A short story
Originally published on Medium on Feb. 17, 2026
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.”
– Book of Job 1:21
Sssssooo, cccccooold!
Ccccan’t stop this shshshsshakin’.
Where are my clothes? Where am I?
I’m back in high school — I think. It’s the same hallway anyway. Same yellow-and-blue colours of Mother Teresa Catholic Collegiate, home of the mighty Saints. All-Ontario football champs of 1980 from Windsor.
But it’s different. Cleaner, antiseptic. Colder.
The yellow lockers look pristine. No crude sketches or scrawling curse words, WLLZ Detroit’s Wheels rock radio stickers or pin ups. Back then, many lockers looked like they had been pried open. They probably were, by someone (maybe me?) looking for drugs.
These floors look so smooth and clean. White tile with blue squares spread out in geometric order, like a game of high school hopscotch. Not the messy floors of the ’70s with cigarette and gum packs, and notebook papers strewn about.
What are those two dark blue-black doors at the far end of the hall. What’s out there?
Where is our ‘Wall of Champions’? The one with our trophy on display behind glass and team photo including me, Josh Joben. Tight end, top row, third from the right. Long, flowing red locks of hair. Big, bushy lambchop sideburns even then. A ladies man with pearls scattered before my feet back in the days of my youth, as Robert Plant sang, when the world was my tabernacle.
And what became of the tabernacle? It was holy ground in Mother Teresa’s halls. Past the drinking fountain, near the washroom where we snuck in smokes, on the left against the wall. It displayed the school’s founders, mission statement and strict warning of words emblazoned across the top: “DO NOT REBEL AGAINST THE LIGHT!”
Oh, it’s so cold! I’m shivering here in my naked shame with only a tattered toque upon my head. Is anybody here to see me?
Wait! I remember this toque. I used it to try to keep warm out in the cold. Soooo cccccold.
I remember cradling myself somewhere. Curled up, inside my cardboard cocoon. My tabernacle. The winds howling and snow flying furiously against the tarp in the winter, or the wrath of thunder and lightning lashing against it in spring, the relentless summer sun beating down and being drenched in the wicked Windsor humidity.
Where did it all go and how did I get here?
In the cold, I washed my hands with snow water, trying to make them clean but they would always look soiled and blistered. In the heat, my skin was broken, boils bursting out and in the areas of my face where I had no boils there were warts. They called me Toad on the streets and cells and shelters. I bleated out words like a blathering idiot. Like a toad. I even had a frog doll.
I have my voice again now. How?
My teeth were broken or missing, out in the cold. My rib cage bones pushed against my thin skin. I had bruises all over. My bones creaked. I wore jeans stained with my own urine.
I swallowed my own spit when I tried to talk. And people would spit at me and sneer or slap at my outstretched hand. One guy grabbed my plywood sign and broke it in half over his knee, then tossed each half away: “Hom” and “less,” they read.
In high school, back in the days of my youth, I was indeed king. King Joben, not Toad. An Adonis with flowing red locks and dimples. A warrior’s physique.
The riches and women followed. They flowed over me like warm water beneath tropical falls.
What happened? I swallowed up those riches and vomited them up again. The water turned to ice. Ice crystals clung to my beard and sideburns.
My wealth’s gone, as if tossed out in the trash. It started with a car accident and months of pain and medication that led to addiction that led to homelessness and hopelessness.
“God’s terrible majesty,” is how Sister Cassandra would describe what happened to me.
My children — all gone. Three I helped raise but I haven’t seen in years. A couple of others I never met. I heard one ended up on the streets like me. Maybe he’s dead?
Everything I had — the women, the riches, my possessions — all gone. Or almost. I had a Superstore grocery cart packed with all my things, and my cardboard tabernacle.
Now all of that is gone. Even the photographs. It’s just me here and my toque.
The cold seems to be loosening its grip. At least, I don’t feel it as much. Just want to sleep.
Where is everyone? The high school hall should be teeming but it’s empty, bereft of life.
Where are my clothes? The little Kermit the frog doll I would hold in one hand, the other outstretched with open palm against closed car windows that sped past me?
I look down on the floor of this hallway and I see no shadow. Where did it go? They say all our lives upon the earth are but a shadow. Where’s mine?
And my reflection. Where did that go? I look at the shiny stainless steel water fountain and all I see is the shape of the locker across the hall.
Above my head, some of the ceiling tiles appear to be missing and I see swirls of things that look like dust motes being sucked up into the black holes. At the end of the hall, the darkened doors remain shut.
There’s no sound here. Nobody here.
But the chill I felt is gone. I’m not trembling anymore. I’m numb. My eyes feel heavier.
These walls look like cardboard now and the hall is getting blurry, dark. I think I hear tarp flapping against the ceiling.
Up ahead, the darkened windows look like they’re glowing with a bright light. The doors creak open…
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and online publications for about 40 years and has published a book of short fiction, Stories in the Key of Song. Visit him at claudiodandrea.ca or read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Bluesky.
Contact him here. He would love feedback.
Claudio D'Andrea 
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