Swiftly, Softly

     It is perfectly quiet.  I sit in my office, working another late night; not unlike any other night.  The harsh glare of the computer screen is something I've become accustomed to.  I've always disliked my job as a clerk for my law firm, but it pays well enough for me to live beyond my father's low expectations
for me.

   "My name is Ivan, Ivan Quark!  I am eight years old, and I want to be a famous artist someday!" I can almost hear my deep-subconscious echo to me in a sort of shameful reminiscence.  That was twenty-nine years ago; I'll spare you the math, I'm thirty-seven now.  All to often these days, it seems that I'm being haunted by a ghost that is making itself known in little increments so small, that it is impossible to notice its existence, initially.  Even as I'm writing this, though, I am becoming more concretely convinced that this ghost is real, and greatly ashamed of my pathetic state of being.

     This ghost's name is Ivan, and it is eight years old.  It is literally the ghost of my dead dreams and ambitions; goals I set out to perform, but never accomplished.  All of my great ideas and fantastic inventions that were broken before I could create them.  Everything fell: shattered to the ground, and nothing held together.  Glue couldn't help, and duct-tape proved futile.  The bright future that made the eight-year old smile had been shattered by the thirty-seven year old monster that now hulked, almost ogre-like, over the keyboard; mindlessly copying legal documents; document which were primarily created as a result of other's hatred, and vengeance.

     This was all made possible by one simple word: "Later".  This word proved to be the bane of my existence; ruthlessly tearing at the very fabric of my dreams, until a sickly, pitiful being was all that remained.  I would do what was necessary to get by in the moment; I lived in the now, and never brought tomorrow into today.

     However, as I sit here in this office, on this particular evening, a very peculiar noise piques my ears; a rather different noise, yet so familiar it makes me want to bash my head into my desk.  It is the sound of a clock.  The constant rhythm of the "Tick, Tick" is enough to make my head spin!

     The ticking becomes faster and faster, and it seems that time will break.  Rushing toward the future at such an accelerated rate, it scares me; I have difficulty breathing.

     With every sad and broken "Tick", I lose a piece of me.  Like a strike to my face, each "Tick" stings worse than the last.

     Louder and louder it seems, and with every second it grows.  I begin to lose my mind: through the rabbit hole I go.  The pain of the past is strong... an ever abiding foe.  A flashback before me, and suddenly everything is slow.

     Now, I look around and I'm in a forest.  It is Autumn, and I feel happy.  I look around and observe the gentle breeze carry a single orange maple leaf to the ground.  It swivels and sways as it floats, back and forth through the air.  And it's in that moment that I realize how quickly the leaf fell.  It took no more than seconds, and the leaf was on the ground.  It was swift, but still soft, and then I was back again.

     I opened my eyes, and there I was greeted by the same old glow.  I looked at the clock, and noticed its flow.  Though constant all the time, in reality it's quite fast.  It works swiftly, it works softly, and soon I'll be the past.

     I stood up without even thinking about it.  Like under a spell, I walked over to my boss's vacant desk, and left him a note for the next morning.  I grabbed my hat, but left my suitcase, and opened the door for the last.