Lost One on the Elevator

These are like the foreboding seconds where you cross your fingers and realize that there's no turning back. The time when you ahve to tell yourself that nothing else matters--when you have to try hard to forget that you never believed tis would happen, and have to try even harder to hope for the best.

I step into the world, and everything is different; the heavy air, the frozen trees; the taunting sky and wavering faces; freedom and reality; the new reasons across the street and the captured eyes of my friends on the fridge.

It's hard to want to be here... that's all I can think as new words fade into the air on my breath, and new thoughts die faster than they are created. I'm backwards--I've never had less motivation, but I've never done things so thoroughly without complaint.

I am mechanical. My body moves like it was meant to. I won't complain. All is done silently, as my mind carefully sulks into every corner of my thought, with no particular interest. The reluctant inspector opens a new door, and the lights dimly flicker to life, beautiful, horrible guitar grumbles and pops from an old stereo in the corner. He doesn't speak or think as he dusts off a rickety slide projector. As a beam of light leaps onto the wall, a few moths flutter to it, desperate for brightness in the neglected room.

Black stripes crackle across the film, and bounce from side to side--a few dying frames remain, so the former, constant animation jumps, skipping steps and blinks, but they're all there--everyone is there. He watches himself smile, somewhat disinterested. The room is entirely silent, save the projecter,grinding like the last words of a tractor, or a small factory whispering poetry, and the guitar gives a final snap before receding into static.

He wants to ignore flawlessly, but the corner of his eye catches another eye. The jumping pictures finally force him to turn towards the image, hands opening and gripping at his sides, feet flat and tense. His eyes shifted manically, finally settling on a still shot of those eyes. Two more pairs of eyes walked up next to those he saw, and he turned away quickly, fists clenching, and only his eyes were clenched tighter. Everyone was there.

That moment of action, the painful momentum of his turning, changed everything again. A table stood in front of him. The top, covered in black and white photographs, came shyly above his knee. he grabbed two sides of the table and leaned over the slew of pictures. The same light from before rattled and jerked above him, casting his shadow, shakingly over the table. Every picture was the same, that one picture he never had a chance to see. He didn't know to feel sadness or anger, but he held one photograph close to his face.

He tried to appear puzzled, if only to himself, but he knew exactly where it was taken--when it was taken. A ridge dropped off behind them into a flat earth, covered in rich, shrewd trees. The two figures posed there, laughing--one was him. It folded crisply into the pocket of his jacket, and his hand rested there, almost hesitating. The other tapped its fingers impatiently, still waiting on the table.

On a whim, with a mind of its own, the patient hand folded a second picture into fourths and placed it slowly in his pocket next to the first. His hands loitered in his jacket, cold and dry. He watched the table, through the pictures in a hollow gaze. He didn't touch them anymore. He dreamed of nothing, and yet he dreamed. His mind disappeared between the cracks in the floor.

"Move it, deaf moron!" a voice snapped, severing his slumber and rough hands shoved him to one side. He fumbled into a crowd of plain figures--tough and unforgiving. Slurring insults slithered through his ears and exploded in his mind... anger and jeering gouged at his eyes, but he was too dazed to be affected, hands still in the pockets of his jacket.

Busy figures rushed and bustled in the crowd, and now a train raucously screamed and squirmed to a stop, sparks and steam announcing its arrival. The conductor yelled hoarsely and triumphantly, but his words were lost as the boy became dazed again, until he was bowled over by another passerby, and rose confused to sit with his arms behind him.

An independent, familiar face appeared out of the gray masses in front of him, smiling worlessly, and bending over to offer him a hand. "It's a harder, rougher world now, boy, take care of yourself," the figure gleamed a small grin, but walked off once the boy was standing again.

Time then lurched forward, like a series of photographs; conversing and arguing; shouting and near rioting as the muddled forms filed wildly, like human livestock into the rusted passenger train. He started to take a step forward when the final whistle shrilly sounded and like a roaring, new creature, found its strength.

He stepped back into place, watching the familiar figure standing at the rear railing on the caboose, staring back at him. The figure waved farewell as he turned to enter the car, when a chilled, gnawing wind caught one of the books he held under his arm and he fumbled to drop it onto the tracks, hidden from view by the station platforms on either side. The figure entered the train. The landing was deserted.

A deep, grainy chord leapt to strike him in the back of the head, and he started quickly to see where it came from. The guitar split out of the old stereo like a solitary crow, or a man laughing into a tin can. It was a simple box, perched on a stool that looked out of place on the cobblestone landing. Now it repeated the same bass, grating note, and he could see the thick guitar string strumming, once every few seconds in his mind. He flinched with each rough sound at first, but soon his eyes became dazed again. The same chilled wind that had taken the familiar strangers book sent him shivering and he folded his arms.