Look at Me Now

As soon as he hit the wall, his body went limp, it slid down the wall, his skin and clothes the only things attempting to hold him up. The tearing and scraping sounds harmonized together, a staccato slither, could be heard across the darkened playground. His body finally came to rest on its knees. His cheek was caught on the spackled and dimpled brick, canting his head at a queer angle, his face at the end of the wide bloody trail down the wall in a close-eyed sneer.

He tried to rise. He rolled off his left side, rose. He ran and hit the wall again, this time at a much lower velocity. This still knocked his 200 pounds over onto his back and he rolled onto his side, then his front. Noticing the cool pavement on his cheek, he disallowed himself that pleasure and pushed up with both palms planted firmly on the ground. He lost his balance twice, once from his head swooning. He scraped his palm and then his knuckles across the brick for good measure. The bits and bumps of brick eagerly dug into the thin skin over bone and he could feel it scraping.

The security light at the top corner of the building clicked off.

He stood as a drunk stands taking a break from his sojourn home: One arm propped out, a palm supporting his swaying body on the wall, head bowed. The blood ran down the front of his face and dripped off his nose. The skin on his bald head burned and tingled from scrapes and lacerations.

The security light clicked off.

"Don't turn off the light...One more time coach.” He slurred. "I swear, me do good papa. oranges in the can until Sunday for sure." He swayed and weaved back to the edge of the playground. Gone were the days when he drank. Presently, he could not remember drinking, much less be able to grasp the concept of it. He assessed his 50-foot runway with dwindling and blurred vision.

He took a deep breath and, waking up the security light again, shuffled past the end of the cracked pavement onto the sparsely grassed dirt of the playground. The same dirt on the same playground he played on when he was so much younger. He remembered, so vividly, looking up from the lower vantage point of a child, up into the compassionate and passively obedient eyes of Young Sister Agnes as she helped him up. Somehow, she mastered the look of diapproval with the air of someone who cares. It was made clear this was the only help he would receive.

His small body tensed at hearing this. He cried what she thought were tears of pain, but what he knew to be tears of dread.

He turned and faced the building. He swiveled his head, and jumped up and down, shaking out his hands and arms like a runner at the starting line.

"Watch this, you...ahhhrgh!" He caught himself off guard and ran early.

He sprinted as fast as he could and slammed into the wall. This time, his head took the brunt of the force.

Sister Agnes, who was getting on as well as can be expected for a woman of seventy, found his body in the early parts of dawn. Seeing him out of the corner of her eye, she thought he was the drunk that sometimes fell asleep on the grounds, so she did not notice his bloody face or his caved-in head until she looked up from her keys and locked her gaze with his dead eyes.

And she cried.