On a day grayer than me, I\u2019m lying on my back on a chilly park bench, hogging it \u2018cause there\u2019s no one else around and let\u2019s face it, I’m a lifelong victim of that miserable only-child mentality. I\u2019ve got my nose plastered between the weathered pages of a Plath paperback, when a little boy in a sunny raincoat waddles up and whispers in a singsong way, Hey lady, I\u2019ve got a secret.<\/em><\/p>\n I ignore him, refuse to indulge, hoping he\u2019s old enough to take the hint, to go away and leave me alone. But he plows right through those social cues, tugs on my hoodie strings, and repeats himself.<\/p>\n Lady, didn\u2019t you hear me? I\u2019ve got a seee-cret. Don\u2019t you wanna know?<\/p>\n I sigh, then turn to look at him and shake my head no, but I’ve got this sinking feeling he\u2019s gonna tell me anyway.<\/p>\n His eyes go too-big-for-their-sockets wide, as he proceeds to check both sides, ensuring it\u2019s just the two of us. Then he whispers:<\/p>\n Do you know what happens when we get old? Like really, really old?<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat,\u201d I mouth, sarcastically, pretending not to know.<\/p>\n We die.<\/em><\/p>\n He utters that last syllable bombastically\u2014spits it out with firework freshness, so much so that I swear I can see the concept of death colliding with his premature psyche, making its meteoric crater in the smooth terrain of his young and innocent mind.<\/p>\n The kid looks down at me with his head cocked, eyes glued to mine, waiting for the shock to land, trying to gauge whether or not I heard his revelatory confession.<\/p>\n I wait a minute before deciding to oblige him with a smirk and a rebuttal.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah? Then what?\u201d<\/p>\n His face transforms into this taken-aback look\u2014like I\u2019ve gone and slapped him. The thought of \u201cafter\u201d hadn\u2019t occurred; not until now, anyway.<\/p>\n \u2026Gee, I dunno.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMe neither, kid. Me neither.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he turns around and melts back into the sea of trees, leaving me to read in peace, while he strives to soften this new weight burdening his boyish heart\u2014boisterously quacking at the mallards napping pondside; snapping any branch that dares to defy him; unearthing mossy boulders for no other reason than to see what slimy creatures reside beneath, piercing his thumbs with the spikiest thorns around, just to prove he\u2019s got blood to bleed; only to wander off further into that land of precarious wonder, leaping right off the cliff of his dwindling childhood, winging his way through that ever-reaching sky, hooting with youth-ridden glee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They\u2019d been married a decade now, and for better or worse, the way he gamed was his least attractive attribute. Revolting, really. The furious button mashing, the forehead glistening, his stiff frame brimming with hostility. The groans, the moans, the thrown controllers. The feet stomping, the temper tantrums, the possessed muttering. They were one of those suspicious-from-the-outside-in childless couples, and she liked it like that\u2026but not this. The way his hands bloomed in palms-up outrage whenever a boss got the better of him\u2026 as if waiting on a handout from the heavens. The way his pouty jaw clenched and popped, opening like a stiff little window every now and then, just to release some of the tension boiling within. Whenever he snatched his controller off the shelf, you could feel the walls sucking in and the plants huddling down and their already-anxious rescues cowering in the corner, bracing for impact. His unruly Xbox ways had their marriage feeling like a gallon of milk gone bad, and yeah, she was na\u00efve, but never na\u00efve enough to believe she could revive that which had soiled. The second the ease ceased, his mood would warp and decay, and he\u2019d sit there as stern as could be, stewing in his rank pool of rotten vibes\u2014a child, begrudging the world for refusing to yield. And despite such temperamental immaturity, she\u2019d sit and console him<\/em>. Rub his shoulders and scrub his scalp, applying the balm of her touch. She loved him\u2014still. Never mind the aggressive tendencies, she couldn\u2019t help herself. Over the years, she\u2019d doled out many a talking-to and ultimatums aplenty\u2014every manner of discipline that came to mind, really\u2014but nothing ever worked; neither one knew how to power down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We die, he says. Utters that last syllable bombastically\u2014spits it out with firework freshness, so much so that I swear I can see the concept of death colliding with his premature psyche, making its meteoric crater in the smooth terrain of his young and innocent mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[4387,3898,4388],"class_list":["post-22840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-abbiedollwrites-twitter-x","tag-bluesky","tag-instagram-2","writer-abbie-doll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22840"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23763,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22840\/revisions\/23763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}In the Throes of Console Woes<\/h5>\n