“Nicholas, pass me the tack, please?” Gregory called to his son from the top of his ladder, a handful of finishing nails strewn across the small platform in front of him. His attention focused on these beautiful nails, and he began pushing them around with the back of his finger as if something soft would be found revealed, precious, at the points of the nails.
“Nick?” He called after a few moments, twisting his back and neck.
“Uh…” Came the response. “Yeah, okay, coming!”
Nicholas stepped into Gregory’s view, and Gregory’s eyes alit anew, locking onto his son’s face, as if he’d found what he’d been looking for. Then, a distraction caught his attention.
“Nick… I want my hammer, not whatever the hell it is you’re using.”
Nicholas hesitated, looking up the ladder to his ascended father, then quickly hiding his gaze down again and hurrying back toward their tools. Gregory sighed, returning to his own search. Soon, though, much quicker than the first time he’d asked, he heard Nicholas’s footfalls approaching once more. Turning around, there he saw Nicholas at the bottom of the ladder with hand raised up, hammer delivering, but head down. Eagerly, he collected his tool, a thing he marvelled at despite any flaws it may have or age it may show.
Just then, all in a sudden rushing moment seeming to last no longer than the caw of a bird, Gregory lost balance. It began by not noticing he was teetering backward, and despite his years in the business, he readjusted too desperately quick and strong – the world spun around him, and he clutched at the small platform, sending the abandoned hammer spiraling downward.
Heart pounding, eyes tracking the hammer, Gregory’s watched its journey resignedly. The head bounced off a step, and he heard a crack. Another bounce, and the head was free, bouncing along on its independent own, but striking a wildly different pattern, flying awkwardly outward toward Nicholas. “Nick!” he screamed, stricken as a man on the verge of murder.
Nicholas, who had already sensed his father’s panicked motions through the ladder and had thus already been looking up, saw the hammer head falling down on him. In its few precious moments singing in the air, Nicholas both expected this but also couldn’t believe it was happening.
The hammer head smote Nicholas’s skull in an ear-cringing thud. He fell as a limbs-loose ragdoll, back smacking and skull bouncing off the concrete.
“Nick!” Gregory shouted leaping down the ladder and landing in a tumble at Nicholas’s side. He shook his son’s shoulders and moment after heart-aching moment passed, tears fludding Gregory’s eyes. Then Gregory hopes at the sight of twitching eyelids, which then opened with such a sudden clarity and recognition unto his face.
End.
The AM Intrigue 
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