The Pedestrian

A story of a comatose man and someone familiar to him...

A gust of dry, musty wind blew through the maze of old houses where windows had long crackled in the weakness of their structures and rotting boards that hung weakly at a feeble attempt to cover the empty eyes of every abandoned home. Doors leaned on the few thick threads of their hinges and groaned with pain at every sway. Weeds weaved across the cracking asphalt of every road, gathering and laughing at the lone pedestrian as they tried to latch onto his foot with every step.

This pedestrian was a man no older than seventy. This old man had long forgotten what it felt like to move freely without pain. His aches were more like constant companions, not friends. His memories were etched into his brain, both warming and haunting him, sometimes drawing a frail smile on his face and other times a lone tear. Time was the thief this man had expected it to be, taking his wife, taking his friends... Everyone wants to live long, but what good is living long if everyone you know and love is either dead or too busy to stop by and say hello? What is it but marking time that would eventually fade away, never to return? The pedestrian would describe being old is like bobbing on a fathomless ocean in a tethered boat, not knowing when death would finally arrive to sever the rope that binds you to the very shore that holds you to this earthly coil. But, I simply saw this man swimming in the tide water of his seventh decade. He was weary and mean, the result of negligence and solitude. Age was a cruel thing. He never would have understood that concept back when he was younger though, but now cruel age was making itself very apparent. All that was on the horizon now was more of the ravages of age, slowly burrowing into his skin and bones until his mind couldn't escape. The pedestrian had been spry and alert right up to his forty-six, and then the downhill slope of age was as quick as a toboggan on a snowy hill.

I smiled as he walked closer toward me.

"You're late," He muttered, emphasizing his 'T'.

"How can I be late if I was here before you--?"

"I'm older than you; do not deride me." He smirked. I chuckled wholeheartedly. Some people were funny merely because they forced it onto others, yet the laughter wouldn’t be genuine. Some people were funny by nature and you’d laugh until your stomach ached. This pedestrian was more in between. You could see him suppress his laugh by the twitch in the corner of his mouth and the soft clench of his fists. His dull eyes that barely gleamed were grey like pale smoke, like slate rock. His eyes were like the cold shackles of time that bound him down and beat him senseless into the sack of wisdom and wrinkles he was.

"What brings you to the ghost town today, pops?" I enquired, my lips pursing with curiosity. I needed to stall him for a while longer before I could actually pry further. My investigation was just beginning.

“Who knows?” He said, his gaze lifting upward, staring at the sky. A scorching sun beat down on us. My forehead was getting moist with sweat. You’d wonder how that could be possible when you’re not even in the realm of real life.

“You know,” I said and paused. The pedestrian looked at me once more. “But I won’t insist on that question now. Do you know who I am?”

The pedestrian blinked twice, obviously thinking about the question. And in that moment, I may have seen his eyes widen slowly, as if recognizing my face, my voice, my gestures, my way of speaking... He may have remembered me. Or perhaps the contrary. He may have found me utterly insane. You see, technology today is very advanced. I’ve found a way to emerge myself in other people’s minds. How is this possible, you ask? Well, it is possible by using a contraption I had brandished that wires to the brain of the user and the brain of the subject whose mind you'd like to submerge yourself into. I made it in my laboratory by mistake with a couple mates of mine. Here we have the scenario in which a loved one is in a coma after succumbing to a disease or a car accident and they are not awakening. You present the idea of placing yourself into their mind, into their psyches, where they dwell subconsciously. You find them and you coerce them to awaken, aid them by helping them relive a memory, and things of the sort. One’s goal in entering in other people’s psyche is simply for medical needs. This is not to be exploited mindlessly. By using this, I have discovered comas go beyond the medical spectrum, and are far more emotional-held than anything I've seen... But I am merely an inventor; what do I know of medicine?

“You are not familiar to me.” The pedestrian retorted. I frowned.

“I am your only son."

“...And I reckon you have the answer as to where we are as of this very moment?”

“Surely. We are within the crevices of your mind!” I smiled weakly. My father stopped to think.

