Barefoot in the street, running on asphalt is like running on a cheese grater. The feet become damaged quickly. Fortunately, the inflammation that will make running (or walking) so difficult tomorrow, were there to be one, has not happened yet, so the boy finds himself with his full faculties. After a short time, under a bright street light, against a quiet street, very late at night, the boy stops, breathless, to see. The roar again. Surprisingly close. And then he sees them, in the direction of his house. Flashing, feline eyes. Maybe 100 yards away, just beyond the last street light. They squint and move in his direction. He stands frozen just a moment, then tries to run. But something has a hold of his feet. He looks down to see a barbed, black tentacle, like the root of an alien tree, wrapped around his ankle and lower leg. An involuntary noise, and he pulls his foot, breaking the tentacle. But then he sees them: the street is lined with them, undulating and growing rapidly toward his legs. Veering into the street around him he runs the other direction from his house.
It happens just before he stumbles into a mass of tentacles, in the middle of the street, he can hear the labored breathing of an animal, coming up behind him. As he positions his body to face up at the coming threat, a program also given to him by his animal ancestors, he suddenly notices that the street has come alive. There are no houses, he's surrounded to the waist by a tangled, moving, soundless mass of tentacles. The trees lining the street, visible in the street lights, bow toward him, bringing the openness in close, trapping him. He sits in the dark between two streetlights but then he sees it. Matted, black fur. About the size of a very large man, running on two legs. Yellow, cat-like eyes. Seeing that it has met with its quarry, and the battle is over, it bounds to a stop on its hind legs, then settles onto all fours. While he can't make out its specific features with the dim light, those eyes are clearly visible. It smells of all outdoors, many such pursuits. Its presence indicates the scary badlands beyond the grocery stores where one must capture and kill what it wants to eat. Kill to survive. The primal growling returns while shiny saliva cascades from its shortened, cat-like lower jaw.
The boy's frozen fear gives way, and he cries, weeping, sobbing openly, heaving in great staccato breaths and muttering incomprehensibly. His arms now held with his legs, only his head is free. There is a moment, we are told by those whom have experienced it, when we know we are going to die, that the terror we feel, or the pain, will have an end, and we stop fighting for our lives. A fly, hopelessly tangled in a spider web, must feel it. A soldier, wounded one too many times for hope has to feel it, too. An antelope, running and dodging with all its might agains the killing-machine cheetah, must feel it when the cat finally sinks its teeth into its trachea, because they go limp well before they would be dead. But not the boy. For he knows. This creature that has come for him, where the world has collaborated in its defense, was only here for one thing.
Suddenly able to speak, but still sobbing, the boy cries, "I'm sorry! Okay? I'm sorry!" Now with slobber and the hardest tears, "I am sorry!"
And the tentacles, holding him fast, loosened their grip. The trees twisted back to a more natural position. The boy fell back onto his back, while the creature, straightening up, bounded away the direction it had come, to wild lands unknown. It had been so simple.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
A Short-Story Cautionary Tale, Part 1
This starts the same way they all do. It's a preteen boy in his bed, curtains drawn, shadowed shapes of trees making arachnoid outlines in the curtain fabric. All is quiet. There are clues of the activities taking place before, a tented book on a nearby desk chair awaiting the next chapter reading tomorrow night, a short, half-drunk glass of water on the small, glass-topped table. The well-trampled carpet gives the only sense of texture to the room, with footprints appearing like moon craters in the dim, directional light. Downstairs somewhere, you can hear the murmured voices of adults, one with the timbre and volume of a man, the other, the thin, pitched voice of a woman. The words cannot be understood. To us, the observer, there is nothing amiss. But abruptly, the voices go silent. The rising and falling of the covers and the boy's body beneath them pay no heed. But there is no mistaking the creaking of footfalls on the stairs. There is no mistaking the thick, suffocating silence that otherwise settles into the air in the house. The boy, sleeping peacefully, doesn't notice any of this, alone with his dreams.
It is then, when the silence has taken on the heat of a summer day in its oppression, that the door, so tacit just a moment ago, explodes into the room, its pieces knocking knick-knacks off the shelves and desk, the deafening roar of a suddenly assaulted wooden object rapidly deconstructing. What person could sleep with such noise? With the humming in his ears, the panic in his head and his heart suddenly pounding in his chest, the way his ancestors would do when threatened when threatened and all the animals do now, the boy bolted upward from his sleep, suddenly and violently wide awake, the only remnants of sleep the eyelids uncooperative against opening. In the last rain of wood shards striking the hard surfaces, silence again falls, as he is paralyzed in the bed. Were this a movie, this is when the subwoofer would shake us into the foreboding, while our jaded nature assures us that we've seen this before, many times, as movies have tried to scare us. But nothing else happens.
