short stories for life!!1111 I will probably hand this in tomorrow instead of using a week to make it good.
PEDESTRIAN
Those who feel they can do nothing to change the world around them should take the crosswalk more often…
It was an early August day humid with promise. Adam Green pressed the button and waited for the signal to change. Crossing the street, Adam heard a peculiar sound. Looking to the right, he saw a rusting white vehicle trying to overcome its momentum. “Is change just an illusion?” thought Adam, who, not wanting to stay at rest permanently, then leapt out of the path of the speeding wreck.
Not wanting to raise his insurance, Jonathan Celeri swerved into the other lane. He had not seen the light change red, it was nearly too late when he saw Adam, and it was even later when he saw the quickly approaching post supporting traffic lights he has neglected to notice. At the moment of impact, Jon realized he'd never told the first person he truly loved how he felt.
The painted yellow metal post, an exercise in postmodern aesthetics, merged with the whiteness of Jon's car bonnet creating a fleeting kinetic sculpture mechanics would fear. Jon would not die this day; his life was not the contrived ending of a short story.
Regaining their senses simultaneously, Adam ran to help Jon just as he was exiting his now truly wrecked heap of an automobile. “Are you okay?” they asked in unison.
Adam had banged his knee when he fell jumping away from Jon's car; Jon's head stopped itself on the ancient airbag, a literal blast from the past. “I'm fine,” they said.
“Do you want me to call someone?” “Should I call for help?” “I'm glad you're okay.” “I'm glad you're alright.” Their dialogue ran parallel as they ran out of breath.
“I'm really, really sorry. I must have been too deep in though, I never saw the light change,” Jon said.
“It's really okay–I'm sorry your car's wrecked,” Adam said.
“It's probably for the better; the heap's time had come and gone. It was only two years younger than me. What's your name anyway, we should probably call the police.” The lights continued changing, despite the best efforts of Jon's snowy monster. Cars drove by, some slowing to gawk, others passing without notice.
“My name is Adam, but don't worry about me; I should get going. I'm not hurt, and I don't want to complicate things with the accident report. You'll have enough on your hands.
“Thank you, my name's Jon, Jonathan Celeri. Let me at least give you my phone number in case anything comes up.”
“You should be fine, just watch out for the changes.”
“Changes?”
“Signals; you damn near killed me.”
“Oh, right, right, I'm so sorry again.”
“Like I said, it just made me a bit more alert.”
Adam took the number, pressed the button, waited for the signal to change, and walked back the same way he had come.
***
Waiting for the police to arrive by the side of his newly acquired scrap heap, Jon thought of nothing. Fleeting notions of love had left him.
***
Adam dashed madly across the street. Narrowly missing him, a car sped past honking. Adam barely noticed for he was dancing with his thoughts. He did the fox-trot with reflection down Spoon Road and tangoed with his passion up Broad Street. He waltzed with his memories on Ealing and jitterbugged with angst on Reading. Rejection was a slow dance, and Adam had no partner. He hated Jeremy for the betrayal, and he hated himself because he knew it was coming. Those brief moments together were shining dime store trinkets, seemingly worth it but quick to break and tarnish. They played at sleeping together; it was platonic napping. It was uncomfortable. They had kissed one October night, months ago, but Adam did not understand the reasonings behind it. Adam wrapped every scrap he was thrown in romantic ideals, obscuring the real meaning.
Safe experimentation with a friend is no guarantee of future activity. Jeremy was detached and different, unattainable and asexual. Adam was hopeless and fragile, manic and naive. He recognized the fundamental differences of Jeremy, but this did not allow him to reason with his thoughts. Logic has no place in the changing rules of love and infatuation. All of his reasonings, self-ultimatums, and attempts to free his mind of Jeremy were doomed. Adam would lay awake in bed thinking about not thinking about him. Adam thought directness would be the best route, and it was. He just missed the exit ramp. Unable to take no for an answer, Adam walked out into the freezing isolation of a February night.
***
“I am almost positive I am in love with you, Jeremy.”
“Adam?”
“It's why I do almost everything. I play games with myself; I think if I do X action enough times, it will generate Y result in you. It is making me crazy. I know life isn't a game.”
“You can't love steel.”
“You're such a jerk, don't you care how I feel?”
“Yes, but if you are really in love with me, why do you chase after so many others? Why are you so harsh? I'd buy that you might have a misplaced obsession.”
“Oh sod off.”
