{This story is the second story I wrote for Creative Writing… : )  I think the teacher was fairly impressed with it (or something hee hee…)  Anyway, it’s all based on partially fabricated dreams I had the week I wrote this and partly on the same old childhood things.  You can guess at the main point behind the dream… *g* anyway, enjoy¡!}
“…We All Fall DOWN!”

     “Ahh!!” squealed Tonya.  “Gimme back my toy!”
     “Ha ha ha!  Come and get it!” teased Mark as he swung Jo the rabbit by his ears out of her reach and slowly backed away from her outstretched arms.
     “Gimme!” she wailed as Mark stumbled backwards on the sidewalk and started to lose his balance at the edge.
     “What the?!” exclaimed Mark in surprise as he swung his body for balance.
     “Quick! Grab my hand!” shouted Tonya frantically as Mark started to topple over the edge of the concrete patio and down the steep incline, which gave way to nothingness.  She clasped his hand and fell with him to the bottom, just missing huge boulders and rolling farther down toward a great river valley, surrounded by nothing more than what nature planted.  Finally, they hit the bottom and laid there silently on a big, mossy flat rock alongside the flowing waters of the rushing river.  As they sat there, their groaning subsiding to near cessation, they noticed a peculiarity about that strange, new place; a certain misplacement, as if there were no way this river could be here, where they now sat.  Slowly, still clutching Jo, Mark got onto his feet and looked slowly around him at this wondrous place.  It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, he told himself, and yet – it seemed familiar, like he’d been there before.
     Tonya then got up and asked, “Where are we?”  To which the air itself replied, almost in answering, by having the slight breeziness in the air that is natural to such an area so close to a body of water subside.  This allowed the faint noise of playing children to be heard across the water just long enough to sense it’s direction.  The two glanced at each other and began to make their way over the rocky bank of the river toward that noise.  This, having now heard it, could be deciphered among the cacophony of birdcalls, the gurgling river flow, and the breeze which distorts, dampens, and almost seems to blow the sound away.  As they ventured silently onward, their wandering eyes explored this new terrain, all with that strange disorienting sensation of déjà vu.  The trees, they noticed, were very old.  Their roots curled out of the ground like great worms, dried out and frozen in place.  What wasn’t covered with a lush carpet of near-lawn quality grass was covered with dense, lush, dewy green moss and lichens of all kinds of textures and colors.  They were speechless at this wonderland of colorful sights and wildflower perfumed air.  Finally, atop a steep, grass and flower covered hill, they spotted a chain link fence, beyond which came those joyful cries of the playing children.
     Their exploratory interests peaked at this point, and they hastily scrambled up the embankment, grabbing onto small saplings and various brush, until their tiny hands took hold of the green vinyl coated links of the enclosing fence.  Out-of-breath, they both looked forward and saw it was a schoolyard, apparently after lunchtime.  This struck them as very odd because, by their figuring, it was almost suppertime; at least, that’s what their already grumbling tummies told them.  More striking to them, however, were the grounds themselves.  They were huge rolling fields with antiquated play equipment that was in surprisingly excellent condition.  There were giant old shade trees everywhere, literally creating a canopied roof over the entire area.  Under these were smaller fruit and flower bearing trees of every imaginable variety, but mostly the familiar apple and lilac.  By all appearances, it did, indeed, seem to be late spring here, what with all the gorgeous, delicate blooms and so little of them falling apart yet.  This was the most spellbindingly shocking observation of all!  For it was late summer/early autumn, just a week or so before that time of year when the leaves begin to turn color and fall off.  However, curiosity always overpowers all else in the feline-like freedom of the mind that enhances young childhood; so, up and over the fence they leapt and made their way both leisurely and excitedly towards the other kids and the school building.
