Ordinarily, I don't put something out there for critique/comments until it's much closer to a "finished product" in my mind. But, I have such a hard time with short stories (usually my "short" stories are like 100 pages lol) that I figured I'd just throw this one out there to see what you people thought.
Monkey Bars
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Granted, I hadn’t expected things to be the same. After all, how could they be after fifteen years? That much time passes, things will change. It was a given. Logically, I knew this. Even still, it shouldn’t be like this.
Where were all the people? Where was the noise? The laughter? The sense of joy and wonderment I felt every time he visited this place? I could not reconcile the place in my memory with the…
atrocity I now saw before me.
The sky, once a brilliant and shimmering blend of purples and pinks, was now the color of mud. Really dirty mud. The red grass had turned a putrid shade of yellow, and rocks, black as death itself, had cropped up from beneath the ground to dot the landscape. I picked my way through the rocks, feeling my heart rip with every step. I was responsible for this.
I paused in the shadow of an enormous silver spire, rested my hand on the dented metal, and allowed myself a small smile. Though there should have been eight more pillars surrounding this one in an X pattern, it still comforted me to find one left. That it was the central post still standing seemed appropriate.
It was against that post that Captain Hanson T. Noobob of the 91st Star Battalion Brigade scored the winning goal of the Intergalactic Drack Ball championship, thus saving the universe from the evil clutches of Dr. Boom, his mortal enemy. The celebration that started that day went on for a long time. Now, apparently, there was no one left to celebrate.
Wistfully, I removed my hand and moved on. I took the path past the genie tree, feeling another pull of regret in the pit of my stomach when I saw it was no more than a rotting bush and not the mighty oak it had once been. I wondered if I should hop three times, spin to my left, say my name backwards, and clap twice; the proper way to have your wish granted by the tree. I decided against it. I didn’t know if I could take the disappointment if it didn’t work.
I knew the path I was on would take me past the rainbow waterfall, by Mrs. June’s super sweet and yummy green bean berry patch, and to the…
The moment the thought entered my mind, I was off at a dead run.
If anything is the same, I thought,
let it be that.
But it wasn’t. The set of monkey bars was rusted over. Weeds, thick and immense, slithered up the support posts, nearly hiding everything from sight. Only a few spots of sapphire blue metal, glittering like the ocean, were evident. It was almost obscene to see the structure in such a state. There should have been children all around the base of it, clamoring for a turn to climb aboard. The monkey bars weren’t about wishes, or yummy treats, or even saving the universe. They showed you what it would be like to achieve your dreams.
Even the dreams you never knew you had.
They touched you deep down in your heart, where nothing else could, and gave you the chance to experience all your deepest desires. It would be a new adventure every time, and it was truly wonderful. The monkey bars only worked on children, adults were far too cynical to appreciate the device for what it was. A teacher, a motivator. Many would say it is cruel to give someone a taste only to take it away a short while later. They would see it as a punishment, believing more that it is showing them what they can never have on their own.
But to a child, to an innocent mind, it opened up realms of possibility they may have never known existed. Showed them a wide world far beyond the scope they once held. It showed them their dreams, and spawned even more. It would serve them well for the rest of their life as long as they remembered what it felt like to achieve those dreams.
I had forgotten my own experiences on the monkey bars. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the memories, and wasn’t sure if I could get them back.
“Hi!” said a bright voice.
Startled, I turned around. The voice belonged to a boy, ten years old, with cheery blue eyes, a lopsided smile with the front two teeth missing, and a mop of dark hair on the top of his head.
“Hello.” Though I was troubled by the boy’s sudden appearance, the boy didn’t appear to share my uneasiness.
“Wanna see something funny?” the boy asked. He waited for a response quietly, but his eyes betrayed how much he wanted the answer to be yes.
“Ok, sure,” I said and forced a smile.
“All right! Come on! I’m Paul by the way, what’s your name?” Without giving the chance for an answer, he tore off across a large field, expertly leaping over the rocks and putting distance between us. When I didn’t follow quickly enough he turned around with his hands on his hips.
“Come on! Hurry up, you move slower than a snail glued to a turtle’s back who’s stuck in quicksand.”
I smiled again. This time it wasn’t forced. The boy led me through a field, into a dense forest I only vaguely remembered. He skidded to a stop just inside a clearing. When I joined him, he raised his arm to point. Though it was hardly necessary.
There was a three foot elf, wearing bright yellow sneakers, dark sunglasses, and a baseball cap, in the middle of the clearing, frozen in place. In his hand he carried a large brown bag, bulging in several places due to whatever was inside. Not ten feet behind the elf, also frozen in place, was a grizzly bear. He was running up on hind legs, looking decidedly human in blue jeans and a T-shirt. He also had the tip of one of his claws up his nose, as if picking it.
This was obviously what the boy wanted to show me.
“He’s picking his nose,” Paul said, giggling as if this was the funniest thing in the world.
“I see that, why is he picking his nose?” I asked.
“I made him. I was bored, and they just stand here all day, so I moved him around. It’s boring here a lot. The bear is Mr. Billings, and the elf is…”
“Murray,” I said, finishing the explanation. “He stole a bag of chocolate coins from Mr. Billings.”
