Jose began to worry about what happened to his wife, so he picked up his handset and dialed the number to the correctional facility in Utah which is where he believed she was.
"Hello, this is Jose Camino. My wife was locked up here."
"Mr. Camino, what is your Wife's name?"
"Her name is Val Camino."
"Let me check our records, but I believe that there is no one in this facility that bears that name. Can I put you on hold?"
"Sure."
The receptionist put Jose on hold, and the hold music was an instrumental version of "We'll meet again."
"So, there appears to be a record here of a Val Camino, but she had been sentenced only to a couple of months. May I ask about the reason you called now?"
"No reason. Thank you."
"My-" The receptionist was cut off by Jose hanging up.
Jose became suspicious of the whole dilemma because he knew that she would have called him if it had been five years, but he also understood that he was in California.
Jose had a little house in California which could only be described through the doors which barricaded the threshold in between the chaos and sanctuary. The doors had been worn by the sun, and had carvings on them. One of them was a fisherman who never caught a fish. Another was of a weary traveler traveling on open plains worn thin from the wind and the rain. Unfortunately this was the one that stuck out most to me. It was of a sick, dying dog breathing its last breaths in a cage, begging for forgiveness, begging, for scraps, begging for its life.
Thinking about his wife, Jose was stuck in a trance. He had no idea where she was, what had happened to her, or even if she was alive. The trance was broken by a sudden noise. The door creaked open. Startled, Jose tried his best to focus on the intruder of the mental and physical field that he was in.
"Sir, I have that tea that you requested."
"Oh, yes thanks miguel."
"I also have some news as well if you would care to hear it?"
"Ok?"
"You remember that man that you wanted us to track down, the Eric York Fella?"
"Yes. What about him?"
"You know how he disappeared about five years ago right?"
"Yes, I hope that son of a bitch died."
"Well, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Some of your spies had seen him, or what appeared to be him walking around Glenwood Springs."
"Son of a bitch." Jose scoured the room that he was in and found a table. The inhabitants of the table scattered and shattered all over the floor. Jose then calmed down and spoke in a voice of clarity.
"Is there any other news that you have?"
"No- no sir. Apologies."
"I'm gonna kill him." Jose then burst out of the front doors, and hopped in his car.
"He's gonna get himself killed."
California was the last sanctuary of summer. Nothing dared go near summer anymore. He was tired, beaten up by all of the seasons, cursed to a longevity of heat and despair. Winter reigned throughout and killed all of the last little pockets of joy and froze them in embarrassment. The drops of water, still dripping, in their most intimate moment with the air, frozen, forsaken, and destroyed.
Jose drove east back towards Colorado. At this point, nothing could stop the inevitable force of Jose. He was winter. Colorado whispered an echo of hope into Jose's ear. The sunset crept towards the west, falling into the Pacific Ocean, and in front of all of it was the force of night. Jose was bored with all of the driving and turned on the radio. It was a Christmas special of a talk show.
"Now, Larry, you're telling me that this guy goes around looking for trouble and blames all of his problems on chance."
"Yes, Bob, but the best thing is that he ends up walking into a music store one day, and I end up being in that music store. I saw him, and I walked towards him, and I said 'Well, you seem to have finally found treble."
The audience roared into laughter and approval, but Jose was ice. Nothing phased him anymore.
In Colorado Eric was still getting used to being home. Even though he had been only a couple miles away from it, the separation stung only because of the time that was spent away. There seemed to be some sort of break in, but what left Eric speechless was a dead dog. Sadly, there was a dog that found a way to break into Eric's home but could not escape, so it died right there on his living room floor. The suspected break in was not this dog however, but some vandalism on the wall above the dead corpse of this dog which said Un Douceur Pour Mon Chein.
The dead dog, rotting, stinking, molding, left a putrid smell of death and decay. Eric became one amongst the catastrophe of death. He himself smelled like death and resembled all things of it, but Eric could care less at this point since it had been years since he had a comfortable sleep.
