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Writer
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 38
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Read as much as you can and respond
—
I looked out the window. Three seconds prior I had seen a man fall. Plummet. It reminded me of a hawk diving for its prey. The rush provided a cool breeze, if only for a second.
I wonder why he did it.
Mrs. Henderson smiled at me, the kind of smile you give someone before you shoot him. Her hands twitched in a nervous sort of way.
I smiled back.
“Is there something funny Mr. Hart?”
Life. School. You. You. You. Just fucking say it!
“No.”
“Would you like to come up to the front of the class?”
“I’d rather be down there with him.” I motioned towards the window.
Her eyes narrowed curiously, but she retorted, “We have no time for your games, Mr. Hart.”
The walls felt like they were closing in on me. They do that sometimes, as if they were breathing, living. The classroom was probably barely big enough to fit all 30 of us. You could tell class was almost over; most kids, by now, had run out of drawing space on their arms. Everyone looked at the clock inconspicuously. If Mrs. Henderson got the impression that we wanted to leave, she would have kept us here as a punishment. I didn’t understand her reasoning. The ringing of the bell pierced through my ears and slapped the walls of the dark classroom.
Mrs. Henderson looked at me, waiting for my reply.
“I guess not.”
I stood up and walked out.
—
The hallway was a cage of mindless chatter. Like social parasites, kids sucked on one another. A group of girls swam through the crowd like sharks, talking to each other on cell phones. It was a bizarre place, and I couldn’t help but feel as if I had walked into a zoo.
My locker was the same as everyone else’s. It had a worn, vomit-green color. The numbers on the dial were faded, too. They were hard to read, by I knew my combination by heart. I let my fingers brush against the black plastic and slowly spin the dial to the right.
1…
I looked around, peering over my left shoulder. I had to make sure no one was looking.
33…
The school, the government, they always taught me that everyone was after my personal information; if someone knows that you’re vulnerable, they will take advantage of you. How are you supposed to live life if you’re always too afraid to let your guard down?
7…
The locker clicked and opened.
It was empty anyway. I stuffed my backpack inside and slammed the door shut.
At least now it has a purpose.
A girl in red walked up behind me and put her arm around mine
I turned around, and she grinned back at me.
“Hey Danny,” she said, as if she was teasing me.
“Oh hey,” I responded, looking in another direction.
“We had fun last night didn’t we?”
I wasn’t with you last night.
“Sure.”
“Me and Ashley were wondering if you wanted to come with us to a party on Saturday.” The stench of vodka seeped out when she spoke.
She took another sip from a water bottle clasped in her hands.
“I think I’m busy.”
“Oh yeah? Doing what?”
Another string of lies to weave together; no matter how safe we seem inside of it, up close it has holes, like the clothes we wear.
“I might stop by.”
She curled her lips, trying to look coy and seductive. “I’ll see you there Danny,” and with that she faded into the crowd.
I slid through the living barrier; my only objective was to reach the end of the tunnel, the grey hallway of lockers. Maybe I would find freedom there.
—
Outside, there was a thick cloud of smoke, accompanied by the whizzing of cars rushing by. I could taste the exhaust bleeding into my lungs.
My school was situated on a major highway. It was as if somewhere along the line we had run out of space for things like schools or hospitals, and the only option was to pack this one in somewhere between the countless strip clubs and adult video stores on route 59. To make up for it, they planted an unnatural green grass lawn in front of the red-brick facade. It contrasted so sharply that people had to turn their heads to avoid it when driving by. Across the highway was quite a view, if you didn’t look too hard. There was a long serpentine creek, it used to shine bright blue, in fact, some famous photographer took a picture of it once; he called it “Perfection.” Now it’s muddy and dark. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had found dead bodies there before. It seemed like that kind of place.
I sat there, like I always do, jeans pressed against the jagged edge of the curb. It had sharp little pebbles, like teeth, imbedded in the cement.
My feet anchored me to the cold road. A layer of dirt and black ash stuck to the sole of my white sneakers.
They were too clean anyway.
I watched the cars. Behind each driver was a story. One man swerved in and out of lanes frantically, his knuckles gleamed white from his intense grip on the steering wheel. He let out a nervous laugh, the result of coffee and heroin binge the night before.
This is where I sat to think. It wasn’t comfortable or anything. In fact the stone curb was cold, and very often I had to endure peoples glares as they walked by on the sidewalk. I used to at least. I had been sitting so long that they had forgotten I was there. People tend to do that.
I closed my eyes and looked for the stairway I’d seen in my dreams. I found only darkness and the intrusive headlights that shone bright through my eyelids, my shields for keeping the world out. The world always found its way back in.
My mind suddenly felt a rush of ideas; it was like watching television in fast forward, like water bursting out of a crumbling dam. And before I knew it, I was done thinking, I had just finished my thought and that’s all there was.
