On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Chosen)

Perfection

Tommy Whistler was awesomely unlucky. You will, perhaps, tell us that the term "awesome" doesn't quite fit for the description of so sad objective reality, which dear Tommy has faced? Oh, if you had only known what his family had to pass through over the last year! You, certainly, don't have the slightest idea of that and therefore we are ready to forgive you such inconvenient and unreasonable remarks. And Tommy didn't even whistle on a constant basis – only quietly under his nose from time to time during short moments of spiritual bliss. And they, believe us or not, weren't that long. And how he has managed to come to this low-water financial mark – only the God or the accountant knows.

Some soul would probably tell us, that a single year – it isn't quite a term, and there is no reason to dive into hysteric and confuse our noble readers here, – but that depends on how to measure. If to measure this term in seconds, which precisely like a herd of lambs come one after another in a never-ending chain – one can easily turn into a sheep himself. And if to measure in events of his life –one will certainly cry and there will be no more wish for counting. The ideal option would be to measure in years – but what's there is to measure then? So Tommy had either to howl to the moon like a wolf, or to the dog like a kitten or to go at once and register without a second thought in a club of anonymous losers. There was still, however, one other option to become a family of totally and irreversibly enlightened people – but financial opportunities of Tommy's family didn't allow them to place such a great number of lighting fixtures in their house. Therefore, his family hasn't conducted calculations of own misfortunes for a long time, for it's an expensive procedure – to measure own sorrows, especially when you are swimming in low waters.

And for the last three months, everything was on the decline, though absolutely not forever. Salary at the enterprise, where Tommy has been working, was constantly delayed, and all its workers were in literal and figurative terms fed with breakfasts. In literal – because he as an employee of a dairy factory was subject to be supplied with milk and its derivatives, and in figurative – because terms of final payments were as changeable and unsteady as women of easy virtue – even uneasy ones – never happen to be. Mainly for that particular reason, he felt more and more like a small sprat in a bank – that particular bank when he, having trusted colorful words of marketing specialists a few years ago, has issued a mortgage.

A typical story, you will tell us? Typical, but not typically. Not typically from the word "absolutely". Because in that significant day something absolutely out of order of his previous accidents happened to him.

***

During that Saturday morning Tommy couldn't find any peace in at least two meanings: firstly, because bank workers were already going to literally throw them away in the upcoming future from their cozy dwelling due to failure to pay the credit; and secondly, because not cats were scraping his soul, but impudent mice instead, who have bred in fair quantity due to cats constant fatigue.

"What for? What for, Lord, have you given us all these trials? Don't you see how hard our life is? Even though we live in the most beautiful and democratic country of the world, bank clerks don't become better, housing doesn't get cheaper and milk doesn't form rivers with a land of milk and honey," so Tommy Whistler mentally lamented, walking to and fro in his bedroom since early morning.

Here we have to mention, that our dear Tommy wasn't quite a believer at all – in the sense that he, unlike a lot of other proud of themselves and respectable citizens of his small town, hasn't spent Sunday hour in a local church, listening to ardent speeches of holy priests, fattened by parishioners. But so hard life has jammed all organs of Tommy by this moment, his heart included, and limits of his powers turned out to be so limited, that both his soul and thoughts were aspiring somewhere to limitless heights in a hope to share own grief with someone unknown, someone so much bigger than all his sorrows taken together.