Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2008 20:38:37 GMT -5
I wrote a short story, and I'm glad I finally got it out of me. I think it's really confusing and needs editing, so please, give me some advice on how to fix this one up xD.
I am the center of attention.
I am here, on the left side of the stage. The lights glare down at me with their harsh, bright eyes, and the students are looking at me as well, silent in wonder and fear. There may be a glint in my eyes – I am not sure – but I know that I am blushing and that my heart is pulsing faster than I have ever known before.
Two men stand before me, both dressed in raggy, dark clothes. I wonder if they have taken a shower in the past few days, and their raggedy five-o’-clock shadow only makes them more intimidating. One of them has beady brown eyes, the other a fresh blue, but both pairs are squinted and staring at me. I can’t tell what they’re whispering to each other, but they are conversing, and about me.
The cross behind me only makes my fear worse. I am tied to one at the moment; ropes bind my very wrists to the stubby arms that shoot out from the sides. My ankles have been grouped together and bound by a single chain. They have left my face untampered with, and for that I am both grateful and worried. I am still imagining horrible things, and am playing with the idea that they have not taped my mouth shut just so they can hear me scream.
“What is your name?”
If it was not silent before, it is now. I can hear no other sound but my own breathing, my own heart beating out of my chest. I choose not to take a sidelong glance for fear of the many watchful eyes that are upon me. I’d rather look the two menacing figures that stand opposite me in the eyes, that russet brown and that icy blue. Silence is not an option, and the burly fingers that toy with a black pistol in the big man’s back pocket signify that. I look up and say, “Jay Arresini.”
The man with blue eyes smiles and steps forward. He is not the one with the gun, and I like him more for some reason. His face crinkles into a half-smile, but his aura tells me that he is angry with me. He puts his hand on my shoulder in a seemingly amiable gesture, but I can feel his grip slowly tightening, a vice around my rapid heart, a noose around my strained neck. “Jay. We’re here for a good reason. So we want you to cooperate.” His voice is very smooth, not like I would imagine a threatening man’s voice to be. It doesn’t have a rough quality—in fact, if not for the circumstances, I would think this man to be very eloquent. He lifts his arm and points down to the right side of the stage. The brown-eyed man trots over behind the right wing of the stage, and up comes the blue curtain.
A young boy a few years younger than me is squirming, tied to a cross identical to mine. His mouth is taped shut, but I can hear the muffled wisps of voice that attempt to escape the silver barrier. Tears are running down his face, and he is fighting.
“Who is that?” the man in front of me asks.
“My brother,” I respond quickly.
The quiet man pulls the pistol out of his back pocket and points it at the boy tied to the other cross. They don’t have to say anything. I already know that one wrong answer—or at least an answer they don’t like—could mean the demise of my younger sibling.
I look over my right shoulder. My finger is not cold anymore, but I can still feel the strange machine that it is tied to. A polygraph, a lie detector, a way that these two men will know if I am telling the truth. My eyes narrow as I can see the little silver pen scribble across the graph, leaving a menacing trail of black ink. The eloquent man starts laughing, and for the first time I wonder why the brown eyed one hasn’t talked. Maybe he is mute. But even if he is, I can feel the air of hatred he has about him, one of anger and malevolence. It’s almost as if he knows something I’ve done that even I cannot begin to fathom. But that doesn’t really matter now, does it? My brother’s life is at stake, as is mine. It would be better for both of us if I answered truthfully.
But still…
There are so many things I don’t want to be truthful about. Things I want to stay inside until the winds cannot blow them out anymore. My eyes are not deceiving them, those two. They can see that there is something I am hiding from them, I can tell. The blue eyed man can see right through the tainted windows and into my soul.
“Are you Jewish?”
I attempt to glower at the talking man, but I think it comes off as a sheepish stare. I am guilty. They know it.
“Yes.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t help,” the man comments with a smile.
He takes a slow stroll across the stage, making sure to look out onto the audience. There are no teachers; all of them have been shipped off to somewhere far from where I am hanging. I cannot see the clock, but I know that it’s around 12:30. If these two hold us up for long enough, parents will begin to worry. They’ll come. And I don’t want to imagine the fate that they will innocently meet, especially on top of all of the things that are happening at the moment.
