Journey Up

A Story by A.M Leone

What is success, and is it something that is achievable?

Journey up

“A friend of mine once told me to keep the bungee cords. A reminder of the struggle that I faced as I struggled my way to the top. The bungee cords were my tie to a time that was simpler at most but still wonderful to think about my life in hindsight.

The bungee cords were for my death trap of a car. My white 2001 white jimmy truck, with the front two doors that wouldn’t stay shut. The Jimmy had been through a lot: two accidents, broken window, stretched out and sixteen years old, but still I drove it. The doors didn’t break down all at once, like most things it happened gradually, culminating in the driver’s side door, the hinge rusting out.”

I paused for a moment, trying to moisten my dry throat, caused by the amount I’d been talking.

“But still I managed, bungee-ing up my driver’s side door hopping in through the passengers-when it still worked. I have taken this truck to Rhode Island, to upstate New York, to Connecticut, and have written many of my short stories from ideas that I got while driving her. As I struggled my way to the top, hopping through the passenger side window, crawling over the console just to get to the driver’s seat- one window always had to be kept down so I could get into the car. This is how I drove to meetings with my writing partner, to the small no budget film conferences for what I had been working at the time. I had the mentality so long as it made it from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ with me safely, that was all that mattered.”

“Did it break down?” a faceless shadow from the crowd asked, only my answer acknowledged that a question was asked.

“Did it break down?” I said with a laugh. “With only my car as material I had a constant flow of comedic routines. In fact, when I walked into work and started with ‘well I was driving my truck when…’ my boss was already laughing, the idea of what nearly unheard of tragedy happened with my car. I sometimes worried that with everyone knowing that I’m a writer, that everyone thought I made these things up. But it truly wasn’t, I don’t think I’d be able to make these convincing to my readers if I hadn’t experienced it time and time again.”

I took a moment to laugh at myself and everything that I couldn’t say from my memory, or at least not in the same way that I see. The constant number of times that I had flipped out when it wouldn’t start. The amount of small heart-attacks I almost had, because of the times I’d broken down in horrible places watching as I watched other cars fly by, narrowly missing me, even though I wasn’t moving and had my emergency lights on.

I looked around at the blackness in front of me. The silence deafening while I wasn’t speaking.

“So how long did you drive the truck?” Another faceless voice asked.

“Well I made my first feature film, that actually had a budget when I was twenty-seven, the thing broke down when I was twenty-six. I have been driving it since I was eighteen. So, wow I drove that thing for eight years.” I answered, my tone genuinely surprised at the actual length. The problem, as I just realized was the quickness in which the time passed. Eight years flying by, feeling like it was only a year or two since I had started driving her.

I looked down in my hands, where suddenly there appeared to be the bungee cords, played out in my palm. One red and the other blue, both frayed to the point where the individual bands of rubber were beginning to rip. An effect of rolling the window up as much as I could, praying that I didn’t break my window with the effort.

“I spent years as the starving artist, only able to survive because I lived with my parents, trying to find a way to supplement my income just as a means to break free and be on my own. I became a life insurance agent, a book critic, and a personal trainer, on top of my tutoring job. But still my main focus, was always my writing. It was one of the most difficult times in my life as I made my way through school, working as a tutor, doing my own writing and hobbies (Drawing, playing guitar, training myself and more writing.) an atlas amount of weight placed on me and not helped by my hatred of stagnation. It was with the publishing of my first book that things began to change.”

He said with a smile reaching my hand out into the darkness and picking up a glass of water that appeared from nowhere. I continued to look in the distance, the darkness still filling what I saw. I began to question why I was speaking, another question interrupting my inner thoughts.

“So then you could say that publishing your first book was what truly changed your life, and is your greatest achievement?” the faceless voice asked from the shadows.

It was almost as if a bright light was fixed on me and it was getting brighter, warmer, yet nothing else was illuminated around me. Where was I? why was I so compelled to answer these voices that stroked my subconscious ego.

“My greatest achievement? Far from it, he publishing of my books, the directing and writing of my films, all pale in comparison to finding my wife, a woman who is fierce enough to put me in my place- controlling my ego as she says is her favorite past time. Creating all those pieces were just the creations of the stories that burdened my mind with the need to put them down to paper. They allowed me to buy a new car, where I bound one of the doors shut, the passenger’s side of course. The idea of never having to hop through a window ever again.” I laughed softly. “As much as writing and literature are my passions, they are not the greatest achievements of my life. I learned that lesson with the birth of my lovely niece.”

“What did she teach you?” a different voice asked, the light around me growing brighter, almost scalding hot now.

“She taught me that there is more than just success in the world. If you have no one to share your success then is it truly success?” I asked the invisible crowd around me. There was a mumble of agreement among the crowd.