The suffering of humanity died like the dog, starving, isolated, beaten, and broken. It sounded pleasant, the suffering was traded for comfort, but it was almost its own type of pain. Becoming a normality, men were told that it was a good thing to be weak, to be broken, to be just people, and the men suffered. their rage was scolded into hiding and their fears were portrayed through every single action they made. Isolation grew like vines and swallowed the men into a deep hole of loneliness, and cursed them to it for the rest of their lives. Suffering died but never ceased to exist, it never spoke but said a thousand words. It was everywhere yet ignored by the individual, and idealism bought and sold the universe.
Jose was only a couple hours from reaching Glenwood. With all the fury and rage in the world, he drove his car like a needle into someone's hand, driving straight into the Colorado border.
Eric awoke and was greeted with light in his eyes. A sensation that was forgotten to him. He sat up in his bed, and felt an indescribable feeling of peace, but there was still a great evil closing its maw on him. Eric then got out of bed, clothed himself, and left to get breakfast somewhere. This morning it was frozen. The ice protected the road with a thin layer of its cold, glassy soul. Eric grabbed an extra coat, and as he was walking out the door, a mouse scurried across the floor. Eric could care less. All of the suffering that he had been through transformed him into something other than a human. He was missing an eye, his face had a terrible scar, and his hair was as gray as rocks. He looked like a monster, and nothing was more certain than that he could never change back to what he used to be. Eric exclaimed in a moment of sorrow "I am no longer a man, but merely the embodiment of all human pain."
With this thought, he shook his head, opened the cedar door that guarded the world from the monstrosity, and left for breakfast
The world was cold, consumed by the frail jaws of winter. The ice killed the plants, and the animals hid from its terrifying face. Its eyes, those beads of sadness, were strained from its cold temperature.
Eric drove with haste towards breakfast. His natural desire to eat consumed his brain and left nothing but a crumb of guilt. His eyes never strayed from the road, but he was envisioning something else. Rest finally became a reality for Eric, but he felt nothing but weariness. His vision was not clear, for he could barely make out the distance in between objects. Once he settled on the breakfast restaurant that he was going to dine at, he parked his car and walked towards the place. He then made it to the front of the building and opened the door. There was a host waiting at the entrance to greet and seat incoming customers, so he approached Eric, and when he looked into Eric's face, fear and regret plagued this poor host's mind.
"How m-many sir?"
Eric nodded his head to indicate that it was just him dining.
The host led him to a table in the far corner.
Once Eric sat down he pondered something for a while. Nothing is truly stranger than eating alone. Quietness was always the backbone of every conversation. It was the feeling of awkwardness which plagued most so that everyone would keep the conversation going. Eric, however, had no one to talk to, and he had not for a long time. A waitress came to him and gave him a cup of coffee, and that was the moment that a man on the other side of the restaurant noticed him. This man approached Eric and sat directly opposite from him.
"Sir, I believe I know who you are."
Eric was shocked by the words that this pure stranger spoke. "I've never even seen you before."
"Well, maybe you don't know who I am. I'm Marshall."
"No last name?"
"You won't need that."
"You probably want to take me in is what I'm guessing."
"No no no, nothing like that. You see, I was hired by an old friend of yours, Jose Camino."
"We're not friends."
"Well, maybe not friends, but acquaintances nonetheless? Look he's coming over this very minute and he's wanting to meet you again."
"I promise you that this meeting with me again is more in the nature of killing me. He hates my guts!"
"That may be so, but the bounty that he was giving me, I would be a fool not to take hold of this opportunity."
"Of course."
"Whatever this adventure that you've been on sounds exciting." Marshall then paused for a second and helped himself to Eric's coffee. "would you ever be interested in writing a book or or maybe even just a story about this adventure? You see, my main line of work is writing, and I think that your story would be an excellent thing to write about."
"Maybe." Eric replied with visible confusion onto what he even meant about an adventure.
"Please feel free to call me. I'll leave you my number here on this card." Marshall then handed him a business card. "Well call anytime I'm free most of the time. I better be going. talk to you soon."
Marshall left the restaurant and as he was doing this he bumped into somebody that Eric definitely recognized. It was Jose.