Entry Ninety-five: Adam Mahoney, You Just Won!

[The next many entries are the current story I am working on. This is twenty-five of who knows how many will be posted. Enjoy it while it lasts...]

Chapter Ten
Adam stood dead center in the doorway that provided a portal between his bedroom and the rest of the house. With a clearer head, post hot shower, the site of his recent habitat depressed him further. What had he been thinking to allow himself to fall into that circle of hell? What was causing his random dives into apathy and indifference? “Besides the fact that I’m the very last person standing on the face of the earth? And there’s no manual?” The ridiculousness of that reality made him smile, slightly, and he moved into the living room to begin another round of clean up. He glanced out the window framing the front door on his way to the kitchen to grab a garbage can and what he saw stopped him in mid step. The Broughton’s house across the street was surrounded by a jungle of overgrown yard and plants. The sight of their normally manicured lawn so overgrown and in disarray jarred him and he slowly walked to the front door and stepped out on the front porch to get a closer look. He scanned the houses on either side of the Broughton’s and they revealed a similar state of disorder. The three yards were indistinguishable, no lines of demarcation, no way to know what belonged to whom, just one big, messy field with three houses plopped in the center for show. His own yard was in need of a cut but, since he had mowed his recently, his stood out as a showcase for maintenance. The yards on either side of his house were in the same sorry shape as the ones across the street. And all of the shagginess bothered him. With a sudden sense of urgency, Adam turned and walked through the house, out the back door and headed straight for the shed. “I’ll mow, that’s what I’ll do.” He felt like a recovering addict, fully engaging in the creed of “one day at a time,” only altering it for his own unique situation to “one activity at a time.” He gained energy and warmth when he had a task at hand. It was the time in-between tasks that were killing him.

All words and images ©2007/J. Colle