Weekly Wattpad Contest Entries

Survivor (#42)

This is my entry for Weekly Wattpad Contest  #42

 (warning - not for the squeamish) 

My life flashed before my eyes. 

They all say that.   In reality, it's just a moment.  That single eternal second where the gossamer veil separating 'here' from 'there' is breached.  The moment you become you.   Mine was 3:31 pm, February 23, 1977.  

The cacophonous trill of the final bell rang, it's brutal earsplitting sound echoing back upon it in the hollow corridors of dull linoleum and dented steel lockers, each poised like a bulimic for their afternoon purging.   The doors flung open, the herd poured out like a roiling river, made fat and dangerous by wild rains after a drought, flooding and breaking against every surface until, as such things always do, it ebbed and there was only quiet and a general air of relief tempered by callow resolution to the inevitable cleanup that would have to follow in their wake.  

Flotsam of the flood drifted here and there, the bits lost by accident.  I was jetsam.  Thrown out deliberately.  A spurned casualty of their sad, pathetic fear that to allow anyone else to float, they would somehow lose their buoyancy and be drawn down into the cold, dark depths where the truth lay.  The awareness that, when all was said and done, none of it really mattered.  The world was immense.  A sea teeming with so much variance that half of it existed in a nameless state.  Anonymous because of the ignorance of humanity, but also saved by it.  What humans didn't know about, they couldn't destroy. 

This was my thought process as I made my way down the stairs and out into a world of cold gray.   The wind that stirred was hesitant but bit hard with teeth as sharp as razors when it struck.  The walk was always my favorite time. It allowed me to strip away the day.  To, with each collision of my sneaker-clad foot to the cracked and crooked sidewalk, the crunching a percussive beat that moved me onward, I pulled free of the shadow of Willow Springs High School. 

There was construction on Elm preventing me from crossing.  The heavy, steamy stink of asphalt filling in potholes assailed my nose and I chose to take the longer route, turning down Ash with all the intention in the world to turn on Sycamore in a block and get back onto my usual path.   I never saw the man.  Not until he grabbed me, his hand crushing my lips against my teeth as he pulled me backward through his oil-stained drive and into the garage.   I tasted the coppery tang painting my tongue, the flavor of panic as I kicked and pried at his arm around my waist.  The smell of Hai Karate and old motor oil when he pushed himself down on me.   Crushing pain, the high-pitched scream of fabric tearing and rough breathing, bile burning the length of my throat. 

Then, all went quiet.  Still.   I could see the clock on the wall.  Dingy but visible, the red second hand sweeping in a wide swath, rushing downward like an executioner's axe then sweeping up like the trailing blood, tasting bitter, sticking to my thighs.   I watched the minute hand creeping, falling more limply toward the six.  Submitting to time's demanding pressure.  Hanging its head in shame, at the very lowest point it could reach.  

I reached as well.  The rust rough under my palm as I curled my fingers around the tire iron.  The almost comical clang of it against the source of that foul breathing, wheezing and puffing turned to a low moan.  Another fast twitch of my arm, the weight leaving me in a slumped flop to the side.   It was strange that my first thought was 'now I'm cold'.    I looked at the clock as I stood on shaking legs, aware of things only peripherally.   The clatter of the tool against concrete, the stickiness as I forced that first step.    

3:31 pm, February 23, 1977.    The moment I murdered your father.  

I did not think of the shameful weeks after, the disdain, the mockery.   I did not think of your birth.  Of your first day of Kindergarten.   Of your graduation or your wedding day.   I stand at the veil facing that moment when I ceased being anything but who I am.  A survivor.  

I turn my back.   I walk away. 

I will come to the veil again someday, and I will step past that moment. 

But not today.  

Today, I will survive.