I felt lonely
You wouldn’t understand.
I hate it, but I can’t help it.
Just then a blue Mercedes pulled up. It drives me crazy how some parents buy their kids videogames and expensive cars, as if it made up for all the late nights at work when they pretend not to screw their secretaries, and all the beer they don’t drink, along with all the bruises they don’t give their wives. I don’t care, really, I’m good at pretending I don’t.
The tinted windows rolled down as the Mercedes stopped in front of me. A familiar face smiled at me. It was Josh. Let me tell you something about Josh.
Josh is an asshole, that’s why I like him. He’s the only person that has ever told me to fuck off. He’s also the only person I’ve gotten into a real fight with. His hand broke my nose, and my nose broke his hand. He probably got the better end of the deal though.
Both his parent’s are both divorce lawyers. His father works at a big firm in New York City, his mother, at a different one. It made me uncomfortable, the way they would look at each other. The kind of look that sends chills down your spine. Josh didn’t have to deal with it much; they were only home minutes at a time.
Whenever Josh needs something, he checks the pockets of his mother’s overcoats. They’re usually filled with wads of money, joints, condoms, and other guys’ phone numbers. Most likely she doesn’t even notice that they’re missing.
I didn’t recognize the girl sitting next to Josh. Well, technically she was sitting on him. Another one was in the back, alone. I could barely see her through the tinted windows.
“Are you skipping, Danny boy?”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t really skipping. I just… wasn’t in class.
—
“Get in, you can keep Ally company.”
I stepped into the back of the car, next to Ally.
She looked about 17, and from what I could tell, she was either high on life, or high on something else. She wore faded jeans, the fake kind, and a tight pink shirt with the word Princess on it. I don’t think a real princess would wear that kind of shirt. But I’ve never met one, so I wouldn’t know.
The back smelled like sex. Josh was the kind of guy that would leave a girls best friend in the back of a car. She looked at me.
I could already tell what was on her mind. She slid her hand over the smooth leather of the car seat. Her nails were too perfect.
“Hey-you.” Her words slurred as she spoke.
“Hey, what was your name again?”
I knew her name was Ally
“Ally,” she said as she giggled, “with a ‘Y’” As if it mattered.
“That’s a nice name.” I looked back out the tinted windows.
It really wasn’t that nice.
I asked Josh where we were going, but I didn’t expect him to answer. His mouth was busy with the other girl’s. He wasn’t looking at the road. Part of me wanted the blue Mercedes to smash into the grey cement divider in the middle of the highway. At least it would be exciting.
And so I looked out the window, watching the world fly by at 80 miles per hour. It looked like an abstract painting, with long absurd brush strokes; I couldn’t make out any of it.
That was when I felt Ally’s body press against mine. She wrapped her legs around me, taking my hands and pressing them against her waist. Her skin was soft. It felt good against my cold hands; I could tell they were cold because she shuddered as I touched her.
She guided my hands, slowly sliding them up her Princess shirt. My stomach ached and I felt like throwing up. I tried to pull away.
“Wait.”
She got off and sat down in the leather seat next to me. Her green eyes looked into mine and she leaned in slowly. I felt her breath on my face as she pressed her lips against mine. This time I didn’t pull away, this time I didn’t do anything. I wish I had.
And then it all stopped.
Have you ever had one of those moments where time stands still? Everything around you seems like it has become suspended in mid-air. After you let go, but before you hit the ground. That’s when you feel most scared, because the music that you’ve stopped noticing, the one that was only a gentle thumping, suddenly melts into nothing. You wait for your heartbeat, because it’s all you’ve ever known, you wait for everything to rush back, the way it used to. And it doesn’t.
The cracking of the windshield as Josh’s face flew through it sounded like it was the loudest thing I had ever heard, like one planet crashing into another. I watched as the girl in the front floated through behind him, like it was their fate to fly off together. To break through the glass plate and keep flying, up higher, into the clouds. Their souls didn’t stop there, they kept going until the earth no longer held its tight grasp on them, until it finally let go.
The metal frame of the car creaked as it peeled away as the glass shards flew by my face. The dashboard of the car, once home to its surround sound stereo system, gave way to reveal a jungle or wires, thousands of dollars worth of technology that the car didn’t need anymore. The plastic bled through.
I looked at the headrest in front of me, knowing that it was there and there was nothing I could do now, that in a fraction of a second it would meet with my skull.
—
Open your eyes.
Goddamn it, open your eyes.
Through my squinted eyelids, I saw my world.
My face was cold and damp.
I was afraid.
My eyes traced the room back and fourth, it was dark, except for a dull light that crept in through from somewhere.
A long thin tube traveled out from under the sheets, the sheets that kept me cold. I followed it to a needle that disappeared into the veins of my wrists. They were a pale blue.
