5 Minute Freewrite: Weekend Edition

I got progressively more and more frightened of ocean sailing until I just couldn't deal with the stress any more. I got a bigger boat, and it didn't help. I got a smaller boat, and that seemed to help a little, so I got a smaller boat, and then a smaller boat, and then smaller, until finally I was just playing with toy sailboats. This actually sparked a new passion in my life, and made me a happier person, or at least a differently obsessed person.

I starting sailing toy sailboats in races. I put little dolls on the sailboats so that I could live vicariously through them. And I knew, even if the dolls drowned and took a bit of my soul with them, my body would at least be safe. It's been several years now, and I've lost about 17, exactly 17, dolls to their watery graves. I didn't know it before, but my soul is not infinite. I think there might be about 20 dolls' worth of soul in me total, which means I haven't got much more to lose.

So now I am frightened of toy sailboat sailing, too, and I haven't found a new passion to replace it. Having only 3/20ths left of a soul, too, I'm afraid for what my passions may lead me too. It may be that I am a more depraved person, and would wind up gambling or doing drugs, until I'd either lost the rest of my soul, or lost my physical life. So now, for the most part, I just walk. I wake up in the morning, eat a little something, shower, dress, then go out for a walk.

"Before you even look at that man, you want to learn about his history." I glanced up from the cracks of the sidewalk, startled that someone would be talking to me, but when I saw them, I realized they were not talking to me, but about me! They were talking to a dove that was sitting on a tree next to where the speaker was sitting in a lawn chair on an overgrown lawn in front of what can only be described as a hut. When I made eye contact with the person, they seemed just as startled as I had been, that I should hear them speaking. They stood up with a leg on either side of the lawn chair, shook all over like a wet dog, then ran into their hut.

I looked at the dove and sneered and it dropped dead. My eyes widened in horror. I loved birds! I hadn't really meant the sneer, it must be my lack of pieces of my soul that had made me sneer at the poor little dove. Part of me wanted to run up to it and try to resuscitate it, another part of me was disgusted at the thought of touching a creature I'd long been told would infest my life with lice and mites. And to imagine putting my mouth around its beak? What kind of bird flu might I contract? No, I'd best continue my walk. The problem was that I'd stopped in the first place.

Winter will be here soon and I may have to discontinue my walking, and I don't know what I'll do with myself then. I'm just getting too old, though, to risk walking in snow and ice. If I fall and break a hip, it's all over for me, I know that. Maybe I should just led my depraved soul lead me to whatever dangerous passions wait to tempt the weak and immoral, since I am getting to a certain age. Wouldn't I rather go out high on some illicit drug than on morphine in a hospital bed with my hip in a sling?

I kept walking, but I kept feeling drawn to the hut, and the dead bird. I walked in a loop that would take me past the hut again, just to see what was happening. From a distance, I saw the person outside, hunched over the ground, probably over the bird. I walked closer. From behind, it looked as if the person might be doing CPR on the poor little fellow, but when I got even closer, I saw that the person was digging a hole in the ground with their bare hands. Well, the least I could do was help bury the dove, give it a proper send off. I stopped, not wanting to scare the person, and they said, "I know you're there and I know you're nowhere."