Happy Birthday Eternity Read Online Free Page A

tumbles as I take another step. 
    Another creaking sound. 
    On the table is a picture of a family.  It's old and there's dust so thick that I can barely even tell it's a picture at first.
    In my hands and after I've blown the dust off of the picture, the family is smiling and looking happy.  Four people.  Two girls and two boys.  They all have brown hair and big smiles and tan skin and they all look vaguely the same age.  It's a family.
    You can't tell they're family by looking at them, because everyone has the same sort of surgical glow to them.  You can't tell they're family, so I'm just assuming that they are.
    I'm studying who I assume to be the parents.  They're holding hands, they're smiling.  They look ideal.  They look like the map that's in my head, the map that tells me what a happy relationship is. 
    Pictures only say what you want them to say.
    I think back to all of my pictures.  Evaline and me, the same pose with the same smiles.  The only thing that changes is our clothes.
    I put the picture of this family down and keep walking.
    More creaking. 
    A nauseous feeling in my gut.
    The draining of blood from my face. 
    I'm stumbling and stammering with no one to stumble and stammer to.
    My knuckles would clench if I had the strength.
    Instead I feel like I've been hit in the face with a brick. 
    In front of me. 
    In the living room.
    A dead body.  
    But that’s not what bothers me the most, what bothers me is the feeling in my gut that says my being here isn’t an accident.
     
     
     
    13
     
     
    You never forget the first time you see a dead body.
        Especially if you're over 2000 years old. 
        And sure the body was nothing more than a dusty skeleton, collapsed on the floor and gnawed on by the weight of time, but it's stuck in my head like some sort of disease.  Burned into the back of my eyelids.  Slowly making an intangible fantasy into a tangible reality.
        Death:  A symbol for a lesson we keep forgetting to learn.
        If only I knew what the lesson was.
        Franklin has two black eyes.
        We're sitting in his living room. 
        I'm describing my adventure.  The drunken night that neither of us remember.  The field.  The walking.  The house.  The body. 
        He laughs. 
        My face is flush.  My mouth is shut.  I'm waiting for something to happen.  I've been waiting the last thousand years.  Because that's what life is; going through the motions with the expectation that something will happen. 
        The expectation that things will move themselves.
        We're way past the point of accountability.
        The conversation strays quickly.
        To Franklin.  To the girl he fucked.  To the perfect tits and the perfect lips and the shapely ass.  He's making motions with his hands.  He tells the story and grows more and more excited with each sentence he shares.
    ‘I don’t care.’
    I’m an asshole.
    Franklin looks at me.  It’s my duty to care.  As a friend.  As a co-worker.
    In his eyes there’s a palpable stinging where his ego has just been bruised.  He looks like a beaten dog. 
    I’m usually more affable.
    Or maybe we’re all just too sensitive.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve got bigger things to worry about than whether or not the latest conquest in your ongoing marital infidelity has a bleached asshole.’
    A pause, a breath, a nervous twisting of nervous fingers.
    ‘So what do you worry about?’
    ‘Death.  Evaline.’
    ‘Eh, things will turn out fine.’
    I shrug.
    My brow is furrowed as I run my hand along a wooden table in Franklin’s living room.  I’m older than the tree this table was made from. 
    I pull my hand back and lean into Franklin’s leather couch.  I look him in the eyes. 
    I used to have more friends. 
    I used to have dozens of friends.
    People I could count on and laugh with and get drunk with and not care with. 
    They got lost along the way.
    It