“I do not remember being here whilst awake...”

“The mind is an incredible thing, is it not?” I questioned. “It conjures up all the places one has been in one’s lifetime and crafts a newer place. You’ve gone to very interesting places, I believe.” I looked around at the ghost town in my father’s mind.

We were silent for a while longer when my father turned to leave. Before he headed off to wherever he was headed, I latched onto his arm, stopping him in his tracks. I didn’t know what to say; I was at a loss of words. Staring into the pedestrian’s eyes, or rather my father’s, I felt the pang of some sort of emotion. My father looked rather hurt to an extent. Maybe he was just tired from the news.

His steps seemed to echo away, picking up clouds of dust. I trailed these clouds and looked up at the sky. The sun beat down its scorching rays. I was sweating profusely. Although this wasn't real life, it felt very much like it, other than having no sense of time. I looked at my watch. The minute and hour hands spun furiously beneath its tiny glass covering. I looked up once more.

"Father?" He was out of sight. Ahead was a barren road, no signs of unsettled dust to be found. I walked further and that's when my head hit something that wasn't there. I stumbled back and reached out my hands. They touched something cold, out of place. It was like a wall, an invisible wall, separating part of my father's psyche from another. I ran my fingers along the barrier.

"What in tarnations is this?" I asked myself, my hands sliding downward until they reached the ground. I assumed the barrier stretched on for a great distance. As I looked down to the ground, I saw half a footstep right below the start of the barrier. A shoe heel was on one side and nothing on the next...

My father must've gone through.

This is where I thought that perhaps there were things my father was hiding, hiding from himself. Perhaps he locked away horrid memories beyond this point. I remember whenever our conversations would always lead to the times of his deployment, he’d instantly stop talking. They were never good memories, other than an unforgettable friend that kept him strong. Charles, I believe him name was, and Charlie as a nickname. There was a paramour and his suspicious wife who was my late grandmother. A war-riddled life... He sought to forget these things as well as things that he forgets simply out of old age. "Son, did you wash the dishes?" he'd ask. I'd always nod or say yes. Three minutes later, he'd ask if I had washed the dishes. I'd always hesitate, but I'd always reply the same thing. "Yes, dad. I have washed the dishes." And he'd nod his head in understanding, albeit I bet he'd forget within the next hour.

I sat on a withered wooden chair underneath what was left of the shelter of a broken house just a few minutes after discovering the barrier. Dust slept over every surface like sullied snow and not a foot print was cast anywhere except for my own. Sunday newspapers, documents and forgotten bills piled up all over most of the ground. Old tea cups lay on a coffee table thickly encrusted with dried mold and more dust. The sour smell of mildew hung in the hot, stale air that was brightened with shafts of sunlight, bursting through gaps in the boarded up windows and door that hung slightly ajar. Heavy velvet curtains and absolute silence dangled as low as the house's only occupants, who weaved their silky network of webs between the spindles of the stair banisters and from the ceiling to the wall, billowing in the slight draft.

I thought about the barrier outside. There was most likely a way to remove it or have it recede somehow. If the barrier blocked what I thought it did, forgotten and ignored memories, then I would have to confront my father about them. I needed to make him aware that keeping these feelings and grieving wouldn't simply make his problems disappear.

I saw him walk by the barrier when I stepped out of the abandoned home. He looked in my direction and I smiled and waved. I walked closer.

"Do you have more lies for me?" Was what the pedestrian said. I shook my head.

"I never once lied to you. But I do need to confront you with a problem."

"What problem?"

I walked to the barrier and placed my hands on it. As expected, my hands did not permeate the barrier and they simply rested on thin air. My father's eyebrows shot up. He too stretched his hand out, but instead on solidifying upon his touch, his arm slid through, making the area beyond appear contorted, wrapping around his arm. He quickly retrieved it in fear.

"Only you can permeate this... this wall." I stared at my father and he stared at his arm with wide eyes.

