October 11, 2017.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #5:

Time and distance rounds off the edges of things. How old am I? Seventy-one this year. That's a lot of time, a lot of distance, a lot of memories. A lot of rounded edges.

The first time I kissed Rebecca, you've never seen such fireworks! Wow! My heart ka-thump-a ka-thump-a so loud in my ears I thought they'd burst! Standing under the tree by her papa's house, her small tender hand in my big flat paw, to the echo of her sister practicing scales. Now this is a memory. She was beautiful, and she loved me, and I loved her. We were married in April, and there were blossoms in the trees.

The years after that, not so good. I was a real schmuck and I did a lot of dumb stuff. Rebecca left me and took little Jim and I never saw them again. There was a lot of pain, years of pain, but those sharp bits are rounded out, those corners gone.

All I can remember is that kiss.

So what? You think that's a good thing, maybe. Let an old man to his happy memories, you think? No, sir. I wake up every morning, terrified, thinking: what corners rounded off today? Every day I lose another year, of pain, maybe, but it's my pain.

Soon, I'll start losing the good memories, too. And what then, I wander around, haunting my damn empty house, till eventually, quietly, I slip from being a living ghost to a dead one. I won't even notice. All my corners will have been rounded away.