Paul Milenski
But then lately Frank had been seeing things. He had quit smoking, was straining terribly to control his habit. His daughter had encouraged him to do so. "Daddy, it's so bad for you. It gives you Heart attacks and cancer. Please don't smoke." So with his daughter living apart from him at her mother's, Frank quit as appeasement to his little child. But there was this side effect to his abstinence: what he gained in peripheral vision from the smoke cloud lifted from his retinae, he lost in clarity (no, it was not clarity) - he lost in definition among the many more objects he now as non-smoker could see. To keep his hands busy, he went into the kitchen, did the crossword in the daily paper, made himself a snack, washed the dishes. Then he went into the bedroom, put his clothes away, made the bed, was passing through the living room to get the vacuum cleaner when he looked out the window again. There was the fluttering, more compelling, almost urgent. He pressed his face to the window, realized a new condition: the wind had died down; there was not a stir of leaves or branches. He ought to ignore it, he told himself, it was such a little thing. But after be readjusted, his daughter's photograph on the end table, he opened the door, stepped outside. But even closer to the object, his vision unobstructed, he could still not make out what it was. He was going to turn, go back inside, but there was something imperative about the fluttering, something that made him move forward.
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