A Treacherous Landscape
Oct. 17th, 2024 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muchtooarrogantLJI Week 12: From the Wreckage
What I remember from that night were the sirens. An artificially sustained screeching that reached into my dreams, conjuring darkness along every pathway I traveled, a presage of dread I couldn't escape.
Ben and I had been condemned to run laps together, a shared punishment for some minor infraction Coach Anderson had pinned on us. I was running flat out, because coach would add laps if he suspected you were slacking in any way, but Ben wasn't. He was a good ten feet or so in front of me, walking backwards, making hideous faces, flipping me off with both hands, clowning for all he was worth. Heart pounding, gasping for breath, I frantically gestured at him to stop. If Anderson saw him we'd both be screwed.
No matter how fast I ran, Ben was always the same distance in front of me. Why wasn't he getting closer? His clowning was starting to piss me off. Didn't he realize that if coach caught him, he'd make us both run until we couldn't run anymore, until we threw up everything we had eaten for lunch, until we collapsed from fatigue?
We circled the track once, twice, and had just begun our third circuit when the sun disappeared. There was no slow progression over the horizon, no lingering twilight. One moment we were surrounded by light, and then there was only darkness. Although the blackness was absolute, I somehow knew that Ben was still in front of me, still clowning, still walking backwards into … something terrible.
"Stop!"
I tried to scream it, tried to warn my friend, but only managed a ghastly whisper. A pitiful hiss of air through my gaping mouth with no volume.
My father's voice was gentle. "Theo, I need you to wake up now."
I blinked, trying to dispel the fog of my nightmare. The all-encompassing blackness was gone, and I could see dad standing beside my bed. The door to my room was open, and the hallway light was on, but there was another light as well, a flickering orange glow from my window. I struggled upright and shook my head. Something was very wrong.
All around us, there was a horrible ululating noise.
"What's that sound?"
"Son," he said, and although he didn't raise his voice, I sensed his urgency in that one word, "I need you to get dressed, and then we need to go outside."
He pulled the covers from around my waist, and I shied back in embarrassment. I was wearing underwear, but still felt terribly exposed. There were shouts from outside, and the wailing, the sirens, were louder now.
"But dad, what's …"
"No time for questions," he insisted, "I'll explain what's happening, but only after we're all outside."
Of course, once we were all outside, standing with our neighbors in the street, no explanation was necessary. Looking at the tower of flames clawing at the nighttime sky, I knew that the danger I had sensed for my friend had been real.
I was reading a book in the family room when Lauren got home. She came thundering up the stairs with a disjointed series of thumps that sounded like a pack of five stampeding girls, even though it was just her. She was shrugging out of her backpack when she appeared, and casually discarded it on the floor before continuing down the hallway towards her room.
"Hey Theo," she called over her shoulder, "Jess is coming over in a bit and we're going to study."
I made a noncommittal noise, and considered whether I should go hide in my room. Jess wasn't as annoying as some of Lauren's other friends, was even kind of cute in a freshman way, but it was a pretty safe bet that very little actual studying would happen while she was here.
"Where are mom and dad?"
Her voice was muffled, and the banging noises from her bedroom sounded a bit like a demolition in progress. Maybe her and the parental units had decided to flip our house, and no one had bothered to let me know?
After two years, I guess it wasn't supposed to be a big deal anymore. It certainly felt like everyone around me had moved on and expected me to do the same, but this, the day before the night it happened, that day would always suck for me. I had been jumpy and miserable since waking up, flinching at unexpected noises, and on the way home, the distant sound of a siren had me flashing back to that night. Not the image of the burning house, but the dreamscape with Ben sauntering backwards in front of me, his mocking gestures, the sudden descent of darkness, and the overwhelming terror of that moment.
"Theo?" Lauren was standing beside me. "Didn't you hear me?"
"I … I'm sorry." The Great Gatsby was my shield, a mask of paper I could try and hide behind. "What did you say?"
"Mom and dad?" she asked patiently, and now there was a hint of dawning realization in her voice.
"Oh," I shrugged, "you know how half the people in mom's office have birthdays in October, and they lump them all together into one big party?" She nodded. "They went to that."
"Okay." She hesitated, seemed on the verge of saying something else, but at that moment the doorbell rang. "There's Jess."
Was it relief I saw on her face before she turned away and ran down stairs?
