WILL OF THE GRASS

CHAPTER 17
The robot clicked disapprovingly, gurgled briefly inside its cubical interior and extruded a pony
glass of brownish liquid. "Sir, you will undoubtedly end up in a drunkard's grave, dead of
hepatic cirrhosis," it informed me virtuously as it returned my ID card. I glared as I pushed the
glass across the table.
There was something special about this little creature. Donna couldn't quite pinpoint what it
was, but she knew with all her heart that it was true. It wasn't a matter of if she was going to try
and save it, but a matter of how she was going to save it. She went back to the car to get a
blanket and when she returned the creature was gone.
There wasn't a whole lot more that could be done. It had become a wait-and-see situation with
the final results no longer in her control. That didn't stop her from trying to control the
situation. She demanded that things be done as she desperately tried to control what couldn't
be.
She reached her goal, exhausted. Even more chilling to her was that the euphoria that she
thought she'd feel upon reaching it wasn't there. Something wasn't right. Was this the only
feeling she'd have for over five years of hard work?
It wasn't quite yet time to panic. There was still time to salvage the situation. At least that is
what she was telling himself. The reality was that it was time to panic and there wasn't time to
salvage the situation, but he continued to delude himself into believing there was.
Since they are still preserved in the rocks for us to see, they must have been formed quite
recently, that is, geologically speaking. What can explain these striations and their common
orientation? Did you ever hear about the Great Ice Age or the Pleistocene Epoch? Less than one
million years ago, in fact, some 12,000 years ago, an ice sheet many thousands of feet thick
rode over Burke Mountain in a southeastward direction. The many boulders frozen to the
underside of the ice sheet tended to scratch the rocks over which they rode. The scratches or
striations seen in the park rocks were caused by these attached boulders. The ice sheet also
plucked and rounded Burke Mountain into the shape it possesses today.
He sat across from her trying to imagine it was the first time. It wasn't. Had it been a hundred?
It quite possibly could have been. Two hundred? Probably not. His mind wandered until he
caught himself and again tried to imagine it was the first time.
As she sat watching the world go by, something caught her eye. It wasn't so much its color or
shape, but the way it was moving. She squinted to see if she could better understand what it
was and where it was going, but it didn't help. As she continued to stare into the distance, she
didn't understand why this uneasiness was building inside her body. She felt like she should get
up and run. If only she could make out what it was. At that moment, she comprehended what it
was and where it was heading, and she knew her life would never be the same.
How had she been so wrong? All her instincts and intuition completely failed her for the first
time in her life. She had so heavily relied on both when making decisions up until this moment
and she felt a seismic shift take place in her self-confidence. If she could be so completely
wrong about something so simple as this, how could she make decisions about really important
things taking place in her life? She wasn't sure what she should do next.
Her hand was balled into a fist with her keys protruding out from between her fingers. This was
the weapon her father had shown her how to make when she walked alone to her car after
work. She wished that she had something a little more potent than keys between her fingers. It
would have been nice to have some mace or pepper spray. He had been meaning to buy some
but had never gotten around to it. As the mother bear took another step forward with her cubs
in tow, she knew her fist with keys wasn't going to be an adequate defense for this situation.
Her mom had warned her. She had been warned time and again, but she had refused to believe
her. She had done everything right and she knew she would be rewarded for doing so with the
promotion. So when the promotion was given to her main rival, it not only stung, it threw her
belief system into disarray. It was her first big lesson in life, but not the last.
The red glow of tail lights indicating another long drive home from work after an even longer
24-hour shift at the hospital. The shift hadn’t been horrible but the constant stream of patients
entering the ER meant there was no downtime. She had some of the “regulars” in tonight with
new ailments they were sure were going to kill them. It’s amazing what a couple of Tylenol and
a physical exam from the doctor did to eliminate their pain, nausea, headache, or whatever
other mild symptoms they had. Sometimes she wondered if all they really needed was some
interaction with others and a bit of the individual attention they received from the nurses.
Lori lived her life through the lens of a camera. She never realized this until this very moment as
she scrolled through thousands of images on your computer. She could remember the exact
moment each photo was taken. She could remember where she had been, what she was
thinking as she tried to get the shot, the smells of the surrounding area, and even the emotions
that she felt taking the photo, yet she had trouble remembering what she had for breakfast.
Eating raw fish didn't sound like a good idea. "It's a delicacy in Japan," didn't seem to make it
any more appetizing. Raw fish is raw fish, delicacy or not.
Sometimes it's simply better to ignore the haters. That's the lesson that Tom's dad had been
trying to teach him, but Tom still couldn't let it go. He latched onto them and their hate and
couldn't let it go, but he also realized that this wasn't healthy. That's when he came up with his
devious plan.