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Fiction
Always Thought I’d See You Again
My first attempt at writing fiction
This is a short sad piece of fiction. It’s about a man, whose life’s course was determined years before by a very early rejection. Predetermined might be a better word, since he has little or no control over the path his life is taking. On top of all that, he hates roast chicken and James Taylor songs.
Rejection. Now there’s a good word. Well not a good word, maybe. Not for the person feeling it.
Jason had been rejected. Not once, but a whole lot of times. Each time he was rejected, he became dejected. People often said he looked dejected. Apparently, that often happens with someone who’s been rejected. He heard them say that too, so many times that aimlessly, in the bar, he often used to ponder words ending with “jection:” subjection, objection, injection, abjection, ejection.
As far as he was concerned, they all had negative connotation. But he was comfortable with that. He felt they were his personal words, that, in a way, they summed him up. You might say Jason was a bit negative. That’s what the guys in the bar often told him. Was he always negative, they’d ask him, half-jokingly. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t, but he could clearly remember the first time he felt rejected.
He was four. Not long after his fourth birthday, his mother left. He didn’t know why Mommy went. One day at lunchtime, when he came back from kindergarten, she was just not there. Now he’s forty, but he still vividly remembers that day. Like most days, Gill Griffin, an older girl in his school, who lived near him, walked him home. That day, his father, looking grey and pale, was waiting outside the hall door. His father worked in town and was never home at this time. But that day, he was standing at the door.
Forty years later, Jason can still smell the roast chicken Mrs. Sullivan next door was cooking and hear the song playing on her radio: “Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you.” His mom’s name was Suzanne. Ever since, Jason couldn’t listen to James Taylor.
His first high school romance lasted three months and four days. His second about a month longer. No surprise then, that his one-and-only marriage was…
