My World

 Hey everyone!  Thanks to all who have been reading my stories.  As a writer trying to get off the ground, I appreciate every view, comment, and critique I can get.  I will do my best to post one story a week.  Please let me know what you think of them or if you have any specific requests.  And hey, if you like 'em, tell your friends!

And with that, here is my fifth story.  Hope you enjoy.    

The sun shone in his face through the trees, nearly blinding him.  Wind swept past his ears, whistling obnoxiously.  He managed a few glances at the “cute” couples laughing childishly over on the grass, sitting on pathetic blankets to protect them from nature’s germs.  “How naïve they are,” he thought.  He smirked bitterly as he ruminated upon his great wealth of knowledge; his recent enlightenment.  He was of a higher caliber.  They were so blissfully unaware of this world’s secret intentions to knock you down and then turn its back on you.  “They will have a rude awakening one day,” he thought.

But not himself; oh no!  He had been inaugurated into the ranks of those who had experienced life’s ultimate truth, and tasted reality’s bitter sting of cruelty.  Everyone would eventually join him, and though he knew this, he felt superior for realizing it so early on.  “I deserved that spot.  Everyone thought so.  I worked for it for years and years and somehow it eluded me.  Though, I should’ve been expecting it.”  Fairness was a fictional lie created to inspire hope in those too stupid to see through its transparent façade.  

A child sped past him on a bike, nearly knocking him into a trash can.  He cursed and then yelled after the child who seemed too afraid to look back at him.  For a moment he looked as if he would give chase, but then slowed and decided against it, kicking a dented can on the ground as hard as he could. “Where are you now, Karma?” He said aloud. “Have I not worked towards this?  Have I not given myself to this cause?” He looked out to the lake at the sailboats bobbing preposterously upon its surface, like little toys in a tub. “Did they all deserve those boats, Karma?” he asked. “Or did they just come upon them purely by luck, as you and I both know to be the truth?”

Laughter pierced his concentration.  He turned around with a growl and grimaced at the family a ways behind him sitting on a hill.  The woman and kid cackled as the man stumbled about, trying to pry a stuffed plaything from their dog’s mouth. “Just let him have it,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t want anything to do with you.  Let him have it and then tell your son all about life’s endless joys; all the wonderful things he will experience.  But don’t tell him the truth – goodness no!” The truth was an evil thing that popped all our silly little bubbles that held all our silly little preconceived notions of things like “fairness” and “equality”.  What a tragedy that would be!

He caught the eye of a lone man on a bench, dirty looking – probably homeless. “Lazy bum,” he thought. “Get some decent clothes, maybe then someone will want to be within ten feet of you.”

He suddenly noticed how stiff his own suit felt – how fake and restricting it was.  Why did this impress people?  Why was this a symbol of someone’s status?  Did he not get the spot because of his suit?  Did his boss not approve of his style and thus, because of it, offer the position to someone else?

He ripped the jacket from his body and tossed it in the trash.  He crumpled his tie and threw it carelessly to the ground.

Moments later he found himself standing on the edge of the pier, looking down into the water, watching his doppelganger mock him from below.  The irritatingly gleeful giggles of children pinched at him from all sides. “Shut up!” he thought.  A mother cooed to her bawling baby, as if it was the only thing to stop its incessant wails. “Control your stupid kid!” he said aloud.  He turned around and saw a group of adolescents sitting in a circle, chirping and banging on instruments of which they surely thought was the road to some kind of “music”.

And then he felt the rage boil inside him and he couldn’t take it anymore.  It was time to end it all. 

He jumped from the pier and the noise and the light of the park subsided instantly as he was submerged beneath the surface.  

Her son’s laughter spread over her like a warm, rolling wave.  He roared and then sputtered and nearly choked at his inability to control his exuberant display while his mother patted him on the back, smiling and laughing along with him.  His father – her husband – tumbled around on the grass as he unsuccessfully tried to retrieve their Labrador’s favorite toy from the dog’s locked jaws.  The two tugged and pulled and growled and flopped about while the observers held their sides at the spectacle.  Eventually the dog obtained the stuffed rabbit – now with much less stuffing – and pranced over to the mother and child, laying down to chew on the spoils of war while they scratched behind his ears.

The mother watched the man crawl back up the hill as if a wounded soldier, causing her son to once again burst out in laughter.  They exchanged bright, meaningful smiles just before the father gave a death cry and put his face down in the grass, defeated at last. “There isn’t a better dad in the world,” thought the mother.

