Short stories and scrapped ideas [1]

Anecdote

Walking home from school is boring. It's the same routine each and every day. The sound of birds chirping eventually becomes a background noise and walking home becomes quite lonesome.

Each day I would come home to my mom asking the same question, "how was your day?" I'd reply to her and immediately go to my room to settle down. I avoided everyone like I had just embezzled the crown of England and was being hunted down by those hot British agents that are part of those secret organizations in every spy or action-comedy movie ever. Unfortunately those hot British agents are fictional characters that are my parents' age and definitely have an alarming body count. How unfortunate.

Autumn was the best time to come around. There was nice coldish weather, there were colorful leaves that would be on the ground the next day, people were anxious to get their heating and insulation fixed because they couldn't be bothered to do it in the summer and birds were getting ready to migrate or sleep in, most of them at least.

Gunfire from the backyard woods became more frequent but this time it wouldn't be from some drunk guy with a truck and gun—the guy who thinks he can take on a unit of police and not get his A' served to him on a shiny silver platter. It was hunting season. I'd never gone hunting, because my family didn't even eat turkey at Thanksgiving; we ate ham, and personally, I've never liked celebrating it. It's a bash of mass murder, hooray for the murder of over 700 Indians; children included. But everyone seemed to be focused on the deer, no one ever gunned down any turkey. I didn't mind that and I quite preferred it to stay that way.

During autumn, when a sixth grader whom I walked with, who I knew liked me despite him insisting he didn't feel love, nor ever wanted to date anyone, was finally dropped off at his house I'd normally run home. Or run halfway before becoming tired and wishing I had wings or a second pair of legs to walk home with. Despite all that there still wasn't much in autumn, which I like, besides the nice weather and a rare, occasional visit to our local bruster's. Plants were dead, grass looked like it had been set on fire by a dad who would eat too much spicy food and complained about how spicy the food was and the only things that seemed to have life were the pine trees. Spoilers, they were also dead.

They stayed the same year round and kept their needles but my mom would always say, "don't go near those pine trees, you'll get ticks." I never believed the ticks were on these pine trees; they may have thought they were still alive but they in fact were dead, extremely dead, classic tree move. Besides I also knew ticks wouldn't jump down to eat my flesh and then start flying like a ballooning spider who lives down under. Sorry not sorry Australians.

And despite my mom only liking living plants, I eventually found something interesting on my way home. It was a brown, brown and a more khaki colored clump of branches with leaves that looked like a four leaf clover had been stretched out on of those medieval stretching torture devices called a rack, and not that type of rack. I thought about bringing home this particular specimen of dead plant but ditched it before I entered my house. The second time I saw one I decided to bring it home along with a feather and a pink monster bottle tab. I was so excited I showed my mother but she looked at me with a weird expression. She looked like she had just witnessed a Norse Viking child smash a cake and shove dirt in his mouth while flipping her off with his middle toe.

When I brought them up to my room I placed the dead hydrangea in my headboard cubby. I admired them before setting the feather next to it and putting the bottle tab with my other shiny trinkets I kept like a crow who was giving opposable thumbs and had no self control with shiny objects, I plead the fifth. The plant reminded me of my younger years when I collected a certain type of pebble from places like a playground and those gravel parking spaces in the forests. I kept them in a ziplock baggie as they were rocks, they weren't sentient in any way whatsoever but I knew they would disappear. I liked collecting those rocks and didn't like when any uninvited guests walked in on four legs and took them or when my mom told me I needed to throw them away.

I knew the same would happen to my beautiful dead plants and feathers. So I hid them away like any kid on their way to becoming a psychopathic serial killer who's good at hiding bodies would do. They hid in my closet, like me, until I was finally able to get my hands on a candle jar. It was a tight fit for the hydrangea, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, but they fit and were now safe from any four legged gremlins who walked around sniffing out trouble and food. Especially after midnight.

But with one down I needed to find something for my feathers, which I now had a few from the turkeys that my neighbor and I fed. Each autumn since I was little the same wild group of turkey would hang out in our neighbors yard. They were quite friendly, enough where I could stand next to one but not enough to pet one. Mr. Norm named a few of them like Butterball or BB for short, and we hung out a lot watching the turkey together.

I'd collect their feathers when they molted, ignoring my mother's concern of me contracting some kind of deadly disease that'd kill me instantly if I even so much as touched a wild bird's feather. However Mr. Norm encouraged me to take the feathers as they were cool and he knew I liked collecting them. He was a great guy, he was the crazy old grandpa of my life whose personality was more hyper than a kid on pure sugar. But when he left the turkey left too and I buried the feathers near the dead pine trees.

By the time winter was coming around I'd found a big chunk of dead hydrangea and kept them safe so they wouldn't scatter everywhere like how people throw rice at newly wed couples, which seems like it would hurt if someone decided to pelt them with the rice. And since it was turning winter my mom went out and bought peanut m&m's. When they were finally eaten I took the container and used it for my growing collection of dead hydrangea and weird stuff I found on the ground. At the same time I was finally able to find a container to safely hold feathers so I wouldn't need to hide them like a body I wasn't supposed to have.

Regardless of if I were to turn out to be a serial killer I was finally able to display my collection of feathers and hydrangea. My mother didn't fully endorse my weird choice of display but she didn't say much about it. She knew it made me happy even if she didn't like it.

One of my brothers did say something like, "it looks like you're getting ready to worship some kind of demon or god," but I ignored him. His words never meant much to me, especially if he commented on something I liked. But regardless of his nightmare child behavior I added another feather to my collection. I stopped finding interesting things as the snow covered the ground. It was winter and I was happy with my trinkets that I had found that often marked the start of a long school year before it went downhill like a child becoming a giant snowball in those try not to laugh videos.

As it got colder I went back to my same good old routine. But at the end of the day, walking home from school is boring.