The Desolate Pathway (a long short-story!)

1

The Desolate Pathway2

By: Mike Collard3

Three steady rings blare from the speakers held high on the wall. The hallways become a floodplain of students in desperate search of their cliques. Once they find their factions, the each group becomes a slow moving, sometimes stationary obstacle for the raging stampede of the masses.4

As I step into the hallway, I realize that I am the last to leave the classroom. This frequent observation leaves me in a state of repetition; I am on a path that has already been laid and will not stray from until the speakers no longer speak to me.5

While every other student storms for their long desired cafeteria lunch at the sides of their friends, I find myself shuffling my large sneakers the opposite direction through a dessert trail to my sanctuary. 6

As I kick the door to the open-air, I swing body forward to clear the evanescent gap my foot creates as well as to drop my head underneath the seemingly low overhead bar. I become aware my haste was not as rapid as I intended when I feel a snag on my pant leg restraining my movement. 7

My baggy work jeans, ragged white t-shirt, plus my tattered plaid vest has me looking like a male grunge freak, which is a visual expression of what others have made me into, a freak. I jerk my extremity from the jaws of the exit in the fury of denial my thought nourishes and I begin to hike, trying to forget about my pessimism and to carry on my serene voyage.8

The five enormous trees circling a grave of firm soil and shattered twigs have built for me a chimerical nook in which to rest in peace along with the shade from the millions of leaves dangling overhead. It is my sacred niche with a private symphony of harps being played with every gust and air as pure as a newborn’s heart. The sun peers through the tiny cracks of the canvas and sprinkles heavenly lights onto the bed of the sanctuary, my fortress of solitude. No one has dared to stray from their all too familiar path to lunch. Not once, over the seven long semesters I have been in this desecrate jungle has any of its sadistic creatures followed my trail.9

Some may consider my life a peaceful one, with time for thought and the complete freedom from the expectations that friends would require me to burden, but I have grown some-what weary of the loneliness that breeds inside me like a plague of darkness I dream to escape. However, because there is no immediate solution to my social dilemma, I shall answer to the annoying whining coming from the caverns of my stomach instead.10

The paper crumbles. The contents the sack previously held lay spewed across the ground. A bag of chips, a banana, and a juice box is all that await my eager taste buds today. I become the victim of my own lack of priorities. Yesterday’s pursuit to cure my boredom left me with a tower of homework for this mornings awakening. Having most of my time consumed, I had little left to prepare the miserable mess that rests in front of me now.11

A rustle of leaves at the door of my chapel snaps my neck as the noise yanks my wary eyes. The fiend looked to be a dark ghost with all features completely consumed from the flaming sunlight bordering its figure. It took a single step of the demon for me to recognize who it was.12

The name Jake Tanner escapes my awe-stricken mouth. He would be two inches shorter then me, but from the ground in which I lay he appears a celestial giant. A long forgotten friend from elementary school, he has much matured since then. He has always been, as far back as I can remember, the model image of what I thought the ideal prep would look like. The slick yet rugged brunet hair, bleach white smile, piercing blue eyes, and name brand clothing taken straight from every leading magazine of the previous week. Rich and popular was an insulting understatement for him.13

He glides up next to me only to snatch away my Cheetos’, the prize possession of my lunch sack. The furry that develops is compressed into a tiny ball in my chest and is held there with the knowledge of what Jake could do to me if I dare quarrel with a man with as many allies as he.14

The reason for his trespassing becomes obvious to me as I analyze all other feasible possibilities. With prom coming up, the student body had to vote for a king and queen. Jake and his girlfriend are considered sure-wins to all his followers, but his rival candidate, a punk rocker named Dane Wales, had a cult of his own. Dane not only had every anarchist and closet freak within the area under his wing, but was best friends with Beast, a notorious teen gang member that had already made a big name for himself as a ruthless and cold-blooded brute. They had become friends when Dane began dating Beast’s step sister. This comradeship gives Dane a certain level of respect, both of admiration and fear, from the weak and pathetic. According to the recent poles in the school newspaper, the two candidates have horded an equal number of voters.15

