“. . . what hell must look like.” The short story — DAWN.
The sun was up again today.
Mornings. Who made them? Who took time and committed this crime of creating a “before” part of the day.
These questions swirled in her head. ‘Though she doubted there’d be an answer to such. She had millions more questions; all without answers. Like why it never rained in the city. Like why had he…
She stopped herself from completing the question and placed her toxic friend back to her lips and took a healthy drag. Her brown irises rose to the red and orange hues dancing before her.
Sunrise. The colours brought to mind the image of what hell must look like. She already knew what it felt like. It felt like hearing a thousand different noises at once. She was already living it. It was befitting that she should witness it too.
She was forced to tear her gaze away from the hell in the sky as her ears pricked with the pandemonium of city life. The sounds of hell. The clang clang of what sounded a thousand hammers, nailing her last nerve. What little resolve she had dissolved when the vibrations of traffic assailed her ears. It was the same sound she had heard moments before a fatal scream from young lungs. His young lungs.
Her eyes closed on their own accord as she drew a deep breath of air and an even deeper inhale of the cigarette until only the butt was left. The early morning TV commercial’s warning about the threat of lung cancer played in her mind. Death was death — she owed this mantra to losing her only son. If that’s what cigarettes promise, then. . .she blindly reached to her left to replenish her heaven.
But her fingers never met that slender, slightly-soft, soul-saver. She opened her eyes and mouth to reveal what was already known: empty box.
The hammering intensified in her ears and she was positive the hammer was knocking directly against her cranium. The image of the road miles before her with the speeding traffic, the sight of a few children running and playing on the road, the lone tree in the middle of the concrete jungle; all became null. All of a sudden, she heard too many sounds at once. A baby crying. Her son taking his last breath. Fire crackling. Dogs barking. Birds crowing incessantly.
A chill galloped up the short rungs of her spinal column and overtook her body and she was seeing red. That noise coupled with the machinery from the construction site below and the blaring of car horns caused her to clamp a hand at each temple in a motion to force the cacophony away.
And just as abruptly the noises had started, they ceased. Slowly, she allowed her eyelids to divorce. It was still dawn, but the sun was a little higher in the sky, which meant several minutes had elapsed since her episode. It felt like hours to her, but then her concept of time was flawed. Yet, she never missed a single dawn. She was always in time to see the sun creep across the sky. Always in time to scowl and spit at it.
Scanning her surroundings to ensure she was in the right place, she saw the empty box of Marlboros and knew she was back on earth. The noise was faint in her ears now.
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Somehow there had been an accident. She could see the mangled cars and hear groans from the ailing passengers. An ambulance’s sirens screamed in the distance. She looked toward the scene and then quickly away. When she looked back, the road was clear.
Just what do people like about the outdoors so much that they feel the need to leave their houses at this time of morning?
“Like the night is any better,” the voice in her head reminded. She never slept at night; only directly after sunrise. Nights in the city was akin to prison. At night, there was no road activity. No background noise. No construction.
Nights were quiet. Very quiet. Too quiet.
Quiet except for the lone voice in her head. She avoided coming to the rooftop at night. At night, she would be less resistant to the voice’s plea for her to take a dive.
Her mind quickly shifted back to the real dilemma at hand. She was out of cigarettes. That meant a trip to the store. That meant colliding with the scenes and people below. That meant being ripped away from her solitude on the roof.
She hung her legs casually, chin resting against the cool metal railing that would soon be another victim of the sun. Metal railings that had been put in place to prevent anyone from falling. These were coupled with numerous barricades she had broken through, that had been meant to restrict public access, but was no match for her dedication.
From her 10th floor view, she eyed the convenience store. By the time it opened, there would be more people on the road, which meant bumping into bodies and being asked questions about how she was coping and if she needed anything. More people meant more voices and more sounds too. More mayhem. More noises to send her mad. Not to mention the sun would begin its attempt to rip the pores off of her skin.
The sun made no sense to her. The street made no sense to her. She would have to walk carefully and briskly to avoid the sun’s death glare and being pinned under whichever vehicle she’d likely have to dash across in front of on her journey to the other side.
The other side… He was on the other side now. That was what they had said. They hadn’t said what was true though. That she was on her way to that other side too since he had died. That her new mental home could be spelled with four letters: HELL. That this was now her place of abode. She felt like she was in a box, like her favourite pack. But it never mattered how many packs she smoked. It never quelled the burning inside her.
She had always liked fire from young. It was the one thing which brought her a sense of peace. It was a cruel twist of irony that fire was a destroyer as much as it was beautiful. The sun was in the sky now. Burning and beautiful. The moisture from her sweaty palm allowed the lighter to slip from her grip with ease. She stood, gaping at the signs of another day in full flight as a sea of spiteful gray clouds on the horizon threatened to separate her from the ball of fire. The sun.
Dumbfounded by the abrupt change in weather, she stared and stared and before she knew it, her face was about to meet the road below.
If you have questions/remarks about the story, drop a comment.
Love,
Don
