Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (the reading list .TXT) 📕

a tear left his eye. I came to the realization that he was no longer there like he was for the first thirty seconds…or even the first thirty years.

His struggle was more than he knew, but he reveled in it. Though it was obvious his medications wore off, I found solace in his confusion. I had the overwhelming feeling that he was OK wherever he was.

But, I struggled more with my own battles than ever before.

Nepotism was a real thing. It got me the job, and I’ve been skating along with my father’s name in tow. Now, he sat before me a shell of his former self, unable to care for himself in any way.

It wasn’t only that I modeled my career after him, but my entire life.

What was I to do now?

My safety net was cut with a machete in a hundred different places and a pit of spikes spired below, ready to impale me should I slip.

All the sudden the pressure overcame me and I stood up.

“What’s wrong son? Sit down and enjoy this movement with me.”

“Movement?”

“You don’t hear it? Bahm’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s so graceful, but it hits you hard when you least expect it, but need it the most.”

He was hallucinating again, and I was there to watch it unfold. I didn’t know what to do in those situations in the past, and still didn’t during the visit.

A nurse came by and introduced herself, and I skipped my part.

“Something is wrong with Dad. He’s not making sense.”

“Mr. Trotter,” she said to Dad. “Mr. Trotter, how are you doing today, sir?”

He spoke incoherently about sparrows and Bahm, though his facial expression remained the same from when I walked in.

She looked down at her chart and back up to me. “Well, it’s three days early for his injection, but I think the psychiatrist would push it up. He’s having fairly significant delusions and hallucinations right now, Mr. Trotter. You might want to schedule around his injections. He’s much more with it around then.”

I nodded and helped my dad to his feet. She walked him out of the dayroom and down the hallway. He was only sixty-three, but was frail enough to pass for eighty-five.

I had lost my father the day he was on the roof, and I lost myself much earlier.

There was nothing left for me to do but to move on without him, though that seemed an impossible task.

His illness grabbed me by the throat and squeezed, and I lost my breath much like Henson. The Sparrow had ahold of me, but he didn’t know it. I was a lost little boy with nowhere to hide.

It was the perfect time for The Sparrow to exist in Lincolnshire.

They were a sleepy little town that relied on me to fix their killer problem.

It was the perfect time for The Sparrow to strike.

Chapter Thirteen

The garage floor looked impeccable.

Newly finished with perfectly straight lines that separated each section of the floor. An epoxy finish on the top made it nice and shiny. So new, in fact, that there weren’t any signs of scuff or wear.

The workbench was a different story. It was nailed haphazardly to the wall, quickly put together, and had no finish. A large, rusty vise was drilled into the top. It looked often used, and the various half-finished projects in the backyard confirmed it.

Brooks sat in a stiff lawn chair next to the wall leading to the door that went into the house. The green and black patterns were woven through each other to provide maximum comfort.

But, it didn’t work. Brooks’ butt was falling asleep and he was sick and tired of waiting.

The garage door screeched open, and Geoff Burnley’s Chevy Impala trudged in. The light to the garage door was out, so everything in the garage was still pitch black.

Brooks made sure the light bulb was loosened just enough to where it didn’t turn on. He planned on tightening it back up once he was done.

Geoff exited the car before shouting an expletive or two and answering his phone. “It’s Geoff,” he said.

The person on the phone was speaking very loudly and Brooks could make out that it was about some work Geoff was supposed to perform and didn’t follow through timely enough. The cursing coming from the other side bothered Brooks more than he wanted it to. People could get their point across without using such terrible language.

Brooks rubbed his face with the palm of his hands. The smell of Dior Sauvage quickly spread through the garage. As Geoff was getting berated on the phone, he stopped and sniffed a few times. Then resumed talking to the customer.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wackermann. I’ll get on it first thing in the morning…I just got home…Mrs. Wackermann, it’s almost midnight. I’ll be there first thing in the morning, I promise. How about 8? OK, sounds good. I’m sorry again. I’ll be there. Thanks. Bye.”

He hung up and called Mrs. Wackermann a few choice words before fetching something else from his car. He turned on the flashlight and mumbled something about ‘cheap dollar-store bulbs,’ before turning the corner to the door that led to the house.

Brooks purposely moved his right foot to make a scraping sound across the floor and Geoff jumped back, quickly panning the flashlight across the garage.

The light shown on Brooks sitting in the darkness with a shotgun pointed directly at Geoff.

Geoff squealed, dropped his flashlight, and fell back against his workbench. “What the hell? Who are you?”

Brooks was silent, but Geoff could hear him stand up and take a few steps towards him.

“I’m serious, man! I have a gun.”

“No you don’t,” Brooks said from the pitch black, his footsteps easing closer. “I found one in your closet,