186

The smallest events can change your whole life.  Not that you could point back to the event itself because it becomes lost in seemingly more important events along the way, but is was, nonetheless, the snowflake that began the avalanche.

In Cecil's case, it was smaller than the Orange Julius at which he grudgingly worked.  It was smaller than the particular day on which he was at work.  It was smaller than the Mango Pineapple Julius, size medium, on which he was working.  It was, in fact, a pen.

185

Celia worked for minimum wage in a relatively new nursing home, serving and clearing meals.  It was tiring, on-your-feet work, but more than that, it tired her brain.  She didn't like thinking about death, and it hung about the place like cobwebs on forgotten boxes in the corner of an attic.  Celia thought she didn't like death, but, in truth, she didn't like the ruin of the body and the draining of the mind.  It made her remember her own grandmother, which always made her sad.  Every day she wondered why she ever went in to the place, and every day was another day still there until weeks and months had passed.

She found the residents simultaneously frightening, pitiful, and unbearably strong.  They stayed alive in bodies she would have abandoned long ago.  They lived on without hope, which Celia thought would have killed her in itself.  Perhaps she had it wrong, though, and a knock on a dinner table hinted at her misconceptions.