He was a stranger before you knew him. But it was the newness of him that excited you, the undiscovered possibilities that he represented. He was adventure. He was a choice. He was your freedom.
For so long, he continued to be your freedom, he provided all the adventure your heart thought it would need.
Days turned to weeks, into months, and still into years and that boy who had your heart in the center of his hands was still there. Sometimes. Sometimes, that boy turned into someone else. Something else altogether monstrous, unlike anything you've ever seen from him before.
But it wasn't all perfectly new, was it? There were scattered moments through all of those days before you that showed the possibility of the monster he might be underneath. Small, throwaway moments that you shoved aside. "It's a bad day.", you would tell yourself, "He didn't mean it like that," you would insist.
But now that you've had all that time and all that distance between you, it's easy to see that all those small things that you threw away had made a much bigger pile than you realized.
It's funny how a person can come full-circle that way, isn't it?
He was a stranger before you knew him. And he became a stranger again by the end, too.
This was never how it was supposed to happen. We were all supposed to make it out of there. Alive. But all it took was one slip, one wrong move, and that chance was gone. We didn't account for how old that rickety bridge was, how strained the ropes holding it in place over the raging river would be. We didn't think about the weight of all of us scampering across the old planks of slick, half-rotted wood.
That's all it took.
Too much weight in one weak spot and SNAP!, it was as quick and smooth as if it were a string cut by a pair of scissors. Two halves of the bridge went swinging in opposite directions, hurtling toward the rocky terrain that led down, down, down to the angry waters below.
I lost count of how many people fell, the symphony of screams all I could focus on as people scrambled, desperate to hang on, to climb up, to make it to the top of this deathtrap and keep going. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I had to push it all out of my mind for the moment, focus only on myself, only on surviving. That was all that mattered right now. If I was alive, I could still help the others.
Hand over hand, tug after tug, I strained up the rope of what used to be the bridge. Like gym class, when coach made us doing all those pointless rope climbing exercises I swore would never be worth a damn in real life. If I make it out of here, I have to track him down and thank him for making that part of our routine.
I'm not sure how long I was climbing, all I was really aware of was my arms getting tired, but I couldn't stop, not now. Almost there, almost there. I chanted it over and over in my mind, just one more pull, just one more, and one more, and one more. And eventually it really was just one more, and I clawed my way up the edge of the rock wall and onto land. I took a moment to collect myself, but only a moment, I couldn't waste the time, I couldn't let the exhaustion sink in, not yet.
When I turned, it was to find two of the others struggling up the last stretch of rope and over the rock's ledge. I scrambled over and grabbed Blake's hand, helping tug him over the edge, both of us turning and doing the same for Jason, too. "How many are still down there?" I asked, heaving a huge breath.
Blake shakes his head, a terrible weight settled behind his eyes. He refuses to look at me when he finally says, "They're gone, Ty."
"Maybe not everyone," Jason pitches in. "Will and Peter are both pretty strong swimmers–"
"Not against rapids like that." Blake interrupts gravely.
"You don't know that. People survive crazy shit all the time, maybe–"
"Jason! There's no point in hanging on to empty hope, okay? If we don't keep moving, The Alliance is gonna find us, and we're fucked, okay? We don't have time for this!"
I held up both hands between the two of them. "Just– shut up, okay? You can both be right, until anything else is proven otherwise." I exchanged a sharp glance between them, and they seemed to both fall into some silent agreement. "Right now, we need to strategize, okay? So let's work on that, and go from there."
There couldn't be another miscalculation like that. Not again.
A lot of people are not fond of rain. It's cold. It's wet. It's dreary. It's depressing. They come up with plenty of reasons not to like it, but he's never minded it very much. There's a very soothing quality to it, something soft and lovely he's always been drawn to. The cold and the wet can be bothersome at times, but even that is not always a deterrent to him.
Days like this, when he has nowhere to be, no appointments to keep, no people to impress, leave him curled up in his favorite chair in the living room with a book or the newspaper or a sketchpad. Today it's the sketchpad propped in his lap as the rain tap dances against the windowpanes, a wild rhythm with a varying cadence. A smile curls around his lips as he listens, only the music of the rain and the soft scratch of the pencil against paper breaking the silence.
