It is getting late, Monday is dead and has given birth to Tuesday, yet he still has the remnants of the Becker dinner to clean up. It had been exactly a week now since Becker had turned the friendly invite into a death match, since the Old Man and the eternal moment thereafter, and Martin still has not cleaned the glasses and washed the dishes and swatted the flies that hum over the last morsels of cold pasta.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get to them.

On the floor lies the small box his father had given him, its top flapped open in a wooden scream, frozen in time. Its lone content has no use any more – it has served its purpose well. Smith still remembers the day his father had presented the gift to him. You will use this when the time is right, Marty. Take care with it. This is in case you ever fall into that quicksand we regular folks call life.

Regular folks. Yes. People like the Beckers and Smiths were regular folks. He was not. He was their offspring but the relationship ended there. As he grew he realized how frail his mother and father actually were, not so much in their physical frame but more so in the mental. Their minds were equipped to handle taxes and shopping and nothing much else, to create in the most rudimentary sense, and it was a purpose that served only to accentuate the glory of Smith’s greater purpose.

That is why they were dead, too.

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