Category: Short Stories

Drawing by “RichardLittlewood” on Deviant Art

***

He knew the whispers like the back of his hand. Well, the back of his right hand. His left hand was interwoven with a series of interlacing strings, all from needles his mother kept in him like a pin cushion. They curled and snaked around his knuckles and veins in continuous, pattern less loops.

Most days he would pretend to not have a left hand. It made ignoring the pain easier.

He knew the words by heart, but he waited for the voices to grow louder before taking action. He climbed down his stargazing post upon the tall oak, and hopped onto a small balcony. From there, he arrived into his room.

It was decorated to a boy’s dream. The walls were painted a dark blue, and glow in the dark stars were stuck onto the ceiling. Dinosaurs lined the floor and his bed. His sheets were of galaxies and astronauts. He fantasized of one day growing up to be an astrologist or paleontologist.

He jumped down the spiraling stair steps, making his way from the third floor to the basement. He hummed with the whispers as he stamped along, his shoulders relaxed and smile wide.

“Come down the stairs little boy. Won’t you give us another toy? Give us a needle from the back of your hand. Give us a piece of the heart in your chest.” He mumbled.

The tune was similar to that Old St. Nick song on the radio. His mother never explained who the man was, besides pointing at a chubby, red jumpsuit wearing figure in one of her patterned pieces of fabric.

It did not bother Timothy, though, and he enjoyed the song for being just a song. Just as he enjoyed the whispers for being just that.

The basement was damp, with a thin layer of water and dust floating over the floor. It had the same spongy feel as a drenched carpet. He was uncertain of what the carpet looked like, what color it had been.

Jimmy did not know a lot of things. He did not even know what his mother’s face looked like. Whenever he asked her about it, she would cry. Though it broke his heart to see her upset, it was nice to hear the sobs. It was nice to hear her, to hear something in her room besides the loud chatter of her sewing machine or the loud smack of a switch as it pierced his hind.

Jimmy winced as the water invaded the insides of his tennis shoes. He sped back up to the top of the first floor stairs to grab his yellow rain boots. He always sped through the first floor, running as fast as he could while at the same time remaining soundless. It was easy enough to do, most nights. However, he had lingered for too long. As he worked in helpless panic to untie his triple knotted shoes, his father awoken.

The whispers grew agitated, transforming into blood curdling screams. His father smelled of smoke but not of alcohol, having a soft, vulnerability to him with his sad, drooping black eyes and balding head. His tweed jacked was a light gray, and it rustled open to a white tank as he ran towards Jimmy.

“Why are you here still?” He whined. “You should have left! You should leave..leave before it is too late.”

The words were barely audible over the floods of incoherent chatter. Jimmy could barely process the information, but, all he knew was that mother got angry and hurtful when his father was mentioned, and so did the voices. From that, Jimmy could conclude that, either way, what his father was saying was bad, and that he was just bad overall.

“Get away from me you mean man!” Jimmy kicked his father, pushing him back into a moldy brown armchair.

“No, you don’t understand!” He whispered, his eyelids slowly closing shut, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Jimmy sighed in relief, and, once he had secured on his boots, he jumped down the steps, splashing in the water with giddy.

“Hello”. The voices all harmonized, as a tall, hunched figure appeared in front of Jimmy. Its body was made of rough, scrambled lines, like the remnants of a rough sketch. The shadows danced around it, forming a white outline.

“Do you have another toy? Another part of your heart? Something else to give me?”

Jimmy grinned. “Of course! Check this out!”

He revealed a stuffed velociraptor, his favorite toy. Its claws extended outward, moving up and down in energized excitement.

“Marvelous!” A bright white tendril emerged from the being’s outline. Like a hot iron to ice, the stuffed animal melted into its form.

For a quick moment, Jimmy was able to see the dinosaur, named “Ranger”, outlined in gray among the being’s body. Soon, it faded into the rest of the darkness.

“Oh, little boy,” The being chuckled. “Your heart is so bottomless. You’re such a good boy. So..pure.”

