By Hunter Cook
It was early morning. The fog was so thick that you couldn’t see more than ten feet in any given direction. The morning sky gives it a ghostly blue hue. It looks as though the sidewalk exists in another world, a world somewhere between life and death. In between moments a car will drive through the neighborhood. As it does, its headlights cut through this illusion. Burning through the fog like a lighthouse in the night. Just for a second. For a heartbeat. For a breath, the fog goes away. For a single moment, there is light in this half dead world. The boy fills his head with these thoughts as he walks along the sidewalk.
His black hoodie is wrapped around his skull tight. The strings bounce as he moves. Only a few small spikes of hair poke out, partially covering his eyes. A chill moves through the neighborhood, and the boy starts to see his breath add onto the fog. He pays it no mind and continues to fill his mind with morbid things. He walks forward.
Slow, casual. As though he has all the time in the world. As though nothing of this world matters to him. He sticks his hands in his pockets to avoid the winter breezes. It doesn’t help, his hands freeze. He pays it no mind and continues to walk. He passes house after house. Sometimes a dog will bark, sometimes they will follow behind him and continue barking on and on and on. Sometimes he will turn around and give them a curious look. He pulls the strings of his hoodie tight for he believes that people watch him at every turn.
He’s passed by these houses a thousand times. A thousand times he’s seen their fancy fences and damaged roofs. A thousand times he’s seen the children playing in the yard, or their parents enjoying themselves. Sick individuals that have not a care in the world for the atrocities that surround them on a daily basis. Too stuck in their own worlds to even look at another’s. The boy thinks these thoughts, and he feels a sickening pressure build in his face. He feels it’s warmth. But he does not stop. His feet do not stutter.
He continues walking. Never skipping a beat. More headlights appear amidst the growing fog. People going to work, or people taking their kids to school. Unaware of the boy’s presence through the fog. Dogs bark in the distance. The distance is taking its toll, it feels like he’s been walking forever. His walk settles into a rhythm. A rhythm that he could feel in his very soul.
He slowed, for he was approaching the end of the neighborhood. He continued slowing as he grew closer and closer to the fence that defined the property at the end of the street. He eventually stopped as he reached it. He stared at it in fear. He stood as frozen as a statue encased in concrete. Headlights cut through the fog drowning out the world, but only for a second. For only a second was the truth shown to him, and he realized that he could wait no longer. He stepped forward with hesitation. He grabbed the metal bars of the fence. He climbed up slowly. Much like when he had walked here in the first place, he was just going through the motions. He wasn’t really here. He was a thousand miles away. In a world of fog that no headlights could cut through.
A jolt of electricity bursts through his ankles as he lands on the rock of the driveway. He puts his hands in his pockets. He pulls his hood down. He walks forward to an old house. The fog seemed to grow thicker as he approached. Crows cawed in the distance. A murder landed and perched on a tree. Their eyes seemed to follow him as he walked. The flowers by the side of the house were blooming, seeming to grow in color as he approached.
A winter chill moves through the world. He didn’t bother knocking as he entered. He looked out the window next to the door, and saw a series of cars pulling up one by one. The boy walked into the living room and sat in a recliner as if he had done this a thousand times before. He watched as the priest talked to the woman laying in bed. Her voice was harsh. Her eyes were glazing over. Her breathing was getting more painful to listen to. The boy stood up straight and watched her with concern. Her husband stood above her keeping teary eyed vigil. The priest tried to hide a solemn look behind a smile. He hid grave news with jokes. No one in the room was deluded enough to be distracted from reality by his quips.
The boy laid his head back. People started flooding in. Men, women, teenagers, and children. Babies too small to walk for themselves. Elders too old to walk unassisted. The men asked the husband questions. They tried to hide their sadness behind their eyes with grave faces. If you looked close enough you could see the pain hollowing them out from the inside. The women embraced each other as they cried together. Perhaps they found strength in shared pain. Perhaps it made the pain hurt a little less. The teens stood away from everyone and stared at nothing while fighting back tears. Children too young to understand things burrowed themselves in the sides of their parents, or their older siblings. Even babies that had no concept of this world wept. The boy stood up from his chair, and walked over to one of the teenagers. He whispered in his ear. “I think you should say goodbye.”
The boy went from person to person whispering this in their ears. Then he hung back behind the wall. The woman on the bed could barely breathe, her eyes had closed, and she could say no more. The pain was too much for her to bear. The boy pulled his hood over his hair. He pulled the strings tight to cover his face out of some unspoken shame. He was making his way through the crowd of people when he saw a teenager that had hung back. Even after the boy had whispered in his ear the teen had stayed behind. The boy walked over to him.
“You’ll want to say goodbye. Trust me.” The boy said.
The teen just sat down in the recliner and buried his face in his hands. The boy went back through the crowd. He stood above the woman. He put his hand against her cheek.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked, holding his hand against her face.
He smiled down at her. Her eyes were shut, and his hood covered his face.
She coughed. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. He turned around and began walking away. He could hear the room fill with grief as he walked out the front door. His slow walk down the driveway slowly built up into a jog. His jog slowly turned into a sprint. He made his way to the fence and climbed up it as fast as his body could handle. This time when he landed he didn’t not stay standing. He crumpled beneath his own weight. He laid against the dark fence. Taking off his hood, he stared into the abyss.
He stared into that endless sea of fog that he couldn’t quite understand. He felt a winter chill touch his cheek tenderly. He felt the wind brush the hair out of his eyes. He slammed the back of his head against those metal bars. His eyes filled with tears. He sat there for a long time in that endless fog. Sobbing out loud because there wasn’t anyone out there for him to be afraid of hearing him.
A headlight cut through his empty world. As he got to his feet as he wiped away his tears. He covered his head with his hood, and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. More headlights appeared as the crowd drove from the house. The boy walked. He walked forward into that world of fog that seemed to only exist so it could be burned away by those beautiful beams of light. The murder roared in the sky above him as he walked. He just kept moving. Stopping only to observe the headlights.