His mind is blank, only the picture slowly unfolding across the previously blank canvas underneath him in the forefront of his thoughts. It's a sense of peace and ease he does not know in the usual bustle of his daily life, simple and weightless in these moments, few and far between.
If every part of his life could be this blissful, he thinks he might not hate it quite so much. But taming the angers and the sadnesses of his heart has not proven so easy. More than he likes to think of (and so, he tries his hardest simply not to), his mind runs away off the rails with ideas of letting it all go. In one big crescendo, or all down the drain. Probably the latter, he's not much of one for making a fuss or a big scene.
Rain is the only thing that makes all of that seem so far away, eases all those parts of his soul that feel so tortured the rest of the time. If only he could trap it in a bottle and revisit this peace whenever he wished. Instead, he simply has to wait for the next time the weatherman calls for rain, and hope he's right.
It might be the only thing that's kept him alive for the last two years.
Sometimes the urge would simply hit him out of nowhere. The desire to just get in the car and see where he ends up. No plan, no map, no destination. Just the sound of the road rolling under his tires and that indescribable thing that takes up a home in his chest that he’s pretty sure is what freedom feels like.
Some days, he can reason with himself about why he shouldn't do those things. He has a life here. A family. Kids. A great job that he loves.
Today was not one of those days.
It won't be the epic trip he would like it to be, because of all those responsibilities that will keep him tied here, grounded in reality, but he could just take a drive for a few hours. He could pretend, just for a little while.
Somewhere in the background of his thoughts, he knows it will end, not in an unknown town across state lines in some shoddy rundown motel, but at 136 Birchwood Avenue. This means the feeling isn't quite the same, of course. But it's close. It's enough, just to have a taste of it sometimes. Because sometimes, a taste is all it takes to push a craving down.
"Don't forget the old trunk in the attic, Natalie. Everything in it is yours."
This was the last instruction I received from my dying grandfather. Like I cared one damn bit about some old junk in the attic when the man who was more a father to me than my real one ever could have been was on his deathbed. I ignored it in the moment, and forgot about it in the flurry of everything that comes with death, final affairs, and funerals. It's a lot, and almost everything fell on my shoulders, because I was the one that lived with him and everyone had so many questions and... it was a lot to deal with. Especially when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball somewhere and sleep for a week.
Eventually, things calmed down. The funeral was over, the long line of rarely seen relatives traipsing through the house was gone, and finally it was just me. Alone. In this big ol' empty house, full of so much stuff. Even after everyone was given what they were left in the will, and had their choices of things that remained, there was just so. Much.
Grandpa had been here for something like forty-three years. A person collects a lot in that kind of time. But I couldn't keep it all, I didn't have the need for a lot of it. But in the wake of his death, everything in the house seemed to hold some kind of sentimental value, and I've been having trouble sorting through it all to make donation and sale piles.
Today has me in the attic, and I'm already regretting the decision to come up here when I can feel the tickle of a sneeze rising up from all the dust everywhere. I sniff and try to shake the feeling off, rummaging through old boxes full of paperwork, clothes, and heaps of other things I can't begin to figure a place for.
The sneeze comes back with a vengeance after I managed to prevent it earlier, breath hitched in that annoying pause as it builds and builds and builds until–
ACHOO!
Finally. But the strength of it rocked me on my feet and I almost tripped over something behind me. "Shit," I muttered and after righting myself, I turned to see what it was. That old trunk. Pretty plain, as old things go, just an antique steamer trunk with brass latches and corner pieces. But Grandpa had said something about it, hadn't he? Everything inside it was mine. Well, did that make it different than everything else in the house? The house itself? But he'd been so specific about it... like he didn't want someone else to get to it first.
Well, luckily, no one even bothered to look at it, the amount of dust across the lid proves that. My nose itches again just looking at it and I groan, but I ease myself down onto the floor and flip the latches down and lift the lid.
I don't know what I was expecting to find, but at first, it's almost disappointing to just see a box of more old things– baby shoes and old pictures from when I was little. That just seemed so bland of a find when Grandpa had seemed so adamant about this old trunk. Still, I sift through it all, smiling at the memories, despite the sharp pangs of sadness in my chest– nothing like the things in these photos could ever happen again, because Grandpa is gone, now.
The thing seems pretty empty except something looks a little strange now that I'm to the bottom of it. I don't know why, but something told me to try to lift the panel at the bottom of the trunk– and that's when I learned it had a hidden compartment. It was a whole other layer of the trunk hidden, cut across the length of it, and it was full of... letters?
