Sitting and reading

Sitting and reading

Sitting and reading and wondering

Wondering if this is real

Wondering when the next Flash will come

So I’m just sitting

And reading

And wondering

The walls look nice today

It looks as if someone has put up a new coat of paint

The hustle and slide of the school-day around me grows loud

Makes it harder to read the words I’ve typed

These kids around me looking to see what I’m reading

This is first period English

What’s that?

They ask me

Nothing, I say. Then I think better of it and let them read.

They take the pages and laugh when they read these words.

You wrote this didn’t you?

Just for this moment, right?

Right?

Then they go back to reading after they see that I don’t care enough to talk

I’m tired.

So tired.

Flashflickerflashflicker

Scene changes and

I’m sitting at my desk thinking

Where’d my paper get off to now?

I look up and the new paint job is peeling

The new roof is caving in from old age

A beard grows thick on my face and scratches my neck when I look down to see how tall and old I am inside the Flash.

I reach down and pick up an old crumbled collarbone from the floor.

I hold it out and think, “alas, poor Uric...”, coming out of English class this sounds funny to me and I smile.

The bone is so smooth. It reminds me of those sweet sounding imagery words on the vocabulary sheet, like scrimshaw, or soapstone. Old words that used to make my fingers itch to touch the ink on the page.

Clavicle... says my brain as I set the bone back onto whatever thing this little pile of dried bone and fur used to be. Light is coming in the windows brighter than ever and I walk out of the classroom into a gently sloping hallway.

The roof is down entirely here and I can see storm clouds gathering their power high up.

Signs of the animal inhabitants line the halls from where deer and rabbit had reclaimed the old junior high wing. The scene shifts just a little—flicka’flickbuzz—and lights that have been gone for years flicker where they used to sit on a mirage ceiling blocking the cloudy sky beyond.

At this point the electricity in my Flash memory is fading. I know the day will come when I’ll be of two completely separate minds. That day the people on the other side of the Flash will lock my better half away somewhere to keep him from spreading his lunacy.

Until then...

I step into a beam of light in the old office and grab an ancient coat from the mostly empty lost and found box. Some old jacket with withered and pulled tufts of fake fur lining the neck, I vaguely register the faded color as yellow.

I step outside and the parking lot yawns before me. Leaves have fallen here for years now and the grass has grown up in swaths where persistent ice has pushed apart the asphalt with its slow setting and expanding motions.

I pull my bike from the rack and start pedaling. Cars dot the roads where they stalled when no one was pushing down on the gas any longer. Some ran off the road. Some collided. But mostly they just slowed down and idled until they ran out of gas. Now they’re just big metal tombstones.

This Cadillac says as an epithet, “He was a hard working businessman”

This minivan says, “Loving parents of three”

This beat up truck says, “A good teacher”

I huff and puff up and down hills on my bike with low tire pressure. I can make out smoke against the gray of the sky.

Damn.

The smoke means that somewhere in town another old gas main has gone up in flames and I’ll lose another old gas station.

I live off of gas station supplies.

I try to drink as little warm coke as possible.

I’m on my way to a hardware store I opened during my last Flash.

The store is open twenty-four-seven now that I’ve bashed in the front window.

There is no burglar alarm since the electric grid went down

This is probably for the best, since the only sounds I’ve heard recently are either on the Other Side or of my own making... not counting any natural sounds of course.

flashflickerflash

The hardware store owner looks at my coat and then at my unshaven face. I knew that I had to look strange. The coat had become the same coat I had worn so long ago and I looked like a reject from a Clint “you feelin’ lucky punk?” Eastwood movie.

But hey, I have bigger things to worry about. Besides, I gave him a genuine smile for what it’s worth.

I stepped up to the counter and asked if I could just air up my tires with one of his bike pumps out front instead of paying the twelve dollar rental fee.

The guy smiles like I’ve offended him somehow and says that, no, I’ll have to pay for the service even if its just to air up.

I say okay and start fishing around in my pockets for change.

flashflickerflickerflash

Well.

No more store owner to deal with

His face starts to dim in my memory already

Like a dream you enjoyed but woke up from swiftly and completely

The store is sagging at the edges from water damage

Where the store owner was standing is a quietly somber pile of rotting ceiling tiles that have swelled and shrunk in past rainstorms until they popped out and fell where they lay.

I stare at them for a moment, trying to preserve the memory of the man’s face.

The lines around his eyes

The stupid care over a few bucks

The acknowledgement of my existance

But he’s gone.

I say thanks to the ceiling tiles and the sound of my spoken words scare me out onto the street

I pump up my tires and watch as the storm rolls in and smoke swirls up over the hills from wherever the fire is burning.

With my tires pumped I take the pump back and set it on the counter instead of putting it in my backpack and carrying it along with me.

No need to screw with ghosts.

I push off and rain starts to tap on my stringy hair.

I look up and... oh.

The storm is here.

Heavy rain is pounding on my shoulders.

I pull into the remnants of a Dairy Queen to wait out the storm

The windows are busted out from a bad day I had a few months back when I couldn’t take the silence and had taken it upon myself to remove every window in the local area.

Luckily I hadn’t been too thorough so there were still some nice safe places to sleep.

Lightning flashes and ancient gods toss and tumble behind the thin clouds above me

The flash of the lightning looks so much like the Flash itself. It lights up the whole area for just a second, before plunging it back into storm induced night.

I used to be afraid of thunder storms.

The memory comes to me, of hiding in the sheltering arms of my parents, during a bad storm.

The rain lightens up and I head to the grocery store closest to the school, a Jay-C store.

I head through the front doors and pass aisle after empty aisle... I’ve been here pretty often.

I walk through the back doors into the stocking areas and grab a semi-cool Gatorade from a pack of six with only three remaining. I pile non-perishable goods into my bag.

I am a Ramen eating machine.

Boil water

Apply Ramen

Eat.

I like simple.

The bike ride back is cold and gray.

I am so confused by those in the Flash who hate their lives in moments like these

Loneliness.

The word pulls out of my mouth like an old washcloth.

Loneliness says my croaking voice to the rain and the tombstone cars.

I’m not really alone.

I get back to the parking lot.

Make it all the way back into the hallway before

Flickerflashflashflash

It was a big one.

My bag is gone and I’m sitting again

I lean over to the girl next to me and ask what period it is

She looks at me like I’m crazy

I shrug and draw the universal sign

a loop around my ear with a finger that means crazy

She laughs and says sixth period.

History.

The day is almost over.

I look up at a globe in front of me.

Today we are discussing plagues.

Irony... says some part of my brain, but I think hush hush, let them play at it anyways. You know it makes them happy. So I sit and absorb dates and names and death tolls.

I catch sight of a globe sitting in the corner

When I used to look at maps of the world I used to picture places far away

We do that because we like to think we might see those places someday

Since the Flash began

I try not to look at maps anymore

They are just too big