Homecoming

The following is my entry for the Best Damn Creative Writing Blog's second Flash Fiction challenge. I hope you enjoy it and as always, welcome any comments you might have.

The first thing I become aware of is the feel of the rocks. I look down at my feet and note with some alarm that they are shoeless. I flex my toes and feel the pressure of several small stones that I am standing on. My eyes rise slowly and follow the path of a dirt road, dotted with the same small stones and pebbles. From my vantage point the road seems to stretch on into forever in both directions, a landscape resigned to sameness.

I begin to walk.

Standing tall on either side, a wall of corn stalks moves with the road, a perfectly parted sea of green. A gentle breeze stirs the long leaves, the sound of rustled pages in an old library. I look up into a sky of clouds, an iron gray shield through which the sun is powerless to penetrate.

It suddenly dawns on me to wonder exactly where I am. I have no memory of where this road began or even how I came to be on it.

I continue to walk past the stalks of the whispering corn plants. There is no other sound. The clouds move slowly overhead. I walk for a time. It is impossible to know how long exactly without the benefit of the sun. The landscape around me remains unchanged, the corn my sole companion.

Still, I walk.

That’s when I spot a figure standing in the road up ahead. Too far away to make out a face or any other defining characteristics, the figure stands still in the middle of my road. Anxious to speak to another person, to find out where I am, I pick up the pace, my bare feet sending up small puffs of dust that the constant breeze tosses into the corn behind me.

As I get closer the figure’s face comes into focus.

What I see stops me dead. I stare, the only action I seem capable of.

The man in front of me, perhaps sensing the shutdown of my mental circuitry, closes the gap between us. Impossibly he stands before me.

“Josh?” I whisper, shock robbing my voice of any real strength.

My brother nods and smiles.

My mind screams that this cannot be. The last time I saw my brother’s face was when I said my goodbyes, when I laid that photograph of the two of us at the old lake house when we were kids beside his still body as it lay in its casket, clad in his finest military dress uniform.

“Josh…how…” I begin, trying to make sense out of what my eyes tell me I am seeing.

Suddenly the clues fall into place in my mind, like so many dominoes pushed by an invisible hand. Understanding floods my soul with a peace so complete no words ever uttered on this Earth would ever do it justice.

My long lost brother raises his arms, tears beginning to spill from the corners of his hazel eyes.

“Welcome home, brother.”