“Have you…ever had a crush?”
The question comes as a surprise. A crush? Why would this trivial query come up in such a serious interrogation. I have suspicions, but I don’t want to believe that they can know. I can’t see how they could possibly know already. Even though they have rummaged through my soul like it is a file cabinet. Even though they’ve seen my eyes—seen through them.
But is this what it’s all about? Why I’m here?
“Yes.”
“Still have a crush?” the blue eyed man asks casually. Almost as if we were having a friendly conversation. The more friendly he seems the more frightening he becomes.
“Yes.”
The lie detector makes a slight flinch, but the silent man nods. He knows that I’m telling the truth. The eloquent man takes a good look at me with his icy eyes. Something about them is refreshingly inviting, even in this situation. What charisma this criminal has! There’s something about him that I just can’t put my finger on, something that makes me wonder how he can possibly be who he is. What is deceiving in this world? How can someone put of an air of friendliness and be so heartless?
My brother seems to have calmed down, and instead listens to the serene conversation that begins to form. The audience is most likely a little more trustworthy, though I’m sure that everyone is still quite unnerved.
The talkative one stops pacing in front of me, and sits down. “Where does your crush live?”
Why is he so interested in my crush? I glance over at the lie detector, watching it go rhythmicly up and down, taking sharp turns wherever necessary. That is the beating of my heart, the speed at which it pumps energy through my very veins. How can so simple sustain me? What is it that makes me live? And is this all these two men care about? Who I have a middle-school crush on?
“Here. In Roslit City.”
Now I start to see what’s going on. I think they know, but they want me to say it nonetheless. There is still a great deal of hope in me. I can see it in my head; that little white light that is telling me that they don’t know yet, that they’re toying with me just to have a little fun until things start getting ugly. I don’t know what they want with us – with me.
The man with blue eyes saunters behind my and starts massaging my pained shoulders. I try not to show signs of contentment, but the worried creases on my face null out as nourishment flows through my muscles. The man laughs, light and airy, and it takes a little willpower to surpress a smile. This is not funny. And yet, his charisma is soothing to me, relaxing as if I was lazing around in a steamy room.
“Where does your crush go to school?”
All eyes and ears are on me as I take a breath to answer the question. I make the mistake of looking sideways and see that everyone is entranced with what is happening. All of us had our cell phones confiscated, so there is absolutely nothing to distract everyone from what is unraveling before their eyes. I bite my lip.
“Central Middle School. This school.”
“Good, good. You seem to be willing to cooperate.” The blue eyed man’s presence is more unsettling now, as if with each question I answer he becomes more blatantly dangerous. There is still a strange air of attraction around him. I am not infatuated with the one who is potentially going to bring about my death, but I gravitate towards him. I want to be around him. But only because he instills stagnance in my heart. He doesn’t start it. He placidly sets it to a slow stop.
All of a sudden, the boy tied up across the stage starts wrestling with his bindings. He is thrashing about, barely managing to budge the firmly planted cross. An echoing rattle sounds throughout the auditorium, and the silent man turns to face him. He pulls back a part of the gun, and with a click, the pistol loads.
My brother ceases to move, and sigh gratefully.
“Your brother, on the other hand…” the blue eyed man starts, but he doesn’t finish. “Anyway, what’s the first letter in your crush’s first name?”
I know where this is going, but I don’t want to know. I know they’ve figured it out already. At least, a part of me does. But the stronger part of me says that I have to keep going, to have that one piece of hope. I know they know, but I hope they don’t.
Now my eyes begin to water. The weaker part of me knows that this is it, and that part has somehow fought past the stronger-willed one and into my tear ducts. My vision starts to blur as I look up at the stage lights. I notice for the first time that I’m unnaturally warm. I am blushing and tearing, embarrassed that I’m going to have to admit everything in front of everyone, and scared for my life and that of my brother’s. I’m not ready for this, for any of this. Teenagers shouldn’t have to deal with this at all.
I take a deep breath as the students in the audience hold theirs in.
“J.”