I glanced up at the windows overlooking our back yard, as well as the houses behind us. The blinds were closed of course, they had been ever since that night. Even so, I could tell from the absence of light around the window's edges that it was finally dark outside, and this awful day was almost over.
I dropped Gatsby on the end table, and got up from the couch. I should take a walk or something. If my mood was going to be this crappy, there was no sense in dragging everyone else down with me.
I walked into the upstairs bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and gave my reflection a quick check. There weren't actual circles under my eyes just yet, but there were definitely the beginnings of shadows there. After drying off my face, I emerged from the bathroom to find Lauren and Jess sitting at the round wooden table in the middle of our family room. Jess's backpack had joined Lauren's on the floor, but as yet, no books were in evidence on the table.
"Hi Theo," Jess said when she caught sight of me.
I nodded at her, and walked across the family room to the set of shaded windows. I had a sudden rebellious urge to break the taboo, open the blinds and look out at what we had been ignoring for so long. Slowly, expecting Lauren to challenge me at any moment, I turned the rod that would open the blinds for the window in front of me.
I had been right. It was dark outside, and I could see lights on in the upper story of the house behind us and to the right, but of course, nothing except a black void where Ben's house had stood on the left. There was a street light beyond the black expanse, but nothing at all in the space where I had spent so much time with him and his family.
There was a burst of giggles behind me, and then Lauren called my name. "Theo!"
She hadn't noticed. "Yeah," I turned to face them, for once grateful to be distracted.
"There's a website we're trying out," Lauren explained. Holding up her phone, she demanded, "Whisper something."
I stared at her bemusedly for a second, and Jess burst into another fit of giggles. My emotions were all over the place, but I shouldn't ruin the evening for my sister and her friend. I considered what to say, and then whispered, "They say girls are made of sugar and spice, but they haven't met my sister." Snarky, but not hateful.
She flashed me a thumbs-up, and started tapping her phone.
"What does it do?" I asked. "Is it some sort of filter?"
"You upload a video, and it reads your lips," Lauren proclaimed.
"Huh," I shrugged, and turned to face the window again.
That was weird, someone, a girl, was walking where Ben's house had been. No, not walking … she was dancing.
"What the hell?" I murmured.
Was it maybe kids playing some sort of idiotic prank? If so, it wasn't right!
"Hey," it was Lauren's voice, "I am …"
"Nope," Jess taunted, "he's right. You're not any of those things!"
As I turned, there was a flurry of movement, and then two figures were rolling on the floor laughing. I stepped around them, and threw a brief explanation over my shoulder, "Lauren, I'm going out for a while." If she answered me, I didn't hear her.
Before the fire, Ben and I had often run a route through the neighborhood together, and for some reason, we made it a habit to start at his place. I still ran sometimes, but had changed the route so that I was never in danger of accidently turning on his street. Walking towards his house now felt alien, as though I was exploring a treacherous landscape full of unknown threats.
When I turned the corner, I noticed a car parked in the street in front of Ben's driveway. We had shot down that expanse of pavement on skateboards, bicycles, and on one notable occasion, a rolling chair temporarily liberated from his father's office. Now a family I had never seen before stood in the street, staring at the mostly empty space in front of them.
"It will take months," the dad was saying as I walked up, "but hopefully sometime next year, our house will be built here, and we'll be living inside it."
A girl, probably the one I had seen dancing from my upstairs vantage, asked, "Will there be kids I can play with?"
"Of course there will," her mother said, while smiling at me as though she were considering the feasibility of instantly recruiting me for her daughter's amusement.
I nodded at them politely as I passed, and kept walking down the street.
I had come running to defend my friend's memory and non-existent house from possible mockery or juvenile vandalism, and instead had discovered a family celebrating the beginning of their life story in what was for them a new location. My best friend was gone, the debris and ashes of his life swept away from this street months ago, while I relived a premonition of danger that had come too late.
"I'd go back in time and walk through fire to carry you out on my back if I could," I told the image of Ben in my head, "but I can't. I'm sorry, I can't!"
For once, Ben didn't make any rude gestures, and there was no clowning, only a sad smile. He raised a hand, waved farewell, and vanished. This time though, the light remained.
Author's Note
The website Lauren and Jess were playing with was https://www.readtheirlips.com/
The first idea I had about this week's prompt was the image of a girl dancing in the ruins of a burned house. I had no idea why she was there or what she was doing, only that someone saw her and came to investigate. I won't tell you all the crazy theories I played with to try and explain why she was there, but I think I finally ended up in the right place.
