Blogpost 11: Free Short Story - The Token Part I

I hold myself in that delicious state between sleep and wakefulness. With eyes still closed I look around the room. I need no sight to see the silhouettes of familiar furniture, expectant and soulless.I grow aware of the sensation of deep relaxation spread throughout my body, which shortly will flee as the tensions of the day begin. I do not need to open my eyes to sense the light, stealing, even now, around the edges of the blackout blinds to draw me from sleep. Should I choose, I can remain in the half stage between the worlds of reality and conjecture for a little longer yet. Gradually I turn to acknowledge the coming morning.

This is the place where my choices are made. Here I have the luxury of reaching into my soul to consider what truly matters to me. But today there is no avoiding a decision. I must determine which path to take. So yet again I face the oldest question known to man: which of two enticing females will I choose? For of two, there can be only one. The choice of one necessarily entails the rejection of the other: she with whom I have sojourned for so very long or she who now entices my being with her beauty? And as I ponder the age-old question I grow aware the outcome was always known.For this reason alone that I cast back the bedding and rise to meet the coming day.In silence I prepare myself. A cunning thief hell bent upon the disruption of complacency, I steal away from my home of history. With regret, I realise that she who has mean so very much to me for so very long is now without consequence. And should I admire in myself the capability to dismiss the dedication of decades? Or should I allow the moral catastrophe of illicit love to overwhelm me?Regrettably, there is no contest. I am a man possessed, possessed with the burden of passion. And the beat of my heart drowns out the voice of rationality that would so insistently demand a measured, considered and … sensible… yes, sensible decision from me –the decision to stay.Silently now, so as to preserve the equilibrium of ordered existence a little longer, I exit, stage right.To be continued…