Amos sat in the old rocker, looking out across the open fields in front of the farm house. He watched wisps of clouds dancing across the sky and jet trails slowly dissolving into the blue and remembered a time, long ago now, when he was more than the frail old man now living out the last of his days watching the seasons pass from his window. Snippets of another life he was no longer sure were even his.
“You see that, girl?” he said, looking over at a canary is a small cage on a dresser next to the window. “You see those vapour trails? That was me once.”
The small yellow bird cheeped almost as if in response.
His eyes weren’t what they once were but he could still make out the feint outline of the city in the distance and he watched as shuttles, from this distance mere specks, took off and headed upwards towards the east pacific low orbit station.
There was a flash of silver as the sun caught the side of a large long haul transporter rising slowly upwards and he remembered, not at all fondly, the early days long before anti-grav when they had to strap you to a rocket just to get you into orbit. He didn’t miss the take offs, but he each landing was fresh in his mind as the day he had made them.
“Good times,” he mumbled to himself, rolling a small red rock no larger than a thumbnail between his fingers. A memento of his last trip to Mars smuggled home, and his most prized possession. He rocked slowly and pulled a blanket over his knees. He looked at it and his eyes lit up and a smile spread across his face. He had kept it locked away for decades but today, today he wanted to hold it. It was softer to the touch than he remembered, perhaps from being kept in the old cigarette tin in the dresser for so long.
“I went there you know,” he told his canary. He had told her uncountable times but he didn’t know that, not anymore. His once sharp mind was now a lottery when it came to the things he remembered and the things he did not. “I saw sunrise over the Martian planes, long before we stopped going there after what happened, and trust me, it was a sight to behold. Miles of red, like a sea of blood stretched out before us.”
The canary cleaned her feathers, then hopped down to the bottom of the cage.
“Oh yes,” he continued proudly, fragments of past glories now darting about his mind. “I was a real American hero. We even had a parade in thirty seven.”
The canary chirped again, and then for a second time, as Amos suddenly stiffened, a look of pain etched across his face. His right arm reached for his chest and the small rock fell from his hand. Amos gasped as the bird continued to call loudly. Amos was now in full cardiac arrest. His hands clenched into fists as the life ebbed slowly from his body, his eyes glazing over, and with a final gasp, Amos McCartney drifted into nothing.
And with that final gasp, his body now relaxed the chair rocked forwardm crushing the small rock fragment. Red dust smeared on the carpet beneath the runner of the old rocking chair. The canary chirped wildly, hopping up to the small wooden perch and then back to the cage floor, but there was nobody to hear it or heed it’s warnings.
Slowly, spreading out from the spot under the chairm a red stain began to creep. It first engulfed the chair and Amos, turning them a dark ochre red, and moments later the flesh and plaid blanket on his knees suddenly collapsed into dust. The canary flapped wildly, flying around the small cage panicked.
Outwards, it then began to spread, devouring all before it and turning everything it touched to ocre dust, and in a moment, the chirps of the canary were silenced…
Afterwards 