The silence is finally broken, and the audience breaks out into a low whisper. I am slightly relieved that I don’t have to talk for the moment, but slightly worried for all of their lives. I look out onto the crowd, knowing that a red color is filling my face.
“Shut up!” the talkative man commands
They are all silent.
“What’s the last letter of your crush’s first name?”
That weaker part seems to be gaining reinforcements and taking over my body. I don’t know what’s going on inside of me. The emotions are so confused that I cannot feel sad or scared. It all happens so fast that I don’t know how to react. I am on the verge of revealing something I’ve vowed never to tell, and I’m telling it on the hopes that everyone in the room will stay alive. What’s going on here? What’s happening and why?
Why me?
What makes me so different from the others? Is it the way I walk, the way I talk? Is it the way I go about things? Can I be picked out – picked on, because of my differences? Is that what the world has turned into?
My chest is rising and falling, but am I really breathing? That sadness has mushed together with the determination and I am now numb inside. Everything wants to shut down, and I want to fall asleep, but I know that I have to stay awake to protect my brother. I have to wonder what’s going to happen when this is all over. Will I still be alive to see everyone’s reactions? Will I want to be alive then? It all blends in with the emotions, memories, dreams, fears. I don’t know what to think now, or what to feel, or what to do. I begin to shake uncontrollably, and the same, resounding echo fills the room. This time nothing is done to silence me, for there is nothing to do except wait or kill me. And they would rather wait.
“Let’s make this easier on you, huh? Okay? How about you just blurt it out. Say your crush’s full name.”
The blue eyed man’s voice takes on a totally different tone. It is almost motherly, calming. How can he expect to tame me, in a situation where everything I treasure is on the edge? What does he expect of me? Does he think that I am a child, that my problems will vanish as soon as there is someone to kiss the booboo? Is that how simple life really is?
I am calmer now.
My vision is gone now. I am blind from the tears that soak my eyes. There is nothing I can do to stop them, because a part of me knows that it’s over. There is no more cross, no more lie detector. There is the blue eyed man and the audience, and there is me. Nothing stands in between the three of us. All of a sudden, I can be honest with everybody. I can reveal everything that is internal, that I have observed, thought, reacted to. Something in me has unlocked, allowing all of that stuff that I thought the wind would never get to tumble out of my open mouth. My soul has been relieved of duty, and there is no willpower left to stop me. It will flow out of my veins and that will be that. It will be over, and there will be no more having to worry about it.
The blue eyed man smiles.
“Johnathan. Johnathan Naimer.”
And all of a sudden, the barriers are up again. I am crying. There is no more emotion inside of me. All of it has either leaked out, or has been locked up for safekeeping.
It’s over. The two of them knew it from the start.
“So you’re…homosexual?”
This one is surprisingly hard to force out of my lungs. I feel like there is no more left of me to give, that my life has been sapped up from me even before I am dead. Johnathan Naimer is in the audience, and he is probably trying to cope with the news. But I can barely think about him now; I can barely call him to mind because I cannot think anymore. All power is lost in me.
“Yes.”
There is a long silence as I recognize everything. There is the audience, the students, still silent from fear and surprise. Shock—chaos—fills the air with tension. There is the brown eyed man and my brother, on the stage, watching silently. I wonder what my sibling thinks of me now, now that he knows everything there is to know about me. And the brown eyed man, who has not uttered a word since I have known him, what’s going on inside his mind? What is he thinking about me now? I cannot tell if the gun is still pointed at anyone anymore. I just know that he is still there; I can feel his haunting presence at the other end of the stage.
And there is the blue eyed man. Even after this whole experience, this whole interrogation, he makes me a little calmer, a little more sane. I don’t know how it’s possible. The man who has caused me so much emotional damage manages to make me whole again, for a split second. Whole enough to think clearly. There is nothing for the next second and a half except for the blue eyed man, the eloquent one, the talkative one. He is standing to the side of me, looking down at me. I can feel the heat of his gaze upon me, but whether it is fervent respect or downright hatred I cannot tell. Everything is a dream to me now, as if I am being lifted up into the heavens as my vision disappears. I feel like I can faint and wake up from this nightmare of a reality. I know that it is not a dream, but I am in one. Purely in a dream.
