That Split-Second in the Park Short Story Weekly

   I feel like this is becoming a weekly affair, and it makes me ever more-so downtrodden, but I have to send my condolences to victims, and the families of the victims of the shootings in Texas by sniper fire. My thoughts go out to you all. 

 I would also like to send out my sincerest condolences to Nice, France, where a truck carrying weapons/explosives crashed into a crowd of innocent people celebrating Bastile Day. I send my thoughts and concerns to all those affected by this tragic terrorist attack. 

   This #SSWkly post is a bit different from the stories I've been writing lately, but it has ( directly? Indirectly?) similarities with the last story, but it was written as its own entity. Still, it is quite short, probably short enough to be a "short" short, but it's still one that just came to me, becaue I've been getting into this summer heat and foreboding winter coming just around the corner. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this short story:

                                                            That Split-Second in the Park

      The dog walked along the park's  edge, white ring weeping willows cascaded from out of their rooted ponds in the delicate breeze, tickling his nose. The sun was bright against the clouds, pilfering  rays of sunshine down to onlookers, bustling about in relaxation. Bikers pass the dog, his rage tail wagging merely in justified oblivious fanaticism for life. The wind was like a kiss from a Mother Nature herself, a dowry of falling leaves on a cataclysmic gorgeousness that is the precursors to Autumn dismay. 

    Before long, the sight of Jack-o-lanterns will be lining the park gates, frost covered orange gumdrops with caricatures carved deep. The dog stops and relives himself zestfully onto a common oak that had grandparents whom lived with mammoths. The world keeps flowing in the beatitude of the everyday commonality, the ever-present moment when breath hits hard enough in the lungs to bring forth a cool cough. 

    Young lovers hide behind sequoias, afraid of being caught by their parents as a kiss and a fair summer-taunt grope is attempted, one eye open to peak from out behind the curtain at a world that holds the ironic misanthrope  of the self that have been play the same games since before the Victorian Age fell. Man returns to water, as the summer sun is outlasting the morning frost, and people jump and play like children, biking and jogging about the torturous heat, reliving past experience; grateful to still be breathing. 

    The dog returns a stick to a random stranger reading the late morning edition of his favorite paper. He doesn't get distraught when the dog merrily barks, wagging his propeller tail some more. No, he only smiles, and like a child again, plays fetch with the old pup, forgetting the numbers, forgetting the crunching, and he giggles as the dog runs with bursts of energy that energized his own soul, redeeming him from his mediocrity. For a morning....he was twelve again, the age before it all went for the downfall. 

   The weeping willow trees gather branches, and like saplings snapping with whip cracks, awaken the senses of the world around them. The park is ever-alive, always an intriguing microcosm of where man meets mystery, where life can turn to survival, if the wrong turn is made, but it is controlled beauty for the sake of society, so no one being goes made from the city life. And it was enjoyed by everyone. 

    The young couple kissed eloquently again, and parted ways, already missing one-another before the other was out of the distance, both called back by hustling fathers that seized the day of the rat-race even as weekend warriors. It was take your daughter to work day. The two young lovers, they would meet up again, and they would be vilified for their love, despite its innocence. The sequoia never judged, it was seeing love, just an energy one creature emits for another, and it was without a care. Society cares, because the energies it emits are seldom for the individual's sake. Yet, love prevails. 

    The bikers and joggers cleared off from the tracks, as the sounds of the park declined, leaving only a barking dog, an older businessman, and a sycamore sapling whipping out and off into the distance, through the wisps of the air, dog slobber cascading off it, as the only movement left in the park. A scruffy old pup chasing after a one-track formulae, a businessman chasing his lost youth, a rolled up paper on a wooden bench, it was enough to here swans singing in the shallows, breathing their last breath on this most precious day in the park. 

    When even then the old businessman saw his watch, and noon was encroaching across the face of his watch, he tossed the stick once more,mand gathered his belongings, heading home to his lofty apartment. The raggedy dog moaned and cried, following with stick in jowls. The man hesitated at first,  as we all would with circumstances being. Yet he smiled at the old dog, tapped his side, and the old boy followed happily behind. 

    The two of them became friends over a game of fetch, and left the park on absolute silence. The chrysanthemums were just waking, as they walked past the colorful array towards the duel entrance/exit iron gates. The old businessman picked up the scruffy dog, and carried him off home. He stopped by the veterinary first to update the animals shots, gave him a bath, and dried off the old boy, as they both nestled on the old businessman's couch, a pipe in his mouth, a book in his hands, and the rest of the afternoon free. 

       A beautiful Sunday, befitting of a romance tale, a satisfied sigh of content, and the two fell asleep on the couch, the pipe extinguished, and placed to the side. The old dog cuddled close, the most pleasant sleep of his entire life, and with content, passed peacefully off into the beyond, leaving the old businessman shattered, but feeling grateful for that moment captured in time. The old businessman passed away many years later, but he always remembered the dog that made him feel like a child again, and the summer that lasted forever, that split-second in the park where a butterfly flapped, and his world expanded far-beyond the reaches of printed ink, or packed tobacco. The old businessman laid to rest his melancholy, he gave away his sorrow, and tossed a stick one last time, hoping, wishing that maybe a little tidbit of his youth would come by, and bring it back to him.  Nothing ever came back to him, but he never wasted another morning in the park only reading the grievances of the daily paper.  When your face is stuck between pages of misfortune, he realized, was when the true noteworthy moments are missed.