Secret Stories, Page 5

each slightly further away, all moving together in a distant cascade.

  He is startled as a wave is falling over his head. But by this time he is sleeping, being carried away by the ocean.

  The Philosopher And The Stranger

  A philosopher later in age asks a stranger during an evening walk what he should do to redeem himself for having wasted his life asking questions and engaging in ideas instead of following through on plans. The stranger, surprised at the question, and further surprised at how serious the philosopher was in the deep belief of a wasted life, thought to himself that the philosopher seemed to be convinced of an idea that meant that certain kinds of action alone were good, as if all people should act only in certain ways. The stranger thought more for several minutes and then answered by saying that the philosopher had misjudged what action is, and that the philosopher could not possibly know all the reactions of the actions of his questions and ideas.

  The Killing Of A Bad Man

  A couple in a parking lot walking towards a store are confronted by a group of three young people in a car. The driver pulls the car up, almost into the female. Her male companion tries to stay calm but lifts his hands up in the air in a general gesture of frustration. The driver pulls a gun from his jacket and points it out the window at the man and tells him to “Fucking watch it!” The man makes an annoyed but non-aggressive face that the driver takes to be personally insulting, so the driver tells the man not to move.

  The couple look at each other in terror and with the horror of the violent change from a pleasant evening out to what could end their lives together and entirely. A blaze of movement occurs instantly, and then is over; when, while the gun is pointed out the window, the man grabs it from the driver, knowing that the woman he is with is still in front of the car, pulls the trigger, hitting the driver and causing his death.

  During that time, the other passengers from the car leave running and the woman lies upon the ground. The man then puts the gun on top of the car and goes to her while seeming unflinched.

  After two weeks of feeling alright, his thoughts begin to become obsessed with the life that he took and the things that he found out about after the incident. With each thought came connections with new empathy fed from his own memories, and this caused him to become ungrounded and disoriented in a way that he found astonishing.

  Through all his positive efforts, he could not get past it.