A pain tore through my head, a pounding, as if I were being crushed by bricks. In the darkness, there was the silhouette of a desk, and flowers. Next to me, there was the humming of machinery, and a bag attached to the tube that drip-drip-dripped.
I tried to turn my head, which proved to be an arduous task.. Slowly I swung my legs around and let them dangle off the edge of the steel metal bed.
With all my strength, I lifted myself up and sat there for a little while. My body swayed back and fourth. My toes pushed against the bleached white tile floor.
The room was cold.
I tried thinking counter-clockwise, there wasn’t any sense to it, except that maybe it would counteract the spinning in my head.
It didn’t.
I don’t even though what counter-clockwise thinking is.
It didn’t matter. I was feeling pretty delusional, and by now, coherent thinking was out of the question.
My stomach still hurt
My body still ached.
I let out a shiver.
Soon I noticed the sweat pooling around my eyes and my neck
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I ripped the tube out of my wrist and let it fall to the ground.
Suddenly, life didn’t feel so simple.
Suddenly, it didn’t come so easily anymore.
Suddenly, I was this little boy, only 17, sitting on hospital bed. An unfamiliar green garb covered my body. Who were they trying to fool? I longed for my clothes, at least something that I could relate to.
And then a small window caught my eye. Thirty feet away, trapped in the empty, white wall.
It was open. I could feel the softest breeze on my face, and through this little opening to the world I saw a white glimmer. A speck that fluttered by. And then another.
It was snowing.
The white blanket came down that night and covered the city, while I watched through the peep-hole into the world, and thought about the people on the outside.
A forty year old man three blocks down, named Joe, mumbled to himself as he thrust the shovel into the snow and flung it back over his shoulder, it didn’t matter where, as long as he didn’t have to deal with it later.
He would be surprised the next morning, when he discovered that the neighbors plowed all the snow back onto driveway. They did it at a much faster rate than Joe, about twenty times faster, with their brand-new snowplow. State of the art. High tech.
It was an arms race of snow, a new cold war.
And there I sat on the bed, ignorant to all of it.
I turned my head when I heard a tap-tap-tapping at the door, a quiet, curious tapping, and opened my mouth to acknowledge it. It hurt too much to speak, too much to breathe. I let out a whimper, the kind of sound you make when someone wakes you up too early, when you try to be coherent but all that comes out is “hmmphgrrrr.”
I was disappointed with my vocal chords. They’re never there when you need them.
My moan was too quiet for the curious tapper to hear, but the door creaked open regardless. In walked a short nurse, she reminded me of that one short straw no one ever wants to pick, because it usually means you have to do something you don’t want to. She carried a clipboard and walked around the room, gazing at her papers, as if her eyes were stuck to them.
She shuffled around the room, like her path was second nature, not even looking at her feet. First she marched over to the big table with the flowers on it, and analyzed it as she would a patient. Every few seconds she would glance at it and write some lines down on her clipboard.
Then she made her way over to the small window and shut it.
I nearly cried.
I liked that window the way it was.
As she turned around, her eyes finally met with mine and she let out a shriek.
“Oh gosh! You nearly scared me to death!”
I looked back at her with glossed, watery eyes.
“What are you doing up at this time dear?” she questioned me sincerely, as if suddenly, she wasn’t scared anymore.
I looked down at my feet.
She probably thought I was dumb.
“I’m only doing a routine inspection, that’s all.”
That was probably the nurses’ excuse for all the evil things they do.
“Have you seen a little boy? About this tall?” She put out her hand in front of her. “He’s missing from the soon to be dead ki…” She put her hand over her mouth as if she had slipped up, which she had. “I mean, Terminally Ills.”
I let my head roll down to the left.
When she noticed the tube dangling, she brought it over to me and introduced it back into my wrist.
Yeah, they know each other, they’ve met before.
Then she flipped a switch that let a liquid flow through the tube into my veins.
I know, because I felt a warm, tingling sensation
“Oh he’s probably a vegetable anyway…” She looked at me, mumbled to herself, and walked out as quickly as she had come in, slamming the door shut behind her.
Whatever she gave me, it was powerful.
I collapsed and slid onto the floor.
There I lay, sprawled on the white tiles, tangled in sheets and tubes.
The ceiling looked up at me and laughed.
Perception is relative. The room had rotated around itself, like that twisted room in the house of horrors, the one with all the desks and chairs glued to the ceiling, except that I too was stuck up there. I was on the bottom of the earth, gazing down at the sky. I looked down at the ceiling tiles, the cheap recycled kind, from my position, pressed against the floor.
The ceiling tiles were cheap because, statistically, people don’t look up very often. They just look down at their path, with their tunnel vision. All that matters to people is the destination, and how to get there faster than anybody else.
I don’t have a destination
It seemed ridiculous really. My body was stuck to this great big orbiting ball. A ball with a force that attracted things to it. Sucked things in.
