All Abraham can handle

Alrighty, another piece from the universe of Lincoln’s Hoard. an odd one at that.

Abraham came of age in San Francisco, and he loved nothing more than traveling the streets of what he thought was the most beautiful city in the world. He spent countless hours on the wharfs among all the tourists, a chill breeze bringing the salt smell of the bay along with it. The open air seafood market and quaint, narrow houses close to the docks gave way to the shops and tourists attractions behind them, the odd streets and the cable cars. He not only liked the hustle sights and sounds of the most active parts of the city, but also enjoyed the quieter times he spent in the residential and business sections to the south. The atmosphere of the city, everything that made it unique, he embraced and appreciated. The times he liked most were the times spent on either the Golden Gate Bridge or the top of Coit Tower, both giving excellent vantage points to look out over city. When the fog and mist cleared, he liked trying to pick out some of the places he had been recently. And when the fog and mist rolled back in, he could close his eyes and envision the lay of the land in his mind, electric and vibrant and alive.

After several years in San Francisco, Abraham stumbled across an opportunity that had never occurred to him before. Simply put, travel. He had enjoyed his time so much in San Francisco that he just had not imagined going anywhere else. After dinner and a few drinks at the Fisherman’s Grotto on a Friday night, he found himself the next day at the airport. While the idea was frightening at first, he quickly warmed to the idea. While he loved San Francisco, exploring a new city could mean that he could find new things to experience and enjoy. Nervous, he waited until he heard his destination as they began to board the passengers. Philadelphia.

Abraham couldn’t rest the entire flight, imagining what would be different in Philadelphia, what would be the same. The bank of the airplane into the turn and the screech of the brakes heralded his arrival. He drank in the sights and sounds of this new place and all of the new people as he left the airport. Taking a taxi into town, the first thing he missed was the smell of the sea, and his heart sank a little. But the new skyline and the thrill of new things to learn raised his spirits back up, and he eagerly kept his eyes wide open.

Fumbling to pay for the taxi, Abraham was carelessly dropped, and he rolled to a halt on the curb, landing thankfully face up. He was not worried, this had happened many times before. It wouldn’t be long before someone found him and picked him up, and he could continue his exploration of his new city. For a few days he was content to look around at what he could see from his vantage point on the street and listen to the passers by. Abraham didn’t know too much about baseball, but he heard enough about “the fucking Phillies” that he gathered the team was pretty important to the city, and he thought that he might be lucky enough to go to a game someday. Until that fateful morning four days after he was dropped, and the old man picked him up. Abraham looked into the curiously absent eyes of his new friend as he picked him up, bending over slowly, and slid him into the rough canvas pocket of the man’s jacket. There were a few other coins in the pocket, and Abraham spoke to them to learn even more about his new home.

The next sight of Philadelphia he saw was the old man’s basement as he was taken out of the canvas pocket and dropped into a Mason jar with his other new friends and placed atop a shelf filled with similar glass jars. The old man spent a further few minutes in the basement, rearranging some other jars before shutting of the light and leaving the basement. For years the old man came into the basement like clockwork, storing and cataloguing his coins and leaving again. Abraham saw nothing but the old water heaters, the spider webs, and the countless other coins in barrels, cans, jars and boxes sitting on shelves and in piles just like him in his glass cage. The musty smell of the basement overwhelmed the salt air in his memory, and the sound of the ocean was replaced by the whispers, screams, and moans of the millions of other coins trapped in this basement with him. Opening his eyes one day, seemingly no different from any other days in the hell his life had become, he discovered the only new thing since he being trapped in this basement. His overwhelming determination to escape.