Those icy blue eyes.
“Shoot him.”
I am here, on the left side of the stage. The lights glare down at me with their harsh, bright eyes, and the students are looking at me as well, silent in wonder and fear. There may be a glint in my eyes – I am not sure – but I know that I am blushing and that my heart is pulsing faster than I have ever known before.
Two men stand before me, both dressed in raggy, dark clothes. I wonder if they have taken a shower in the past few days, and their raggedy five-o’-clock shadow only makes them more intimidating. One of them has beady brown eyes, the other a fresh blue, but both pairs are squinted and staring at me. I can’t tell what they’re whispering to each other, but they are conversing, and about me.
The cross behind me only makes my fear worse. I am tied to one at the moment; ropes bind my very wrists to the stubby arms that shoot out from the sides. My ankles have been grouped together and bound by a single chain. They have left my face untampered with, and for that I am both grateful and worried. I am still imagining horrible things, and am playing with the idea that they have not taped my mouth shut just so they can hear me scream.
“What is your name?”
If it was not silent before, it is now. I can hear no other sound but my own breathing, my own heart beating out of my chest. I choose not to take a sidelong glance for fear of the many watchful eyes that are upon me. I’d rather look the two menacing figures that stand opposite me in the eyes, that russet brown and that icy blue. Silence is not an option, and the burly fingers that toy with a black pistol in the big man’s back pocket signify that. I look up and say, “Jay Arresini.”
The man with blue eyes smiles and steps forward. He is not the one with the gun, and I like him more for some reason. His face crinkles into a half-smile, but his aura tells me that he is angry with me. He puts his hand on my shoulder in a seemingly amiable gesture, but I can feel his grip slowly tightening, a vice around my rapid heart, a noose around my strained neck. “Jay. We’re here for a good reason. So we want you to cooperate.” His voice is very smooth, not like I would imagine a threatening man’s voice to be. It doesn’t have a rough quality—in fact, if not for the circumstances, I would think this man to be very eloquent. He lifts his arm and points down to the right side of the stage. The brown-eyed man trots over behind the right wing of the stage, and up comes the blue curtain.
A young boy a few years younger than me is squirming, tied to a cross identical to mine. His mouth is taped shut, but I can hear the muffled wisps of voice that attempt to escape the silver barrier. Tears are running down his face, and he is fighting.
“Who is that?” the man in front of me asks.
“My brother,” I respond quickly.
The quiet man pulls the pistol out of his back pocket and points it at the boy tied to the other cross. They don’t have to say anything. I already know that one wrong answer—or at least an answer they don’t like—could mean the demise of my younger sibling.
I look over my right shoulder. My finger is not cold anymore, but I can still feel the strange machine that it is tied to. A polygraph, a lie detector, a way that these two men will know if I am telling the truth. My eyes narrow as I can see the little silver pen scribble across the graph, leaving a menacing trail of black ink. The eloquent man starts laughing, and for the first time I wonder why the brown eyed one hasn’t talked. Maybe he is mute. But even if he is, I can feel the air of hatred he has about him, one of anger and malevolence. It’s almost as if he knows something I’ve done that even I cannot begin to fathom. But that doesn’t really matter now, does it? My brother’s life is at stake, as is mine. It would be better for both of us if I answered truthfully.
But still…
There are so many things I don’t want to be truthful about. Things I want to stay inside until the winds cannot blow them out anymore. My eyes are not deceiving them, those two. They can see that there is something I am hiding from them, I can tell. The blue eyed man can see right through the tainted windows and into my soul.
“Are you Jewish?”
I attempt to glower at the talking man, but I think it comes off as a sheepish stare. I am guilty. They know it.
“Yes.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t help,” the man comments with a smile.
He takes a slow stroll across the stage, making sure to look out onto the audience. There are no teachers; all of them have been shipped off to somewhere far from where I am hanging. I cannot see the clock, but I know that it’s around 12:30. If these two hold us up for long enough, parents will begin to worry. They’ll come. And I don’t want to imagine the fate that they will innocently meet, especially on top of all of the things that are happening at the moment.