The only people that haven’t made up their minds on who to elect are the freaks, geeks, nerds, twerps, and all those belonging to the popular groups would never risk being seen with. For that reason alone is undoubtedly the primary motive for why Jake approaches the independent loner inside an invisible alcove at the time of day he is most in his state of chameleon.16

A mere six words. That’s all it takes to get me to submit to him. Handing me a campaign button, he gives his celebrity smile and hastily trudges off. Only six words and I am a mindless serf to the most unworthy of brutes. “Help me for old time’s sake.”17

With the love of my lunch already devoured by my unexpected visitor, I sulk at the pathetic sight of the insignificant leftovers. Both the banana and the juice are inhaled immediately leaving an assortment of garbage to be dragged inside the school.18

My rotund mesh of mess is arched into the already brimming trash bin. Remarkably it stays. A smirk emerges as I receive a minuscule moment of ecstasy from my accomplishment. As I begin to walk away, glimmer catches my eyes and they are thrown to discover Jake's button on top of the pile. I lift it up and pin it onto my shirt.19

Almost instantaneously a door swings open to my side and I sense my wrist squeezed from someone behind me. I feel my body being jerked into the all consuming darkness of the janitor’s closet. The joy I had so recently felt has been corrupted and reborn into an indescribable chaos. As quickly as the door had flung open it falls shut, but now with two new inhabitants in its clutches.20

Raised on the abusiveness of a brother, I had to learn at a young age how to defend myself. Until now, I had not had to use the skills my brother had forced onto me. However, his skills had proven ineffective against a member of Beast’s gang. Here is to see if that history of violence could have had some positive effect in my life. However, his skills had proven ineffective in a fight last year between him and what was thought to a member of Beast’s gang.21

The hand previously on my wrist has snapped to my neck. As I am trying not to panic, I get hit right in between my eyes and lose any sense of calm and turn to my deep intuition. As soon as I realize that it is the assaulter’s left hand that is clasping my throat, I swing my left fore-arm to block his follow-up punch. What little oxygen that was seeping through my wind pipe is abolished and my body is forced against the wall. In my ear I am whispered, “I will bury you alive just like I did your pathetic older brother.” My desperation for air illuminates as anger floods my veins; the fear and rage leads me to take the offense. As I sense another attack approaching, my fist instinctively uppercuts and I feel the punch strike flesh. Beautiful breath fills my lungs. As the attacker’s advantages dwindle, so does my fear of him.22

The knock I had received had forced testosterone into my pulsating heart. All that adrenaline has me lying blow after blow on anything my fist can reach. It seems as if each punch I gave put a gallon of sweat on my hands but that doesn’t at all fatigue my frantically swinging arms.23

A bell signaling the end of lunch draws me to a stop. I hear the distant sounds of screaming underclassmen behind me. Pushing off my adversary and stepping backwards, I collapse into the door. I quickly turn and fumble for the handle with an ever growing the thought that my aggressor would pummel me to my end if I were to give him enough time.24

Grabbed and pulled down.25

The piercing light expunges my vision. I am left blind to everything but the awkward silence and putrid smell of a nearby trashcan.26

All the anticipations of my peers racing the halls disappear as I enter the deafeningly soundless hallway. The perspiration from my fingers smears across my face as I try rubbing my eyes clear of the fog layered over them. At the same time, exhaustion blankets my whole body, crippling me to a resting state before I can solve the mystery of the silenced floodplain.27

Dreams of plenty play like films projected onto the inside of my sealed lids. My eyes open only to experience the pain of from bright rays of light that give a sensation all too familiar to me. As they begin to focus, the room becomes clearer and I notice a great sum of posters on the walls. An enlarged brain, a human skeleton, photos of healthy and clogged arteries, plus a multitude of pictures of organs and muscles tell me where I am and, recognizing that, I remember what happened before I arrived here.28