"Why? What is going on? I did not notice this earlier when I walked through here." I felt the sun beat down a harsher heat. I reckon his confusion and bubbling anger ignited something in his subconscious and affected the climate here. I needed to calm him down before we both melted to death.

"As I mentioned earlier, we're inside of your mind. And before you project, I have just shown you this barrier and anything you say against it will contradict itself," I stated. The pedestrian nodded in agreement. "We need to rid you of this barrier. You are currently in a coma in which you have not awoken from for several weeks now. Two months to be exact." I felt tears sting my eyes. It hurt to see the old man have such a worried expression on his face. The sun burned my skin. I was sweating even more now.

"What happened to me?"

"You had a stroke. Do not fret though; you are still responsive. All you have to do is wake up and you will be fine. If you wish to wake up, you would hear me out. Behind his barrier lays your forgotten and unwanted memories, lost with time and sadness. You must remember them all and let bygones be bygones."

He shook his head. I suppose there were memories best left unremembered.

"The war, the losses, your wife, your childhood... Me," I listed.

My father shook his head even harder. The sweltering air made my hair cling to my skin. My father was blatantly unaffected.

"Remember--" A terrible rumble was emitted from deep within the belly of the earth below, striking fear into my heart. My father stumbled about, yet it was me who lost complete equilibrium. The ground began to move beneath my body, as if it were a wave on the sea, as if the houses were rafts, as if I were a drowning sailor. My father was the god that commenced the platonic uproar. I heard the houses crumble and fall weak into the arms of their foundations. But then, there was another sound.

It was the horrid screech of metal on some form of stone. It was a cacophonous squeal of pandemonium. It was so intensely loud, that I began to hear a muffled buzzing in my ears. My hands quickly shot up to cover my ears, but the noise filtered through. I managed to look up.

The barrier…

The barrier was moving.

The strange, warped wall of continuous scenery, appeared to retreat backward. I looked for my father, but he was gone. Then all at once, the noise stopped. My ears rang. Somehow, I muddled through the process of getting to my feet and making my way to the barrier without failing. I stopped once there and looked down. On the sandy ground of the deserted ghost town we were in, was where the barricade once stood. There was evidence of where the barricade once was, an infinite little step extended to where the barricade then stood after its movement. My mouth hung open as I walked to where the barrier moved to and touched it with one hand. Instead of solidifying completely, the barrier slightly warped around my hand and fingers. I was close, I realized. Now, I just had to wait for my father to return. I was getting him out of the coma.

I sat near the ruins of shattered houses when my father stepped out of the barricade. His body appeared out of thin air, but I didn't question it. I ran to him, glaring at his sunken face.

"I remembered," He groused, the look of pain flashed on his face and it struck a chord in my heart.

"What did you remember?"

"My childhood... The Vietnam War... Charlie, my only friend..." I felt the ground shudder.

"Father--"

"Now, for the grandchildren you will never bare. Now, for my wife, my family." The heat blazed my skin once more, even harsher than before. I felt my blood boil in my veins. The shuddering turned to a furious quake and the screeching began to make my ears ache. I squeezed my eyes shut and the world went dark.

Then the quake stopped. I squinted in the brightness of the dry day. Sand from the ground had risen and created dust clouds in the air. I coughed. Father stood in my front with a pallid face.

"The wall is no longer there," Said the pedestrian.

And all was silent.

He… he had done it!

Somehow, at that same moment, I awoke in a hospital room sitting in a couch near a hospital bed, hearing the beeps of medical machines and small talk exchanged between nurses and doctors that I couldn't quite pick up. I peered in front of me to see a familiar face staring right back.

The weary grey eyes of my father, the pedestrian, borrowed their gaze in my soul. I smiled weakly at his presence and stood.

"I am so glad this coma thing is over," I sighed in relief.

"Coma?" My father questioned, tilting his head. I blinked blankly in horrid realization. The side affects of my experiment, my psyche-submission, induced amnesia? All my effort to bring him back, the pain I endured during the process of demolishing the barriers in my father's mind, had gone to waste? He simply didn't remember? Well, not exactly a waste. He'd simply not recognize me as a hero?

