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THERE'S AN OLD ADAGE floating about that says it takes twenty-one days to break or form a habit. A plastic surgeon, namely Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his observation stated that 'it takes 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to gel'.
Countless twenty-one days had passed yet Dawn Marshal's image in his mind, remained frozen in time. At first, she walked in and out of the doors of his mind, sneaked in like the first autumn breeze escapes through the cracks of a locked window. But now her thoughts had built a permanent residence in his mind and perhaps his soul too.
He could not stare at the sky without plucking out metaphors for her.
In conclusion, he labeled Dr. Maltz's theory as nothing but a mere myth and for-the-lack-of-a-better-word: bogus.
A week old dead roses lay at the feet of the tombstone. He should've brought flowers.
"Estelle Adams
1983-2003
Loving mother, daughter and neighbor."
The epitaph read. The last time he had been here, it was three years ago. Being here opened too many old wounds, some of which he was still healing from. A gust of air swept away the dried leaves from his mother's grave.
He realized, when he dies no one would bother with a proper burial let alone bring him flowers. He would just be a carcass lying in ditch somewhere, broadcasted as the John Doe found floating in the lake weeks after his death. One moment a front page headline and another moment, in a paper-shredder.
And that very thought filled his heart with a forlorn loneliness.
His presence barely left a mark on earth and his absence would barely leave a crease. He was just another pebble causing a tiny ripple on the surface of the water before sinking at the bottom.
Suddenly Clyde Parker was mad.
He was mad at Dr. Maltz's bullshit theory, mad at his mother for being a coward and taking the easy way out, mad at himself for turning out the way he did, mad at his father for being more of a coward than his mother, mad at his brother for being a piece of shit, mad at Dawn Marshal for haunting every waking hour of his days and mad at himself for letting her in.
If Clyde Parker believed in any deity-he would've been mad at them too.
He buried his face in his palms and let silent tears stroll down his cheeks.
Tonight he will cry, tomorrow morning he will learn to walk away.
And when he closed his eyes, a memory drifted before him.
The sky was a blanket of stars peeking through the canopy of arched trees. The fire cackled devouring sticks, logs and dried leaves and his guitar lay on the sparse grassland.