I frowned and set the piece of shelving aside and scooped up a handful of the letters. They all had my name on them. I could feel my heart trying to leap out of my chest. I'm still not sure what any of this means yet, but I know one thing for sure: This is what Grandpa had intended for me to find.
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branchandroot
Day 1: Stranger
Date: 2021-11-01 05:41 pm (UTC)For so long, he continued to be your freedom, he provided all the adventure your heart thought it would need.
Days turned to weeks, into months, and still into years and that boy who had your heart in the center of his hands was still there. Sometimes. Sometimes, that boy turned into someone else. Something else altogether monstrous, unlike anything you've ever seen from him before.
But it wasn't all perfectly new, was it? There were scattered moments through all of those days before you that showed the possibility of the monster he might be underneath. Small, throwaway moments that you shoved aside. "It's a bad day.", you would tell yourself, "He didn't mean it like that," you would insist.
But now that you've had all that time and all that distance between you, it's easy to see that all those small things that you threw away had made a much bigger pile than you realized.
It's funny how a person can come full-circle that way, isn't it?
He was a stranger before you knew him.
And he became a stranger again by the end, too.
Day 2: Mistake
Date: 2021-11-03 08:41 pm (UTC)That's all it took.
Too much weight in one weak spot and SNAP!, it was as quick and smooth as if it were a string cut by a pair of scissors. Two halves of the bridge went swinging in opposite directions, hurtling toward the rocky terrain that led down, down, down to the angry waters below.
I lost count of how many people fell, the symphony of screams all I could focus on as people scrambled, desperate to hang on, to climb up, to make it to the top of this deathtrap and keep going. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I had to push it all out of my mind for the moment, focus only on myself, only on surviving. That was all that mattered right now. If I was alive, I could still help the others.
Hand over hand, tug after tug, I strained up the rope of what used to be the bridge. Like gym class, when coach made us doing all those pointless rope climbing exercises I swore would never be worth a damn in real life. If I make it out of here, I have to track him down and thank him for making that part of our routine.
I'm not sure how long I was climbing, all I was really aware of was my arms getting tired, but I couldn't stop, not now. Almost there, almost there. I chanted it over and over in my mind, just one more pull, just one more, and one more, and one more. And eventually it really was just one more, and I clawed my way up the edge of the rock wall and onto land. I took a moment to collect myself, but only a moment, I couldn't waste the time, I couldn't let the exhaustion sink in, not yet.
When I turned, it was to find two of the others struggling up the last stretch of rope and over the rock's ledge. I scrambled over and grabbed Blake's hand, helping tug him over the edge, both of us turning and doing the same for Jason, too. "How many are still down there?" I asked, heaving a huge breath.
Blake shakes his head, a terrible weight settled behind his eyes. He refuses to look at me when he finally says, "They're gone, Ty."
"Maybe not everyone," Jason pitches in. "Will and Peter are both pretty strong swimmers–"
"Not against rapids like that." Blake interrupts gravely.
"You don't know that. People survive crazy shit all the time, maybe–"
"Jason! There's no point in hanging on to empty hope, okay? If we don't keep moving, The Alliance is gonna find us, and we're fucked, okay? We don't have time for this!"
I held up both hands between the two of them. "Just– shut up, okay? You can both be right, until anything else is proven otherwise." I exchanged a sharp glance between them, and they seemed to both fall into some silent agreement. "Right now, we need to strategize, okay? So let's work on that, and go from there."
There couldn't be another miscalculation like that. Not again.
Day 3: Rain
Date: 2021-11-03 09:29 pm (UTC)Days like this, when he has nowhere to be, no appointments to keep, no people to impress, leave him curled up in his favorite chair in the living room with a book or the newspaper or a sketchpad. Today it's the sketchpad propped in his lap as the rain tap dances against the windowpanes, a wild rhythm with a varying cadence. A smile curls around his lips as he listens, only the music of the rain and the soft scratch of the pencil against paper breaking the silence.
His mind is blank, only the picture slowly unfolding across the previously blank canvas underneath him in the forefront of his thoughts. It's a sense of peace and ease he does not know in the usual bustle of his daily life, simple and weightless in these moments, few and far between.
