The Elephant Gate

Tonight, he was relaxing with a glass of his favorite Shiraz, feet propped up on the coffee table, idly flipping channels. He settled on a NatGeo channel. It was about elephants, an animal that figured prominently in his books. This doc.u.mentary featured The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, of all places. As the voiceover drone on, he watched the videos of the elephants interacting among the trees and grassy area of the place.

In a stream, volunteers were shown throwing buckets of water on a young elephant, and Kevin absentmindedly rubbed his c.h.e.s.t. Something about that video made his c.h.e.s.t ache. He grew restless and impulsively decided to head up to his loft study.

A sleek black desk sat in the middle of the room, angled towards the outside windows. Underneath the low wall of the loft opening, bookcases in white were filled with writer paraphernalia: dictionaries, tomes of scientific interest, copies of his own works in various covers and languages.

The top of the cases formed a continuous shelf. On this were various bits of his life. There were frame pictures of some of his travels; a college graduation photo, one of the only that showed him and both parents in the same frame; and a collection of different elephants in many forms, gifts from his fans.

There was a comfortable lounger facing a corner stand with a flatscreen television. The stand held his movie collection and his prized possessions. There was a baseball that he caught at a Nationals game the year before, but his eyes zeroed in on one thing.

It looked incongruous between his DVD collection and his sports car models. The stuffed elephant leaned against his favorite, a 2014 Lotus Elise soft-top in wasp yellow, both a little dusty.

What was it about that bit of childhood? Even when he moved into his own place, that thing had to come with him, even as his sports trophies and awards stayed in boxes at the old house.

He picked it up, as always surprised by the weight, and brushed the cobwebs off the tattered ear.

"Kandula…" he whispered under his breath, remembering those childhood days when he thought he could talk to it and it could reply. That imagination had worked well for him, in a time where it was impossible to communicate with his parents, so locked in their own internal struggle to have much time for their son. Even his cancer scare failed to make more than a small blip in their self-centered lives.

He carried it back to the desk and plopped it down so those plastic eyes focused on him. "Are you trying to tell me something," he murmured, "Or am I going crazy and talking to a stuffie for no reason?"

He opened the laptop, intending to work on his current manuscript, or maybe sort out some of the questions in the mind. Instead, his fingers hovered over the keyboard, as indecisive as he was. After a time, he sighed and shut the lid down. He crossed his arms over the computer and rested his head, still staring at his childhood friend. His eyelids slowly drooped until he closed his eyes and finally slept.

When he woke up the next morning, he felt refreshed, despite a crick in neck from the angle. And, strangely, the elephant was tucked under his arm, with its trunk resting against his cheek.