Haley's Sanctuary

For awhile Haley thought there might be something wrong with her.

Haley's Sanctuary

 Down by City Lake is an old fallen tree most people call The Old FallenTree. Nobody ever bothered to find out what kind  it was. It didn't really matter anyway.

Haley used to sit on it every evening and dream about Steve. Steve is the boy  she had been in love with since she was in grade school. He ran off and married his Physics teacher, Mr. Elmer.  He and Steve had a very close relationship. When they first met Steve was just a freshman. They hit it off right away. No one ever suspected because Steve never seemed to be...well...different. Who would have suspected the star quarterback of the football team to be... you know...different.  He earned All State honors his junior and senior years.

Haley was devastated by the news and had given serious thought to throwing herself into the lake and drowning. Her plan would have been fine had she not been a champion endurance swimmer. She never lost a race. Besides, there were far better ways to take ones life.

She could, for instance, sneak into her mother's medicine cabinet and overdose on her sleeping pills. It would be easy, painless, and clean.

And so this became her plan. She picked a time when both her mother and father were out visiting the neighbors. She opened the medicine cabinet door and found only two pills in the container. Her plan seemed doomed to failure, but she grabbed up the bottle and took the pills anyway. They did nothing more than cause her to sleep peacefully through the night, and half  the next day. Just her luck too, she didn't even get to miss school because the next day was Saturday.

Her mother never suspected a thing. She was concerned over the missing pills, however, thinking she might have taken them by mistake. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened.

Eventually Haley recovered from her depression. It wasn't so much Steve that bothered her, it was the thought of being replaced by a man; and an old man at that!

She wondered for awhile if there might be something wrong with her.

  Eventually, however, she came to realize that the problem was with Steve, not her.

She laughs now when thinking about him and that old man. She's glad her suicide venture had failed.

She still returns to that old tree down by the lake. Sometimes she thinks about Steve, but mostly she thinks about life.

Recently she's taken up another hobby, swimming across the length of the lake with no cloths on. Sometimes she clocks herself to see how fast she can get across and back. She figures by swimming with no cloths on she subtracts two seconds off her time.

 She does, however, have to keep a close vigil for strangers who might show up unexpectedly. It's not so much being caught without any cloths that bothers her, but there's a city law which strictly prohibits swimming of any sort.

  But even so, her new activity has become her new passion; a new and exciting challenge.

She smiles more now than she used to. She walks often down to her sanctuary by the lake.

She sits on the old dead tree and reflects upon her experience,

“I'm OK.” she whispers to herself.

Author's Note

This story started out as something to do because I had nothing better to do.