(c) Daniel Quentin Steele - 2010
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This is the third story I've done for Literotica. I hope it's a little different from the first two and once again I hope readers like it. I've been very pleased, and surprised I must admit, that readers have responded as strongly as they have to my first two efforts.
I would again like to thank editor LadyPineRose74 for her help and contributions to this story. Her comments were very welcome. And I'd like to thank her publicly as I have privately for being willing to donate her time to help me in this way.
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All of our lives, no matter how long we live, boil down to moments. Moments and decisions we make in those moments. The rest of our life is just the filler, the stuffing to occupy the space between those moments.
Right now, I'm in one of those moments. My last moment. I see my death spelled out in stark detail on the instrument panel in front of me. It says that my single engine Cessna Centurion will be airbound for a few more seconds, maybe a half minute or more, and then it is going to plunge to earth a half mile below like the proverbial rock.
There is no rabbit I am going to pull out of my hat, no McGyver stunt I am going to carry out using rubber bands and plastic cement to somehow keep my little plane aloft. Below me is only the rugged terrain of what must be Gilmer County in Northeast Georgia. I passed the lights of the small town and county seat of 20,000 plus residents, Ellijay, a few minutes before.
It's too late to turn, and even if I could, I don't think there's much of anyplace I could set down. The whole county is lousy, with rivers and national forests, no really good easy sites to try a controlled crash landing. I must be approaching the outskirts of the Chattahoochee National Forest. If I try to turn or if I head straight ahead, I'm going to come down in a forest wilderness no matter what I do.
Right now, I hope that my Sunday school teachings about Heaven are correct, but I have my doubts. I've always had my doubts, although I've always kept them from my family and loved ones.
I'd call myself an agnostic, but deep down I know I'm an atheist. There is nothing after this. There will be a moment of pain, a moment only I hope, and then nothing. Like a candle in the wind, Lewis Walters and everything he's known and seen and loved and been in the last 34 years will simply vanish into the ether.
I'm an attorney, and don't even bother. I've heard every lawyer joke ever made and even coined a few myself. I wonder if it's too late to draft a last minute contract, a deal with God, to spare me if he's up there, and walk away from this, but I know the answer already.
A few more seconds gone by, as I frantically fiddle with the radio controls. The only thing worse than contemplating my imminent demise is the thought that I will die without a single word to anyone I've loved or cared about. I will just vanish, and they will never know what and who I was thinking about in my last moments.
I've lately developed a liking for music again after years of basically being addicted to talk radio. One of the songs, "Live Like You're Dying' has a line it it, "Who would you call with your last goodbye?"
I was listening to it on my IPOD just a few minutes ago, as a way to pass the time during a boring commute from a Tennessee court date for a client on my way back to Jacksonville, Florida, which is where I was born and bred.
I find myself thinking real hard about that line right now, as it has been transformed from an idle speculation to the most important question in my life.
The other thing on my mind, oddly enough or perhaps not so oddly, is a comic book. Besides being a late developing music fan, I also have loved comic books and science fiction and fantasy, since I was a kid. One of the greatest comic book series ever made, and I think hands down the best movie from a comic book, is called The Watchmen.
It's an adult story about superheroes and one of the characters, the only real superhero, is Dr. Manhattan. As a result of some typical comic book accident, he has gained godlike powers, which is okay but what always fascinated me was the fact that he stands outside of time. For him, every instant, past, present and future is NOW. He sees them all simultaneously.
I'm not Dr. Manhattan, but in a sense, as I'm staring at my death, I see time the same way. Even as I sit in the tiny cockpit and stare at the controls and rain hits the grayish cockpit windshield and wind rocks the tiny aircraft, I'm also...
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...at the wheel of my 2007 Escalade. I turn in to the gated entrance of the Queen's Harbor Golf Club and Condominium community and wave at the guard on duty at the gate. This is some new guy I've never seen before. Usually there's black Sam or Hispanic Eduardo. He makes me show him my ID, and I ask him where the usual guys are?
"Oh, Sam came down with one of those stomach bugs. It was sudden. They had to call me in from my day off. And Eduardo's father died yesterday. He took time to go be with his family in Puerto Rico."
I don't think anything more about it. I'm just anxious to get home and get a hot bath. I've just flown in from New York when a trial ended after both parties to a particularly nasty, multi-million dollar divorce intricately intertwined in an epic family business battle had suddenly decided at the last minute that they really loved each other and wanted to make another effort to save their marriage.
As an attorney who makes money off broken hearts and dysfunctional families and companies, it's always depressing when a happy ending comes along and slaps you in the face.
I would have called Norman, my partner in our two-man firm, but it was Friday, and he had told me he was going to be turning off his cell phone early. "A hot date" was all he had said, but I could hear the grin in his voice. He's a hound, always has been since we went into business 10 years before fresh out of the University of Florida law school. I lost track of the number of secretaries, legal aides, female reporters, waitresses, female judges, female cops, you name it, he's fucked, sometimes juggling three or four of them along at the same time, usually without any of them knowing about the other women.
I've always been fairly happy with my marriage to Mona, but even if I'd been of a cheating nature, I got exhausted just watching Norman running from flower to flower depositing his load of -- well, the anology breaks down there -- but anyway, I got tired just watching him juggle his women. How the hell he could even managed to get it up that many times a week amazed me.
Mona is Mona Walters, formerly Harrell; a tall, 5-10, brunette with long hair, respectable boobs and an ass that at one time I thought should have been insured for at least $10 million. We had met in law school, and she actually had her law degree and had practiced for a while after we started dating.
But after we married and I started pulling in decent bucks, she decided she was going to became a Volunteer Queen. She volunteered for EVERYTHING. Of course, her contacts helped our business, and after we found out we couldn't have kids and we -- that's basically me - didn't want to adopt, the volunteering filled a void in her life. I was busy as hell and only occasionally found myself staring at friends' kids and missing what we'd never have.
We'd had a fairly hot love life when we married. But, we were young. As we got older and I poured more of myself into the practice, basically making up for the energy that Norman poured into chasing pussy, Mona and our face time got less frequent. It seemed like she got most of her pleasure from doing good works and similar shit, and she was tired more and more often when I'd roll over late at night and try to play with her.
Our sex life never ended, it just kind of dribbled away. And, I found myself more often than not jerking off to some movie on Cinemax involving huge breasted starlets simulating sex with limp dicked studs.
So, long story short, from experience I pretty much counted on Mona being out at same charity event, and she probably wouldn't much care when I got in.