“Have you…ever had a crush?”
The question comes as a surprise. A crush? Why would this trivial query come up in such a serious interrogation. I have suspicions, but I don’t want to believe that they can know. I can’t see how they could possibly know already. Even though they have rummaged through my soul like it is a file cabinet. Even though they’ve seen my eyes—seen through them.
But is this what it’s all about? Why I’m here?
“Yes.”
“Still have a crush?” the blue eyed man asks casually. Almost as if we were having a friendly conversation. The more friendly he seems the more frightening he becomes.
“Yes.”
The lie detector makes a slight flinch, but the silent man nods. He knows that I’m telling the truth. The eloquent man takes a good look at me with his icy eyes. Something about them is refreshingly inviting, even in this situation. What charisma this criminal has! There’s something about him that I just can’t put my finger on, something that makes me wonder how he can possibly be who he is. What is deceiving in this world? How can someone put of an air of friendliness and be so heartless?
My brother seems to have calmed down, and instead listens to the serene conversation that begins to form. The audience is most likely a little more trustworthy, though I’m sure that everyone is still quite unnerved.
The talkative one stops pacing in front of me, and sits down. “Where does your crush live?”
Why is he so interested in my crush? I glance over at the lie detector, watching it go rhythmicly up and down, taking sharp turns wherever necessary. That is the beating of my heart, the speed at which it pumps energy through my very veins. How can so simple sustain me? What is it that makes me live? And is this all these two men care about? Who I have a middle-school crush on?
“Here. In Roslit City.”
Now I start to see what’s going on. I think they know, but they want me to say it nonetheless. There is still a great deal of hope in me. I can see it in my head; that little white light that is telling me that they don’t know yet, that they’re toying with me just to have a little fun until things start getting ugly. I don’t know what they want with us – with me.
The man with blue eyes saunters behind my and starts massaging my pained shoulders. I try not to show signs of contentment, but the worried creases on my face null out as nourishment flows through my muscles. The man laughs, light and airy, and it takes a little willpower to surpress a smile. This is not funny. And yet, his charisma is soothing to me, relaxing as if I was lazing around in a steamy room.
“Where does your crush go to school?”
All eyes and ears are on me as I take a breath to answer the question. I make the mistake of looking sideways and see that everyone is entranced with what is happening. All of us had our cell phones confiscated, so there is absolutely nothing to distract everyone from what is unraveling before their eyes. I bite my lip.
“Central Middle School. This school.”
“Good, good. You seem to be willing to cooperate.” The blue eyed man’s presence is more unsettling now, as if with each question I answer he becomes more blatantly dangerous. There is still a strange air of attraction around him. I am not infatuated with the one who is potentially going to bring about my death, but I gravitate towards him. I want to be around him. But only because he instills stagnance in my heart. He doesn’t start it. He placidly sets it to a slow stop.
All of a sudden, the boy tied up across the stage starts wrestling with his bindings. He is thrashing about, barely managing to budge the firmly planted cross. An echoing rattle sounds throughout the auditorium, and the silent man turns to face him. He pulls back a part of the gun, and with a click, the pistol loads.
My brother ceases to move, and sigh gratefully.
“Your brother, on the other hand…” the blue eyed man starts, but he doesn’t finish. “Anyway, what’s the first letter in your crush’s first name?”
I know where this is going, but I don’t want to know. I know they’ve figured it out already. At least, a part of me does. But the stronger part of me says that I have to keep going, to have that one piece of hope. I know they know, but I hope they don’t.
Now my eyes begin to water. The weaker part of me knows that this is it, and that part has somehow fought past the stronger-willed one and into my tear ducts. My vision starts to blur as I look up at the stage lights. I notice for the first time that I’m unnaturally warm. I am blushing and tearing, embarrassed that I’m going to have to admit everything in front of everyone, and scared for my life and that of my brother’s. I’m not ready for this, for any of this. Teenagers shouldn’t have to deal with this at all.
I take a deep breath as the students in the audience hold theirs in.
“J.”
The silence is finally broken, and the audience breaks out into a low whisper. I am slightly relieved that I don’t have to talk for the moment, but slightly worried for all of their lives. I look out onto the crowd, knowing that a red color is filling my face.
