Old

Old. The word was just not enough. He felt so much older than old. Age lay around him like a dark shroud, leaving him old and alone. These two words he knew could sum up his entire life now. There had been happiness, and excitement, and yes, life had laid its harsher marks on him too, lines of sorrow and anger etched as deeply into his forehead as the laughter lines beside his eyes were.

His face was a series of crags, crevasses and ravines, each of which had a story behind it. Many of the stories were the same, because people never really learn from life's lessons until they have been driven home repeatedly. He had been hammered relentlessly on the anvil of life, and shaped by its lessons. His head was creased and a straggly white beard had brown patches near the lips, stained by the countless cigarettes he smoked. His eyes were yellowed and watery, and his breath reeked like a bar the morning after, stale alcohol and countless cigarettes.

Once he had been young, strong and vital, a name in a world run by names, but time had worn his down, erased all memory of his name, leaving just him, old and alone. He sat in his chair, fumbling with the pack of cigarettes he always kept near. It was a gift from one of the few people in the world who still knew his name, and cared. That that anyone had ever really cared, he thought, as he put the cigarette into his mouth, brown teeth coming momentarily into view. He struggled with the matches now, looking with despair at his shaking hands.

He had been very proud of his hands once. He'd had big strong hands, hands formed by years of hard work and struggle. He could make anything with his own two hands, he had always boasted, and it was actually not that much of a boast. He had been strong, but capable of great delicacy with his hands, and the fingers had been long and straight and smooth. He could do anything with his hands.

He could have gripped the world in his fingers.

Wrinkled, gnarled, twisted fingers, skinny and clawlike, which could barely hold a cigarette, could barely light a match now. Twisted and disgusting, with spots and lines. Shaking with no warning, and with no reason, so that he couldn't even strike a match. Time had left its mark everywhere, on his face, on his fingers and on his soul.

After two or three attempts the match finally struck, and he flinched as his dark room was suddenly lit up by its light. Shakily he brought the match closer to his face, careful that it didn't come too close to his beard, and lit his cigarette. He dropped the match into the ashtray, and once again the room was dark, the only light being heavily filtered sunlight which forced its way through a grimy wire mesh and a dusty, dirty glass pane, and then a thick curtain. In the twilight of the room the lit cigarette burnt bright, and he focused on it.

Just then his door was thrown open, and bright light from the room outside streamed in. "Grandpa!" a piping young voice screamed, "The test went great! Thanks for all the help grandpa!" The old man smiled, and his world seemed lit up for a while. He stepped out of his room, and sat with his grandson, asking about school and telling stories about his youth. He used all his skill to tell the stories, because there was no one else to listen to him anymore, and for a while he felt alive again. But then his grandson got up, and went off to play with his friends.

The old man wanted the boy to stay, to talk to him and keep the world bright, but he knew he could not be so selfish. He smiled wistfully, wishing he could be young again, and then walked back into his own room, where he could be swallowed up by the darkness.