Stay Inside

Stay Inside

By:  Matt R. Konopka

Featured in the Fantasy Newsletter 1/31/08

2nd Place in Show Off Your Best at the Sandbox Contest, June 2008


Just ten more minutes until recess.  Benny Klemine sat with his eyes glued to the clock, watching the tiny black hand tick, tick, tick slowly around.  The only time of day he enjoyed was recess.  Otherwise his choices were to be sitting here in school or staying inside at home.  This summer afternoon, or any afternoon for that matter, was the only safe time of day to go outside.  You were asking not to come back if you went out at any other time of day.
         
Mrs. Anttail droned on in front of the board.  She had one of those voices that spoke too softly to understand or warrant any attention, and a personality too uninteresting to even catch your attention in the first place.  Benny liked school however.  He would never admit it to his friends, Mike and Jasper, but when he sat at home in his room, waiting for the truck to come by to deliver food at the house, Benny actually enjoyed studying.  His favorite subjects were English and Math.  He liked to think to say the least.  Thinking and challenging the mind were some of the only freedoms left in the world since the war. 

It was good that he enjoyed school.  It ran all year long now since It began.  That meant hot summer days trapped inside.
         
"And believe me when I say that we could have only been so lucky, children.  Now, who can tell me about the battle of California beach?"  Mrs. Anttail spoke in one neutral tone, never showing any anger or joy.  Benny would never be able to understand, not at the age of eleven, that Mrs. Anttail had been alive during the war, nearly thirty years ago, and had seen things that would never allow any spark of emotion again.
         
Benny knew the answer to her question, but he didn't dare raise his hand in class.  If you did that you were a nerd, and Benny liked just being an average student.  He had learned from Jake Meyers example that if you were a nerd, other kids didn't like you, and if other kids didn't like you, you got beat up.  Even now, from two rows behind him, Benny could see the black bruise around Jakes left eye.  He didn't want that, no sir.
         
As Benny sat feeling sorry for Jake, he felt yet more remorse watching while Hansel, the dubbed class bully, shoved Jake from his right side.  Hansel was fat and heavy for his age, while Jake looked like a stick holding up a cantelope, so he sat motionless, keeping his eyes locked on Mrs. Anttail.  She didn't say a word to Hansel.  This was something else that Benny would never understand.  All of the adults had just decided to let others do as they please.  If you intervened, you started a fight that most of the time, you could not finish.  Hansel shoved Jake again, harder this time.  Jake remained unwavering, his hands clasped firmly together on his desk, but Benny could spot the beginning of tears in his eyes.  Jakes hand shook slightly as he raised it to answer Mrs. Anttails question.
         
"Yes, Jake?"
         
Jake may have kept still while Hansel shoved him, but he could not hide the fear in his voice while his jaw quivered uncontrollably.  "That was when the Polish invaded, after we started putting heavy taxes on their products."
         
"Faggot."  Hansels fat face grew even wider as he sneered at Jake, knowing that it was only minutes until recess.
         
"That is correct Jake.  Now, as you all know-"
         
Benny zoned back out.  He glanced at the clock.  Only three minutes to go now.  Only when he waited for a certain time did time seem to move so agonizingly slow.  Benny supposed that was the price you paid for something that you wanted.  You had to give a little to get a little.
         
A short sting of pain on his arm abruptly broke Benny's focus on the clock.  He looked down to see a rubber band lying on his steel desk.  Looking over, he saw his friend Mike stifling a laugh and pointing at him.  Benny made a fist and threw the rubber band back at Mike.  He caught it between two fingers and set it back on his desk.  That was the reason everyone always wanted Mike to be on their team when they played football, one of the few American sports still played in the world.  Mike could catch anything, anytime.
         
A folded up sheet of paper fell onto Benny's desk.  He looked over to Cindy who sat next to him.  Only the prettiest girl in class.  She shrugged and pointed at Jasper sitting halfway across the room.  Mrs. Anttail continued with her lecture, not paying attention to anything, as always.  Jasper motioned towards the note, urging Benny to open it.  He did.  Inside, the note read, you should kick his ass at recess.  Benny smiled and shook his head no.  He liked to act as if he could, when in reality, he knew Mike could beat him into the ground.  His head would look like a hairy pumpkin growing out of the ground when Mike finished with him.
         