“I don't think you know what you feel. I don't want to date you.”
“Don't you feel anything for me?”
“Friendship, friendship which would be ruined by a relationship. I've been down that road, and I get the feeling it's not love you want: it's possession, it's ownership, it's control. I am a means to an end for you, an alleged cure-all for your loneliness. You have the solutions to your problems at your fingertips, You can't place salvation in others.”
“Don't you even care how I feel?”
“Adam, are you even listening to me?”
“Why did you say you're bisexual? Why have you let me get this close to you? Why does it always seem like you're hinting at something bigger?”
“I've never hinted at anything, it's all in your head. You misinterpret everything.”
“All in my head?”
“It is not my job to make you happy, Adam.”
***
“Who raped you?” said Stephen.
It had been a long year. It had been an even longer day. High school appeared better than middle school, but as a freshman, Adam felt trapped on the same emotional roundabout. Adam couldn't help but throw his notebook in rage. Another student laughed. The student teacher minded her own business. Adam collapsed into his seat and detached.
***
Jon was half asleep on the trunk of his wreck by the time a police officer arrived. Jon was exceedingly glad no one had been injured. The officer began to take pictures of the scene as he questioned Jon. “What happened here?”
“I crashed into the signal post.”
“I see that much; what happened?”
It suddenly occurred to Jon he had no way to explain the accident. If he said he swerved to avoid someone in the crosswalk, the officer would become immediately suspicious. Jon swore at himself for not getting Adam's number. “I… there was a bee in the car?”
The officer nodded. “Happens all the time–normally to teenage girls. You ought to invest in a little bravery, son.”
Jon gained confidence in his lie, “I'm allergic you see. One of the little bastards nearly killed me once, I'm just glad no one got hurt…”
The officer smiled and phoned for a tow truck. “I hope you have insurance. The city will be invoicing you for any damage to the signal post in the next month. Be more careful next time, or drive with the windows up. Good afternoon.”
“Well this is a change,” thought Jon.
***
Reaching the intersection of 5th and 9th, Adam launched into the Tarantella of self-loathing and pity. “Nothing ever changes,” he screamed out into the night air.
No one was listening.
***
When he was fifteen, Adam believed himself to be in love with his closest friend, Stephen. It is hard to be awkward. It is hard to be adolescent. It is hard to be in love; even harder to be in love with an impossibility. A friendship was destroyed. Adam couldn't walk out then, he could only fester in teenage self-loathing. Stephen had his own problems, but Adam couldn't see the tree of hard emotion for the woods of idealistic youth. One drunken night in eastern Asia, Stephen confessed troubled thoughts of sexual confusion. It meant nothing. That same night, Stephen apologized for unfeeling words said in jest to Adam months before. Adam fell asleep alone, wanting more. Things between the two boys would not improve. Adam began playing games with himself, if only he could change, he thought, then Stephen would love him.
When he left for college and met Jeremy, Stephen was nearly forgotten. There were so many failed attempts to understand the mental noise in-between.
***
Adam walked calmly down Spoon Road, unbothered by August's oppression. Remembering when he danced last February, Adam felt ridiculously small, but that was the night he discovered his secret. After running for blocks and in front of traffic, secretly wishing for the worst, Adam grew tried. He found himself at the main road in Tableton, which even at 11 p.m. was too busy to cross safely. The true danger of Adam's emotions was their insignificance. He desperately wanted to live and was possessed by hope, but he wanted to be allowed his emotional outrage. He competed constantly, tacitly for the Most Dramatic Outburst Award. He knew he wanted attention, but knowing was only a footing; he faltered on the two-step.
Stumbling, Adam pressed the button, waited for the signal to change, and crossed the street. He heard a peculiar noise, and turning to his right, he noticed a woman crying in her stopped mini-van. There was no way to be certain, but Adam felt responsible. An entire thought process took shape in his mind; he was both awe- and dumbstruck. He stopped his conga line of regret in the street and looked all around him–there were countless vehicles, all stopped. All stopped because of him. “If I had never pressed that button,” Adam thought, “these people would not be here. They would still be driving, continuing on in their journeys.”
Countless lives unfolded in Adam's mind eye.
The woman, Ann Lidde, was late to picking up her son from his first school play. He was the lead character in Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and she had tried desperately to leave work on time but had been delayed; she then hit absolutely every red light en-route. It was an icy February are roads were in a poor state. This latest stop, for some strange boy to cross the street at almost midnight, screamed meaninglessness. Her resistance crumpled.
