The Fallen (excerpt)
By paborama
- 511 reads
A wheel spins on the horizontal, slowing to stillness in the frigid hall. Books lie scattered. His fingertips trace the outline of a decorative teaspoon long lost beneath the shelving, till now. Thigh stumps waving for balance above his behind, he spins like a wagon on a wheelhouse to face his locomotive once more. Gripping a leg, he tips the chair back into its upright. Applies the brakes, one click following the other. Shuffles a bit more then, wheezing from the effort, he builds a countering stack of Virgilius and Plautus upon which he can steadily lift his once-sturdy-still-tough frame up and back into a comfortable sit.
'Bain!' He calls, the dust motes dancing a-fresh from the cry.
'What?'
'Bain, come here, please. I'd like a little hand.'
A few footsteps, and just that appears: a tiny plastic hand on a long black stick from around the open door, followed by the cheerful grin of Baruch Bain, entrepreneur and befriender of elderly codgers.
'Give over, you nonce,' says Cauldwell. 'Give us a hand.' They pick-up, and rally-round, and re-shelve, and put the dust back down.
'Tokens. I was looking for me tokens.'
'I put them on the kitchen board, ya daft bugger. Y'watched me do it.'
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Comments
sounds like a couple who know
sounds like a couple who know each other's foibles.
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