If every part of his life could be this blissful, he thinks he might not hate it quite so much. But taming the angers and the sadnesses of his heart has not proven so easy. More than he likes to think of (and so, he tries his hardest simply not to), his mind runs away off the rails with ideas of letting it all go. In one big crescendo, or all down the drain. Probably the latter, he's not much of one for making a fuss or a big scene.
Rain is the only thing that makes all of that seem so far away, eases all those parts of his soul that feel so tortured the rest of the time. If only he could trap it in a bottle and revisit this peace whenever he wished. Instead, he simply has to wait for the next time the weatherman calls for rain, and hope he's right.
It might be the only thing that's kept him alive for the last two years.
Day 4: Drive
Date: 2021-11-10 01:05 pm (UTC)Some days, he can reason with himself about why he shouldn't do those things. He has a life here. A family. Kids. A great job that he loves.
Today was not one of those days.
It won't be the epic trip he would like it to be, because of all those responsibilities that will keep him tied here, grounded in reality, but he could just take a drive for a few hours. He could pretend, just for a little while.
Somewhere in the background of his thoughts, he knows it will end, not in an unknown town across state lines in some shoddy rundown motel, but at 136 Birchwood Avenue. This means the feeling isn't quite the same, of course. But it's close. It's enough, just to have a taste of it sometimes. Because sometimes, a taste is all it takes to push a craving down.
Day 5: Letters
Date: 2021-11-10 03:13 pm (UTC)This was the last instruction I received from my dying grandfather. Like I cared one damn bit about some old junk in the attic when the man who was more a father to me than my real one ever could have been was on his deathbed. I ignored it in the moment, and forgot about it in the flurry of everything that comes with death, final affairs, and funerals. It's a lot, and almost everything fell on my shoulders, because I was the one that lived with him and everyone had so many questions and... it was a lot to deal with. Especially when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball somewhere and sleep for a week.
Eventually, things calmed down. The funeral was over, the long line of rarely seen relatives traipsing through the house was gone, and finally it was just me. Alone. In this big ol' empty house, full of so much stuff. Even after everyone was given what they were left in the will, and had their choices of things that remained, there was just so. Much.
Grandpa had been here for something like forty-three years. A person collects a lot in that kind of time. But I couldn't keep it all, I didn't have the need for a lot of it. But in the wake of his death, everything in the house seemed to hold some kind of sentimental value, and I've been having trouble sorting through it all to make donation and sale piles.
Today has me in the attic, and I'm already regretting the decision to come up here when I can feel the tickle of a sneeze rising up from all the dust everywhere. I sniff and try to shake the feeling off, rummaging through old boxes full of paperwork, clothes, and heaps of other things I can't begin to figure a place for.
The sneeze comes back with a vengeance after I managed to prevent it earlier, breath hitched in that annoying pause as it builds and builds and builds until–
ACHOO!
Finally. But the strength of it rocked me on my feet and I almost tripped over something behind me. "Shit," I muttered and after righting myself, I turned to see what it was. That old trunk. Pretty plain, as old things go, just an antique steamer trunk with brass latches and corner pieces. But Grandpa had said something about it, hadn't he? Everything inside it was mine. Well, did that make it different than everything else in the house? The house itself? But he'd been so specific about it... like he didn't want someone else to get to it first.
Well, luckily, no one even bothered to look at it, the amount of dust across the lid proves that. My nose itches again just looking at it and I groan, but I ease myself down onto the floor and flip the latches down and lift the lid.
I don't know what I was expecting to find, but at first, it's almost disappointing to just see a box of more old things– baby shoes and old pictures from when I was little. That just seemed so bland of a find when Grandpa had seemed so adamant about this old trunk. Still, I sift through it all, smiling at the memories, despite the sharp pangs of sadness in my chest– nothing like the things in these photos could ever happen again, because Grandpa is gone, now.
The thing seems pretty empty except something looks a little strange now that I'm to the bottom of it. I don't know why, but something told me to try to lift the panel at the bottom of the trunk– and that's when I learned it had a hidden compartment. It was a whole other layer of the trunk hidden, cut across the length of it, and it was full of... letters?
I frowned and set the piece of shelving aside and scooped up a handful of the letters. They all had my name on them. I could feel my heart trying to leap out of my chest. I'm still not sure what any of this means yet, but I know one thing for sure: This is what Grandpa had intended for me to find.