Week 14: Dylan & Zoe- Just When I Thought There Was Only Darkness
Full Prompt: “Just when I thought there was only darkness, a light shone through”
Story:
Alexander sat with his back against an uneven brick wall. His right leg extended across a rough, wooden planked floor. His left, bent at the knee and pulled tight to his torso. He stared at a shoe lying across the room, on its side, having landed approximately twelve inches from the wall he had hurled it at. His left elbow was propped on his bent knee, while his hand held up his head. With a torn shirt and matted, disheveled hair his mind was both a race and a blank. He could not seem to grab hold of just one thought. Instead they flew by as children on a carousel, bright, swift, and a blur.
He’d collapsed to the floor as a result of tiring himself from pacing the long, dark room he now stared down. For hours, perhaps days, he had searched every inch of the room. He ran his calloused fingers along every brick and beam which comprised this structure. In a frenzy he had taken to punching the brick hoping physical effort would jar something loose. Besides pain, it had not.
Still catching his breath from assaulting the wall, blood dripping from his right hand to the floor, single frames of memories shone across the screen of his mind. His mother pulling lovingly-made food from the oven. His father writing page after page at his desk. Their smiles. Discovering for the first time that falling on your hands and knees hurt. How cold his grandmother had been. The phenomenon of a firefly. His first heartbreak- Delia. Her smile. The love that had once been there. Losing his best friend. His first A in grade school. How quickly sorrow had turned to joy when his first dog, Arrow, had run away only to return a day later. Not unfamiliar pieces to all, but uniquely shaped to form a puzzle that comprised Alexander Alard.
As the sound of rain began to batter the roof, tears ran down Alexander’s face. “My life…” he breathed slowly, weighting those events against where he sat. Having spent so much time searching the room he now searched inward. He had loved his life. He’d been hurt by it, more than some, but not nearly as badly as others. He recalled all the things he got to experience that others did not. True friendships. Laughing until it hurt. Beauty in circumstance. He thought of all the things he still had to live for. His heart knew them to be worthwhile, but in the moment, in this room- they meant little.
He could feel the darkness of this place bearing down on him. As if gravity here were somehow elevated. It was too heavy to stand from the floor. Too heavy to even move in place. His head would have fallen to his chest were his arm not propping it up. The empty, lightlessness of this place was overwhelming.
Alexander waded through his flooded mind. Weeping had given way to laughter at some of his happiest memories, and returned to sobbing at the realization they were exactly that. Memories. The past.
He pressed harder into the brick behind him as his mind raged against this plight. He tensed all his muscles making his back as broad as he could manage. His leg felt pinned to the wooden planks of the floor. He thought, “Wood. Brick. Once mighty trees and the very clay of the earth. Me… dust. For a short while me… then back to dust…” and his body relaxed.
Exhausted from time, effort, and emotion, he breathed deeply in through his nose and held it. He slowly opened his raw, red eyes in time to see a single beam of sunlight push its way through a hole in the ceiling he had not previously discovered. It landed upon the opposite wall. It hit something metallic. The light was refracted by the object and created a prism of colors. Alexander beheld the natural phenomenon, a show seemingly meant solely for him. He contemplated the sun’s stubborn reliability and its life-giving warmth; its persistence. In that very moment Alexander was able to hold onto a second thought. His brow broke and in an almost imperceptible motion, the corners of his mouth rose as he whispered aloud: “Eureka.”
