This short story is something I wrote to try and deal with the stress that comes from returning back to school. Summer is great, but it only lasts so long...
I wasn’t supposed to go there that day. I wasn’t supposed to go there any day in particular, the place just beckoned me. The monsters left their caves at fifteen minute intervals throughout the day right on the dot… 4:15, 4:30, and 4:45. The lights flashed on the wall with all the different times and the ones meant to leave first roared to life. Their hearts warmed as the men threw coal down their throats. You could see the people breathe life into them. They yelled a few times, telling the people they were getting ready to go back into their tunnels. They were getting anxious. I was getting anxious. The one called Seven stomped its feet on the tracks. Finally, Seven’s heart started beating very fast -- you’d almost think it was having a heart attack -- and it raced down the abyss into what I thought was nothing. To humans it was nothing, but to them it was everything.
I contemplated whether or not going down that if going down that tunnel would be nothing to me. Both staying and going may end in trouble, but why stay and do the same thing over again? When I was younger and naivety still sat on the tip of my nose, I used to think that I would just start at any set of tracks that I want and walk for hours. And this walking would somehow make all the bad and all the good disappear, and the person I was would just dissipate. Somehow I believed following something into the unknown would bring me back to where I started. I thought, I thought I knew that walking into the abyss would possibly make me a slave to this land, bringing me closer to what my ancestors had known and farther away from what my family had become.
Falling in love with the unknown was such a sweeter emotion than being with the bitter reality. I had spent fifteen minutes thinking of my options, to stay or go. I wasn’t supposed to go there that day. I told my dad I was getting a few things from the store, yet all I could pull myself to do was wind up there. The whistle called for the last train to the general area I wanted to travel to, but I just stood there. I could’ve swore that my whole life I knew I wanted adventure, but when it was put right in my grasp it felt as if someone had dragged it through mud and gave it to me to clean. How does anyone choose the somber, untold journey from the iridescently present future?
