So, I started out with an idea to take a picture and see if I could indeed get a thousand words out of it. This time, my first go around I did not. I could have kept working on it or polished it up but it kind of felt like cheating in a way. This was kind of born out of the #freewrite stuff that has such a great community on here. I hope if you read it you enjoy. Please feel free to leave any comments or come up with your own picture and shoot for a thousand words (or use this one!)!
Watch Your Step
It's not a simple thing to see Them and walk away. To know that They are there all the time, out of sight, waiting for you to see. Oh, the things They could show you.
Since the beginning, and now I'm a simple man, that concept is too big, more of a guess. They have been here. Beyond. Well, beyond for you and me, I suppose for them it's just another Monday.
I don't know what They were, all I know is that I've never wanted to stay somewhere more in all my life. I've never wanted to leave somewhere faster than that moment.
Like you I suspect, I've been stuck at home. Cooped up. Quarantined. I do break away a few times a day for some fresh air. It was on one of these outdoor dalliances when things got weird. Not weird like running into your ex-fiancee at the grocery store during a three day bender weird, but weird, weird.
It was the same walk I take every day. Out the front door, down the street a few blocks and into the local park. It's well traveled, I see the same people. I tend to avoid them. Today it was empty. It was quiet. Yeah, squirrels frolicked and dragonfly's flew but it felt eerie.
Then I heard the music. A light tinkling, akin to cheap wind chimes from the local garden center, but underneath that, a buzz, a low hum. I felt it.
And down the path she comes. Zooming right by me, a blur of hair and all smiles. Off the path, through the grass and into the thick brush bordering the trees and gone. What you don't know that I know is this park sits atop a cliff. This lady, this unknown cyclist, has about 10 yards of forest and phewwwwww 100 yards, straight down. I run after her.
It's dusk now, it shouldn't be. I had finished lunch not long before lacing my shoes and leaving the house. The shadows aren't right. I can still feel the hum, still hear the chimes and then BOOM I'm blasted with light. An electric blue haze. Fog and stars and am I still in the same forest? I am. She's here. Frozen, a statue of a moment, three feet off the ground, bathed in the same blue light.
We're in front of a lone tree and everything else is mist. The humming grows louder, my teeth are chattering in reverberation, they could shatter. The source of the light, this glowing blue orb, bursts and all around these tiny floating creatures are singing. It was never chimes.
They're singing to me. They know my name and my past. They want to show me things and tell me things. Things that I know I should know. Things I know I shouldn't. They've told the lady on the bike. They start to tell me.
I feel so warm. I don't want to leave. They don't want me to leave. What fun we could have if only I would stay.
You know that feeling, fight or flight, knowing something is about to go bad before it goes bad. From my head to my toes all my being was screaming "RUN! GO, NOW! NOW!"
So here's the rub when you're dealing with some kind of inter-dimensional pixie folk. YOU. AREN'T. CALLING. THE. SHOTS
Now, I'm there, feet dangling above the ground right next to the lady on the bike. I'm not going anywhere.
It's all images. Flashing, one after the other. I think it's the story of us. Not me and the lady but us, as a people, as a species. It's not that great of a story. You know most of it, fill in the gaps where you need. It's as cyclical as they come.
They show me other things. I can't even begin to describe them. It's all colors and feelings. Space? Time? Creation? The End? They must have caught on to the fact it wasn't all assembling proper in my thick skull. Didn't pass the test, as it were. The three foot fall to the forest floor felt like a lifetime.
I look up in time to see the face of the lady before she flashes out of existence. At first I thought she was happy. Then I realize it is just her receding flesh revealing a skeleton grin.....cycling to her grave. A lifetime condensed into a moment.
I brush the dirt off the knees of my pants as best as I can. I hear people. Families in the park. Kid's playing. I walk back to the edge of the brush and part the branches, stepping back into the known universe. I don't remember it being so bright.
THE END
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