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

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

He filled the mower’s tank with gasoline and pushed it to his driveway. Before cranking the engine he surveyed his small, bedraggled kingdom, trying to formulate a plan. “I may as well start across the street and work my way around. It shouldn’t take me too long to cut six yards.” Satisfied, he pulled the starter rope and prepared to get lost in his new lawn maintenance career.

Fifteen minutes later he stopped. He was out of breath, dizzy and had to sit down. He dropped on to the steps leading up to his neighbor’s porch and tried to regain his composure but the air was not filling his lungs fast enough and his heartbeat was throbbing in his ears. His struggles lasted for several minutes before some normalcy returned and he was able to start a regular breathing pattern and gain enough control to walk across the street to his home for some water. As he sat in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette, he wondered what was happening to him. He had never been in great shape but this was beyond any physical struggle he had ever encountered; he’d never had to take a break from cutting the front yard before. Had his recent movie phase sucked that much out of him? He wasn’t sure how long he had camped on the sofa but apparently it was long enough to alter his constitution and aerobic capacity. “This is ridiculous.” He wanted another glass of water but he wanted to get up and fix it even less. As he stared at the empty glass, wishing his autonomy had come with super powers so he could make the glass fill on its own, a massive realization struck him. It wasn’t massive in that the idea it generated was brilliant, but it was massive in that, like a lot of things, the small idea led him to move, to take a baby step, to begin an activity that would eventually evolve into a turning point in his existence as the last person standing on the face of the earth. “I need to get in shape,” he said out loud, to no one in particular.

All words and images ©2007/J. Colle