The afternoon sun was still high and the tree nearest them offered speckled bits of shade through its branches.  The clouds overhead were big and puffy and white and the woman thought she couldn’t remember a day so beautiful.  Music floated over to them and she turned to see a circle of cheerful teens, playing guitars and tambourines and singing in wonderful harmony. “How great it is to see kids appreciating a gorgeous day like this,” she thought.

On a bench just down the hill from them she saw a man hunched forward, gray hair spilling from his fedora, wearing old, worn-out looking clothes and staring silently off into space. “I wonder if he is appreciating this beautiful day,” she thought. “I hope so.”

Just then she saw a man a ways away do something peculiar. “Look at that, honey!” she said. “What’s he doing?”

The man in question had torn off his suit jacket and tie and thrown them in the trash.  He then began to jog towards the lake. “How odd!” her husband said.  And then, “Look at all the boats on the lake today!”

“I see!” she said. “Do you see them, Tommy?  All the white sails?”  The boy nodded happily and smiled.

Her husband came up to lie next to her on the hilltop.  He took her hand in his and squeezed it.  She felt the breeze pass gently through her hair and heard the laughter of children nearby.  The sweet voice of a mother spoke soothingly to her crying child and there was a distant splash in the lake; no doubt kids jumping off the pier.  The mother closed her eyes and tried to think of a time when she had been more content in her entire life.  She could think of none.          

   The man swung his foot in a low arc and connected with a discarded can lying innocently on the sidewalk.  The severed pop-top rattled metallically inside while the can bounced again and again and landed gently upon the grass just a few feet away from a recycle bin. “I bet he won’t even glance at it as he passes,” thought an observer sitting on a bench; an older man with long, graying hair and a scraggly beard. “That’s alright.  I’ll get it later.  He’s probably too involved in his own life to notice.  We all are sometimes.”

The can-kicking man began to grumble to himself and then looked straight at the man on the bench.  He scowled and walked on. 

“I wish I could have a thousand more days just like this,” the old man thought. “And there that young guy is, wasting such a day on useless anger.  What good has anger ever done for anyone?” He watched the man rip off his suit jacket and throw it violently away. “He will regret that later, when he comes to his senses.”

For a while after that the older man did not think of much at all.  He merely listened and watched.  He wished he could hold the sun in the sky and prevent it from sinking.  He wanted to be young again and go join the circle of kids playing music. 

And then the memory came back to him, cold and stinging.  He heard her laugh in the rustle of the trees, saw her smile on the face of a young boy laughing with his parents atop a hill.  He wanted to tell everyone the same thing.  He wanted to warn them, to explain his own greatest mistake so that they may avoid it, even if they already knew to do so.

He felt the slow ticking of time in his veins with each pulse of blood.  An infant began to cry and he remembered how he would get so frustrated with his own daughter when she wouldn’t stop crying. “Just let me go to sleep,” he would say. “Please let me go to sleep.”  But now he wanted to go up to the mother and tell her not to worry about the crying, but to appreciate every second of it.  Crying meant life, and life was the most precious thing on earth. “Too few realize that too late,” he thought. “Too few…”

Some days he wondered if he would ever be able to laugh again like those children in the distance.  Or was it all too much to recover from?  His mistakes; had they taken their toll at last?  Had he been robbed of joy just as he learned to truly appreciate it? 

But those days were gone – the days where he wondered these things.  Now he merely accepted the damage and dealt with it.  He no longer guessed at how many days he had left or how many he had wasted in his youth, but simply took everything in that he could; the way the boats skimmed the surface of the lake, leaving trails that fanned out behind them, and the swaying of the branches whose leaves painted playing shadows upon the concrete of the winding walkway.

Most of all he watched people.  He watched them without jealousy or envy, but with a heavy heart, knowing that they might make the greatest mistake of all – the one he had made – and not realize just what they had when they had it, but after it was gone. 

He looked over to the pier just in time to see a man jump in the lake, still wearing nice suit pants and a button up shirt.

“What I wouldn’t give to have his problems,” thought the man on the bench. “I would take his problems and laugh at them and then trample them as I went on with my life.”

The man in the suit came to the surface and swam, sputtering frantically, to the shore.  He placed his hands on his knees and panted, staring at the ground dejectedly. “Perhaps my daughter could have given him advice,” the man thought. “Or at least shown him how it’s done.”