The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead

With a deep sigh, Andrew Phillips rose from his seat, stretched himself, and slowly gazed out of the window, leaving a deck of tarot cards messy on the desk. The sky outside was suffused with the pale light of dawn. Hills in the distance were already occupied by the brown and white.

His brows knitted. Andrew was rapt in deep thought.

“My luck is on the ebb.”

“No luck in love today.”

“Probably be misunderstood by others.”

“A windfall can be won.”

“I need to be careful of things concerning water.”

…

“Alas, not quite a good day!” Andrew muttered to himself, back to the earth.

“Gulp!” Seeing the needles pointing to a quarter to seven, Andrew stamped his foot heavily and hurried to suit up. With a hasty grab of his coat, he went out.

Along the road, few people appeared. Leaves rustled in the wind. He turned up his coat collar against the chill wind. It was a thirty-minute’s walk from his apartment to the bus stop. He quickened his pace in order to catch one of the few buses that would stop at this quiet alley.

For the past five years, every weekday, he walked to the bus stop, spent forty minutes on bus to get to the company he worked at; then climbed to the eighth floor at the double. Thousands of times he had wheezed out curses on lack of elevators in the building, and hundreds of times the thoughts to quit this job and find a nearer company or at least the one that was in a building equipped with an elevator occurred to him. However, with deep faith in the instructions told by tarot cards, he gave up the opportunities of altering the condition again and again, for