What Once Was There

A Story by MixedSignals

Descriptive piece, for a young audience about a boy who sees the world a little differently

The grass comes to an end around the swing set. It’s not an abrupt man-made sort of end, but the kind made by generations of children congregating there to play. Near the swing the grass starts to disappear so that soil can be seen in between the plants. Another foot or two in and only a few weeds are left growing sporadically around the edge. The resulting oval of soil has been packed hard by the hundreds of feet that have scampered there over the years. A young boy, in second or third grade, sits on a swing. Unlike other children, he doesn’t swing; he just sits there, inspecting the bare ground. A particularly loud shout brings the boy’s attention off the ground. He looks out and sees the other children running and tumbling in some kind of game. It all seems distant and remote while the shouts have a muted quality. The boy quickly looses interest. His gaze continues to rise, past the firs that mark the end of the play-ground and up, into the crystal sky. He notices the unusual richness of color that seems to spread on forever. A bird, possibly some kind of hawk, floats by way up high in the sea of air. The boy’s gaze follows it. He would love to be up there, soaring above the world in the tranquility of the sky. Then suddenly he’s looking down at the small toy school in the small toy town. He drifts on the air currents, the sense of limitless freedom making him feel ever lighter. There are no clouds, even from this vantage point, and the sky is a darker, richer hue of blue. He watches the tiny cars speeding along the stripes of road that spread like a web over the town. The current draws him on over the park, which appears quiet and empty. He begins to circle higher into the vast blueness arching above him. As he climbs, the earth shrinks, but he no longer notices. A single thought of freedom takes over. He feels an acute need to go, to escape someone or something he can’t name. A bell rings. The boy’s gaze drops. He gets off the swing and slowly trails the other children back inside. At the door he stops to look up. The bird is still there, circling freely in the blue sea of sky.

Fear. It is a clenching of the stomach, a drying of the throat. It is breaking out in a sweat, while trying to swallow a lump down the throat. It’s a tension in the legs, a clenching of the hands. It’s a humbling emotion, one that creeps inside and takes over before it even registers in the brain. This is what the young boy feels as he comes face to face with a lion. It stares mesmerizingly at him with luminous gold eyes. Its tail flicks casually. It crouches in a tight powerful ball, muscles tense, power rippling under its sleek coat. The tension peaks, the creature’s hips wriggle, and it bunches itself up like a spring ready to burst. The boy stands frozen, registering all in an instant. He can’t move or speak, caught up as he is in the powerful stare. Then it pounces. He expects to feel sharp claws, ripping teeth and crushing weight. Instead, as the lion lunges it sinks out of view, and he feels a soft weight on his foot and a few scratches on his ankle. His breathe whooshes out as his head drops and there is his kitten attacking the undone lace on his shoe. It rolls off his foot, attempting to run off with its trophy. Frustrated in the attempt, the kitten begins to slowly back away with the end in its mouth, staring up at him pleadingly with its big gold eyes.

The young boy watches his mother prepare to take him to his doctor’s appointment. He doesn’t watch her in the normal sense of the word, with intensity, curiosity or even boredom. It is more that he’s looking in her general direction, noticing occasional small details while his mind rests in a place somewhere between sleep and thought. Through the serenity in his mind he sees her select a pendant of intricately carved stone. Part of him seems to shake off a daze; the swirls of stone are familiar, as is the way his eyes continually trace around the three-dimensional spiral. Into the middle it travels where the path turns sideways, spiraling back out through the loops. He continues to follow the hypnotic curve of stone, pulled further from the semi-conscious place in his mind where all is simple, quiet and unhurried. At this moment his mother selects a perfume. She has a strange way of applying it: she sprays it in the air and walks through the mist �" forwards, backwards, and to both sides. Her son breathes scent and is no longer sitting on the bed. He is in a garden at the peak of summer bloom. The garden is a large square, surrounded by a waist-high white fence. Growing around the fence are alternating pink rose and white lilac bushes. The bushes are large, yet the profusion of flowers bends them inwards. The beds are laid out intricately: in each corner is a huge triangular bed, the top corners point to the corners of the square, the bottom corners reach nearly to the middle of the sides. Then four smaller triangles are positioned the same way in the resulting square. There are four sets of triangles in all and at the center is a fountain. It is a simple yet large structure; a circular base, about six inches tall, with concentric jets of water spraying upwards. Each ring shoots higher than the one outside of it and all the falling streams point outward. But here the order ends. The beds overflow into the gravel paths that separate them. Tall and short plants are mixed at random, as are colors. There are so many that plant grows over plant until the ground cannot be seen. It looks as though someone has cultivated the wild flowers from a field into a jungle. The dizzying array of flowers exudes an alluring scent yet everything is silent. Not even the splashing of the fountain makes a sound. He turns to the closest flower bed and reaches out a hand to touch a single blossom. He feels soft, lacy cloth. He turns back to see his mother finishing her makeup.

He loves to take showers. The rush of warm water is always soothing. He closes his eyes. The rushing becomes a roaring; the soft caress of water becomes a pounding, driving force. He slips, not on plastic but on stone, and falls heavily before sliding into a pool. He is now under the main part of the waterfall and the noise becomes deafening. The sheer force of water drives him down under the water. The pressure lessens and he fights to break free. Instead he leaves the epicenter of downward force and the water becomes more violent. He is dragged and tumbled until he cannot find the surface. The currents finally force him against a rock, and by now he is out of air. The current, however, hasn’t finished as its force continues to pin him to the rock with such intensity that he is forced upward, toward the smaller part of the rock. He then reaches the surface, not through his own cunning or brute strength, but because the current is right. He climbs out, his rock being joined to the shore and finds himself behind the waterfall. From this angle it looks more like a blue silk curtain than a ranging torrent of water. The light is a shifting blue-white and the rock wall is covered in algae. The “ceiling” is hundreds of feet up, where wall and rock face meet. The “floor” is composed of a fine sand that looks blue or white depending on the light. It is beautiful despite the noise, which has now hushed. As his stares in wonder, his breath releases vapor into the space and soon it is filled with steam and the boy finds himself staring at the shower wall. He shakes his head…perhaps his tranquil zone is better after all.

Sleep has always been something the boy likes. He likes to be tucked in bed and kissed “Goodnight”. He turns over, pulling up the blanket, which is very warm and fluffy. He moves his head to the center of the pillow…it is air-light. He begins to drift off to sleep on a feather-weight mattress when a glint of sunlight rouses him. He sits up. Laid out before him is a magnificent sunset. The sun is an orange and gold disk on the horizon. The sky around it is yellow and the clouds in front of it are pink. The yellow fades to a delicate blue that grows darker farther up in the sky. Overhead it is a deep velvety black, and the first stars have come out. Despite this heavenly sight, he looks down, to what he has been sitting on. It is a cloud. He has a cloud-bed, a cloud-pillow, and a cloud-blanket. They are soft and light and warm. The cloud stretches out much farther than his bed so that he cannot see the ground. He tucks back into his cloud-bed to watch the sunset, a gentle breeze begins. The sun sets, but he does not notice; he is fast asleep.