prompt: bill, title: the bill comes due in "the next big thing" flash fiction

“I’ve been wondering something,” I said as I swirled at my coffee’s dregs, “something kind of tangential to your story.” “Sure,” Frank said, “like I said, I’ve got all night.” “You’ve lived a very long time.” He was taken aback by that, he stopped to inspect me a bit, under all the hair I’m almost certain his brow furrowed. “Compared to a human being, sure. For my people, I’m not even middle-aged yet. But I’ve lived for more than a couple of your lifetimes, sure.”

I set the coffee down. I sighed. “Do we ever get old enough to forgive ourselves?” He was still studying me. “What do you mean by that?” “I’m wondering if it’s just how short my life is that I’m having such trouble forgiving myself. For all the things I screwed up. All the things I didn’t do because I was scared. All the people I didn’t spend enough time with before they were dead or at least gone in some other way.” I paused to look at the mural on the wall, those bright white letters of the Hollywood sign, gleaming like the bones of Death herself against her black robes.

“This town, I… y’know, I failed so very badly here. Myself, my family, past loves, my dreams. I failed my own dreams so very goddamned badly here.” “Or maybe those dreams failed you,” he posited. For that one little moment, he sounded like my father. I miss that son of a bitch so much.

“Maybe,” I offered back, “maybe it doesn’t matter which direction the arrow of failure was shot, where it fell. It happened, y’know, and so many other things too. So many failures of omission. I can give myself that I haven’t many screw-ups of commission but, brother, it’s omissions all the way down the well.” I cracked my knuckles. “I just wondered if maybe time heals those wounds, best to ask someone who has had more, will have more, time that I ever could experience.”

“I’m maybe the last of my people,” he said, “I got shot trying to be an idiot hero and I woke up alone. Relative scale, human to sasquatch, I’m younger than you, Mike, I don’t know if time is the answer at all.” He smiled compassionately. Survivor’s guilt. From mirrors, I know it too well.

“But every morning, I wake up and forgive myself. Every night, before I go to sleep, I forgive myself. I tell myself my bill of pain is paid in more than full, interest included, that I am allowed to move on and make the best of what comes next. If I am the last, I owe that to myself as much as I owe it to my species entire, to try and make the best of things.”

“So,” I asked with due sheepishness, “I mean, how long before that day and night forgiving starts to work?” He smiled again. “If I ever feel fully forgiven, you’re the first person I’ll tell.”