Mrs. Anttail hurried to finish her lesson.  "Remember children, we lost the battle of California Beach because we weren't prepared for it.  When you're prepared to do something, then you have a chance of actually doing it.  America was not prepared for what it got itself-" 
         
The bell rang, a loud, buzzing chime, like a nest of metallic bees. 
         
Benny sprang up from his desk, as did the rest of the class.  The other kids felt the same as Benny about this time of day.  This was one of the few times that they ever got to go outside.  It was worth loving.  He left his books and papers on the desk in a clutter, not worrying about anyone stealing anything.  Recess only lasted so long.  It wasn't safe to stay out long.  His legs carried him out the door in a blur, pushing him into a hall of swarming kids, all running to be let outside.  He could hear Mrs. Anttail attempting to yell after them, yet hardly raising her voice at all.
         
"Be safe, children."
         
The halls in the school were dim, lit only by a soft light at the end of each corridor.  Running through the hall was like running through a dark funhouse.  Somewhere Jasper and Mike called after him.  Benny didn't bother to search them out in the chaos of excited school children.  He would find them outside.  To get outside, you had to keep your eyes looking straight ahead, or you could fall and get trampled to death by all of the tiny feet.  It had happened to Gary Chaghun only a few months ago.  There was no point in regulating some sort of line leading to the playground.  There were too few adults, too few rules, and too many kids to keep any sort of control, especially when it came to the best time of day.
         
The big doors opened at the end of the hall as the massive sea of kids spewed forth through the darkness.  Two men armed with guns stood by the side of each door, staring blankly ahead as the children ran by.  Sunlight burned through the cavernous school, and at this same moment, every day, Benny always imagined that these doors were the gates of some tropical paradise opening up to them.  Mike surely would have punched him hard in the arm for that one.
         
The children rushed from the building and into the warm light, and if planes were still used in the skies, anyone looking down from them would have said that the children didn't look like children at all, but seemed instead more like one massive black body eating up the land.
         
Mike and Jasper tailed behind Benny as he ran towards the basketball hoop, so out of place amidst all of the green.  Try as they might, neither of them could ever catch up to Benny.  They were far better than he ever would be at sports, but Benny had always been the fastest among the three.  Ever since he had found himself outside at the wrong time, Benny had learned to run.  Behind them, the screams of laughter and joy from the other children were left behind.  Not many kids enjoyed playing basketball anymore.  The majority of them preferred much rougher, meaner sports.
         
"Slow down you crap monkey!"  Jasper loved putting the word crap in front of anything.
         
Benny called back, wheezing from the lack of air.  "You're just jealous cause' you can't keep up!"
         
"Shut up you crap stick."
         
The three boys slowed as they reached the basketball hoop. 
         
Mike scooped up the orange basketball as he stepped onto the concrete.  He stood and placed one hand on his hip, using the other to hold the ball in the pocket between his chest and his elbow.  "Alright sissies, what do you want to play?"
         
"Let's play America One." 
         
Mike shoved Jasper playfully.  "We always play that.  What do you want to play Ben?"
         
"You know I don't care."  He never did.  Sports were just sports to Benny, nothing to get too thrilled over.  He wished he had the guts to come outside and read a book like Jake always did, sitting under the tallest tree near the school.  Jake paid for it though, every day.
         
Mike and Jasper argued over which game to play.  Benny drowned them out.  He looked up, taking in the clear blue sky.  It was a beautiful day.  Not a single cloud ruined the blue portrait of the world above.  He had seen plenty of films, one of the few forms of entertainment left from the Pre-Nuclear days.  One always came to mind when he looked up at the sky and saw it as clear as this.  It had been a nature show, and it the cameraman had been focused on a flock of birds flying through the clear sky, in the shape of a gigantic V, all of them seeming to float across the world majestically.  The film had been made shortly before the war, one of the last pieces of footage of the birds.
         
