Call it what you want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRUNTOqCmAM 

This story is inspired by modernism and its tenets.

It's a cold day. No sunlight seeps through the iron mask of clouds. No light finds its way through my window to alight my dreams. The frost seems to bite my lips as I stroll out of the house. Papa always says “never put on a coat when it’s cold, because that won’t make you strong”, so I brave the sleet sleeveless. My house is a masterpiece, creaking and groaning with the maturity of old age. The turrets that rise from the west side seem to spear the sky, poking up into the stratosphere. One day, I’ll be that tall. I’ll fly up above the clouds and far away, farther than any horrid arithmetic teachers can go. 

I never wear a coat when it’s cold, did I tell you that already? Goosebumps are my layers, nothing but the strength of my skin to keep me warm, but I quite like it that way. And my house, oh, my house is a beautiful haven. I keep to myself in those sweet little boxed rooms, the walls keeping me and my thick books in and the world out. Every night before I go to bed, I lucidly see the turrets standing over my bedroom like guards, like great big stone guards. My Papa would never take the time to stand watch over my room, so it's nice to feel safe every now and then. The wind blows against my face, scattering the long strands into oblivion. I wonder where they go… maybe to the ends of the Earth… maybe they go to look for a coat for me. Well, if I ever see them again, I’ll have to avoid them like the plague unless I wanna give up my goosebumps. Still, I do so hope that they’re all right. Why don’t they come back to me? I bet my hair would be twice as long, all the way down to my shoes, if they decided to come flying back to their home. Well, at least they’re free. At least they get to fly. 

Papa sits by the fire whenever I come back from school. Every night, after 4:00, I come back in and he’s waiting there. Sometimes I wonder if he’s waiting for someone else, though, because he never seems to notice my slamming the door closed. “Oh, you’re here. There’s nothing for dinner again.” Each day I would come back to the same saggy words, drooping as they reached my ears. There was always lunch at school, though. Mashed potaters and some grayn bayns, that was how the lunch lady said it. I wonder how many people like me she’s seen, dreaming for the stars and the sky while being down here on the cracking ground… I bet she has. What’s her name again? It beats me, I see her every day at noon, look at her name tag, and I still can’t keep it in my noggin. It’s like sand, slipping through the cracks like money through my father’s hands.

***

It’s a real cold day. I can’t even begin to tell you how cold it is. My worn-down shoes keep flopping on the sidewalk like rotten flounders. Why don’t they just make it hot all the time? Heat’s annoying, but at least it doesn’t make you feel like your body’s falling to pieces. There’s an expanse of frozen ground that stretches out for a mile from the left side of my house. The only inha– inhati– inhabitants are little stretches of frost that pile up next to rough stones. 

Far to the right, there’s a towering oak tree that stands seven times above me. I only work up the courage to walk over there and stand in its shadow on the weekends, when I have time to waste. I skip over the rocks in my floppy flounders, avoiding the ice. I don’t know if any of you know, but it’s one of the worst feelings in the world (I assume) to touch your bare arms to ice. I’ve never felt anything worse.

One day, hopping over the rocks and ice like normal, I saw a group of men at the tree. They weren’t a seventh of the size of the tree, no, they were like a fourth! It looked like they were partying, I think… They were getting out some ropes, bringing out another man from a trunk. Maybe they were a magic act, trying to practice a trick. I always love the one where they wrangle out of the tank of water– that’s such an amazing stunt that I can never help but gasp. When they force the man to put on the rope, I’m still thinking of a magic trick. Then they tie him to the tree and it hits me and I run. Hard. I run as far away as I can. 

I stop, let my lungs fill and refill like a balloon pumper. I plug my ears to get the screams out of my ears, to block them off from the horror. The ropes ripping into the skin of my neck as I hung from the great, tall, tree, the men around me laughing all the while as I was tortured… my hair fraying as the rope ripped into my Adam’s apple, no one could save me now… More than ever, I want to be a strand of hair. I want to fly away and never come back. Fly to where there was always enough warmth and always enough love and always enough grayn bayns. The pain, the searing pain… Where could I go? My legs wouldn’t take me any further than where I stood, and I didn’t have wings the last time I checked. 

The man screams with a vengeance, gurgling spittle erupting from his mouth… fly away, as far as I can. I don’t want to come back, don’t want to, don’t want to. It’s funny, you never know you’re descending into darkness until you’ve arrived...