"Yes," I said gutturally. "A coma in which you were in for two months from a stroke after a car accident. And you are--"

"I am a pedestrian, it seems," My father interrupted, with a cocky tone in his voice. “in this endless stretch of road that we call life... And the road does have its many obstacles." 

My father sucked in a heavy breath and started to talk again, "I suppose I have found one of these obstacles -- and quite literally!”

I felt my heart flutter, do a flip, and rise into my throat. Perhaps he did not remember what had happened in reality, but what happened in my father's psyche would forever linger there...

And we smiled knowingly.

Author's Note

Something I wrote for class...

Reviews

[Skai Rain]

This is actually one of my favorite short stories on here. You paint a clear picture and it is different from most works. Thank you for sharing!

[Kringefest]

That's nice to hear! Thank you for reading (:

[AprilRN1210]

wow.. first wanna thank Doc for the read request.. this was "mind-blowing"... it captivated my attention from beginning to end.. I giggled when I read "tarnations"... sounds like my grandpa.. he would always say that to me.. I like the surreal, dreamy-like quality and imagery you created here.. this is the first piece I have read of yours and I really enjoyed.. love the ending.. it was endearing and brought a warm smile to my heart... my grandfather had Alzheimer's and this made me think of him in other parts as well.. exquisite writing... I thoroughly enjoyed..

[Kringefest]

Haha, thank you very much for reading and reviewing. I'm sorry for your grandfather, but I'm also happy that you have some soothing memories of him! I just recently lost my grandfather and the clearest memories I have of him were just from two summers ago when I saw him last... I don't remember much of him when I was younger because I couldn't see him often though. At the same time, I've learned to be okay with his passing. My grandfather died satisfied with life, and that's something not many people accomplish! (: Thanks again.

[AprilRN1210]

you're welcome. it was my pleasure.. and thank you.. I appreciate it.. :)

[Rene Salinas]

Aren't I glad I got an invite for this writing! My attention taken from the beggining when the descritiptions started to unfold but the moment were my eyes went up as a sign of surprise, "we are within the crevices of your mind" it made the scene for inner and outter realm and within that is the language creating images that served as a bridge as it is always risky to navigate through inner and outer.
The intensity and suspense are also factors that held my attention and helped me to continue as I went down the writing. There are also the aspects of relationships clearly emphasized the ever intriguing dynamic between wisdom through experience against vibrant but youtful enthusiasm.


Finally , something I seem to share with absolute conviction is at times physical wounds have the tendency to heal. Memories and the seeming dissociation that may occur from a hazardous event not so likey to heal that quickly and very often they are subject to that dynamic which presents the psyche having good days only to be followed by terrible ones so on so forth. I agree the bridges of the psyche could take a lot of effort to heal.

Greatly enjoyed!

Thankyou

[Kringefest]

And I thank you, thank you, thank you! :D

[Jack Wolfe]

You use a lot of ly dialogue tags, which you should consider omitting. E.g. he said rhetorically, the context suggest this.

having (so) sense of time. (no)

This was a very entertaining story, one I’ll pass along, you have a knack for the descriptive, and your uses of metaphors were well done. Being able to delve into the inner psyche of your father’s subconscious to find the barriers of repressed memories was quite enthralling. A few places the story seemed a bit rushed, as if a little more information could have been passed, but overall, the ending tied it together. He didn’t recognize me as the hero . . . yet he still awoke, and subconsciously he recalled the internal conversations, hinting at a step forward. “I am a pedestrian, it seems.” Well done, and I’ll look for your work in the future.

[Kringefest]

Thank you so much for this constructive review! I love reading description so I tend to add a lot of it in my own work, hence the amount of it in this longer piece of work. Also, I do believe that some places are a bit rushed because I had a specific limit for myself (Again, this was classwork)... Nonetheless, I'll go through this story once more and omit what might be necessary. Thank you once again; I am grateful!

[Fire Mage Andrea]

Fascinatingly strange - you captured the characters feelings too

[Kringefest]

Thank you for reading, mate (: