Circumspice Literary

As his consciousness flicked back on from a dreamless sleep Auri struggled to comprehend the sensations he was feeling.  Slowly he realized the intruding presence in his bedroom was indeed daylight.  The muslin curtains swayed in the breeze of the ceiling fan and Auri cursed the severity of his inebriation for robbing him of the basic capacity to remember to close the drapes.  He then allowed himself a few minutes to contemplate how to bring his plan for songbird genocide to fruition.  While the berry fields brought out the magic of fireflies at night, they also summoned a Hitchcockian army of birds in the morning.  He finally settled on a flamethrower.  Yes, he would destroy his crops, the house, and perhaps a few innocent squirrels and rabbits, but it was a price he was willing to pay to silence the cacophony.

He felt as if he had not had a drink of water for a week and he was certain his cranial blood vessels were playing the first few bars of Thus Spake Zarathustra on repeat.  He was drenched in sweat.  Not only did he forget the drapes, but apparently, simply making it to his bed taxed the limit of his drunken capacity and he did not even remove the purple velvet smoking jacket.  He then attempted to summon his water bottle on the nightstand telepathically but failing that, he gathered the motivation to move.

A half hour later he trundled downstairs in a ball cap, t-shirt, and jeans.  He told Lily and Jude to be ready early so he had to get moving.  Since he was a child his father took him to Buddy’s Diner in Hendersonville on the first Saturday of the month.  Buddy was one of his father’s oldest friends and was the one who encouraged him to dance with the smokin’ hot Colombian girl on that mission trip to Medellin.  Now in his seventies, Buddy still worked the counter at his diner and Auri was not going to let him down.