Infinite Silence; Prologue

The muscles in his leg ached as he ran harder on the puddle-covered concrete. His white sneakers squeaked as they skidded across the wet rough surface. He struggled against the limits of his body to reach his destination. His heart pumped loudly as he strained to continue to running. The rain trickled down his face as he ran through the harsh, cold weather. His sight was slowly becoming blurrier because the rain dripped steadily down his glasses. The black backpack on his back was giving him shockwaves of pain each time it came into contact with his back. He flailed his arms back and forth, hoping it would help him balance as he ran on the slippery sidewalk.

A small, exhausted smile spread on his chapped lips as he saw the bus stop. He pushed himself harder to find shelter from the nasty weather Mother Nature cooked up. Once under the shelter of the glass covered bus stop, he plopped himself on the metal bench and leant his head against the wall. He could feel his heart pumping loudly and rhythmically in his chest, it felt the strong intense pain in his chest every second he took a breath. His breath was shaky, uneven, and short as he inhaled to calm down his body. His body sent signals from the bottom of his feet to the top of his legs, reminded him how much pain he was in. His wet dark auburn hair stuck in clumps on his face as he tried to catch his breath. The blue polo shirt he wore was soaked and pressed firmly together. He could feel the droplets of rain trickling down his body and decided to ignore it.

For today was the worst day ever for him. He couldn’t believe that each bad luck situation after one after another, each worse than the last. He thought it was strange that the dark grey opaque clouds-like weather was slightly ominous looking and that it had been 2 weeks worth of sunshine and this type of weather came, but shrugged it off. He didn’t think of much, but it started to make him ponder about this day. It was after he broke 2 pencils during math and how an oversized, steroid pumping jock opened his locker and hit him in the face as he left the classroom, causing him to go to the nurse and get a bandage around his nose. Then he didn’t have enough money to go off campus and get lunch, so he was stuck paying for the cafeteria’s lunch: Mystery meat and potatoes with a carrots. Mystery was the key word in this scenario, the potatoes held a strange orange-tint in it’s coloring, the carrots were spotted in some places and looked old and slightly rotting; so he went hungry because the second he got lunch, he threw it away. In some strange way, he forgot his history essay, which was worth 65 of his grade and if he turns it in tomorrow, he’ll drop a grade and considering that history wasn’t his best subject in the first place, he’d be lucky if he got a B-.

But that wasn’t the worst of it all. During gym, because of the bad weather, they played dodge ball. And as humiliating as it was, he was first out, because the same jock who hit him with a locker, hit him painfully in the gut with the hard textured red spherical ball, but before he went down, another person hit him with another ball, hitting him on the shoulder. He seethed as he fell to his knees, his arms wrapped around his oddly thin body. The places where he was hit with the dodge balls didn’t hurt as much as his pride and dignity did. Because right then and there, he knew everyone’s eyes were on him, some snickers, some word of concern, but mostly insults were spat at him. As he went to the bench, someone called him a “queer”, but he knew they just wanted to call him something besides “pansy” all the time; he wasn’t gay.

When the bell rang, the most anticipated part of the day, he couldn’t help, but smile, for today was hell and under for him. Some being above was torturing him, playing with his mind and emotions, but now he was free; so he thought.

Once he walked outside, with the biggest smile he worn in years, it started to rain. But this wasn’t any normal rain this was rain that soaked anything in 2 seconds flat. With his best friend gone to Cape Cod and his car in the shop, he’d have to take the bus once again this week.

So here was, soaked completely all over his pale, moderately freckled body. His clothes soaked from the rain. The bandage on his nose, soaked, bloody, and tattered looking. He could feel the wetness slowly getting to his socks from his wet shoes. His backpack was soaked through, he wondered if all his textbooks and binders with his work were wet too. When the thought of this having to be the worst day ever, he then, in a maniacal sense, laughed. He laughed, laughedand laughed.His stomach tightened and sent shockwaves of pain threw his body, but he just laughed. His tears mixed in with the droplets of rain on his face.

He felt like a failure, sad, and humiliated, but here he was, he was laughing, as if nothing had happened. As if today weren’t full of bad situations to make him feel like he was a bad-luck magnet. Here he was, using his usually timid voice to fill the void of silence with his bubbly laughter.

They always did say tears of laughter were stronger than tears of sadness.

Too bad those weren’t tears of laughter.