Dan
What I remember from that night were the sirens. An artificially sustained screeching that reached into my dreams, conjuring darkness along every pathway I traveled, a presage of dread I couldn't escape.
Ben and I had been condemned to run laps together, a shared punishment for some minor infraction Coach Anderson had pinned on us. I was running flat out, because coach would add laps if he suspected you were slacking in any way, but Ben wasn't. He was a good ten feet or so in front of me, walking backwards, making hideous faces, flipping me off with both hands, clowning for all he was worth. Heart pounding, gasping for breath, I frantically gestured at him to stop. If Anderson saw him we'd both be screwed.
No matter how fast I ran, Ben was always the same distance in front of me. Why wasn't he getting closer? His clowning was starting to piss me off. Didn't he realize that if coach caught him, he'd make us both run until we couldn't run anymore, until we threw up everything we had eaten for lunch, until we collapsed from fatigue?
We circled the track once, twice, and had just begun our third circuit when the sun disappeared. There was no slow progression over the horizon, no lingering twilight. One moment we were surrounded by light, and then there was only darkness. Although the blackness was absolute, I somehow knew that Ben was still in front of me, still clowning, still walking backwards into … something terrible.
"Stop!"
I tried to scream it, tried to warn my friend, but only managed a ghastly whisper. A pitiful hiss of air through my gaping mouth with no volume.
My father's voice was gentle. "Theo, I need you to wake up now."
I blinked, trying to dispel the fog of my nightmare. The all-encompassing blackness was gone, and I could see dad standing beside my bed. The door to my room was open, and the hallway light was on, but there was another light as well, a flickering orange glow from my window. I struggled upright and shook my head. Something was very wrong.
All around us, there was a horrible ululating noise.
"What's that sound?"
"Son," he said, and although he didn't raise his voice, I sensed his urgency in that one word, "I need you to get dressed, and then we need to go outside."
He pulled the covers from around my waist, and I shied back in embarrassment. I was wearing underwear, but still felt terribly exposed. There were shouts from outside, and the wailing, the sirens, were louder now.
"But dad, what's …"
"No time for questions," he insisted, "I'll explain what's happening, but only after we're all outside."
Of course, once we were all outside, standing with our neighbors in the street, no explanation was necessary. Looking at the tower of flames clawing at the nighttime sky, I knew that the danger I had sensed for my friend had been real.
I was reading a book in the family room when Lauren got home. She came thundering up the stairs with a disjointed series of thumps that sounded like a pack of five stampeding girls, even though it was just her. She was shrugging out of her backpack when she appeared, and casually discarded it on the floor before continuing down the hallway towards her room.
"Hey Theo," she called over her shoulder, "Jess is coming over in a bit and we're going to study."
I made a noncommittal noise, and considered whether I should go hide in my room. Jess wasn't as annoying as some of Lauren's other friends, was even kind of cute in a freshman way, but it was a pretty safe bet that very little actual studying would happen while she was here.
"Where are mom and dad?"
Her voice was muffled, and the banging noises from her bedroom sounded a bit like a demolition in progress. Maybe her and the parental units had decided to flip our house, and no one had bothered to let me know?
After two years, I guess it wasn't supposed to be a big deal anymore. It certainly felt like everyone around me had moved on and expected me to do the same, but this, the day before the night it happened, that day would always suck for me. I had been jumpy and miserable since waking up, flinching at unexpected noises, and on the way home, the distant sound of a siren had me flashing back to that night. Not the image of the burning house, but the dreamscape with Ben sauntering backwards in front of me, his mocking gestures, the sudden descent of darkness, and the overwhelming terror of that moment.
"Theo?" Lauren was standing beside me. "Didn't you hear me?"
"I … I'm sorry." The Great Gatsby was my shield, a mask of paper I could try and hide behind. "What did you say?"
"Mom and dad?" she asked patiently, and now there was a hint of dawning realization in her voice.
"Oh," I shrugged, "you know how half the people in mom's office have birthdays in October, and they lump them all together into one big party?" She nodded. "They went to that."
"Okay." She hesitated, seemed on the verge of saying something else, but at that moment the doorbell rang. "There's Jess."
Was it relief I saw on her face before she turned away and ran down stairs?
I glanced up at the windows overlooking our back yard, as well as the houses behind us. The blinds were closed of course, they had been ever since that night. Even so, I could tell from the absence of light around the window's edges that it was finally dark outside, and this awful day was almost over.
