Resolution

The rain fell gently against the windows of Oliver's bedroom as he lay on his bed in solitude. It was a relatively dreary day outside, but he liked it, and in fact preferred it over any other kind of weather on that particular day. He was recovering well from his illness, and the pitter-patter sound of the raindrops hitting the glass soothed him. The only other sound in his room was from the flowing piano melodies of Keith Jarrett on the record player. He needed time to relax, and listening to the master of jazz improvisation himself seemed to do the trick. Oliver knew he hadn't been acting himself lately and that his family was probably a bit concerned, but he was grateful that nobody was treating him like some kind of mental case. His wife and sons appeared to understand that he was going through some sort of strange mood swing, but that was probably only because they attributed it to his recent fever. He knew that they couldn't possibly understand what he was going through because even HE didn't know exactly what it was. Was his past catching up to him psychologically? Did he even desire anything at all from his past? Was he worried about the future? He didn't know. He would have loved to simply classify it as a "mid-life crisis", but honestly, he wasn't sure if that was what it was. "Stop thinking about it," he told himself. "It doesn't matter. It'll all work itself out in the end. The end. The end to all this anxiety, to this paranoia, this confusion. When will it be the end?" He knew the answer, but at the same time, he didn't know.
All of a sudden, Oliver heard a loud boom and felt the walls and floor of his Thallow Flats apartment tremble. He shot up out of bed and stumbled onto the ground in a panic. The room suddenly got a whole lot darker. "What the--?" He had no idea what had just happened. He knew it had to be some kind of explosion, though. That sound couldn't have belonged to anything else. He looked across his bed at the window and saw that a thick smoke cloud and pieces of debris had covered the glass. Getting up quickly, he opened his bedroom door and raced into the living room.
"Dad!" yelled Jonathon, who looked just as shocked as he was. "What's going on?" "I don't know," said Oliver. "Where's your mother? Have you seen Wilbur anywhere?" "They went out to the store about half-an-hour ago," said Jonathon. "Did something explode?" Before Oliver could reply, he felt a sudden wave of lightheadedness coming on, and crouched to the floor immediately. "Whoa, hold on, got up too fast," mumbled Oliver as he sat there holding his head. A few seconds later he could start to see clearly again and got back up. "God, I hate that. Okay, Jonathon, follow me downstairs. Whatever that was, we probably shouldn't stay inside. You hear me?" "Yeah," said Jonathon. As they hurried downstairs, they could see other residents of Thallow Flats heading outside to see what exactly had exploded. They ran out the front door and looked to the right, where the empty lot had a gigantic smoke cloud and fire erupting from a large crater right in the middle of it. "Well, I'll be damned. They blew up the lot," murmured Oliver. "Now I've seen it all." And at that moment, he felt he truly had. And he felt fine.