For the fiftieth time this month I'm dragging home an old couch cushion in the dead of night. It's easy enough to get into the old homes and mostly the dead are so decomposed as to barely even smell. I'm not picky about colour, together the florals, greens, blues, reds and browns will be a mosaic for our new dojo. Darwin's only six but in a few short years he'll be out there on the streets and fighting eclipsed reading and math as useful skills some time ago. If you can count to twenty these days you're a brainiac. If there are more than twenty assailants you're basically screwed anyway.
I drag this cushion up the sweeping stairs to the old board room. The windows are massive and the ceiling vaulted, I don't know why we haven't made better use of it. I can just see him here pushing his cars around and stacking tins but its too late for that now. The cushion fills the last hole as I knew it would. Even my father would have been proud of this dojo. Training starts tomorrow.
Found in Darwin's Ghost - first draft, authored by .