“Shut up!” the talkative man commands
They are all silent.
“What’s the last letter of your crush’s first name?”
That weaker part seems to be gaining reinforcements and taking over my body. I don’t know what’s going on inside of me. The emotions are so confused that I cannot feel sad or scared. It all happens so fast that I don’t know how to react. I am on the verge of revealing something I’ve vowed never to tell, and I’m telling it on the hopes that everyone in the room will stay alive. What’s going on here? What’s happening and why?
Why me?
What makes me so different from the others? Is it the way I walk, the way I talk? Is it the way I go about things? Can I be picked out – picked on, because of my differences? Is that what the world has turned into?
My chest is rising and falling, but am I really breathing? That sadness has mushed together with the determination and I am now numb inside. Everything wants to shut down, and I want to fall asleep, but I know that I have to stay awake to protect my brother. I have to wonder what’s going to happen when this is all over. Will I still be alive to see everyone’s reactions? Will I want to be alive then? It all blends in with the emotions, memories, dreams, fears. I don’t know what to think now, or what to feel, or what to do. I begin to shake uncontrollably, and the same, resounding echo fills the room. This time nothing is done to silence me, for there is nothing to do except wait or kill me. And they would rather wait.
“Let’s make this easier on you, huh? Okay? How about you just blurt it out. Say your crush’s full name.”
The blue eyed man’s voice takes on a totally different tone. It is almost motherly, calming. How can he expect to tame me, in a situation where everything I treasure is on the edge? What does he expect of me? Does he think that I am a child, that my problems will vanish as soon as there is someone to kiss the booboo? Is that how simple life really is?
I am calmer now.
My vision is gone now. I am blind from the tears that soak my eyes. There is nothing I can do to stop them, because a part of me knows that it’s over. There is no more cross, no more lie detector. There is the blue eyed man and the audience, and there is me. Nothing stands in between the three of us. All of a sudden, I can be honest with everybody. I can reveal everything that is internal, that I have observed, thought, reacted to. Something in me has unlocked, allowing all of that stuff that I thought the wind would never get to tumble out of my open mouth. My soul has been relieved of duty, and there is no willpower left to stop me. It will flow out of my veins and that will be that. It will be over, and there will be no more having to worry about it.
The blue eyed man smiles.
“Johnathan. Johnathan Naimer.”
And all of a sudden, the barriers are up again. I am crying. There is no more emotion inside of me. All of it has either leaked out, or has been locked up for safekeeping.
It’s over. The two of them knew it from the start.
“So you’re…homosexual?”
This one is surprisingly hard to force out of my lungs. I feel like there is no more left of me to give, that my life has been sapped up from me even before I am dead. Johnathan Naimer is in the audience, and he is probably trying to cope with the news. But I can barely think about him now; I can barely call him to mind because I cannot think anymore. All power is lost in me.
“Yes.”
There is a long silence as I recognize everything. There is the audience, the students, still silent from fear and surprise. Shock—chaos—fills the air with tension. There is the brown eyed man and my brother, on the stage, watching silently. I wonder what my sibling thinks of me now, now that he knows everything there is to know about me. And the brown eyed man, who has not uttered a word since I have known him, what’s going on inside his mind? What is he thinking about me now? I cannot tell if the gun is still pointed at anyone anymore. I just know that he is still there; I can feel his haunting presence at the other end of the stage.
And there is the blue eyed man. Even after this whole experience, this whole interrogation, he makes me a little calmer, a little more sane. I don’t know how it’s possible. The man who has caused me so much emotional damage manages to make me whole again, for a split second. Whole enough to think clearly. There is nothing for the next second and a half except for the blue eyed man, the eloquent one, the talkative one. He is standing to the side of me, looking down at me. I can feel the heat of his gaze upon me, but whether it is fervent respect or downright hatred I cannot tell. Everything is a dream to me now, as if I am being lifted up into the heavens as my vision disappears. I feel like I can faint and wake up from this nightmare of a reality. I know that it is not a dream, but I am in one. Purely in a dream.
Those icy blue eyes.
“Shoot him.”
