Sol's Random Stories

Every month or so, he just goes bat-crap crazy. Frank Campbell has walked up and down the same pitch-black alley for the last five years. Out of booze, cursing his damning impulses, with circular inner rants in the odd, disparate voices of strangers. " When all you think about is the mistakes, bad calls, rage starting as misunderstanding, posturing, mornng, noon, night, then alone in your room, no more self- lying, the stray BS of the day irrelevant, when all you think about are decisions made then gone bad, when you were focused, crazed, both, neither, rotten choices, yet you still didn't expect the worst, others also pained, a chain of hurt, you didn't think ahead, or behind, or at all, call it delusion delivered, or your mind in a loop trap of old crap, call it full of remorse, but you've forgotten who or when or why, try again, point towards an exit from the humdrum matrix, this time pick your own galaxy to roam, stay out of mine, when all you think about is the ...

From rushing understreams of sleep, Dana Conner rises before dawn to go to work, just as his father had before him, as they had for many generations past. Ninety-three now, he never retired decades ago when they offered. The two century-old foundry where the town and his family worked just saw him return each morning after steady morning, as if no years and decades had ever passed at all. Conner loved his job, his routine, blessed with his devoted wife, his four children and eleven grandkids. Conner trusted the unquestioned goodness of God, the enduring grace gifted to his life. From silent waters of streams completing their course, tracing back to their sacred source, Dana Conner rises to go to work one last time in kind, only a still body left behind.