Benny had wondered what it would be like to see the world from that high up.  Not very many skyscrapers remained in the United States, and those that did were only allowed to be looked at from the bottom.  It was unsafe to be very high in the sky. 
         
"Hey, Benny."  Mike tossed the ball lightly at Benny's shoulder.  It knocked him out of his daze and back to the spinning orange and black colors that rolled along the pavement at his feet.
         
"What?"  Benny rubbed at his arm, vaguely annoyed.
         
"I said, look at what's going on over there."  Mike pointed his finger past Benny's eyes.  He turned his head, looking past Mikes finger, past Jasper standing with his arms crossed and laughing, past the field of artificial green, to the crowd of kids which had gathered around the tall tree that Jake always sat under, reading.
         
"What is it?"
         
Mike grinned.  "Looks like Hansel is about to beat the shit out of that dweeb Jake."
         
"That guy is such a crap fag."  Jasper laughed hard, finding his own joke too funny to stand up straight for.  Mike laughed and clapped him on the back.
         
Benny gazed over the crowd of kids with a deep pity.  The kids chanted and yelled, some of them laughing, most of them cheering, all of them raising their little fists in the air.  There were too many to see Hansel or Jake, but Benny knew what he would undoubtedly see in the middle of the crowd; he would find a towering Hansel standing over a cowering Jake.  Hansel would be sneering with that fat smile of his, his beady eyes squinting with contempt, while Jake lay curled up on the ground, bleeding from the nose.  Jake would have tears streaming down his face, but he would be quiet.  It would only be when Hansel picked up the book that Jake had been reading, showing his teeth under his fat lips with an even wider smile, that Jake would begin to cry out.  And then, planting his foot down on Jakes stomach, Hansel would tear pages from the book, as he had all the others, while the other kids laughed and made fun of Jake.  Only nerds read for fun.  Outward nerds like Jake, and secret nerds like Benny.  Benny knew all of this because he had seen it all before, standing in the crowd of his peers, laughing along with them, because if he didn't cheer, then he was just like Jake. 
         
Mike picked up the basketball and ran towards the crowd.  Jasper chased after him, both of them dying to see Jake balling his eyes out.  Benny knew what Mike would do with the ball.  He would throw it at Jake just as Jake tried to stand up, knocking the poor kid back to the ground.  Benny felt his heart hammer deep in his chest.  He would have to join the others soon if wanted to remain fitting in.  First he wanted to enjoy a bit more of the summer air and wind whispering through the grass.
         
Ideas of a peaceful world that Benny lived in by himself blocked out the heathen sounds of the other children.  He imagined himself on an island, the hot sun beating across his bare chest as he lay in the sand.  Palm trees would sway in the wind, and the ocean would whoosh up onto the beach, the water sparkling in the afternoon sun.  And there, up in the sky, a flock of seagulls would fly overhead, squawking at each other in that speech that only birds can make, and Benny would pick up a book and start to read.  He wished that he could know the feel of the sand, and the warmth of the ocean water.  All of these things he had only ever read about in books or seen on television.  His parents didn't deem taking a trip to the beach safe enough.  Someday, when he grew older, Benny would spend a summers worth of working on taking one of those new types of trains that travelled deep underground, the only truly safe place anymore.
         
An unpleasant cold crept up Benny's back, changing his island into a freezing block of ice.  He wrapped his arms around his body and shivered.  The cold unbearably moved down his body and dug into his bones, making it hard to move.  The sunlight had vanished from the sky, which no longer held the blue of the ocean.  A darkness had enveloped the playground.  There were no clouds in the sky, not that Benny could tell, yet the sun had disappeared anyway, turning everything to a shade just lighter than that of nightfall.  Benny turned to look at the crowd of children.  They were still picking on Jake, all of them as of yet unaware of the approaching cold.  At his young age, Benny had only felt the cold once before, and so it took him a moment to realize what was approaching.  And then it came to him.
         