     Now, this school building was, by itself, quite an awesome sight.  It seemed larger than life, with vine covered, red brick walls that towered over them like those of a church or cathedral.  The windows were constructed of thick, dark-gray painted wood and the multiple panes of glass were of the old type, which bent the light in a slight, almost unnoticeable wavy curvature.  At this point they stopped, sat down, and tried to think aloud what they should do next.
     “Where are we, Mark?”
     “I dunno…”
     “This is really weird… ’you think we should find a… uh… teacher or someone?”
     “Sure, go ahead.”
     “Come with me?”
     “Alright.”
     So, off they went around to the front of the building, beyond which was a deserted stretch of road that curved out of sight at each of the far sides of the road.  Beyond the road was a dense, dark and menacing looking forest which – although not noticed immediately by them – was utterly silent and seemingly devoid of any animals, including birds and insects.  They approached the entrance of the building and went through the bolted-open doors that, despite the rest of the building’s exterior, were the standard glass and aluminum doors common to most commercial edifices.  Inside they found it looked not unlike any other ordinary school; in fact, it was quite similar to their own.  Almost by instinct, they walked right toward one of the lit up classrooms which, by the way, was in the same location as their own classrooms in their school.  Within they found what they were looking for, a teacher.
     “Excuse me, uhm… can you help us?” inquired Tonya, a bit nervously.
     “And you are?” the teacher replied, almost giving off the appearance of being annoyed at their intrusion.
     Even more nervously, “I’m Tonya, and this is my brother Mark.”
     “Mark, butting in, said in a calmer voice, although he himself was even more nervous than Tonya, “We’re from Waterford, Miss… (?)”
     “Baileen… Mrs. Baileen, please.”
     “Mrs. Baileen, could you please help us get home?” inquired Tonya.
     “I will try… however…” she said, thinking, “just where exactly is Waterford anyway?”
     “Oh, it’s… it’s… right up the river?” said Mark a bit uneasily.
     “Where are we anyway, Mrs. Baileen?” asked Tonya.
     “We’re in Coddington. Now, you say it’s right up the river?  I can tell you there is no town that I know of along the length of that river which goes by that name.  Now, there’s a Watertown and a Hartford along the route of the river, not on the river, but close by.  Did you perhaps make that mistake?”
     “No, ma’am, we’re from Waterford,” replied Mark.
     “Hmm.  Well, do you know your phone number then?” asked Mrs. Baileen.
     “Here, I’ll write it down,” spoke Tonya as she did so.
     “Okay, you two go outdoors, I’ll make some calls.”
     “Alright,” replied Tonya and Mark in unison as they ran outside.  They exited through the front, as they didn’t know where to find the back exit, if there were one, and this time noticed something.  They noticed the silent forest.  Feeling exploratious still, they both considered going into it, just for a peek.  However, they decided against it, afraid they might find themselves in further trouble if they did.  So, around to the back they ran and were stopped by a tall man whose arms were crossed in front of him.
     “Hey there, slow down!” he exclaimed authoritatively.
     “Sorry,” they both replied.
     “Uh-uhh, that’s not gonna cut it.  You know our rules here, now go and sit against that wall over there for a bit and settle down some, and don’t let me catch you two running around the school again, hear?” he said, scowling at the pair.
     Shrugging, they replied, “Okay, sorry.”
     “Right,” he said as he walked off towards the front entrance.
     “What was all that for?  Sheesh!” said Mark.
     “I dunno… I don’t think I like this place very much, Mark,” said Tonya uneasily.
     “Oh, calm down!” he said as he sat down against the wall, Tonya following him.
     They sat there against the wall for a few minutes looking over the field at all those strange kids playing.  They saw the kids having a good time playing with lots of toys, mostly balls of all shapes, sizes, colors and variety bouncing around and around off trees and floating through the air like balloons.  They looked up at the cloudless sky through “holes” in that leafy roof and saw the rays of the sun shining through the branches in visible shafts, the way it would through dark rain clouds after a thunderstorm.   They saw birds of color they’d never seen before flying through the trees, chirping over the chorus of laughing children and the occasional cicada bug making it’s distinctive buzzing sound.   In the air were dozens of Monarch butterflies, floating over the heads of the children like little fairies or insectile angels.   Then, they heard coming around the corner of the building, the voices of two adults talking to each other.   The two children sighed.   The grown-ups didn’t sound too pleased.