We live on a giant magnet.
And we have organizations, government branches, determined to find ways to get off of our big blue ball.
Just because.
Just because it’s so good at keeping us here.
We’ve run out of better ways to spend our money.
At one point, someone finally looked up and wondered.
Why not live out there?
—
Who knows how long I lay there, frozen to the bleached white tiles?
It could have been days.
Weeks.
Maybe they already sent out a search party.
They’d spend weeks searching all the places I’d been, combing through all the clues, before they found me, sprawled out on the floor.
Or had it only been a few minutes since the stubby nurse had left me here?
Time is never constant. A moment is an eternity, while a lifetime is the blink of an eye.
I blinked.
And suddenly a head floated into view above me.
It was a child.
He looked at me and giggled.
“Watcha’ doing?” he asked me innocently.
“Hi…” was all I could let out.
I managed to lift my head up. A small crack of light came through the little window. The sun pierced through the horizon.
“Hi,” I said again, and forced a smile.
He sat down next to me, with his legs crossed. His feet were curled into a position that only a child could achieve.
“Let’s play a game.”
Okay. Fine.
“I’ll think of someone, and you have to guess who it is.”
That’s a stupid game.
I sat up and stuffed a pillow behind my back. I didn’t feel like moving very much. The floor was just starting to get used to me.
“Boy or girl?” I ask, mostly to humor him.
“Well,” he thought for a little bit, “He’s a guy. I think. Maybe.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Mostly dead,” he replied with a creepy little chuckle.
I wished he would make up his mind.
He stood up and starting skipping around me in circles.
One…
“What color are his eyes?” I asked.
My head spun as he pranced around me.
Two…
“He doesn’t have eyes.”
Three…
“Does he even exist?”
Four…
He stopped circling and looked at me. “What do you mean?” He asked me.
“Well… is he tangible?”
His face scrunched up, you could tell he was confused.
“I mean,” I tried to explain it to him, “Can you touch him?”
He thought for a second.
“You can’t touch him, but he can touch you…”
He started his skipping around me again.
Five…
You can’t touch him, but he can touch you.
“I don’t know.” I waited until he made his sixth rotation and came back around.
Six…
“Stop that.”
He sat down on my bed. His hands tapped lightly against the metal frame.
“I don’t know,” I said, exasperated, “who is it?”
“You’ll know someday.” His mind was already engaged in other, more interesting things. He got up again and wandered around the room, touching everything.
As if he hadn’t felt a wall before, his hands brushed against it. The table. The vase. The flowers. Each sensation shot through him, and with each new feeling he let out a smile.
I tried to remember a time when my senses excited me. Back when the feel of silk sent shivers down my spine. Back when the taste of chocolate brought a smile to my face. Back when the smell of a rose reminded me how beautiful the world could be.
He walked up to me, slowly, crouching, and put his hand against my face.
It was warm.
Footsteps resonated outside the door to the door to my left, someone was running through the hallway like a bullet through a gun’s barrel.
The boy, with his big, bright eyes, inched back and tripped into a chair, where he sat, dazed.
“I really must be going,” he said, “we really must be going.”
I didn’t question him. I didn’t feel like it. Instead, I searched the room and found a pile of clothes, meticulously folded on a bad in the corner. Someone had been paid to stack it into a little column.
It’s a shame
I grabbed the pants and pushed my legs down into them, taking off my hospital garb and stuffing it into the small duffel bag that I draped around my shoulder.
Wrapped into a little square, was a hoodie three sizes too big. My parents had most likely bought it hoping that I would grow into it. Usually, by that time, it was worn and faded. I pulled it over my head and looked at the little boy, slouched over in the hard plastic hospital chair. His hair draped in front of his eyes, the bright ones he had, that were now closed.
I expected him to jump up at me, to giggle and set off running down the hall, but everything stayed quiet.
His mother and father would come the next day and see him there, an empty body with a pale white face.
On the table nearby lay a vase with twelve flowers and a bright yellow card. I stuffed it into my duffel bag and walked back out into the real world.
—
In the corridor, the walls buzzed, vibrating to the beating in my chest.
In…
Out…
The lights swung on long, polished chains that hung from the ceiling, blown by a subtle wind, that pulsated like human breathing. The air brushed against my neck.
Down the hallway, a light at a desk flickered, turned off, and back on again.
The nurse didn’t turn even turn to me as I walked out, past the front desk. She was busy with coffee, solitaire, and the janitor who winked at her every time he walked by. Fantasies played through her head as I walked unnoticed past the waiting room, out the automatic doors that never slept, never took coffee breaks, never complained about salaries or working conditions.
One day everything will be replaced by automats; automatic doctors, automatic lawyers, automatic prostitutes.
I didn’t pay anything much heed as I walked out through the doors that slid open by their own will.
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