The Way It Feels

A Story by Ali Diehl

A short story that I wrote for my Journal. Something rather random and thought up.

Something felt wrong. Something felt off about the way that the air swirled and the leaves circled on the ground. Finn felt cold, lost. He was a wandering soul stuck and broken in the place where he stood, molded to the concrete. He saw the body on the ground in front of him. He saw the fall leaves hitting the shadowy figure and landing in the pool of blood that surrounded it. Finn was sorry. Finn didn’t mean to do it.

It had happened fast and rough, like pulling of a Band-Aid. The pain that should have felt so real was no longer that full of purpose or pain. It had come and gone so quickly, Finn didn’t even properly remember anything. However, he still knew that he was sorry.

Tears ran down his face and he took off down the road, his old converse hitting the pavement with hard thuds, his heart pounding nice and steady in his chest, the air whipping past him like he was some Olympic medalist who was taking a victory lap. Only this was no victory for Finn. This was very, very different. As he ran, his mind swirled and the voices came back. They yelled at him. They screamed, “One’s not good enough!” at the top of their lungs. Finn felt as though a huge weight was pushing on his brain and he grabbed his blonde tufted hair as he ran, pulling it and willing for the confusion and suffering to go away.

It didn’t.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” It was the old man who sat on the corner of Everglenn Drive and High Street, sitting in the dirt and watching Finn sprint past. Finn doesn’t answer. He can’t. There is a lump in his throat and that pain in his head. He feels like screaming. So he turns, runs down the alley behind the music store and forces himself to stop thinking about what happened back at the park. He tries to stop thinking about the dead body lying on the ground in a pool of blood and the way it made him feel.

He does stop thinking about it eventually.

Finn starts to forget the feeling.

Until it happens again.