No.
         
The thing never came during the afternoon like this.  Never.  This was the only safe time left of the day.  Benny couldn't bare to have that taken away from him.  He couldn't bare it!
         
Then the alarms came.  Not the same monotonous buzzing as the school bells, but a wailing, high pitched screaming, like a thousand children crying out for help.  Benny was already running back to the school before the other children realized what sound had filled their precious ears, and they to were screaming and running.  They were a massive stampede of antelope which has just discovered a lion amidst their numbers. 
         
Benny didn't turn his head to see if Mike and Jasper were close behind or not.  He followed the three simple rules that had been placed down after people had first discovered the darkness.  Run as fast as you can, don't stop for anyone, and never, no excuses aloud, look back.  The ground seemed to shake with so many feet pounding against it.  A cacophony of cries swelled up behind Benny as he ran, in the lead, all of the children following closely behind.  The cold slipped back a little from his skin as he ran faster, then managed to find its way back into his body.  Scientists had already proven by using an ex-Olympic gold medalist, that if you were not close to any sort of shelter by the time you felt the cold, then it was already too late.  No human being could outrun the darkness.
         
Mrs. Anttail stood outside by the doors with the other teachers, all of them waving their hands for the children to hurry.  Their faces did not show fear, however.  That, to, they had become immune to.  The sirens grew louder as Benny neared the building.  He felt as if his eardrums were going to pop and splatter inside of his head.  Benny felt his feet on the steps now, his legs carrying him up the stairs.  He made it in first, followed by the rest of the students.  The massive group of children and teachers pushed their way through the doors and each other.  Some fell to the floor and were trampled, others were pushed into lockers and knocked unconscious, but everyone made it inside.  Everyone except for one squealing voice.
         
Despite the amount of children and adults cramped into the hallway, all grew silent as those who could see looked outside in the darkening day.  They saw Jake, limping across the grass, his shirt torn, blood dripping down from his nose.  He screamed for help, his cheeks wet with tears and snot hanging down from his nose.  He held his torn book in one hand.  The open pages fluttered in the growing ferocity of the wind.  No one said a thing as they watched in silence.  Jake screamed desperately.  He limped towards the school as hurriedly as he could.  The thing in the sky came closer behind him.
         
Benny wanted to help, yet knew that he could not.  He stood watching quietly, seeing what he could over the heads in front of him.  Jake turned his head to see what sped after him, and now he screamed in the kind of agony that only those who know they are helpless can scream.  Benny gazed in awe at the moving black cloud that undulated through the sky, twirling through the air like a living tornado.  The black cloud or mist, or the Darkness as they called it, swooped down towards Jake, thinning and changing into a swirling black finger.  Jake tripped, too exhausted to run anymore.  He looked up at the group of onlookers, holding out a hand for someone, anyone, to take it.  The end of the black finger opened up, exposing a gaping hole of nothingness, closing in just above Jake.
         
Mrs. Anttail let the doors close shut, blocking out the last view of Jake that Benny would ever have, his face a creamy, pale white, his eyes wide and terrified, tears mixing with the blood on his nose.  Most importantly of all, the look of fear and acceptance that had come across his features in the last second before the doors closed.
         
The group stood still in the darkness of the building, all of them too afraid to do anything.  Nobody knew where the Darkness had come from, what it was, what exactly it could be called.  It had come around sometime after the last bomb had been dropped.  Scientists had only thought that it came at particular times of day for whatever reason, but now it seemed that it would never be safe to go outside again.  Recess would become like the rest of the day.
         
At this moment, recess didn't matter much to Benny though.  He said a prayer for Jake, thanking the Lord for taking him.  Benny felt better about seeing Jake being swallowed up into the Darkness, not because he disliked him, but because he felt it was better for Jake this way.  Kids like him, they weren't meant for this world, not for the way it was now.  In this world, you had the freedom to think, but you could never openly be a thinker.  If you were a thinker, no one liked you, and if no one liked you, you got beat up.  That was just the way it worked. 


(3,425 Words)