As I slowly regain my consciousness, my whole body begins to shriek with the core of my pain coming from an overwhelming throbbing repeatedly pulsating where I had been grabbed around the throat. As I rise, looking for a mirror to evaluate the damage, a bed that has been curtained off gains my awareness. My tender neck wrenches my attention back to itself before I get the will to investigate the fenced off asylum and I am leashed toward the mirror I had previously sought. 29

The mirror lay right next to the cloth fortress walls as well as the anonymous captive secluded within. I begin to wash my hands too distracted by my inquisitive mind to glance at my prior prime objective, the reflection no more than a slight eye raise away. As an intense color radiating from the sink breaks through my dazed thoughts, I am heaved back to reality. I notice blood on my hands and instantaneously think back to when I rubbed my eyes. The hit I had taken must have been fierce enough to break a couple layers of skin.30

Having finished the cleansing of my hands, I begin to gaze up to examine the damage absorbed by my face. Right before my head draws itself up I found it strange that a bleeding wound would not have hurt more. Glancing up, I don’t see anything, besides a very slight bruise, which would indicate I had been hit. However, there are four long dried streaks of red and what looked like a palm print on either side of my face, unquestionably from me trying to release my eyes from their blindness while I was in the hallway.31

I look to my side at the green ripples of drapes that taunt me by withholding its mysterious tenant. I cautiously grasp it with my trembling fingertips. My insignificant touch causes a vast series of waves to tremor the once calm mass. My head screams with anxious anticipation but my hand is struck motionless with the greatest of unease. As a faint signal of courage stretches to my arm, my body begins to shudder. With a swift slice, the curtain glides open.32

My knees collapse in a state of shock and I fall backwards. The gruesome shell of a sleeping carcass lay at rest on the cushioned table. Ruin lay to the body of this disfigured man as only the wrath of smite-full god could reign down on a single individual. A freshly lain cloth inadequately tries to cover up the severely bruised and barely breathing corpse. The view strikes a sense of awe into my being.33

My hands drag me backwards to my own jumbled cot, too disturbed to stay next to him but evenly as stunned as to prevent my eyesight from swaying from his body. He sits motionless, resting still, the guy that has been trampled so badly that I could barely make out his identity. This knowledge spread, throughout the building, fear drenched smog. My hands pull me further back until my shoulders hit chilling metal. 34

Propping myself up, my hand slithers across the sheet until a tough fabric collides with it. I look away from the massacred sufferer and turn to see a creased slip of paper displaying my name on its cover. Opening to view its contents, I read the text it withholds aloud in a low voice speaking the slightest of whispers. 35

Thank you for taking out my opponent’s primary pit-bull. I merely wanted your vote, but for you to do this for me has me owing you much gratitude. You have and always will be my friend. 36

Signed,37

Jake Tanner38

My ears grow cautiously alert with the sounds of footsteps protruding from the hallway. I heave my legs under the covers’ canvas and pull it up to shelter my body with the protection it provides. The shrillness of squealing projects from the room door’s handle and a wail of noise is released from its hinges. Tension strains my heart as a blue-cloaked man nears me, building into an abundant inferno blazing every last minute fabric of my innards.39

The instantaneous boom of speech in an almost completely dismal room quivers my body into a sudden flailing, upward spasm that is repeated by the guest as if a chain lightning had struck me and arced into every muscle between the two of us. 40

With the troubled water finally settling down and dissolving, the nurse gives approval to me, an authorization to leave at any moment of my choosing. “We will also be free to go to school on after you rest up tomorrow and Sunday if you so chose.” She pivots and hastens off, intentionally voiding a contractual requirement forcing her to check on the weakened fiend in the corner. Without glancing backwards, I follow her ever cooling tracks out the doorway and make my way home.  Three moons’ worth of sleep and relaxation would do my drained muscles a tad bit of good.41