Something was bothering the little boy. A spark of curiosity gone array in a flamboyant display, he knew better than to ask, but he had to know the answer.

“I know he is bad, but, I could not stop thinking about.” The being fell aback, as if in surprise.  

“I could not..get it out of my head. I, when I was there, and he, he was there, he told me, to run, to escape this place before..before it was too late.” Jimmy spit out the words like poison.  

The being listened attentively, though its body shook, as if a wrapped bedsheet slowly becoming undone.

“What…what is this place? I know you told me it is a place where my dreams are reality, a place of happiness and paradise. And I am enjoying the place, yes, yes, I…love it here. I love you, I love mom, and, I suppose I don’t even mind dad.”

“But…my dad. He is so miserable. I know he is a bad person but…what about mother? She can’t even show her face…she can be a bad person too, hitting me, using me like a mannequin or tool, but…I still love her. I still…I still want my family to be happy. Even if they are bad…bad people.” Jimmy gained confidence as he spoke.

At the end of his ramble, he was able to look up directly at the being, a being whose comforting warmth had been drained to frostbitten cold.

“You!…” The being seemed ready to burst from its container, whatever container had been binding it into its lump like form.

“No,” It sighed, and the cloak around its mysterious figure relaxed. “I suppose eventually, you would figure out. You are nine, after all. A big boy now, eh?” It chuckled.

“Well, of course, no one here is good. It is an equivalent to Hell, I suppose. Yet, it is worse. Oh, it is worse.” The being approached him until its jagged lines poked at the boy’s flesh like rose thorns. When Jimmy began to bleed, it stepped back and cried.

“I tried to give you Heaven, Nirvana, Summerland, whatever you want to call it. Oh, I can’t, I can’t, we can’t,” The voices cried, conjoined from one supreme tone. Only then did he realize they sounded like..like children.

Children like him. Children who were hiding under this cloak. Children like him who had been…too late. Too late for what?

“Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy,” They whined. “We are all bad people stuck on this island. Bad people who have done things before or after death. We are all bad people except…you. But we were greedy so we dragged you here, oh Jimmy, I’m sorry. You lived for only a few minutes. We thought we could help you…we thought we could help ourselves”.

“But it’s too late for any of us. It is too late for you, too, sweet Jimmy.”

The cloak surrounding the children began to tighten, swelling up like a balloon before drifting towards the ceiling. The cloak was suspended over Jimmy’s head as the middle began to tighten. Feet were flailing towards the back end, flapping like fish trying to swim through air.

Out of curiosity, Jimmy moved towards the bone white limbs.

His mouth hung agape at the sight of the wiry children. Their eyes were the same black as his father’s, and stretched to cover most of their face, even creeping up towards the back of their head. Either they were entirely bald or had sparse hair, and their lips were thin circles barely stretching out to scream as they were squeezed into oblivion. Instead of skin and guts exploding in disarray towards the tunneled opening, the cloak drifted down and revealed not carcasses, but toys. His stuffed animal, Ranger, lied on the tarp, suspending its exceedingly heavy load above the water layer.

Jimmy reached out for Ranger, and brought the toy, still warm, to his chest in comfort. He rocked steadily, rhythmically patting the stuffed animal’s head as he faced forward in cold expression. Guided by a spark of madness, by the echoes of loneliness, by the mental jumblement of confusion, Jimmy began to scream.

“Where am I?! Where did you bring me to?!”

“Welcome,” Ranger turned his head 180, his eyes soullessly looking above to his owner. “Welcome to the Assigning.” His mouth moved in sharp, incoherent jolts. “ Welcome to becoming a god.”

“A god…? That does not sound so bad.” Jimmy pondered. “Why would, why would,” His eyes widened, and, suddenly, he realized.

He realized everything.

He realized so much of what he questioned, so much of what he wondered about.

The reason his mother worked so vigorously was because she was the goddess of creation. And, when she hurt him, that was not her fault…she was just playing the flip side of that…the goddess of destruction.

His father was so soothing yet elusive due to him being the god of sleep. He was to tangle with the brain for needed rest, to battle the subconscious for understanding and clarity, to produce dreams and to rally nightmares.

