Soft Served August

Chapter Three

“This is the worst day of my life,” I repeated again and again as I sped back home. It was getting dark already, and I was barely even out of Manor Way. And my house is what? Back in Hawthorne Avenue? Yeah, great, great. That’s still about 2 miles away.

Now I’m really starting to regret what I did a while ago.

I’ve acted upon really bad decisions today, and I just want to suffocate myself with a pillow. Tomorrow’s Tuesday, another school day if not a holiday, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to face the people in my school. It’s impossible for them to just forget the incident instantly. And the customers in Seymour’s a while ago, what about them? What if they see me and flashbacks of what happened earlier suddenly slips into their minds?

I wanted to stop running and just pause the world in that moment; find the girl and her mother, or Heterochromia guy, and apologize to make them understand what lead me to do that. I wanted to go back in time to stop myself from doing anything I had done today and just stay home. But I can’t.

I couldn’t catch a bus or a cab on my way back; they were either full or off to somewhere, or my house wasn’t in their route. Back in Cooper Park I got hit by a Frisbee, and I was definitely out of luck when the dog that Frisbee was originally meant for decided to chase me. Was that the universe punishing me? Again? God, it really hates me, does it?

As I ran, tears blurred my vision, but I still went on. I was now in a dark alleyway, which made it even harder to see. The nearest streetlight was probably a few more yards away from me, and it was almost pitch black; as black as the keys of my piano. Every breath I took seemed to be caught and freed at the same time, until it eventually slowed. As black... as my father’s car. And almost as dark as his hair.

I stopped running and froze on my spot. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t want to either. The images were flashing in my head. Again.

I remembered my father’s icy blue eyes, and how I inherited mine from him. Those days when he’d set his work aside to take me to the park. They were rare, but they enraptured me. When he would teach me everything he knew about the piano, and we’d pass out in the music room after practicing for hours on end, or when he would play me a lullaby, and soon he would fall asleep too after I did. When we’d sneak into our own world through hide and seek, and if one of us fails to find the other within five minutes, the seeker must give the hider a hug. And when we adopted Harvey back when I was five; taking him with us on every trip or spending our weekends playing with him at the park.

Every happy memory with my dad flashed before my eyes, and yet my mind... destroyed them.

Replacing every single one of them with one scene that seemed to be on loop: my father sliding into his black corvette, dashing out of our driveway, leaving tire marks as he disappeared into the hurricane outside.

I opened my eyes and this time it really was pitch black; the images had disappeared. I began looking around me, searching for any possible sources of light, and moving my arms in different directions in hopes of feeling a wall (or any solid object in this matter, actually) to serve as an indication that I was still living in my reality, and not in my head. I wanted to sit down, but I couldn’t move my feet. It was as if they were glued, or wrapped in a glacier’s embrace. Like they were turned off, while the rest of my body was on. I felt like I was losing control of everything.

Including my suddenly over-active, corrupted brain.

And it wouldn’t stop. Not even just for a while. It was finishing me off slowly, leaving me feeling as though I was falling infinitely in oblivion. The once very simple act of breathing got harder, and it felt as if my heart was going to explode in my chest in mere minutes.