Smoke 'n' Mirrors

wet into wet ~ Nikki Dalke

There must be an underlying conviction that we will live a good life. It remains to see how we interpret that premise.
The boy who expected nothing sat on the grassy bank that his father had made and looked out over the hollow of suburban houses. Sometimes he would wonder how he would react if his parents didn’t return from the supermarket, if the white beetle should fail to cross his vision where the road snaked around the hillside.
Sometimes he would shout down to the English boy across the road:
“M-i-c-h-a-e-l”
Pause to hear his voice echo near the station hidden down in the trees at the valley’s funnel.
“M-i-c-h-a-e-l”
Michael rarely responded these days, especially since the incident with the WW2 fighter pilot’s headgear being swapped for one of Johan’s con jobs. He’s got that blame for that, not Johan; shit, it had been between Michael and Johan, he’d had nothing to do with it save having been present at the negotiations.
Sometimes he watched the clouds, but not for long, he always got dizzy lying on the bank and watching the clouds; as if he were going to fall into the sky.
Sometimes he just watched.
Nothing ever happened.
The man who expected everything to happen to him grew to have his expectations fulfilled.
His expectations misguided perhaps, but delivering nevertheless a good life; a life full of change; a life not spent in the one place his boyhood had never wanted to leave.