The children were the gods and goddesses, the deity of love. They released it, as they did with his nurturement, and they would absorb it, as they did through his art pieces and creations which were, literally, from the heart.

On the surface, none of these positions sound bad. However, his enlightenment made him realize that while their line of work was good and produced happiness, they will never be happy. His father would forever remain restless, and desperately seek slumber through others. The children will forever remain unloved, and will, in the same manner, seek it through others.

His mother, and…himself, too…will be entirely void. Since they are the universe, they, themselves, are nothing. They are void of personality, void of interaction, void of life, void of death, void of anything which can relate them back to the beautiful world they have become.

He had realized too much.

“Stop, stop,” He cried, clutching his pulsing brain, which radiated with the all, the all of time, space, life…all of what is, what was, and what will be. Moments aged him like centuries. In his metamorphosis was the clear display of his godly awe, of his power and its retribution. Even the most carefree and ignorant of spirits would be hardened by this burdensome task. The god of knowledge had no room for the wonder or play he had cherished and cultivated with such deep care.

His sole job was to know, and in insultaniously he had done so. He held his mother’s thread of creation within mental bindings. However, it will take an eternity truly know it all, to truly see and experience it all. He would, is, and will have to sort through its loose strings, its changing hues, its wiggling and unpredictable shapes. He was a genius, yet one can never predict endlessness or chaos, except to suppose it will always be present and never stagnant.

It came as a bloated shadow eclipsing the sun.  

If the sky was clear that crisp morning, it would have been an obvious intrusion. However, that day, the sky was clogged with brown dust, and it took me several moments to become alert to its presence.

I regret wasting precious time in ignorance, for I knew it was more than the usual passersby, more than the usual threat.

I launched myself up, and allowed the wind to take me to the nearest grassy field. Most of us were farmers, harvesting the tall green stalks for food.

I was one of the few who guarded the community. Those of my trade were positioned on the nearby sandy plains, looking up for danger. The area was good for making clear observations, though relaying such information back to the general public was strenuous. Fortunately, I found a father and daughter pair on the community’s outskirts.

“Excuse me, sir and ma’am,” I pulled the two aside, their blue eyes staring into mine.

“What is it?” The father asked.

“I’m a nearby patrol, and I saw…well,” I looked over towards his daughter, who was a young girl of 4 months, and lowered my voice. “I saw a Sun Floater”.

His face became expressionless, his entire body still. I prodded his side, and he began to jerk around uncontrollably.

“Tell the others, as many as you can.” I spoke slowly, trying to keep eye contact with his moving figure. “I will remain out here and continue observing it. Okay?”

He stopped shaking. I wondered if he had heard me, but then he turned around, signaled his daughter to follow, and headed deeper into the thicket. I sighed in relief.

Suddenly, I felt a large thump from above. My vision become blurred by particles flown up from the impact. I closed my eyes and kept them shut until the atmosphere calmed. Once I regained my sight, I was surrounded by gray bodies, including the father and daughter I had encountered.

I knew there would be not escape once we emerged from the ocean, so we had to act, quick. I shouted for everyone to get up, and to follow my lead. I began chomping on the surrounding bundled net, and the others did the same. Though we were all working together, we were making minimal progress. I looked around desperately for another solution, and recalled something my patrol officer had mentioned about Sun Floaters.

She had told us that while Sun Floater’s were powerful creatures, their exterior armor was rather weak. I pushed up towards their flabby appendix and clamped down on it with all my might, and hoped for the best. Immediately, we were flung away towards their backside, and sunk back down to the surface.

As we cheered for our freedom, I noticed something rather odd. From my studies of these creatures, they supposedly had a total of four limbs, all covered in a brown hued coating which occasionally had an extra, multi colored layer.

However, this being seemed to have three limbs. There were the normal two at the front, but, then, instead of two more at the back, there was just one long, fish like tail. It was covered in hypnotic, iridescent scales.

All I could do was watch it swim away, and wonder what such a creature could be, and how such a contradicting combination of earth and water could exist.