Depths of the Mind

His heart stopped or possibly he was throwing up his blood-pumping organ.

There were infinite words to describe her, but not one that would match the spectacular creature that she was, sitting on a bench constructed in honor of a city engineer. Her face spilled with red freckles and her flaming hair contrasted her soft skin, while her petite nose and structured lips could be recognized in a crowd of a million people. Lowering her eyesight, Benjamin saw that the tip of her delicate sneakers were kissing each other while the flowers right beneath the wooden bench drifted with the warm spring breeze. Soon, rays of sunlight made her eyes glow, reflecting the emerald trees that were in the horizon of the park.

He narrowed his eyes to her, trying to focus on the exhilarating beauty that flowed over her like a foggy day. He covered the smile that had formed in his lips and felt his trimmed beard, gently scratching the palm of his hand. His hollow eyes seemed to fill with an emotion he couldn't quite describe, but it felt grand, powerful, intoxicating. Now he dived his face into his hands, feeling his huge brown curls gently touch his hands and possibly a drip of sweat sliding down his forehead. It was tiring just to look at her.

She glanced to the side where Benjamin was admiring her, but he quickly threw his head to the opposite direction. The heat of embarrassment seemed to invade him. His white skin became slightly less comparable to a tomato.

He waited patiently for a few minutes before turning around, and once he did, it was as if his heart weighed one hundred times more. She had left.

After brief moments of desperation, he noticed a piece of white paper stuck to the bench. Rushing like the wind, he grabbed the paper from its resting position and read it as quickly as he possibly could.

The words took some time to appear. It was her business card, printed in round letters. Her name was Summer Days, and she lived in Sunset Boulevard. He chuckled with the irony of the names, but still found it profoundly beautiful.

"I'm in love with happiness," A smile arose to his face while a woman made a peculiar stare as she walked past him.

He walked to his house looking thoughtfully to the sky and thinking of what it would be if he encountered her another day on the streets. Once he arrived at his humble home, Benjamin snatched a cookie from the daily batch Mrs. Stone made.

"Where have you been, Ben?" The white heat was still leaving the batch.

"Falling in love."

His mother gave a warm smile, as if she was waiting for this day to happen for a long, long time.

"And where does your love live?"

"Summer Days lives in Sunset Boulevard."

Mrs. Stone knew the town they lived inside out. She had never heard of a Sunset Boulevard, and mostly, never heard of the Days family. His mother groaned as she suspected something based on his past behaviors, but Ben quickly escaped from the complaints and life lessons his mother always gave.

As night fell, Ben couldn't sleep, his mind was exploding with thoughts about Summer and all the precious details that represented her. With the urge to spit the words somehow so his mind would come to rest, he decided to quit on a night of sleep. He wrote furiously of what he thought about her into several blank sheets of paper. He even quoted Arctic Monkeys in one of the dozens of letters he would send her: "Loving me is as easy as pie".

"She'll answer," he said, hugging letter number twenty-five. "One day." He looked at the business card lying on his desk piled with unfinished homework and assignments, smiling at the thought of one day having the courage to go to Sunset Boulevard and possibly seeing Summer Days, the love of his life.

Then he came back to reality, the reality he was living in. To the blank, soulless room where he had to spend most of his afternoons before going to a room that was not his. A smiley man walking and clapping his hands continuously while a woman staring endlessly to a blank wall made Benjamin think that what he had wasn't as bad as he thought.

"Benjamin," the woman with round glasses and a dry sense of humor spoke.

He replied with his arms crossed, "Annabeth."

"Who is Summer Days?" The pen and notebook she carried was prepared to scribble everything he said.

He hesitated before answering:

"My greatest delusion."