Borderlands 5 by Unknown Page B

had no need for pastry.
    One of the many ironies of retirement was that now that he could sleep until mid-morning, if he wished, his body wouldn’t cooperate. He’d risen at 6 a.m. for forty-five years five days a week, often waking groggy and disoriented. Weekends he awoke at ten feeling fully refreshed. Now he found his bladder screaming at him twice a night. He’d stumble into the bathroom at 3 a.m. and then fall into a fitful sleep. He was awakened again at 6 a.m. like clockwork. Try as he might he couldn’t fall asleep again.
    The question still begged. What would he do ?
    Find a hobby, his daughter had told him often over the phone. He’d tried cooking gourmet meals but he was soon put off by all the preparation for twenty minutes of pleasure. And little that he cooked using six books of supposedly tantalizing menus tasted as good as a greasy pizza he could order from a corner store a few blocks away or a steak or burger he could cook in fifteen minutes. His experiment with gardening was even less successful. Volunteer work? Teaching had been volunteer work for the paltry salary he had drawn. He no longer had the patience nor stamina to work with handicapped children. He had no desire to work with the elderly. And he certainly didn’t want to be reminded of his mortality by working with those who were ill.
    He found he spent more and more time in his Lazy Boy lounger, one of his few new purchases since his retirement. He decided to catch up on his reading. He had hundreds of novels and biographies he’d purchased and never had time to read. He attacked them with gusto. After reading several chapters, though, he’d get a headache. His optometrist prescribed new, even thicker glasses than the ones he’d already had. After a month the headaches returned. Worse his concentration wandered. He found himself reading the same page, the same paragraph over again and again. A book that had taken him days to finish just a few years before now took two weeks. And as so much of what he read was instantly forgettable he finally gave up the effort. The daily newspapers, The Sporting News and Newsweek served his reading needs. He seldom made his way through those without dozing.
    He’d awaken in his lounger with a start and he couldn’t see his feet for several minutes. They weren’t there . He could sense them, like an amputee, but they had vanished. Soon, though, they reappeared. Maybe he’d been dreaming that he’d awakened when he hadn’t. But it seemed so real. And over the next several weeks it only intensified. He’d awaken
    —or so he thought—and he couldn’t see his feet nor his legs. Another time his feet and arms appeared to have melted away. Once his penis shriveled into nothingness before his eyes. He had to stifle a scream.
    Bad as the dreams, hallucinations or whatever-the-hell he was experiencing were, worse was that he had nobody to confide in. His few good friends—precious few—had all died several years before. He couldn’t speak to his children. They’d think him crazy and send him to the dreaded nursing home. He feared seeking out a shrink for the same reason.
    Each time when he’d finally come to his senses and literally counted his toes and fingers making sure he still had all ten of each, he was again assaulted by the question. What would he do?
    What he did was pick up his gun. He’d completely forgotten his purchase when he answered one of his infrequent phone calls and was told that he’d received a clean bill of health and his gun was waiting for him. He began to visibly shake as he put the receiver down. Not from fear, but anticipation. He wanted the gun more than he’d wanted anything in his life, not that he had any use for it.
    At the gun shop the owner again indulged him, showing him again how to properly load and clean the gun. The proprietor suggested he purchase a lock box. James shook his head. There was nobody who could get hurt in his house. He purchased several boxes