Duck Song

“I'm hungry.” Jonti grieved.
“As am I.” Lem responded. It was normal for them both to be hungry at that time of the night and their youthful vigour had since evacuated. “I'm bored.”
“Me too...” sighed Jonti.
“Of everything?”
“Yeah...” They were walking in the park beside the duck pond. The ducks were there as their little honks could be heard somewhere in the brush.
“I used to dig this gig.”
“A rhyme. Intentional?”
“No, and it wasn't amusing was it?”
“Slightly, that's a sign of my age.” He looked in to the blued and waving mess called water and couldn't muster any real thoughts. “How about we do something different with tonight?” They couldn't do anything different.
“Like what?” Lem cocked his head. “Molest a water fowl?”
“No, I was thinking like watching the sun come up.”
“There's something romantic about that.”
“Like lovers?”
“Like self indulgent.”
“I like it. It's a good way to end a night.”
“A life time...”
“Yeah...”

The two pallid boys made their way to the little green bench with no back. In that moonlight reflected from the water it looked emerald. The two thought it special and now with their end decided it looked like home. They sat on it and Lem pulled out a bottle of whiskey and passed it to Jonti. Jonti looked at the bottle of whiskey, he saw the year, nineteen hundred and thirteen. “Christ that's an old one. Even for us.”
“I know, I thought one day it might be the last thing I drink. What with the war and the like.”
“So you've been looking forward to this?”
“I knew that it was coming, yeah, we lack what we used to have. A certain jay (he could never say it right) der vie.”
“Joie de vivre? Neither have been de vivre for at least an eon.”
“But still we used to get off from exisiting.”
“That was youth.”
“That was a long time.”

The both looked at each other. “Lem, were you planning to do it tonight anyway?” Lem looked into the shimmering blued pond and looked back at Jonti.
“You got me.”
“I always could. Like that time we were in Pontefract, of all places, a life time like ours and we wound up there, anyhow you there trying to pick up both of these girls and I could tell you weren't hungry. That you just wanted, how can I put this...?”
“An encounter?”
“You bet your arse an encounter. You wanted someone to share your night with.”
“Yeah and then you come up with a few drinks. All smiles and beaming. You pass me a drink – some blue alcopop and hand the girls an orange one each. I knew your game too.”
“Hell you got them in your bed.”
“Shame they never woke up.”
“That was your fault.” The two of them laughed. They laughed like the did the evening they found those two dead girls in Jonti's bed. They laughed like when they took all their bed clothes outside to burn. They laughed like they were boys again. For that time all was bright and that sun wasn't even up.

Jonti gestured to the bottle in his grip. Lem nodded. Jonti tore it open like a pro and the two began drinking the fiery liquid. No regard for the drunken state that would ensue for they knew, as you should by now, that it wouldn't matter.

“When was your last dawn?” Lem asked.
“That'll be today.”
“I mean previous.”
“I never saw one come up, ever.”
“Wow, on the arse end of an age and this is your first.”
“Yeah, heh heh, that seems kind of fitting.”
“You're right. It does.”
“When was yours?” Lem looked up at the sky as if he was trying to remember. In actuality he could never forget. The moment took him and he remembered more fondly than ever before the first time he saw the sky tan orange, fiery and untameable, where he was, who he was with and the precise feelings he got.
“I was at a park like this back home, hell even the bench was broken, I'd spent one day with this girl and her name was Leigh she'd painted my nails pink and I'd given them to her. We were exhausted. We'd spent the day previous screwing around in the April showers and sunshine – nothing physically intimate just really getting to know one another. We'd captured each other that day. We sat and watched the sun come up then we went for breakfast at a fast food place and then we parted ways.”
“Wow... whatever became of her? I know it couldn't have ended well.”
“Well you know I said we parted ways that day? Our paths only ever crossed once again. They literally crossed, we were pleasant and then nodded and said bye.”
“That's really sad.”
“Not really – it was nice and I'm glad that it was never outside of that day. It allows me to get nostalgic. Like I am now.”
“How come you've never told me this?”
“The opportunity never arose.”
“Makes me think you might have brought up the sun shine just so you could tell me.”
“Somewhere in between the old psyche and ego you might be right.”
“S'weird how that moment is the inverse of this life that you've spent. You could be considered a constant, a staple of the earth and yet...”
“I cling to something that passed? I rarely think about it, about her...”

And while they were talking they hadn't heard the dawn chorus ring up about them. That their hair had greyed and the deep wrinkles in their skin shone in the pre-light before day break. Their voices had become breathless and cracked but the two of them smiled like the boys they had always been. And as they melted away in to that early morning sun their lasting memory on the world was now dust on rooftops or a tampon decaying, mute, in the sewer pipe. Nothing now, all dissolved, just a broken bench with no back.