Original -- No Place Like Home
Title: No Place Like Home
Rating: PG
Word Count: 816
Warnings: creepy?
Summary: In which we meet a girl.
Author's Note: For some reason, I needed to write something one time when I was in an English discussion, and... my brain went somewhere even weirder than the usual. Extra special thanks to eltea for helping me edit to submit it to my school's literary arts magazine. :D
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Darkness didn’t fall. It slammed.
Fall, via its direct semantic link to autumn, conjured the fluttering ragged edges of tired leaves going yellow, then orange, then red, and then brown, like extended traffic lights. The leaves were falling, too, spiraling downward to the gravel strewn across the vast cracked plains of the sidewalk, but they were softer than the night, and less complete. They looked lovely there, like crumpled butterflies’ wings, until I crushed them under my Converse.
I felt like a sociopath.
Flecks of broken leaves scattered around my sneakers, and my misting breath swirled upward as if to counterbalance the downward migration of the foliage. The dark felt like a physical weight, pressing on shoulders and head, on joints and limbs and every available surface, pushing the soles of my shoes against the pavement.
I found it amusing, somehow, that there was a white picket fence. It wasn’t that they weren’t everywhere (for they were) or that they didn’t match (for they did). They fit perfectly with the oak trees and the flower pots and the stop signs glittering ruby red and silver, like the different incarnations of Dorothy’s shoes.
The old wood was beginning to crumble, crying for a new coat of paint to smooth out and cover up the cracks in this one. I traced the fissures with my fingertips, lovingly, working my nails into the larger ones. My hands moved on their own, exploring the arid wonderland while my eyes took in something else entirely: the regal colonial façade of the house.
It was white, like the fence; a grand specter tall in the night, the slate gray shingle roof sloping off and melting modestly into the dark. The rest was strong, unrepentant angles, the lines thick and straight, making no apology because that house wouldn’t have wanted your forgiveness anyway. Someone had to hold the head high and keep the chin up and stand in opposition to the swaying, slouching carelessness that had long since permeated life and culture in these United States.
The door was a navy blue so deep that it looked black even in the searing light of noon, even in the warm yellow of afternoon and the bloody catharsis of sunset. The shutters were the same color, largely decorative though they were-they had hinges, but there were screens in all the windows. Four pillars planted their single feet on the porch, reaching identical arms towards the overhang that ushered in the second story. I followed their stark contours up to the intricate molding, thence to the leftmost set of ornamental shutters. My hands tightened around the fence posts until flakes of paint fell like soiled snow to litter the grass at the edge of the lawn.
That was his window.
The corona of golden light around it didn’t surprise me; there was something perfectly preternatural about him even at his worst. He was just like that, down to the details-how he loved chocolate milkshakes and the color red; it washed him out a little, but then his eyes stood out even more. He played the electric guitar, and he was getting a lot better, to the point that if he kept at it, and if he got lucky, he might end up in a band someday. He hated haircuts, because he liked to hide behind the dark fringe-he felt secure with a barrier, however insubstantial, between him and the world. His mom was always checking in on him, and he secretly liked it, even though he felt guilty lying to people he didn’t want to hang out with, telling them she had said no. He wanted to go to a private school in New York and study rhetoric. He’d acquired the faintly ribbed white scar on his chin when he’d fallen off of his bike fifteen seconds after his dad took off the training wheels. He’d played with dinosaur figurines every day in preschool, and he still knew all the names.
My fingers were clenched so tightly around the posts that the jagged wood was biting into my skin, and I felt the tears burning slowly at the back of my eyes, ready to flare up at a moment’s notice.
He didn’t even know my name.
He didn’t even know my name.
But it was all right.
Because he would.
Because he would soon, someday, and then I would claim him, and he would be mine.
I could make him so happy. He’d see it in the first instant, how perfect we were. How perfect we were together. How we’d been meant to meet. He wouldn’t know how he’d ever lived without me.
And then he’d never be able to again.
I smiled, and prised my cramped, bloody hands from the fenceposts, and walked home, singing softly.
“Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…”
Rating: PG
Word Count: 816
Warnings: creepy?
Summary: In which we meet a girl.
Author's Note: For some reason, I needed to write something one time when I was in an English discussion, and... my brain went somewhere even weirder than the usual. Extra special thanks to eltea for helping me edit to submit it to my school's literary arts magazine. :D
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Darkness didn’t fall. It slammed.
Fall, via its direct semantic link to autumn, conjured the fluttering ragged edges of tired leaves going yellow, then orange, then red, and then brown, like extended traffic lights. The leaves were falling, too, spiraling downward to the gravel strewn across the vast cracked plains of the sidewalk, but they were softer than the night, and less complete. They looked lovely there, like crumpled butterflies’ wings, until I crushed them under my Converse.
I felt like a sociopath.
Flecks of broken leaves scattered around my sneakers, and my misting breath swirled upward as if to counterbalance the downward migration of the foliage. The dark felt like a physical weight, pressing on shoulders and head, on joints and limbs and every available surface, pushing the soles of my shoes against the pavement.
I found it amusing, somehow, that there was a white picket fence. It wasn’t that they weren’t everywhere (for they were) or that they didn’t match (for they did). They fit perfectly with the oak trees and the flower pots and the stop signs glittering ruby red and silver, like the different incarnations of Dorothy’s shoes.
The old wood was beginning to crumble, crying for a new coat of paint to smooth out and cover up the cracks in this one. I traced the fissures with my fingertips, lovingly, working my nails into the larger ones. My hands moved on their own, exploring the arid wonderland while my eyes took in something else entirely: the regal colonial façade of the house.
It was white, like the fence; a grand specter tall in the night, the slate gray shingle roof sloping off and melting modestly into the dark. The rest was strong, unrepentant angles, the lines thick and straight, making no apology because that house wouldn’t have wanted your forgiveness anyway. Someone had to hold the head high and keep the chin up and stand in opposition to the swaying, slouching carelessness that had long since permeated life and culture in these United States.
The door was a navy blue so deep that it looked black even in the searing light of noon, even in the warm yellow of afternoon and the bloody catharsis of sunset. The shutters were the same color, largely decorative though they were-they had hinges, but there were screens in all the windows. Four pillars planted their single feet on the porch, reaching identical arms towards the overhang that ushered in the second story. I followed their stark contours up to the intricate molding, thence to the leftmost set of ornamental shutters. My hands tightened around the fence posts until flakes of paint fell like soiled snow to litter the grass at the edge of the lawn.
That was his window.
The corona of golden light around it didn’t surprise me; there was something perfectly preternatural about him even at his worst. He was just like that, down to the details-how he loved chocolate milkshakes and the color red; it washed him out a little, but then his eyes stood out even more. He played the electric guitar, and he was getting a lot better, to the point that if he kept at it, and if he got lucky, he might end up in a band someday. He hated haircuts, because he liked to hide behind the dark fringe-he felt secure with a barrier, however insubstantial, between him and the world. His mom was always checking in on him, and he secretly liked it, even though he felt guilty lying to people he didn’t want to hang out with, telling them she had said no. He wanted to go to a private school in New York and study rhetoric. He’d acquired the faintly ribbed white scar on his chin when he’d fallen off of his bike fifteen seconds after his dad took off the training wheels. He’d played with dinosaur figurines every day in preschool, and he still knew all the names.
My fingers were clenched so tightly around the posts that the jagged wood was biting into my skin, and I felt the tears burning slowly at the back of my eyes, ready to flare up at a moment’s notice.
He didn’t even know my name.
He didn’t even know my name.
But it was all right.
Because he would.
Because he would soon, someday, and then I would claim him, and he would be mine.
I could make him so happy. He’d see it in the first instant, how perfect we were. How perfect we were together. How we’d been meant to meet. He wouldn’t know how he’d ever lived without me.
And then he’d never be able to again.
I smiled, and prised my cramped, bloody hands from the fenceposts, and walked home, singing softly.
“Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…”