He was happy to be there on that special morning. There were others in the room who were friendly to him, but for the most part he was a loner. In fact he had a reputation for being totally silent, remaining focused on the interactions at the moment, waiting to speak until he felt he fully grasped the topic and the dynamics of the others. On this particular day there was a coziness in the air, but there was also a sense of dread. It was as if the apocalypse was outside the window, and the resurrection was its companion.
Everyone behaved as if it were just a normal day, but the howling of the wind and the chill on the feet set the true tone. Voices were loud, and the rattling of the glass in the windows created a peppering of random clunks and scratches that could only be ignored through pretension of normality. For one hour and forty-five minutes this went on, but no one noticed the time, with the whirlwind of activity acting as the ultimate form of blissful denial. Busy activity is the best antidote to anxiety.
At 9:45 everyone in the room was instructed to “zip up” and exit out the door into the wild, with no polite reservations and no supporting encouragements. There were whimpers and “donwannas” here and there, but all resistance was futile, any discussion quickly overridden, and time was not to be wasted on stragglers. Out into the wilds they went, with less visible distance than most had ever experienced, and their faces were hit with rocks and frozen ice, the sandblasting relentless yet somehow removed, much like the numbed mouth in a dentist office is removed from the pain of the scalpel and the drill.
Rocks, sand, and ice create their own whistling sounds when carried by the force of high energy. It is the down side to the wind in the pines. All human sound is futile and insignificant, buried in the chaotic swirl of evolving worlds. Sight, sound, and touch are replaced by the imagination, the unknown, the teleportation carried out by external forces. As his skin became thinner and the edges of his eyes crusted over, he knew he would not last even another minute unless he could somehow flow with the forces that surrounded him. There was no rescue unless he discovered the way on his own. With every surge of the force, he was buffeted up and back, into the air where there was no reference of gravity, no high or low, no brightness on the horizon or anywhere else – no horizon. Just then, he heard a wave of white noise coming toward him, directly ahead of him. He knew from the sound that it would certainly knock him over and blow him away - so with an anticipatory swirl he turned his back to the sound and leaned down with his knees bent. Miraculously, this worked as a defense against the onslaught, although it pounded him as if he were a circus animal being disciplined by the trainer. Surviving the blows, he felt renewed confidence that he could move on into the darkness, without being thrown down on the ground to die. All he had to do was walk backwards.
As he traveled over the landscape, eyes to the rear, only sensing direction by intuition, he reasoned that if he were to run into any object in his flight, it would be a gentle encounter, because nothing could be as fierce as the wind blowing at his back. This turned out to be accurate, as he witnessed small juniper shrubs appearing to his right side. Rotating his head to the left, he saw a cluster of lanceolate shaped leaves and thorny branches at eye level, revealing the Russian Olive grove that he decided to explore. Was this the security outpost on this foreign planet? Was the planet safe to land on, or was this an alternate plane in an alternate universe? He leaned up against a tree, and looked intensely at the focused swirls directly in front of his closed eyes.
After four minutes, he was fully convinced that he had indeed reached another plane. No human had ever traversed to this foreign outpost. He felt a flush of joy and his heart started beating faster as he realized that he had actually discovered a new region, and a way to get there, far beyond anything previously discovered. He knew there was an obligation to explore this unknown world, and he rejoiced at the possibility.
It was then he heard a sound, a strange sound, high in tone, with enunciation and variance of pitch, but without discernible syllables or phrases. The sound grew louder, and he could tell it was getting closer. Was this danger, or historic discovery? After a minute of hesitation, he decided to move away from the trees and expose himself. He had discovered this foreign place, and no one could take it away from him, but the entity appeared to be moving closer to him, and so he felt exposed. Friend or foe, he was there to see what would happen. The moving shadow stopped making sounds, and came directly in front of him, bending down to look at him straight in the face. After a moment of silence, the alien began to speak:
We have been looking all over for you – you were gone for an hour! We were very worried. All the other children have gone back to class. Are you OK? Do you want to walk back with me?
Together they walked back, hand in hand, with his sand filled eyes barely able to open. It was good to settle into his warm seat in a room filled with laughing voices, even though he had very little to say, especially about the new world he had just discovered.
Still reads well a year later. I miss these Midwestern blizzards.
Another engaging story. That first paragraph sounds like you were describing a "Scorpio" personality. As with all your stories, I will be re-reading!