Paul wasn’t near as surprised that I knew that information as I was. He simply nodded.
“So Murray is bad, right?” he asked.
I couldn’t keep a smile from curling my lips as I looked down at the boy, who looked back at me, eyes twinkling. He was testing me.
“No, it only looks like Murray is bad. Mr. Billings stole the coins from Murray’s friend Benjamin first, and Murray is only trying to get them back for him.”
Paul nodded happily. “That’s right,” when he saw a pained expression come across his face, he sobered. “What’s wrong?”
I rubbed my hands across my face and sat right there on the ground. Without hesitation, Paul flopped down next to me.
“I’m scared,” I said finally.
“Of what?” Paul wanted to know.
“A lot of things.”
“There’s lots of things to be scared of,” he said wisely. I couldn’t argue with
him.
“What are you scared of mostest?” he asked after a few moments of silence.
I pondered that. “I don’t really know, I guess. I’m scared of so much that it’s hard to choose. I guess I’m scared most of not being able to do what I want to do.”
“Why couldn’t you do what you wanna do?” Paul asked.
“Sometimes you don’t get to,” I responded.
“Why not?” he said.
“Because,” I said.
“Because why?” he persisted.
“Because that’s just the way it is.”
After another few moments of silence, during which Paul drew shapes in the dirt with his finger, he muttered, “I can’t wait to be an adult.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Cause you get to say stuff like that. I said that to my mom one time when she asked why I never cleaned my room when she told me to. She yelled so loud at me Dad said my ears would probably fall off. No one will yell at you when you say it bet.”
And that was the problem wasn’t it? He had to hold himself accountable; there was no one to do it for him. It was too easy to blame everyone else. As he realized the problem, he also realized why everything around him was in such disarray. He was scared that he wouldn’t be able to fix it, but that was still no reason not to try.
With a start, Paul Benton, a 33 year-old sales executive, woke from his fitful sleep on the couch. The phone fell off his chest and clattered to the floor. He blinked, momentarily confused, as the dream faded from his mind. As his bearings returned, he took the phone back towards the kitchen. He replaced it in its cradle, then couldn’t resist hitting the button to replay the last saved message on his answering machine.
“
Paul, this is Gary. Listen, I’m really sorry about this. I know you’ve been with us for a really long time, but we just had no other choice than to let you go. It was just business. Call me when you can and we’ll talk. Let me know if you need anything, a recommendation or something like that. We’ll help you get another job, I promise. Call me. Bye.”
A mild sense of panic bubbled up in Paul’s gut, but it was no where near the feeling of despair and depression he had been feeling since getting the news of his termination. Now it was more panic and disbelief that he was actually thinking of doing what he was thinking of doing.
Before he could manage to talk himself out of it, Paul walked to his bedroom, and opened the closet door. It took twenty minutes to locate it, but eventually he pulled a file box out from a pile of old clothes in the back of the closet. Not even bothering to pull it out, he sat crossed legged on the floor and lifted the lid to the box. A musty scent assailed his nostrils and a feeling of nostalgia slid over him like a second skin. He removed the top stack of papers, and smoothed the crinkled sheets.
“The Genie Tree by Paul Benton, Age 8 ” he read aloud. The childish manuscript and illustrations brought a smile to his lips. Gently, almost reverently, he set it aside and picked up the next. “The Complete Rules to Drack Ball.” One by one, he pulled the stories from the box. Each story set in its own little world, and then combined in his head to create one giant place he could retreat to any time he wanted.
As he read his work, he laughed at himself for making the most basic of errors in his writing, and other times he marveled at his own creativity. It took over three hours to go through the entire box, reading and rereading, getting lost in thought. He never moved from the closet floor. Finally, there were only two stories left. He had a lump in his throat as he picked up the first.
“Monkey Bars,” he read. It was his favorite of all the things he had written because it had seemed the most real. His mind drifted back to the first time he had used the monkey bars himself. Having them show him what it would be like to write for a living. He had never really ever wanted anything else. Even at such a young age he knew that. So what had happened? He didn’t know for sure. A combination of events most likely. It doesn’t take much to get sent astray when it comes to life. Now he was sitting at a crossroads. Though it terrified him, he had made his decision already. He owed it to a bored little boy stuck in a place he shouldn’t have to be stuck in.
With that thought, he finally pulled out the last story. He thumbed through the pages until the very last scene. Mr. Billings chasing Murray the elf through the woods.
“Ok guys,” he said aloud, talking to them as if they were real people. “I got sidetracked for a long time, but I’m done with that now. Here’s hoping ‘better late than never’ is a true saying, right? Let’s see if I can get you unstuck so you can finish your adventure.”
Leaving everything where it was, he rolled the unfinished manuscript in his hands and knowing there wasn’t a better place to try to get back on track, headed for his home office to get writing again.
In another place, weeds slowly began to recede from a metal frame, while large chunks of rust began to peel off, revealing more sapphire blue underneath, glimmering like the ocean. And a 10 year-old boy laughed hysterically as Mr. Billings wondered why in the world he was picking his nose while chasing Murray the elf.
I'm so happy I read it!
