“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Alice states, her sharp blue eyes attempting to cut through me. She stands fidgety at the end of the endless hallway as I walk down it, carrying her “world,” as she calls it, inside many brown boxes.
“What do you think? I am helping you move in.” I manage to say, struggling to hold up the filled cardboard boxes and walk forward in a straight line.
“You’re bumping into each wall! If you break anything I swear to - “
“If you helped, then maybe this wouldn’t be a problem!” I bark to cut her off.
“Then maybe I should stop,” she says, entering into her new cave.
I curse underneath my voice and attempt to rush down the hallway, but I feel like a cheap plastic toy whose arms are about to pop off. The end of the hallway never looked so tantalizing as it does now, my legs waddle me faster across the thinner-than-paper carpeting. I see the light from the windows flooding the threshold, as I reach it. Once inside, I slowly put down the boxes, my arms feeling a good foot closer to the ground than they were this morning.
“Alice!” I shout, looking for her in the box ridden apartment. Only a few rooms, but she doesn’t need much to hide. “Alice!” I scream out once more, walking through the empty hallway. A weight lunges and latches itself on my back and pushes me down on stomach.
“Did you want to apologize?” The girl says, using me as a stool.
“Get off me!” I manage to command after being turned into a flat juice pouch.
“Did you want to apologize?”
“Get off!”
The weight slowly lifts itself from my back and I get up to see her walk towards her boxes.
“Are you ignoring the fact that you just pounced on me?” I walk towards her
“I think it’s fair, you gave me sass, I pounced on you,” she says, “and if you think otherwise, maybe I should stop helping you,” she says, her head ostriched in one of her boxes, looking for something.
“C’mon, you know I need you to get my GED.” I say, trying not to sound like I’m whining.
“Then just help me unpack and stop complaining,” she says pulling out books upon books from one of her larger boxes.
I grumble underneath my breath once more and walk towards the windowless window frame. According to Alice, the cleaners managed to break a window and have yet compensated for it. I look out of it and see the lone bus stop, Route 35, with a few people there..
“Why did you move near a bus stop, won’t it get loud?”
Without looking up, “I just like this place.”
“You spend so much time in books, I’m sure the bus coming and all the people would get annoying. .”
“I can ignore it,” putting another book down on the floor. “Now help.”
“I am, I am.,” I take a step forward and immediately step on the book she just placed. The books slides forward and I am sent backwards, towards the window.
~
The air brushes underneath me, wanting to suspend me and keep my body in its thin arms, but alas, its efforts are reward with none.
CRREUUNK.
The sky fades away into whites and blacks. I am inside, and everything is banished.
screams, whispers, sobs, “Route to…”, sobs, whispers, screams, whispers, silence…
EEEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEEOOOOO
“Oh lord… Please, please let him live…. Please!”
EEEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEEOOOOOO, EEEEEEOOOOO.
