In the Cover of Dark

Then, in a flash and a sputtering of electricity, the monotonous video died, leaving the class in utter darkness. Usually, with thunderstorms during the day, a certain amount of gray light is able to stretch its way even through the densest of clouds. But today there was nothing, nothing but the nervous laughter from my peers, and then a great intake of… air? Breath? Before the room seemed to dim even another level.

Usually one can tell if the space around is great or small, if the walls are uncomfortable tight and close, or if there is no wall in sight. Then, even as I touched the cold plastic chair beneath me and the wooden desk under by arms, I still feel a creeping itch up my arms, down the back of my neck, a drop in the temperature, only the slightest one, but one that would come from being exposed. The urge to speak, to call out for another being somewhere out there in the dark was overwhelming, but my through was pinched, my mouth dry. *It was the second of dark that always makes one unsure, when logically, the world would be the exact same as it always has been, but always with that prickling fear in the back of your mind that somehow in that moment of darkness, that moment that forced you to lose track of what you know to be real, everything was irreversibly changed. And you were in the dark.

My throat squeezed, and a strangled cough escaped.

I closed my eyes.

It was dark behind my eyelids, and I was being ridiculous and paranoid and hang on a second, why didn’t everyone stop laughing? Why isn’t Mrs. Leal saying anything, giving any sort of reassurance that we all though we haven’t needed since lower school but crave just the same?

Light behind my eyelids.

An empty classroom, empty except for the head two rows in front that whipped from left to right then turned to look in my direction. I waited for his eyes, but they skirted mine, always off, always looking just beyond.

My voice box was frozen.

My body was still and dry. Once, during a soccer game, the hottest one of the season, I became so dehydrated that I collapsed. I hadn’t drunk a sip of water that day, stupidly enough, and I still remember the feeling in my, like I had swallowed a bag of cotton balls that had absorbed every bit of moisture in my throat and mouth. The rest of me felt frail and paper-like. It was a thirst that went beyond the parched sensation of my mouth, it invaded my very skin, my bones, my stomach was cramped and my lips were flaking and my very being shook.

That’s what it felt like in the classroom, like I had been squeezed like a sponge and every drop of moisture was gone from my body. Even the air was dry, a rough hand that swept through the room and scattered starch white papers across the floor and against the walls. The lights flickered, from a much too bright mode to an orange setting that reminded me of an alarm.

The white board slammed to the ground and the desks crashed around the room, I tried to stand and I tried to reach out my arms but the wind was like a rope, like a chain. The linoleum floor began to peel, first the white layer, then the wood underneath, and finally the concrete crumbled and was sucked into the cycle in the air in front of my face. My hair whipped with it, blond strands and papers and chunks of concrete, splinters of wood, strips of linoleum, and wind that would have sworn had concentrated itself into a tangible thing.

The thing swept the body in front of me up, up into the air, twisting and spinning and floundering until it had consumed him, morphed him into one with it and I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even yell and this time really was like I was just dehydrated again because my head was fuzzy and light and it felt like there was a hole in the very top through which the essence of my awareness was slowly leaking and the darkness started in around the edges, just like before.

 

And then the laughter rang out, drowning out the rain and acting like a surge of panicked energy, like an alarm clock. His face was red, his eyes were wild. And he was there on the floor. He was entirely still, not rigid exactly, but not moving even a fraction of an inch, like he was waiting for something deadly to pass him by.

I began to realize that I was too, how we must look, white faces and wide eyes, my hands hovering above the desk, trembling slightly, heart seeming to whir rather than beat, really.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Leal asked, trying to stifle her laughter. Ben helped him up and he smiled, the same easygoing, light grin, and the rest of the class seemed to relax again. No one saw. No one knew.

“Sam?” Sidney’s eyebrows formed a slight crease as she looked in my direction.

I smiled, and raised my eyebrows. She shook her head and returned back to the video.

From the back he didn’t change. Ben’s hair was in front of me; straw colored and in front of him was the same back of the head I had seen in my dream.

In my dream. In my dream.

The video ended and we stood up to leave. He looked back just once and this time his eyes did meet mine.

In the lightening, his face light up, deeper and more lined than it ever had before. He looked like an old man, like the years were slipping before my very and eyes and in that moment I could feel the change. I could feel it like you can feel the electricity in the air before a storm, like you can feel the adrenaline before the starting whistle, like I might as well have been watching a sped up movie, except we were still here in our very own teenaged bodies.

            Whatever had happened, he had been there too.