Summer's Solitude

A Story by Ben M

Well, I guess then is when I started noticing a lot of dead earthworms. They stood pale, even against the bleached concrete. I moved along. The sidewalk was painted with shifting shadows from the branches above. They blew about in slow motion, happy to just exist. I passed a sprinkler, spitting out like a crazed dog. It had left dollops of water near my feet. I narrowly missed it's spray.

I had recently left 7-11, and I was walking home, bag in hand. I felt my forehead; it was sweaty. I turned into my neighborhood, and cut through someone's yard. I tumbled through the grass and I felt as tall as the sun. I looked about and saw dragonflies buzzing only moments above the grass. I guess they're gonna die soon. They only live for days, but it probably feels like an eternity to them. I mean, it's their life. It's the only thing they have.

I jumped into my garage and stepped into my house. It was smallish and very long. I put my bag down and walked over to a mirror. My face was tall and my hair was jumping away from it. I looked at myself for a while, and after that my brain skipped off.

` Faintly I heard yelling coming from the other room. It was my parents. I frowned and snuck back outside so I wouldn't have to hear it. The sun was still beating down in that awful way it does. The sun really is very putrid. I feel foreign in it's rays. I feel like an ant underneath a boot.

I vaulted over my deck and began walking through the grass. I let it feel the contours of my bare feet and in return it let me trample it. It was an age old relationship. I walked up a green hill, past one of my neighbor's gardens. It was beautiful and the flowers shot up out of the ground like smoke from a cannon. But instead of smoke, it was flowers. They sprung in every direction and in every color.

I knew the lady that lived in that house. She was very old, so I'm happy she has something beautiful like her garden. She has a dog, or maybe three, and they're very little and bark all the time. It sometimes astounds me how it's the little dogs that bark the most; if I was scrawny like that, I would keep my mouth shut.

And so I kept moving. I traced the edges of the street in my mind, forming a map of lines in my head. They snaked about and I let them stretch into places I know they shouldn't. I cut through an opening in some hedges and emerged into a new street. I looked to the end of it and saw a man mowing his lawn. I smiled at him, but he didn't look at me.

I walked further, and I had an out of body moment. Not one where it's spiritual, or not one where you look at your body from afar or anything like that. I guess I was just really very tired. I very nearly tripped and fell on my face.

After that I continued moving, shooting away from that street and rejoining the sidewalk. My summer solitude was blissful; I let my mind go where it wanted to. I had dreams of being far from home, of breaking the rules just for once. If only I were different, maybe I would. That's how it goes, I guess. In the end, everyone is who they are, and usually that's pretty disappointing. You live, you die, the end. Or so it goes. People that actually make differences are little more than fairy tales to me.

And so here I was on that little bridge above that rocky old creek. I slid down to it and looked at the water in the sunlight. I should've brought a book. I hoped a beautiful girl would find me. Isn't that it, though?

I dipped my feet in the water, and it was like a whole new world. It was so separate from the dry air, it was hard to imagine that the two existed in the same universe. It gave me hope, I guess. I smiled my teeth at the world, and I wondered if anyone was watching me. "Hello," I said to them. No one answered back.

There in the creek, I could feel something changing in me. I wanted to go out and away, I wanted to fight and scream. I wanted to see how life works in the night, and I wanted to see how bad things happen. I wanted to see the full picture. I laid back down in the grass and smiled half heartedly.

"Not today."

I closed my eyes and tried to have a philosophical moment. It failed. I got back up and started heading home.

I opened the door and saw my father sitting.

"Hello," I said.

He looked up at me.

"Hello," he said back.

I looked at him for a few long moments. Not at his eyes, but at his fingers. They were too tight. I could feel my heart in my chest. I wondered where my mother was. I brought my eyes over to the clock. It read 4:46. But I knew the clock was an hour off, so it was actually 5:46. I thought for a moment.

"Uh," I managed.

"Yes?" my father asked.

"I think I'm gonna take a nap," I said. It was almost a question.

My father nodded. "Alright," he said.

I looked at his eyes this time.

I paused.

"Yes."

I walked to my room, opened the door and fell into my bed. I've never been great at napping. I always wake up with a terrible taste in my mouth and a bad sense of time. If anything, napping makes me more tired than I was before. But now I was in bed, with my eyes closed, trying to sleep. I left my thoughts to themselves. I felt my bed stretch out in every direction, and I couldn't remember what I had been thinking of only moments ago. It seemed impossible to even fathom opening my eyes.

It happened quicker than I thought, or maybe it didn't. I was asleep, but I didn't know that at the time. I was dreaming, but it wasn't too exciting. Actually, it was the antithesis of exciting. My dream was simply me, in a white room. Except it wasn't a room; it was just white. Bright white that never ended and never started. Bright white.

I guess right then I realized that I was in control. I stood up and screamed as loudly as I could. Then I floated up and stayed there. I played with the position of my mouth relative to my face for a while, until I decided on the perfect spot. Then I realized something even more important: I could do whatever I wanted.

I didn't do anything at first.

I stayed there for what was either seconds or years and then I closed my eyes and imagined something. A big, expansive fantasy world of monsters and mountains. I opened my eyes and there I was. All around me were the most fantastic things. Worlds of ice and snow and worlds of rock and lava. I could see all the little people, fighting and loving. I could see the very shape of the world I created. I could see everything that was underneath it, holding it all together.

Beneath me was a village. I could see men sitting with their families; I could see women feeding their children; I could see people laughing and people sleeping. Their homes were meticulously crafted out of the local materials, namely wood and straw and such. I brought my hand up to my face and studied it. I supposed it was beautiful in it's own right. I smacked myself. I felt nothing.

I looked down at the village.

I rained fire upon them.

I woke up with a start, breathing heavily. I absorbed my room ocularly. I sat there in my bed for a long time, not doing anything. Just feeling all the vibrations of the world. I heard a knock on my door.

"Yeah, hello?" I said.

"Come here." It was the voice of my father.

I got up and opened my door, and there was my father. He led me back outside once more.

"Look at this," he said.

And I looked. There was a dead bird sitting in our yard, next to a tree. It's little body lay limply in the grass.

"What happened to it?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "No idea."

I could hear other birds chirping and singing in the trees.

He turned to me. "What do we do with it?"

I thought for a moment. I looked down at it's lifeless body.

"Nothing," I said quietly.

© 2011 Ben M

Author's Note

Not sure if I'm gonna turn this into something bigger than it already is. It feels logical not to, I don't really know. Please point out any grammar or tense errors or anything like that.