Marc by Nathan Leslie

Was a big man and unafraid. Six foot five, two ninety seven–he felt as though he was invulnerable. He would do it all–jump out of an airplane, roller coasters galore, cliff diving, spelunking, guns, motorcycles, hang gliding, drink anyone under the table. Nothing phased him. Fuck it, he thought. So I will die someday. We all do–not going to let putrefaction win. Not going to run from some worms and the thought of an exit. He taught his children the same system–stare down everything, don’t let it win. Poke out the eyes of anything and anyone who stops you. His three children loved him for it–they felt they too were safe. Nothing could touch them. Walk with a bit of swagger and confront the world where it stood. That’s the way to live.

It was a family picnic–a reunion actually. They sat by the water in the pavilion eating hamburgers and tomato salad and drinking sodas and beers. The thunderstorm rolled in on schedule. The weather app said 2:30 and the skies darkened and the winds churned and the thunder groaned a warning from behind the trees. It felt as though the world was ending, the sky darkening into nothingness.

Little Gillian shrieked and ran to her mother’s van. Marc slowly covered the leftovers and rolled the paper plates and other light-weight items under his arm. His children were already safe with Caroline in the parking lot, away from the trees, but he wasn’t concerned about the sky or the lightning that sent jagged fingers across the darkness. Just a thunderstorm. When one jagged light finger poked him, it was with the voltage of a small sun. For just a millisecond Marc smiled at the irony of it–walking across the grass to the parking lot, innocuous. After all the narrow scrapes, the harrowing half-breaths. That was how he would go. A singed mound, a blackened stump of nothing. 

Nathan Leslie won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his satirical collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. He is also the series editor for Best Small Fictions. He is the author of thirteen books including Invisible Hand, A Fly in the Ointment, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. Nathan is currently the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of the online journal Maryland Literary Review. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.