It was just all so sudden: he walked over there knowing her
parents wouldn't be home, walked in without knocking as he normally did when
they were gone, and stepped into her bedroom to see Ian and Julie lying there
nose to nose. What were they doing, or what would they say they were doing?
What would be their excuse?
“We were just
discussing the deeper meaning of life and preparing for future lessons in
philosophy for college when a seizure overcame me and Julie was giving me mouth
to mouth and you walked in at the moment her tongue became disengaged from my
throat,” Ian might say.
Or maybe Julie would chime in: “It's not what it looks
like, I was just practicing on Ian what I was going to do to you later, after
all he is a suitable stand in, don't you think? When I'm screwing Ian, in
spirit I'm really screwing you!”
At any rate, it was over, for both of them. As he reached
his house, he was determined to find his own way. Sure, he had already been
accepted into the same college as Julie and Ian, but he didn't have to go there.
He might have just barely squeaked out a 3.0 GPA when school was all said and
done, but he'd find somewhere to start a new life with new friends and a new
girl. Maybe he wouldn't go to school; maybe he'd just dive into the workforce.
There might be a lot of sharks in the water ready to devour a small fish like
him, but he was more up for the challenge of that then having to see either
Julie or Ian ever again.
He made his way to his room avoiding any eye contact or
words with his mother or stepfather, afraid the slightest bit of human
interaction would send him into a barrage of tears and unstoppable shakes. As
he went into his room he quietly closed the door, as much as he wanted to slam
the door shut several hundred times he knew that would quickly arouse
suspicion. Once he was in his room he quickly drew the blinds to make it as
dark as possible in the room. Eventually, they would come to his house to tell
him that what he had seen was an accident of some sort, and at that time he
would alert his parents that he didn't want to see them. Of course, they
wouldn't stop at the door, they would try knocking on the windows when the door
didn't work and he didn't want to look at them.
Right now all he wanted to do was turn off his mind and
give into a movie or TV show or something that didn't require a thought to
enter his sad little brain. Maybe Tenacious D, the HBO skit “Death of a Dream”
seemed apropos at the moment. What was the next step in the death of his dream?
Maybe Door to Door Rocking? No, there's too many memories to be had with
Tenacious D to keep his mind on the current situation at this time. An action
movie might fit the mood better. For sure a few explosions would cheer him up a
bit. Maybe Predator. The idea of a
humanity murdering unseen alien force ripping through a team of special ops
soldiers only to be thwarted in his scheme to take over the world by an overly
ripped Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed to warm his broken heart. It seemed like an
allegory for the soul: the Predator was his heartbreak, and now Schwarzenegger
must be his mind fighting back the heartbreak and ultimately defeating it.
As he lay on his bed, huddled under covers and pillows
watching his mental metaphor on film, it came much sooner than he expected. He
heard the rat-a-tat-tat on the front door followed by the muffled sounds of his
mother talking to someone. The edges of his sight became black and his vision
blurry as his heart began to race with the sound of footsteps making their way
down the hall toward his door.
“Bryson, Julie and
Ian are here to speak to you,” came the typically soothing voice of his mother
through the door delivering this message of certain doom.
Thickly he replied, “I don't want to see them right now.”
“Why not?”
“I don't want to talk about it. Please just tell them to go
away.”
“Okay,” the response
seemed to almost question if this was truly his wish, but she reluctant seemed
to trudge back down to the hall to deliver the message. He heard her muffled
voice from the front door followed by the sound of it closing. He started to
breathe a sigh of relief, but the sigh caught midway in his throat as he
realized this can't be it. Sure enough, the steps came back down the hall once
again. “Can I come in?”
“Not right now, Mom,
I'm indecent.” He felt like a fool as the words came out of his mouth. Was he
now transported to the early nineteenth century that this phrase now issued
from his lips. Of course, he knew he meant this more about his mental state
than his physical appearance.
“Okay, well if you need to talk about anything, your
stepfather and I are here for you.”
“Thanks Mom,” the words came out thicker than before and he
had a hard time getting them out as a couple tears leaked onto his cheek. Of
course, he would never talk to his parents about what happened this day, not in
twenty or a million years. They'll question his choices once he makes them, but
they were his choices to make and they'd just have to accept the fact that he
made them. Right now wasn't the time to think about those choices though.
Not to mention the attack on his mental state wasn't quite
over yet as the rat-a-tat-tat came to his window.
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