dull plastic sunshine
三島和希
Kazuki Mishima

“In other news,” said the radio, “we continue to exist.”

The morning came despite the expectations of certain weeping spiritual types. The sun appeared unceremoniously to show all that nothing had changed.

For the old man morning was the end of a battle that had begun when darkness descended to smother the hills as he finished a solitary meal. The night had stuck on the trees and infected the snow that curses the north, and the old man had waited, raging against the darkness as a testament to his certainty of the coming sunrise.

When the morning came, however, the battle ended in defeat; the rising sun told the man not that he was right to make his stand, but that he had forfeited a night's sleep in vain. He made that day's ascent envisioning a private hour enveloped in the dull plastic sunshine of a Gamow bag.