The boy's paralysis suddenly loosens its grip, though the physiological reaction is maintained. Scared as he was to move, more afraid was he to sit still, because we are all taught by movies the same way, even characters in stories. Moving quickly and silently, he steps out of bed, feeling his heartbeat throughout his head and his chest seized against breathing, a burning sensation in his ears. Expecting a form to emerge from the darkness, he freezes again, but nothing comes. His instinct is to call for his parents, but he is afraid to do it, and paralyzed against making his presence known. The animals in his ancestry were brought up this way, the primal self-preservation they have shown is why we persist now. For this boy to persist, though, he must overcome his instinct, the way his body has betrayed him against action and the youthful way hiding always seems best during scary times. The darkness suddenly thicker than the silence, the dim light once entering in through the window extinguished somehow. Nothing moves nor makes any sound. So the boy feels his way to the light switch by the door. That's when the guttural noise, like the creaking of wood against asphalt, crescendoes out of the darkness, from the direction of the corner opposite his door. This refocusing of his attention causes him to forget where he is in the room, and, suddenly dizzy with fear, he falls to the floor. Desperation sets in now. This bomb in his chest, feeling close to the point of exploding, compels him to do what his body was preparing for anyway--run. As he hits the wall, a picture frame falls right before him, freeing him from the feeling of being in infinite space. Now he knows--he's three feet to the right of the now-vacant doorway. Tears jump to his eyes as he finds it, not bothering with the light switch, he fumbles through the door, half walking, half crawling, and down the stairs. Darkness persists at the bottom of the stairs but the door to the outside is there, 90 degrees to his left. There is no sign of a living soul in the darkness. The TV that should be on keeps its location a secret. Finally, the fear lets its grip on his throat slack and he manages to yell, "HELP!" before stumbling toward the outside door, unlocking it and hurling himself outside into a heap on the concrete porch.
Was there danger? His eye suddenly burns, and he feels it with a hand. His hand, in the dim light of streetlights is wet and shiny black. Blood. Something terrible has happened. Then, from inside the door, a primal roar, something beyond human, something large. Without turning to look he runs. Down the stairs of the front stoop. Into the street. Turning to his right, he runs down the street, his liberated vocal anatomy shrieking, hoping to find its way to competent, sympathetic help. But he can only run, so that's what he does.
It is then, when the silence has taken on the heat of a summer day in its oppression, that the door, so tacit just a moment ago, explodes into the room, its pieces knocking knick-knacks off the shelves and desk, the deafening roar of a suddenly assaulted wooden object rapidly deconstructing. What person could sleep with such noise? With the humming in his ears, the panic in his head and his heart suddenly pounding in his chest, the way his ancestors would do when threatened when threatened and all the animals do now, the boy bolted upward from his sleep, suddenly and violently wide awake, the only remnants of sleep the eyelids uncooperative against opening. In the last rain of wood shards striking the hard surfaces, silence again falls, as he is paralyzed in the bed. Were this a movie, this is when the subwoofer would shake us into the foreboding, while our jaded nature assures us that we've seen this before, many times, as movies have tried to scare us. But nothing else happens.
The boy's paralysis suddenly loosens its grip, though the physiological reaction is maintained. Scared as he was to move, more afraid was he to sit still, because we are all taught by movies the same way, even characters in stories. Moving quickly and silently, he steps out of bed, feeling his heartbeat throughout his head and his chest seized against breathing, a burning sensation in his ears. Expecting a form to emerge from the darkness, he freezes again, but nothing comes. His instinct is to call for his parents, but he is afraid to do it, and paralyzed against making his presence known. The animals in his ancestry were brought up this way, the primal self-preservation they have shown is why we persist now. For this boy to persist, though, he must overcome his instinct, the way his body has betrayed him against action and the youthful way hiding always seems best during scary times. The darkness suddenly thicker than the silence, the dim light once entering in through the window extinguished somehow. Nothing moves nor makes any sound. So the boy feels his way to the light switch by the door. That's when the guttural noise, like the creaking of wood against asphalt, crescendoes out of the darkness, from the direction of the corner opposite his door. This refocusing of his attention causes him to forget where he is in the room, and, suddenly dizzy with fear, he falls to the floor. Desperation sets in now. This bomb in his chest, feeling close to the point of exploding, compels him to do what his body was preparing for anyway--run. As he hits the wall, a picture frame falls right before him, freeing him from the feeling of being in infinite space. Now he knows--he's three feet to the right of the now-vacant doorway. Tears jump to his eyes as he finds it, not bothering with the light switch, he fumbles through the door, half walking, half crawling, and down the stairs. Darkness persists at the bottom of the stairs but the door to the outside is there, 90 degrees to his left. There is no sign of a living soul in the darkness. The TV that should be on keeps its location a secret. Finally, the fear lets its grip on his throat slack and he manages to yell, "HELP!" before stumbling toward the outside door, unlocking it and hurling himself outside into a heap on the concrete porch.
Was there danger? His eye suddenly burns, and he feels it with a hand. His hand, in the dim light of streetlights is wet and shiny black. Blood. Something terrible has happened. Then, from inside the door, a primal roar, something beyond human, something large. Without turning to look he runs. Down the stairs of the front stoop. Into the street. Turning to his right, he runs down the street, his liberated vocal anatomy shrieking, hoping to find its way to competent, sympathetic help. But he can only run, so that's what he does.
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