Horror 100 Volume 2

Laurel

It was summertime,1947, and a warm breeze swirled through the neighborhoods caressing old brick homes with white painted porches and radios blasting out tunes by the Harmonicats. Those were the days when milk was still brought to your door in cold sweating glass bottles which the doorman delivered clinking to your doorstep and sleek black cars cruised by on white wall tires blaring horns that really let you have what for.

My father had come back from the war three years before, gaunt and etched, a ghost of the man he'd been -- returned back to us from across some raging ocean surrounded by killing fields, entire countries become crypts. He was further away now than he'd ever been during the war. He drank Schlitz on the porch all day every day, that's what he did, from sun up to sun down and my mother and I mostly just stayed away.

But I was 13 at the time and it was glorious summer. I spent every day with Tommy Miller, a scrawny boy to be sure, but a renowned hellion. We spent that summer roaming creation. We shot at squirrels and birds in Oakree forest with our slingshots and fished all along the banks of Carr creek, a mobius band of swishing waterfalls and silvery pools. Its creekbed pocked full of deep holes where mighty catfish and river nasties lurked and the days whipped by .

I tell you it was just pure joyful life, and I was alive and it was me and Tommy best friends forever, and that's when I saw her and everything changed. She wasn't just any girl, her name was Laurel, and she was the tail of a comet or a shooting star, whispy cold and beautiful. The sky I remember was shouting blue and we were playing baseball with the other 8th graders out on Hest field and she came walking by with a group of girls and I tell you that was it. Man I must've looked like a fool standing there with my mouth agape while those girls passed by -- I don't even remember how the game ended and I don't remember the next few days. Where those memories should be I see only grey fog and her.

But I remember every bit of the moment I saw her, every second, the way the grass felt between my toes, the smell of dirt and summer and trees and the clenched knot in my stomach. My heart skipping and jumping and stopping and triple beating and I knew from the moment I saw her that I was in love – deep everlasting head over heels love.

Her skin was pale porcelain starlight and her eyes were lightning blue and her pouty lips were promises wrapped in red ribbons and yes sir I tell you I knew it from the moment I saw her, she was for me and I for her and we would marry and have kids and grow old until we faded away into our golden years sipping lemonade on porch swings. Two old farts in love. One of us would go first, probably get cancer, and we'd hold hands in the hospital until twilight called the other home.

And so I planned how to win her and thought myself silly but knew what I lacked in experience I would more than compensate for with enthusiasm.

A day passed then two, two nights of dreams of Laurel. Sweet lark filled dreams of gentle moonlight and grassy green plateaus and starless skies forever. I saw an elk in my dreams, I was the elk and I ran for days and nights through white crystalline snow, lightning beneath my hooves and she was the sun and moon that lit my way.

Til Saturday arrived. It was Saturday june 14, 1947, and not a cloud dare defy the radiance and fullness of that day -- I remember! I had chosen Saturday because I knew there would be a pickup football game down on Brower field. I knew my friends would be there and the other boys from Camry street would be there and we would become clashing titans that day and the gods of Olympus would be watching, they'd be watching as we battled for glory just as we had done every Saturday for the last few months, the gods would be watching but more importantly the girls would be watching too. The, girl, would be watching...

They always came by to watch the games, pretending to be interested in football. I'd told my mother about it once and she said "well now Isaac, girls aren't interested in football, they are interested in the boys playing football." It hadn't made much sense at the time but Laurel had awoken in me an understanding of the nature of boys and girls and that primal desire to love and be loved and I knew then as I know now she had not been interested in football all along, or even boys, she had been interested in me. I was the reason she came to watch football on Saturdays.