Upon my arrival to school, Jake was the first to greet me and thank me once more for my deed. I graciously accept his awkwardly frank gratitude and seemingly artificial admiration. While denying his proposal to hang with him during lunch, I stressed my need to get to class. “I’ll see you later though, all right?” I shout back as I speed to my first hour’s classroom.42

“Yup, later,” He hollers back in a mildly agitated bellow. I can tell he was upset from the rejected offer, but I will have to make up a test during that time, and I really wanted to get it out of the way.43

As the day further untangles and I now head toward second period, many whispers ascend and slither around me like a swarm of locust thirsty with superstition. Rumors of strict fallacy spread in a furry of winds cascading through every crevasse of each hallway and classroom. A few I have heard so far have me placed as a bloodthirsty mongrel drawling random victims into closets and sucking the life from their bones, others display me as a silent, murderous assassin, reigning carnage on my foes. Both had made me laugh hysterically when I first heard them. 44

The most common fable in the gossip world, however, has portrayed me as a messiah, savior to those defiled by the presently comatose intimidator previously known as Beast. That was undoubtedly not my attention, but with the immense number of other loners and second-hand students approaching me and thanking me for my “valor” and “courage,” it seemed I had a clan of the previously damned forming behind me. As I am drawn into the horde’s adoration, my thoughts send a brief flash that the deference I am receiving should probably have me overflowing guilty for the devastating injuries sustained by Beast.45

In anyone else’s eyes I would be looked upon as a person who has everything one could desire. I am surrounded by people of all different groups, including Jake and his friends thanking me for his soon to be victory, Dane’s followers, who had left him from their lack of feared of his flimsy authority, and every other student too feeble to have stood up and raised their voices before now. I have been given that which I had, to a great extent, dreamed to have bestowed unto me. Not a single moment of quiet to take away from my busy life.46

To some, this is as close to haven as anyone can get, but for me, I had gotten weary of it the second it I became imprisoned in a cage of people. The constant demand of my attention becomes a weight impossible to bear. The constant warming mist provided by the mass’s voices dehydrates my body and crumples me into insignificance I am unable to recover from for the persistent forces surrounding are too great. Release seems out of reach.47

Second period disappears and I recognize Jake has somehow fallen off the face of the earth as more rumors begin to spread. This time they say that I am to become the next prom king, eliminating the other powerhouse who’s smashed and beat-up button I still parade on my chest. I still remember when he first handed me the cheap bribe. A place I had used to break away from the troubles of my world.48

The gears in my head begin to clank loudly, overpowering the boisterous hollering of the subordinates encasing me. My escape plan is materialized and prepared for as I am reminded of the habits of every individual in the building.49

Lunch grants itself the attendance of each and every mindless sheep that instinctively flocks to it on the automated trio of dings distributed by the cyclical speakers. My opportunity emerges. 50

I sprint the long path of carpet and concrete as well as sand and dirt to the archway of my haven. My heart throbs as my chest beats with pain. My knees buckle below me and are met by my wrist. My chassis continues downward and my hands are forced to pillar its weight. Head bobbling, I crawl into my blissful quarters and am given a welcome of vines gently caressing my shoulders. The soft dirt conforms between my fingers as my arms prepare to collapse under the stress. Falling, the last morsel of energy is spent to fold onto my back. The trickle of flowing air becomes a clear, vibrant sound that ripens as it passes. Specks of sunlight beam through the exhausted eyelids and give view into a chimerical abyss with the sweet smell of decaying leaves catering to every satisfaction of my nose and lungs. My eyes open one last time to reap the pleasure provided by my sanctuary.51

A murderously tall figure looms above me leaving me to see nothing but the light shimmering in its background and a glare beaming from its hand. It rapidly jumps forward and injects the bottom of its palm into my chest. The friends I had originally wanted so bad, and then fled so quickly from have once again become that which I desire the most to notice me.52

A single voice begins circles me into dizziness as my body fades into numbness. “We could have been friends, even if it would have been just for old times sake, but I guess times changed, and, along with them, so have I.” Those words bleed into an endless lullaby that ensnares me in a chasm of an eternal fate. 53