The young couple in the station wagon, Barbara and Joseph DéSerrt, were saved by the stop. If they had continued on their path, a drunk driver would have side-swiped them at the next intersection. Their minute delay sent the drunk careening into the ditch and not their future.
The elderly man in the lorry, Jacob Goldstein, sat biding his time. His patience stretched on before him; his entire life expanded infinitely behind him.
A carload of juveniles had second thoughts. Its driver honked at Adam, dragging him out of his reflection. He rubbed his eyes and finished crossing the street. Even though it bordered on the realm of the fantastic, Adam trusted his intuitions. He watched the signal change back to “don't walk” and watched calmly as cars drove back and forth, going about their business. Adam imagined himself to be a pebble in a stream. He might not stop the flow or divert the path, but what if his air bubble is what causes the penultimate Amazonian butterfly to flap its wings?
Adam pressed the button, waited for the signal to change, and crossed the road. He looked knowingly at all the stopped drivers. Whether or not he changed things for better or worse with his crossings, he did not care. Adam figured even chaos was positive in the face of entropy. His hope and exuberance was flavoured with dark cynicism. What mattered was the dynamism of the action; things were no longer standing still. With his thoughts buoyant and roaring, Adam can-canned all the way home.
Somewhere in the distance, metal screeched to a halt as a young couple screamed, but Adam failed to even notice.
***
Throughout March, April, May, June, and July, Adam went walking. He felt that he understood the workings of the world better every-time he took the crosswalk; it was enlightenment through stop lights and crosswalks. He could read the lives of drivers and passengers; he could complete their stories. The missed dates, the dreamers, the early arrivals, the surprise parties, the manipulators, the realists, the lunch breaks, the miscreants, the professionals, the lovers, the drifters,the carloads, the busloads, the everyone.
In the intervening months, Jeremy remained distant but not altogether gone. Adam had not been abandoned this time, but that was irrelevant now. Adam had new fantasies to attend. Zebras and pelicans (humped or otherwise) became a new obsession.
Adam pressed the button and waited for himself to change.
***
When he arrived at home, chilled by revelations on a brisk night, Adam phoned Jeremy. “Hey, sorry about what I said earlier, and I'm sorry for just running out.; I was feeling helpless, but things are changing now. I hope we can still be friends if you aren't too weirded out.”
“It doesn't matter, but I've been thinking about what you've said. You really don't want to date me, I've got my own problems.”
“I know,” said Adam. “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“What?”
Adam grinned, hung up the phone, and went to bed. That night, he dreamt of walking through an orchard filled with apples in infinite shades of green and red.
***
Stephen wondered what could be taking Jon so long. They were supposed to meet at the train station to catch a 7:31 p.m. train to leave town together for the weekend. Stephen felt odd, almost dangerous, being here in this strange town. He thought of how if things had gone differently, he might be meeting his old friend Adam, but they had not spoken in years. Stephen was sure Adam must be a completely different person now; Stephen knew he had changed. It didn't seem to matter if the change was for the better or for the worse…
Stephen had recently realized he'd been lying to himself for too long. He could not simply cast aside emotion; he had hurt and been hurt. He needed to tell Jon what he felt, even if it hurt their friendship. It was a muggy day, but Stephen was overcome by his thoughts and an intense feeling of destiny. Stephen left the train station to take a walk to sort out his thoughts. Outside, he pressed the button and waited for the signal to change. Crossing the street, he heard a peculiar noise. Looking to the right–
# # #
“And that's my idea so far,” I said. “Though I don't know if it should begin with a car crash or not. I think the logistics are messed up. Also, I don't think I'm capable of writing anything that isn't an escapist fantasy.”
“Just go with it and build on what you have. Become a collage artist. Name the people after the objects. Spoon for the road, Mr. Celery for the guy, shorten plastic lid to Mrs. Lid for the lady, and so on,” he said.
“Hmm, I suppose I could. It seems too obvious. Oh, I know, I could make it a frame story! At the end it could pull out to us at the dinner table discussing the idea. It would be real deep,” I said as I wiped my eye.
A single eyelash became dislodged. On an atom in the tip of the eyelash, there exists whole new universes, just as big and infinite as our own. I handed the eyelash to him and said, “make a wish.”
“So, it's about layers?” he asked.
He blew on the eyelash, and we melted into nothingness.