“So, then your greatest achievement is finding your wife then?” another voice asked growing more interested.

“Well that is becoming one of the greatest achievements that I have ever accomplished. It was through her that I found my greatest achievement, which was finding out that I was going to be a father. It was when I was twenty-four when the fear of becoming a parent weighed on me. I had my niece, who lived just too far away and I never got to see her much, but she was still the most precious thing in my life.”

“Then why were you afraid? You had a precious niece so why wouldn’t you want a child of your own?” a more childish voice asked.

Hearing the change in the age of the voice speaking, my eyes squinting with all my might as I tried to focus and see through the darkness, to no avail, I was now seemingly blind to everything but the bright light that began to fill up my every being. My heart began racing in my chest as the light and warmth began making him nervous, engulfing me with each passing second.

“I was afraid because of the idea of messing up my child’s life. What if my temper drove my child away? What if I’m too lax and my child grows up like many of the stupid children I see today with barely any brains in their heads. But more than the damage that I could do to them, but what the world could do to them instead. Growing up, the growth of the internet, allowing others to come into your home without permission and attack people through a screen where people feel more comfortable to be as harsh and as mean as they want to be. A problem that wasn’t as big in the nineties- early 2000’s when I grew up. I can honestly say that the generation today scares me. Their want for everything, their sense of entitlement, and their reactions when they don’t get them.”

I was growing tired of talking, though my throat grow dry my heart lightened, the chance to admit all the fears that I had begun to have in the last several months. Soon the light grew too much to bare, too bright and warm. Something was wrong. The darkness grew almost engulfing the surrounding light as I looked around. The questions all stopped, the darkness became silence, and what felt like goosebumps coated my flesh.

Soon the light was all gone and I was alone completely engulfed in the darkness, cold and alone, no warmth coming. Something new was happening but I couldn’t describe it, I had never been on a plain like this.

“Mr. Meyes are you ok? Mr. Meyes please wake up. Your wife needs you.” A frantic female voice shouted from above me.

My eyes fluttered open, the white institutional feel that staring up at the ceiling brought to me. I hated Hospitals, and for several moments I could not recall why I was there. All my mind remembered was the conversation in the darkness. The loud sounds, over bearing after the absolute silence that my audience watched me with. the white walls brighter than the light that engulfed me. The hospital bed that I had somehow had gotten into despite my lack of consciousness.

“Sir, your wife is out of labor, she is worn and tired but is waiting for you to name her.” The nurse said announcing to me for the first time that I had a daughter.

My wife Cara, insisted that we keep it a surprise, this way we could be surprised and not enforce any gender roles so early in life. I got off the bed. My legs wobbly, my mind groggy, my eyes unable to focus on any one thing as the nurse led me towards where my wife laid, assumedly with our daughter in her arms. We walked past so many other people, some healthy-probably visitors; Others sick or injured meandering down the hallways some accompanied by nurses while others wandered alone. As it’s my nature as a writer to observe people, even in my groggy state I took in everything, all my focus wiped clean as the nurse turned me, pushing me into the somewhat memorable room where my wife had begun our journey however many hours later.

Everything became unimportant, more so than he had believed it earlier as he saw the little child in my wife’s arms. My focus was on the child, my peripherals barely registering the smile that crossed the lips of my wife as she looked at my face smugly. She was precious, she was the center of my existence and she was one that I would give up everything for.

“Well Caleb, what do you think of this being we created?” my wife said, her voice was sweet but worn with a mix of her pride in the beautiful child that she held so tightly. “They told me that you were unconscious and probably wouldn’t be up in time to help me name our child.” She finished, her voice sarcastic as she teased me.

“well then, it’s a good thing this nurse here” I said as I pointed at the nurse who was walking from the room, muttering something under her breath. “She was very diligent at yelling and screaming at me to wake up. What happened anyway?” he asked curiously

My wife, Alice rocked the baby in her arms while she chuckled lovingly at me.

“You were the big bad man as they wheeled me in here. You held my hand as the doctor, cheering me as the doctor told me to push, and then you saw something and fell. Down for the count. They had to put me on hold while orderlies came in here to pull you onto the bed and wheeled you out. The nurse behind you told us that you hit your head on the concrete. You got a few stitches.” She laughed almost condescendingly as she told the story, watching her as she rocked our child.

“Have you thought of a name for her yet?” I asked moving to sit on the little bit of bed next to her.

“Well we could name her Alice?” she said wanting already to turn her into a micro version of herself.

“What bout Angela?” I asked, the name fitting the young baby as she began giggling in her mother’s arms as Angela looked around with her big and curious eyes.

She was the greatest achievement in my life, better than marrying someone who seemed best for you. Better than all the works I ever created. She was when my story started, my eyes locked on her, my wife the peripheral thought.