Reborn by Thomas Hunt

Roger decided not to be born that day and wandered in the bone white morning away from the hospital where his parents waited… their dreams would be stillborn. Roger crossed the street near the courthouse, past the Granada Cafe, and wished he could smell the breakfast cooking. As the air around him grew less vaporous, less insubstantial, he began to feel the length of his body filling out — flesh and bone imagined and then restored. He was corpus again, not so much alive as a somewhat living thing. His gait remained slow and determined. He wanted to fit in. He wanted to belong, even though without an actual birth he was but a half-formed thing. 

A great church rose up before him as he turned the corner from Downtown to Midtown. Its vast Corinthian columns towered in marble around the facade of stonework. In any other moment, to any other wanderer, it would have been imposing, but Roger knew this place. It had been home once upon a time. He'd lived here, near the parsonage. He had known much love and attention from the old pastor who worked here and spent time with him in the evenings after supper. Both he and Roger before the fire, feet warming in the glow. 

Age eventually arrived for both of them. Time had its own schedule. So when they moved on, the pastor moved beyond the realm of petty concerns. Roger, however, had work yet to do. He would not move on, or beyond, but would skulk in the parsonage yard near the old doghouse until the new pastor would see him and run screaming from the scene of the partial person forming in the yard. 

Thomas Hunt lives in Oklahoma City, works in health care, and has two spoiled cats. When not writing, he paints abstracts in watercolor and acrylic. He can be found at www.thomashunt.io