FLASH FICTION - The Prayer Gate
Bells tinkled somewhere, and children laughed while they chased a dog with sticks. The dust sparkled magically as one passed through the Prayer Gate - it was the visual counterpart to the tinkling of unseen bells, thought Peter. He moved slowly forward. The heavy thud of his own boots, muffled by the dust which was everywhere, and the lumbering walk of a former soldier who was no longer carrying enough weight on his shoulders - these were nonexistent to him as he moved forward, numbly as if carried by a conveyor trolley on a movie set. Sights and sounds detached and tunneled around him. He felt himself shrinking smaller and smaller. Like the small boy he once was, he tugged at the soiled garment of a blind man who sat under a sparse tree next to the Prayer Gate. "Can you tell me my future?" he queried, putting a sandwich into the blind man's gnarled hand. The blind man's donkey idly lipped the sandwich as the man returned to Peter a few-toothed grin. ...