Never, ever under any circumstances go outside at night. If your job requires it, quit. If your house is on fire, put it out or die. If you forgot to get groceries, go hungry. If your friends suggests it, dump them. If someone tries to drag you out the door, fight with every bone in your body. If you want to find love, you can’t. If you want some fresh air, just wait until morning. There is never a good reason to go outside at night.
Why?
It’s dangerous, there are so many things out there. A car might drive into you. Someone might try to kidnap you. Someone might break in and steal all your food. You might get arrested for looking shady and lose your job. You could be shot, or worse, survive a shooting where your friends all die. Maybe a war has just started and you haven’t heard and someone might just fly across the sky and drop a bomb but if you’d just been a little further away, inside your house, you would’ve been okay. Maybe. Possibly.
You just don’t get it. It’s not safe. It doesn’t feel safe. I just want to feel safe. You can’t make me go.
But if you do.
Can you hold my hand?
“Welcome to Valesin Library!” Announced Mr. Dun, who had noticed that a large crowd of unknown people had just arrived. He knew everyone in the town, as he was very old and the town was very small. The strangers also seemed to be a little more colourful than the townsfolk, both in their clothes and skin. Of course, Mr. Dun had seen both blue and purple skin on occasion, but green and red skin were entirely new to him. This did not impact his welcoming attitude in the slightest.
The people stood in the doorway of the library, wide-eyed but meek, and Mr. Dun thought it best to allow them time to adjust to the sight of the grandest library in the world. There were thousands and thousands of books, covering every round wall of the tall tower, with about 50 long ladders for reaching the top shelves. In the centre were even more books stacked up, as he had run out of shelf space, and many reading tables with little oil lamps sitting upon them. But what the newcomers couldn’t get their eyes off were the various birds of all different colours organising and reorganising the shelves to their hearts’ content.
When Mr. Dun felt they’d had quite enough time to adjust he interrupted them, “Come in, come in! And close the door behind you, would you?” He gave a little wink, “We like to maintain a cozy atmosphere.” He started pointing out all the sections and where they could find various books, as they continued to stare with mouths hanging open.
Mr. Dun had spent at least twenty minutes helping the strange persons to find the things they were interested in, and hadn’t noticed he’d left his office open. Then, just he went to lock the big wooden door, he heard a scuffle from inside. He debated just leaving the person locked in there, while he would go and get help from the towns-guard, but decided against leaving all his rare and precious books at risk.
He opened it again and locked it behind himself, and searched the small, old-smelling room for signs of life. He checked under the desk, as well as under the completely disorganised but important documents that made a paper-sea across the floor. He even checked behind the big bookcases, knocking some books off in the process.
There was no other way out.
But no one was there.
I close the old green wooden door for the last time, saying goodbye to a place that doesn’t even look like the one I’m familiar with anymore.
Inside, our comfy couches have disappeared, leaving nothing but the cold hard carpet to sit on. Our crowded bench is no longer so, with my special coffee machine and toaster and all other things neatly packed in the back of my car. The walls are empty, where the kid’s photos and paintings used to hang. Their bedrooms, however, had not changed in years.
We’d turned them into guest bedrooms ready for them to come and visit, with neatly made brand-new beds and furnishings, and a brand new coat of paint in each. But they never showed any interest in visits, they just left one day and only returned for and hour or two on Christmas Day most years.
But now that doesn’t matter. There’ll be no such designated area for them where we’re going. It’ll just be us, and Silver, our black and white ball of fluff, and all our stuff will somehow squeeze into that tiny unit.
Even the garden doesn’t look as it once did. In the past couple of years it began to get overgrown as we slowly lost the energy to keep up. And now that we’ve also removed every garden gnome, dog toy, and flower pot, I can’t help but think I might be saying goodbye to a house I never really knew.
Her outfit was supremely ravishing, gleaming, sparkling in the soft moonlight, out on the balcony of the hotel. She’d been beautiful the whole day and night, since she woke up this morning, though I hadn’t seen her until 3pm, standing at the other end of the aisle.
Her hair was uncharacteristically done up in a beautiful braid, but I prefer her like this, out of its ties and clips, and flowing like a river down her exposed back.
I loosen my tie and meet her out there, offering her the piece of cake she was too busy to eat. “Long day, huh.”
“Yeah, it was good though. Chaotic, but I had fun.”
“It was the ultimate chaos, was that your uncle who spilled his champagne all over Nancy?”
