Reflection

This is my first original short story for Steem

Reflection

One cold December night, almost late enough to be considered morning, a man walked down a street in Philadelphia. He seemed to whimper with each step, questioning how this could have happened to him. He reflected upon his life. His pristine marriage, the birth of his beautiful baby boy, followed by his beautiful daughter. This evening, he had awoken to see them be taken from him. He thought he could remember quite clearly what the man who had taken them looked like, yet he could not think straight enough to form a complete picture. Perhaps he had had too much to drink, perhaps he just didn’t care to remember straight. Either way, he walked the streets in order to find this man. Men of this caliber are the only ones on the street at this time of night. Men of despicable character.

He paused, and remembered when his son had first cried. Not the tears of a baby, but the tears of a blossoming man. He and his wife had had a huge argument over finances which ended in threats of divorce. His son witnessed the whole thing and wailed at the thought of divorce. A virtue which every man should keep, yet this man was too blind to realize this at the time. He thought of how, at the age of nine, his son had been twice the man he was because of values such as this. Youthful innocence is a virtue in itself. Now, the man shuddered after realizing he had watched his son cry for the last time.

Image Source: Pixabay.com, License CC0 Public Domain

The man came to a train station, where he and his family had traveled on numerous occasions. He remembered a trip they took to a little town in Pennsylvania called West Chester. He recalled that this trip had represented the crowning moment of his family life. Not one member of his family felt discontent, and everyone was happy in the moment. However, the moment was invented to change and his family’s happiness had ended at this train station -- where reality inevitably sets in.

The man gazed across the tracks. The faint light of the approaching train revealed a shadowy figure whose features were barely recognizable. The figure stood with a posture that suggested he too felt depressed about where his life had come to. As the light grew, the man realized that this figure had been the man in his house earlier this evening. The man shouted something which was inaudible due to the approaching train, at the very same instant, the figure shouted something which was also inaudible. The man, frustrated at the sight of the murderer who had taken all that was precious to him, allowed anguish to get to him. As he stood, he contemplated jumping. He did not necessarily want to die, he merely did not want to live knowing of what could have been. As the train got closer and closer, he decided that this figure should know how he had destroyed his life. At the very last possible moment, the man jumped, and to his astonishment, so too did his faint reflection across the tracks.

Thanks for reading this! See you later!

(Note) In order to encourage meaningful feedback on the platform, I will check comment trails of users who leave superficial comments (ie "Awesome post," or "Upvoted.") and will mute any users who exhibit a pattern of leaving "spammy" comments.