Spectrum

A story about escape, with influence taken from Tim Winton's "Big World" in the book "The Turning"

The sound of rain pitter-pattering on my roof was what woke me up in the mornings. You know the kind. Not quite enough to wake you up in the middle of the night, but just enough to lift you out of your dreams. I hate the rain.

 

It always seems that the worst days are the ones that start of with rain. The ground is not wet, but damp enough to lightly stain your Testoni leather shoes. Sure, the chum walking next to me doesn’t give a s**t. He’s wearing a pair of Hushpuppies. No-one gives a s**t about Hushpuppies.

 

All days are the same. Assembling on the streets, we commence our march. Whilst the troops disassemble into their buildings, I’m faced with a woman in a bright rainbow dress. We smile at each other but in the rush of the morning commute, our connection melts as quickly as it was formed. I linger. Today was an anomaly.

 

My brother Ben and I are nothing like each other. The fact that he’s my step-brother probably contributes to that. He was never in one place for more than a year at a time, constantly moving interstate as a teenager, never having a sense of home or family. It’s funny; He’s the only family I really care about.

 

I envy my brother. He suffered from depression, flunked his VCE and never attended Uni. Today’s he’s in the Royal Botanic Gardens, setting up the new Tulip field. They were always behind schedule, he said, as they planned to have it ready before the new year. But he lives in nature. He’s not missing out on anything up here. He’s happy.

 

I long for irregularity. I hate that everyday is always the same. I’m over it. I can live without the materialism of the the modern world. I can’t live with perfection. I can’t live with my family. They’re always concerned with their hip-pocket’s, worried that I’ll be something they’re not; living the life they want. I can live with tranquillity. I can only watch from my glass prison. I want the ocean to engulf my leather shoes. Screw the shoes.

 

I leave my desk, abandon my things, then walk to the elevator. My manager looks at me quizzically from behind his new iMac, through the glass panels laced with golden streaks. He may as well have smoked one hundred dollar bills for fun. I pause, smile at him, not breaking eye contact for a second. I need him to know that I made the choice. I win.

 

The remanets of the glass lie scattered across the floor. Among them are my leather shoes. A step too far? I guess I just had to make a more shattering statement.

 

My blood is replaced by adrenaline, as I wait for the elevator to reach the ground floor. Not a single person enters during my descent. Is this the symbolism of my gradually sinking sanity? No, this is real.  I call Mum, tell her I’m sorry. “Nothing personal” is what I say. But of course that’s all it was.

 

I was surprised when Ben jumped straight on board. I though it would take a little coercing to get him with me. I thought abandoning everything he had would be more difficult. But he’s been doing that all his life. It wasn’t long before we were on the highway, the land of limitation only a memory. Destined for freedom.

 

We were at the end of the Peninsula; on the pier smashing beers and eating pies. We had become completely different people. But that’s not the case entirely. I was red, he was blue. Me a dog and he a cat. But inside us was a rainbow These people were always in us. The ones that weren’t scared of change or being ourselves. We were opposites our entire life, yet we were always the same.

 

We just needed someone to bring it out. The rainbow woman. The evidence of autonomy. The speck of individuality in a sea of conformity. I look up at the sky to see a clear sky, lit up by the brightest rainbow imaginable. In its complete essence, it showed me that I was free.