Suffice it to say that their venture out of doors did not last very long, because they ended up inside the mall, embedded in crowds of last week’s fellow wage earners and spenders as they pushed their way towards next week’s haemorrhoid H-ers. He smiled at that joke, but didn’t feel the need to share with Jayne.
Jayne offered to put everything away, so he let her.
He wanted and needed to get inside of his den and close the door. He made like a turtle once inside with his shirt surrounding his head. He sat there like that, seeking solace and silence until he was calm enough to begin his research once again.
When his head popped back up, he could hear Jayne fixing dinner, all the while listening to the oldies radio channel. He imagined Buddy sitting in there, waiting patiently for a taste or two to come his way.
That was the Bud-meister for you. He always waited, and with those doe-eyes watching, you just had to toss him something. He was so going to miss that dog.
He cracked his knuckles a couple of times like a professional pianist and then began with a Google search. What popped up, though, was totally different than anything he had ever seen before!
It was online. There were actual videos of people doing it. Doing it! Watching the first one, he felt almost like he had been the person in the video. His heart was racing, and so was his pulse. He could not believe that just seeing a video could cause such a reaction.
Someone ought to complain about this, he thought and then, I should complain about this. But he wasn’t going to. He watched another one and another one and another one. Each time, he felt he was the person of interest himself. Each time, his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.
He turned it off. It was too much. Way, way too much!
He continued playing what he had seen over and over in his head now. He couldn’t escape it. And the more he thought about it, the more scared he became, and the more scared he became, the more his courage waned, until he wondered if he could actually go through with it.
It was all in the eyes. The panic-stricken eyes of the victims!
He considered their reactions, and decided that they looked that way because they, unlike him, hadn’t done any research beforehand.
He figured that they must’ve just made up their minds and went for it. This idea he could not fathom.
It was far too risky, and what if they changed their minds? Without all of the facts before them, surely they would or could change their minds at the last minute, and then it would be too late.
He definitely did not want that to happen to him.
He was pretty certain that he was different from all of them.
Maybe he was overcautious.
Maybe he was just too dull and too boring to be able to change his life. To be able to take control of his life.
That was because he had been at the mercy of the treadmill for so very long, like all of the other hamsters. On and off and on and off, without anything real to show for it.
He hated his life. Yes, he loved Jayne and he loved Buddy—but life is more than just work and bed.
Yes, making love was nice, and cuddling was nice, and friends and family and all of that mumbo jumbo were nice—but life had to offer him more than that. It just had to! And he was going to reach out and grab for that ring before it was too late.
Because he knew that if he didn’t do something to make his existence on this planet mean something soon—then he might as well not have even been here.
He closed his laptop, put his head down, and fell asleep.
Chapter Four