PART 2.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.
The sounds quickly muffled and then separated themselves, leaving behind the crunch of Sebastian’s feet. At first the tunnel’s walls were damp and trash-littered — old tires, plastic buckets, newspapers and cardboard, and more mattresses – but soon, as the light of the opening receded, the leavings of others ceased. Sebastian had once been taken snorkeling in the ocean, and the sensation was like that – a transition from the lit surface with its rocking commotion into a quieter dimworld, a dimworld where the familiar embrace of a mind waited.
When? When had absence become such anger? That is what Sebastian asked himself as he now bent over his backpack, pulled out a flashlight, and cast a beam of light into the tunnel’s depth. The light jerkily brought into view the curved walls that were darker in places from damp, the ceiling, blackened from years and years of train soot. Then the beam of light disappeared forward into emptiness. The tunnel itself had room for two tracks, but only one remained. Small stalactites whiskered from the ceiling looking like hair, while the regularly cadenced arches that had been used to support the tunnel made Sebastian feel like he was walking through some sort of trachea or into one of those mirrors at the clothing stores that repeated the reflection into infinity. There were mushroom-like mineral growths on the ground, and the track continued beyond vision.
Sebastian set out, and with walking he thought. He had felt it for years, building and growing inside of him. Like a hook embedded somewhere inside tugging and tugging. It had been there even when he was a kid. Something wriggling and dangling.
He and his dad had lived by themselves back then. Well, not so much themselves as Sebastian by himself. His mom, he couldn’t remember her. She’d left before he was three, and it had just been him and his dad. But really most of the time it had been Sebastian by himself.
“You’re all I’ve got, boy,” his father was fond of saying. “I knew the day that you were born that you’d never leave me.”
Most nights his father would fall asleep with the television on, sitting there in his recliner. Sebastian would clear the bottles and the plates, and then climb up the fire escape to the building’s roof. There was an old wooden water tower there with a ledge that ran around its perimeter. Sebastian would climb up its metal ladder and sit there on the ledge, taking in the lights and buildings that spread out before him. All of those people. All of that light out there, living some sort of life. Each light another path, another possibility, and another memory.
***
For example, here was Sebastian sitting with Lisa on the floor of her room. This was before her parents became divorced Lisa’s father was Sebastian’s father’s doctor, or therapist, or something like that. He had taken an interest in Sebastian, and often included him with his own family’s trips and gatherings.
On this day, Sebastian was over for a cookout. But right now, Lisa was showing Sebastian a game about plants and zombies. She had a computer on her lap, and she was hunched over, intently looking at the screen and explaining how the plants were used to block the zombies. In the game the zombies would try to cross the lawn, and different kinds of plants could be moved to slow them down: peashooters, exploding potatoes – and the zombies, some had buckets on their heads, some pushed bobsleds. As she spoke, Lisa expertly positioned plants as the hordes descended. The game was totally random, and Lisa loved it. She’d started that afternoon afternoon by playing him a song that showed a singing cartoon of a dancing sunflower plant:
“There’s a zombie on your lawn,” sang the bobbing, animated sunflower plant, “There’s a zombie on your lawn.”
Lisa had a chocolate bar in one hand as she excitedly talked, and she would occasionally take a bite. Between them wrappers strewn here and there. But Sebastian wasn’t really looking at the game or at the chocolate. He was looking at Lisa. Hair falling forward; fingers intently moving, shoulders shaped just so. Eyes forward. At that moment, he had never been happier, there with his friend, seeing her excited and completely engaged and including him in how it all worked.
Later that day, they went up to the roof of Lisa’s building. It was dusk, and Lisa’s father and mother had lit a small fire pit that they arranged in the middle of a circle of chairs. They gave Lisa and Sebastian marshmallows that the two of them roasted on long sticks. Lisa talked the entire time, slouched back in her chair, legs crossed in the air in front of her, head back, and inspecting each marshmallow just so. Sometimes she would hum the sunflower song, and sometimes she would explain why one plant was better than another. Sebastian had watched this family. The parents, reclining in wooden chairs and holding hands, Lisa their loved daughter with them, the sun setting. Sebastian had taken it all in and known that this was what he wanted.
***
“Bull shit,” said Sebastian back in the tunnel. “Get a grip.”
He hadn’t felt it then, though, the hook that pulled him out to the streets every night. He hadn’t felt it in that moment. So, when had that started? Sebastian didn’t know. After her parents had gotten divorced, Sebastian had begun to lose track of Lisa. Oh, they would see each other. They even dated in there for a while. But it was as if he could no longer actually bring her into focus. She wasn’t around during summer. He was no longer invited by her father to spend time with his new family.
“It’s just us, boy,” said his father.
Another night, and now Sebastian is 17 and sitting on the ledge of the water tower. It is his usual spot, but now something encrusts him. Something has moved between him and the lights of the city that spread out before him. “What is happening,” he murmured out to no one in particular.