“Yeah, she just ran off crying thinking she’d been ‘tainted by the sinful drink’ or something.” She laughed and it was beautiful.
“This won’t be one to forget!”
“Gee, I hope not!” This time we laughed together.
“I guess this is the part where we… do the thing?”
“If I’m gonna be honest, I’m way too tired, it’s not like we haven’t done it before…”
“Oh, that’s a relief, same here.”
“Wow! I’m astonished!”
“What? You think women are the only ones who can be too tired?”
“Nah I’m just teasing, let’s go to bed.”
“I think I just met the happiest person in the world!” I called to my mum as I walked in the door, just having arrived home from school. “I’d love to be able to be as happy as that.”
“As happy as what?” Mum was skeptical, I could understand why.
“So happy that when she dropped a coin on the ground she didn’t even sigh! … or pick it up.”
“Is that right? It’s only one time though, that doesn’t mean she’s always happy.”
“Yeah, but then I followed her!”
“I’m not sure that’s a very nice thing to do…”
“Someone said she was ugly and she didn’t stop smiling for a second!”
“Oh, that’s strange, did you ask if she was okay?”
“Of course, but she just ignored me. So I kept following her, trying to help. And she walked into a store, picked up some milk and went to pay for it, the cashier said she didn’t have enough money, but she kept on smiling and took the milk without paying more, the cashier was speechless!”
“I would be too if someone didn’t pay enough for their milk! What did you do?”
“I went back and picked up the coin she left on the ground, and gave it to the cashier, and by the time I got back to where I last saw the lady, she’d already walked away”
“Well that was a noble thing to do, but I think if you see this lady again you should maybe stay away, if she can smile as she steals milk, I don’t think she’d be very safe.”
There was a quiet knock at the door.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“That would be Sunny, my new friend, she blind and deaf, so be nice to her.”
“She looks a lot like the happy lady.”
I’ve always been the funny one in the class, or so the laughter echoing around my classrooms on an near daily basis would tell me. Even my teacher thinks I’m hilarious, she doesn’t laugh but the look on her face reads “trying not to laugh” every time, and I love it.
I don’t understand why she can’t just give me a little giggle and get over it, it’s no big deal and doesn’t really take up as much class time as she says, but I guess she just wants control. Sometimes she’s even sent me to sit outside the classroom so that I’ll “stop disrupting the class.” Usually when it gets to that point I stop for the rest of the day, and just giggle to myself when I think of something good. Though I can’t help but think about saying something really nasty (and really funny) so she has something meaningful to kick me out for.
Of course I’d never do it, I actually quite like Mrs. Clarice, and I think deep down I’m actually her favourite student.
Obviously that could only mean he was right, but why had nothing happened until now? Why would someone spend a full 2 years following a kid, just to kidnap him? After two years of hearing the same old story and not believing a word of it, something finally happened to simultaneously prove his innocence and and remove someone else’s, but whose?
I’ve always known the follower as a man, but what did James say he looked like? I wish I hadn’t ignored him. I’d imagine he’s a scruffy, short, muscly man, driving around in a old blue Toyota. But what if he’s tall, and follows him in some shiny black car with tinted windows? I don’t know and I can’t know. Maybe he wrote it down somewhere…
I start searching his room for papers and notebooks he might have hidden about the place. It’s a surprisingly clean room for a boy of 11, with dark blue walls, his pyjamas from last night are thrown onto the Ben 10 bedspread in a complimenting green. The wooden legs of his little desk dig into the plush cream carpet as I open the drawer under the white desktop, smudged with grey pencil markings. The contents of the drawer aren’t quite as organised as the rest of the room, so I tip it out on the floor with a rattle and a crash.
Mum calls out from downstairs “Are you alright, Sasha?” I call back “Yep! Just looking for something!” hoping she won’t notice the intense panic in my voice. But as I dreaded, she opens the hallway door and walks quickly towards James’ room. “What are you doing?!” She bursts out, both shocked and upset at the state of my brother’s drawer. “Would you like it if James went through your stuff while you weren’t here?” Before I can half-heartedly admit, “No,” she has my upper arm in her firm grip and pulls me off the floor back to my own room, closing the door to make a point.
She returns to the drawer to clean it up. As I press my forehead and scrunched fist to the back of the door, I hear her put it back together in tears, one half-used pen at a time. And through gritted teeth and teary eyes I mumble, “I was just trying to help.”
