STORIES: Somewhere in Old Europe…

…I’ve been led into the lives of an old man and for two days he’s bothered me with a need to tell me things:

But as her face came to his mind he shuddered, frowned, and gathered his saliva in a hot angry ball of phlegm when something made him swallow it instead.  His rage disarmed by thought instead of action made him realize it was because she’d left him, sickened, died and passed into another world where he was not allowed to go, and that it was between them, the very first time one had gone somewhere distant without the other. Without the opportunity, without permission and agreement, for if she’d asked, he knew now he would gladly go.