I dropped Gatsby on the end table, and got up from the couch. I should take a walk or something. If my mood was going to be this crappy, there was no sense in dragging everyone else down with me.
I walked into the upstairs bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and gave my reflection a quick check. There weren't actual circles under my eyes just yet, but there were definitely the beginnings of shadows there. After drying off my face, I emerged from the bathroom to find Lauren and Jess sitting at the round wooden table in the middle of our family room. Jess's backpack had joined Lauren's on the floor, but as yet, no books were in evidence on the table.
"Hi Theo," Jess said when she caught sight of me.
I nodded at her, and walked across the family room to the set of shaded windows. I had a sudden rebellious urge to break the taboo, open the blinds and look out at what we had been ignoring for so long. Slowly, expecting Lauren to challenge me at any moment, I turned the rod that would open the blinds for the window in front of me.
I had been right. It was dark outside, and I could see lights on in the upper story of the house behind us and to the right, but of course, nothing except a black void where Ben's house had stood on the left. There was a street light beyond the black expanse, but nothing at all in the space where I had spent so much time with him and his family.
There was a burst of giggles behind me, and then Lauren called my name. "Theo!"
She hadn't noticed. "Yeah," I turned to face them, for once grateful to be distracted.
"There's a website we're trying out," Lauren explained. Holding up her phone, she demanded, "Whisper something."
I stared at her bemusedly for a second, and Jess burst into another fit of giggles. My emotions were all over the place, but I shouldn't ruin the evening for my sister and her friend. I considered what to say, and then whispered, "They say girls are made of sugar and spice, but they haven't met my sister." Snarky, but not hateful.
She flashed me a thumbs-up, and started tapping her phone.
"What does it do?" I asked. "Is it some sort of filter?"
"You upload a video, and it reads your lips," Lauren proclaimed.
"Huh," I shrugged, and turned to face the window again.
That was weird, someone, a girl, was walking where Ben's house had been. No, not walking … she was dancing.
"What the hell?" I murmured.
Was it maybe kids playing some sort of idiotic prank? If so, it wasn't right!
"Hey," it was Lauren's voice, "I am …"
"Nope," Jess taunted, "he's right. You're not any of those things!"
As I turned, there was a flurry of movement, and then two figures were rolling on the floor laughing. I stepped around them, and threw a brief explanation over my shoulder, "Lauren, I'm going out for a while." If she answered me, I didn't hear her.
Before the fire, Ben and I had often run a route through the neighborhood together, and for some reason, we made it a habit to start at his place. I still ran sometimes, but had changed the route so that I was never in danger of accidently turning on his street. Walking towards his house now felt alien, as though I was exploring a treacherous landscape full of unknown threats.
When I turned the corner, I noticed a car parked in the street in front of Ben's driveway. We had shot down that expanse of pavement on skateboards, bicycles, and on one notable occasion, a rolling chair temporarily liberated from his father's office. Now a family I had never seen before stood in the street, staring at the mostly empty space in front of them.
"It will take months," the dad was saying as I walked up, "but hopefully sometime next year, our house will be built here, and we'll be living inside it."
A girl, probably the one I had seen dancing from my upstairs vantage, asked, "Will there be kids I can play with?"
"Of course there will," her mother said, while smiling at me as though she were considering the feasibility of instantly recruiting me for her daughter's amusement.
I nodded at them politely as I passed, and kept walking down the street.
I had come running to defend my friend's memory and non-existent house from possible mockery or juvenile vandalism, and instead had discovered a family celebrating the beginning of their life story in what was for them a new location. My best friend was gone, the debris and ashes of his life swept away from this street months ago, while I relived a premonition of danger that had come too late.
"I'd go back in time and walk through fire to carry you out on my back if I could," I told the image of Ben in my head, "but I can't. I'm sorry, I can't!"
For once, Ben didn't make any rude gestures, and there was no clowning, only a sad smile. He raised a hand, waved farewell, and vanished. This time though, the light remained.
Author's Note
The website Lauren and Jess were playing with was https://www.readtheirlips.com/
The first idea I had about this week's prompt was the image of a girl dancing in the ruins of a burned house. I had no idea why she was there or what she was doing, only that someone saw her and came to investigate. I won't tell you all the crazy theories I played with to try and explain why she was there, but I think I finally ended up in the right place.
Dan
