I felt a slow bullet of cold fall from above. It hit my shoulder and I tried to brush it off, but it had already sunken into my jacket.
I checked my watch. 1:06.
I looked up. A dead tree stared back at me, and an empty village road. The shops should’ve been open, but they weren’t.
A sinking breeze sent a chill down my spine. My teeth felt numb and my fingers swollen. Soon they were wet, too.
I wasn’t smiling to the sky. The rain was coming from my throat.
I swallowed it back.
The wind whistled and the bus stop sign swayed.
I checked my watch. 1:06.
Nearby stood an electric pole. I thought I heard it spark and crack at me, but I know better.
On the pole sat a poster.
“Missing.”
A picture of a teenage boy was still on the page.
His hair was scruffy like he didn’t shower much but his eyes looked more lively than mine. The reflection of my watch isn’t flattering, and things are grey enough already.
I could use a shower, too. In purposeful, hot water. Something to seep in and cleanse but not invade too much. A shower to feel like I did something unwrong.
“Missing. Jacob Melius. 16 years, 180cm…” yada yada.
I hope that they find him, but I doubt it, too.
“Last seen: 16/08.”
I checked my watch. 1:06.
My heart stung for his mother.
A teardrop rolled down the poster’s plastic cover. The words were smudging, anyway. I should have known it was just rain, but sometimes I get caught up in lies because my mind is blank.
Where is this bus? I wondered.
A silent branch brushed over my feet and down the road.
I heard ringing. I jumped and clutched my pockets, but I’d forgotten my phone that day. I looked to both sides and up at the sky. But the sound was coming from underneath.
I kneeled and sunk my hand into the cement. It yielded at my touch, turning to liquid. Out of this, I dug a phone. I stood up, wiping it off, and I read the name “Michelle Melius”.
“Hello?”
“Do you know where my son is?” a woman answered.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Melius.”
My own voice was glitching, but hers was clear as day. Well, not today. The sixteenth of August was pretty sunny.
“I think he was shot,” she said, “but who would do that?”
“I wouldn’t. He looks like he had a lot of potential.”
“He did.”
I could hear her sobbing and felt my own chest rising and falling to the rhythm and its erraticisms.
“I’m sorry,” I said, again.
“They did, you know. I saw it.”
“You saw it?”
“In a dream. The hole in his head, I–” she took a shaky breath. “I know what they did,” she hissed. “And I can’t save him.”
“Maybe you can,” I told her, but I didn’t know what I was saying. I just wanted to say something.
How could I know what she’s going through?
“I’m not a god,” she cried. “Just a woman.”
And the line went dead.
I put the phone into a tree, balancing its unnatural shape with the veins of the branch to find a crevice perfect.
I walked back to the poster.
His face looked sadder now for some reason.
This pole is wooden, but it’s not natural. It’s been shaped and manipulated with the expertise of a madman.
I wonder if that’s what happened to Jacob.
It didn’t feel right to bury that phone again.
Because maybe he isn’t really gone.
Sometimes things take patience.
I checked my watch. 1:06.
My elbows are numb.
Maybe I should just go home.
No… I forgot where that was. I’d start walking but I wouldn’t know where to go.
I forgot who it was, too.
I wondered where Jacob’s home was, and how empty it is now.
I heard the sound of wheels and brakes but everything stayed still except the soft journeys of leaves on the road. Whenever one got stuck on the wet concrete, I helped it to fly again.
“Get in, will you!” a rough voice yelled.
I blinked. “What?”
“We’re waiting here!”
I stared at nothing. “Who are you?”
The voice changed to a gentle woman. “Hold out your hand,” she said.
“Where?” I asked, my eyes wide.
“You know where.”
My eyes locked onto a particle of dust sitting at head level just past the curb.
“Reach for me,” the voice whispered.
I stretched out my hand and a warmer one took hold. It pulled me onto a platform and as my feet steadied, my eyes flashed black and my environment distorted.
I could see the bus now.
The woman had black hair, tired eyes… a soft spoken throat. But I had the feeling she’d screamed for her life.
She didn’t smile at me, but I felt it.
“Are you balanced?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Did she mean surface level or something not so shallow?
My line of sight switches between dimensions. Flat to deep. Safe to leaping at me. I’m not sure how to stop it, or if that’ll make everything crumble.
I feel like they can see the instability in my eyes but they never say anything.
“I was worried for a moment.” She stroked my shoulder.
“Why?” I croaked, blinking. My eyes were wet and not from the rain.
“I thought I lost you.”
I wanted to tell her I didn’t know who she was, but I felt like that wouldn’t be true. Not completely.
Two tears fell from our eyes at the same time, followed by many from above.
Her hand fell from my arm.
“That isn’t right,” the bus driver grunted, pulling a lever.
Echoing chatter started to form all around.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, head shaking, eyes closed.
My jacket was just starting to dry, my soul just warming from outside.
“How do you know it’s okay?”
“We’ve been through worse, honey. This is a small storm.”
I almost smiled.
Then the bus trembled.
“Let me out of here!” someone screamed from the back.
Everybody turned to look, but my eyes were locked on the driver. He was rocking on his chair, pressing buttons which did nothing and ultimately leading us nowhere. His mind was present but his body felt distant soon.
People argue over souls and bodies. What’s going to happen when I die? They ask. Your spirit gets lifted into the sky. They say.
Oh…
no.
No, no. They should know better.
But I’m not sure if they’re lucky. I’ve never been a fan of ignorance or bliss because they’ve never seemed attainable. But the depth of the world has always been a mystery. I don’t really know my wingspan.
The roof of clouds rumbled.
A drop rolled over my eyelids and they started to close.
The driver froze. I could only see one eye. Left is always right. Coincidence? It started to grow and bubble and slowly drift to connect with mine.
We were locked. Staring through the rain and the woman’s head like two bullets.
People argue over souls and bodies.
What about eyes?
As we were frozen in our stare, deathly still, we were seeing what was never meant to be seen.
We caught a glimpse of the end. Not our end, or not ours alone, but the end of everyone.
No matter the beliefs of the brain or the possible logic, not a soul on the bus ascended. And we knew the problem.
They had thought there was more to see so they just did enough to survive. Crawling. Coughing. Trying? No one could think they gave up. But not one was fulfilled for a moment.
Their souls, disappointed and stretched thin like a rag, leaked through their kidneys and out their back, through the floor of the bus and onto the road. The melted cement engulfed these souls with the delicate, crushing silence of a world misunderstood and the sadness, the inevitability of being shaped for someone else entirely.
The cement knows. But what does that matter? It can do nothing except accept the pain that drowns in it with grace. It can never say a word, never beg for release or a first breath. No one would care. It knows how these people died, knows how many came before, and knows that the pattern will only grow more rapid as time passes quicker and quicker. Tragic and enraging as this is, the cement wants to be a part. It knows how this happens, but it doesn’t understand or experience. Immortal, it will continue to absorb soul after soul, gaining weight and story, but losing itself in the end.
Celeste Wilner – Year 11
