FLASH FICTION
A Vagabond Life Interrupted
The Lack of Time Led to a Life Well Lived
The wood of the platform vibrated as Scott heard the train come rumbling up the tracks. The smell of wet asphalt mingled with the perfume and musk from the tired bodies of people eager to hop aboard and return home after work.
Scott was headed in the opposite direction. He’d already closed out his final day as a working man. He walked away from the front stoop of his colonial suburban home for the last time that evening.
“Do you have the time, sir?” Scott heard a mellifluous female voice say from behind.
Those words opened the floodgates to a torrential rush of bittersweet memories. Those were the very same words she said the first time they met. That day thirty-three years ago, he carried nothing but a dirty, partially-torn backpack. The last thing he expected was to meet the love of his life.
Back then, he didn’t think he had any love to give, not after his business partner Sonny decided to give his family the gift of a newly-painted den, a den painted with his bone fragments and bloody gray matter.
In the weeks that followed, Scott fell through the bottom, and hours after losing his last dollar…
