A short writing game (idea)

"I know I've been a cynical bastard," he announced. "I always talked about the convenience of believing comforting stories. But I think now I was embracing my doubts for the same reason others eschew them: fear."

He paused and thought some more, and there was silence while we all waited. The grandfather clock chimed the quarter-hour, and a redundant cuckoo clock somewhere else in the house echoed back. He sighed and shook his head, as if a timer had gone off and he still didn't have an answer.

"I suppose it's all part of the modern condition. Fear is omnipotent. It drives everything. One day it will drive her, and she'll be ruined like the rest of us."

Speak for yourself, I thought, but nodded my head sadly along with the rest. This was the most glum I had seen him since his daughter's birth, and I wondered what must be eating him. It wasn't out of character for him to wax sullen about the state of the world, but never when he was home. Never with her there on his shoulder.

"Why should I have believed in God?" he demanded suddenly. "Why would He create us in order to give us the freedom to destroy ourselves? How can that be the definition of good?" His eyes were wild, brimming. The child began wailing sympathetically, and he took her downstairs to her crib.

Many years later I met his little girl, all grown up, walking on the streets of New York and looking agape at everything around her. She talked to me with more enthusiasm than I, a ghost from her youth, deserved. She had been five or six when I saw her last. I hadn't seen her father since then either. I asked about him, tentatively, fearing the worst. He was in India, she said. He was healthy, in good spirits. He had a new wife. "How wonderful! That's just super. Really great." I was effusive in my relief. She was watching me carefully as we talked.

"How did you recognize me?" she asked finally.

I realized I wasn't sure myself. I said the first thing that popped into my head.

"You looked like you were lost."