     As the teachers came closer, Tonya and Mark saw it was Mrs. Baileen and an old man, who, though quite obviously aged past 50, was at the same time thin and relatively healthy looking.  (I suppose one could liken him to one of those proud and lonely trees that grow hundreds of years old up between the parched, brittle rocks on a harsh and wind blasted desert mountainside – a tree that decided to live in hell.)  How wholly out of place he seemed to be in this virtually edenic nowhere.  At the mere sight of him, the playing children suddenly froze in their tracks, as if they were the intricate workings of some carefully crafted perpetual motion machine into which someone had just jammed a wrench into the gears.  One could almost have expected the balls to have halted in mid-air at that precise moment, just before gravity took hold and accelerated them toward the ground where they bounced unenthusiastically against the unresponsive shoes planted in the moist, fertile earth.  His stare traversed the space between the two newcomers and himself like a brisk northerly wind directed into their eyes; stinging them, lording over them like death itself; draining them of all color; icing them beyond their mere physical being; brutally violating the innocence of their young souls with a liquid nitrogen enema of the vicious manifestations of psychopathical neurosis.  He spoke in broken, barely audible murmurings.  The teacher’s voice cracked and screeched.  The children sang like frightened bats aimlessly vaulting off the walls of an echoing cavern and plummeting to the ground, one by one, as the fabric of reality mutated before their very eyes.
     Oh, how they tried to shut themselves out of this chaotic nightmare, but, alas, the lids were sewn open and they were thus made to see the psychedelic erosion of both space and time, as well as causality and all the other sane physical laws as it rained bright red flowers that fluttered down on their expressionless faces like butterflies descending upon a field of dandelions.  As their gazes looked for peace skyward, they saw, to their explicit horror, that the sky was inversed black and white.  Fluffy, ebony puffs of cotton candy cumulonimbi clouds formed against a dark and foreboding sky of iron gray.  The tarnished silver dollar disk of the moon glided into the path of the hole in the sky, which opened into deep, black nothingness – the sun.  At the moment of alignment, shrouded in a cloak of inverse twilight, they fell asleep and dreamed of their mother and father worrying over them at that present moment.  Then, their minds reversed at random back through the photo album of their subconscious memories and recalled all the fighting alongside all the good times between the two of them, their two parents, and between both their parents and them.  Farther they slid until pictures became vague feelings.  The physical forms they thought they had, had disintegrated and become whole once again in foggy, numbed pain under the glare of eight hospital spotlights.  They just glanced at each other and at the delighted, tear-streaked faces of their onlooking parents and fell back asleep.  This time they slumbered dreamlessly and without fear.
     When they had fully recovered and returned home, they both decided to give their old friends a visit.  It was upon arriving and walking outside to play once again with little Jo that they discovered him missing, along with Pressilla the cat.  However, most shocking of all discoveries, they found that there never was a hill there to have fallen down, just flat, grass-infested pavement with a sole growth of one leafy dandelion sprouting up between the tarred rocks.  On this dandelion sat a butterfly, a green winged bug with velvety black hairs on it’s wormy body.  The wind blew, and they went on playing as usual, forgetting – as if nothing had ever happened.  And indeed, it hadn’t.


{For those of you who’d like to see the (much over-)photocopied picture that we were required to use as a composite for the characters (and the plot to some extent) of the second story assignment that we had… it’s right down there… btw… the clarity and resolution is exactly the same way it was as I received it… gosh! what an inspiration it was to me… : P }

A really bad photocopy of some brats… *g*


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