RocketSauce
New Member
This is just something I fiddled with when I was trashed one night. Still thinking of expanding it though.
1
Jacob leant against the forlorn willow, of which seemed to pour itself over the small, gray farmhouse on Coral Street. The street lay sprawled along an upstate NY landscape, just as one may do so after a brisk run with a greyhound. Jacob had lived in this town his whole life, and ostensibly so had his beard, which had grown to a shaggy pumpernickel husk around his tender jaw.
It seemed as though the willow shared the same reverberating waves of downcastness that Jacob found himself bearing on this colorless day. The gray sky wasn’t of the typical color tributes one would value to be “gray,” and it had a curious tinge about it. It seemed as though the gray, plasma sky was obscuring pigments of loud complexion, and brilliant sparks of glistening steam.
Jacob could see all of this through the sobbing appendages of the willow, and squinting his eyes, he used his eyelashes as one uses oars in a calm lake: distorting and playing with the reflecting images just before they reached his retinas.
His right shoulder grew sore from leaning. He didn’t think he was putting all that much weight on it but readjusted himself anyway, as the pain was beginning to intensify. He shifted slightly against the weathered bark, only to slide with a wisp toward the mossy ground. When he landed, he heard a sound not unlike that of a heavily muted kettle drum thunder through his chest and head.
His right shoulder was no longer in mild discomfort. His left shoulder, now followed by the rest of his body, had landed in a patch of grass that was as tall as his wrist was wide, and had become the subject of his wincing eyes. He was still squinting, but it was no longer out of the self-amusement provided by the tree-filtered sun. The pain tingled in shards that seemed to dance erratically to the beat of his pelting heart.
Jacob chose to lie there for a couple moments more as his shoulder began to pass into numbness. He was feeling dizzy and didn’t want to risk passing out from standing up too fast. He relaxed his eyes a bit just as a darker patch of clouds covered what little brightness had escaped through the plasma sky. In a thoughtless gaze, he seemed to focusing on a particular blade of grass, but no thoughts swaggered through his mind toward it. In the back of his mind he wanted to lift his head to break the mindless gaze, but he was so tightly coiled in nothingness that it seemed to paralyze him.
Jacob’s shoulder remained numb down on the sultry grass. He felt himself becoming anxious, and he began humming a tune he’d heard on the radio earlier that morning - He often hummed to himself when he was nervous.
After quite a passage of time, Jacob’s humming gradually faded to silence along with his anxiety. But just as he realized this, he realized he was still gazing at the blade of grass. At this sudden realization, it began to pulsate.
A sharper wave of anxiety took hold of Jacob’s chest. The sensation developed its menacing cloak, as his body seemed to envelope itself with the fluctuation of the green blade. His breathing became long and drawn out, but in furious bursts and gasps. He felt a tingling aura caressing his nerves and scattering amongst his being. His toes began to feel like crackling embers, chanting along with the drum of his heart and nerves.
The sun seemed to start peering through the sky as all this chaos began swirling through Jacobs mind, and he felt as if he were sweating electricity. His head throbbed in an animated haze. He was segueing in and out of different feelings and emotions - first through delusional comfort, and then through jittery indifference toward his surroundings.
He transcended into a panic again. He could feel it begin to slowly digest him, and he started to blink - rapidly. He couldn’t tell if the blinking was caused by these nervous fluctuations, or his newly filtered conscious trying to escape the anxious happenings of his mind.
Then, finally, as if a tightly wound string snapped out of its claustrophobic tension, he gasped. Heaving his chest toward the heavens, he writhed, taking in the luscious air he seemed to have been deprived of.
Jacob felt as though he had broken from the grasp of a paralyzing nightmare. But, was he awake from it?
2
Jacob stood up in sprightly ascension toward the leaves of the willow. He took one last gaping breath as he tried to reintroduce himself to his surroundings.
He first noticed that the pain in his left shoulder had been extinguished to a great degree of relief. He sighed and swung both his arms gracelessly – no pain.
He then noticed that everything around him took on a khaki-green tint - such as one sees after staring into a bright-red light for a while. Everything seemed brighter as well.
Jacob’s vision seemed faced with a roaring sunlight surrounding him, just as when one strolls through a snow-covered field on a cloudless, sun-soaked day - the plasma seemed to have disappeared.
He leaned up against the tree again, this time with his outstretched hand palming the aged bark of the willow. He was trying to widen his eyes as much as he could - trying to make his retinas adjust to what images awaited his recognition - but they felt heavily restrained, and everything was blurry.
Just then, he heard an ominous screech - like that of an eagle - come from somewhere behind him. This was a split-second before he felt a stinging jolt pass swiftly through the center of his face, and down through his sternum. He felt brief sparks of fear shake his mind, but it didn’t take him over as it did before. This feeling dissipated quickly, and everything around him quickly darkened.
He heard what he thought was thunder in the distance, as bruised-looking clouds started to muscle clumsily into the afternoon sky. A gale wind began to brush the accompanying leaves of the willow - gently, and then sternly - along with the ragged white t-shirt Jacob had been wearing under his overalls since the night before.
He trembled slightly, brushed himself of the soft dirt, and began his trek towards the garage of the cottage. It was starting to rain.
3
Jacob stood in the musty doorway of the garage smoking a cigarette. Everything became clearer, and he observed a moth dancing clumsily around a single light bulb.
There was a ’79 MG fastened with spider webs, which accumulated around its pumpkin-colored shell. One would assume a rat’s nest existed under its heavy steel hood.
Taking in the jaded nose of stored wood and grease in the leaf-ridden garage, Jacob gazed upon the refrigerator that stood idly next to the workbench.
The rain grew heavy and sounded like a muffled static. This was accompanied by the fridge’s intoxicating hum, taken in by Jacob’s hazy regard. If he remembered correctly, his father had just picked up a twelve-pack of beer yesterday - of which Jacob found. He grabbed a longneck from the cardboard case, and sat on the stoop outside the door that led to the living room of the small cottage.
Resting his forearms on his knees. He felt slightly buzzed, but it couldn’t be from the beer; he had only two sips. Staring at a small twig that lay in between his shoes as a millipede drifted slowly past it, he aimed and spit - hitting the twig, but missing the bug.
The approaching thunder began to shake the garage a bit, and the frigid bottle of Bud in Jacob’s left hand was sweating. The label was peeling easily with the aid of Jacob’s nervous thumbnail.
It was another Saturday night alone, and with the dwindling cigarette extinguished by the freshly yielded saliva at his feet, Jacob stood again.
He then remembered his father’s pistol. It was always wrapped in cloth, and placed in an industrial-sized coffee can atop the knotted crossbeams of the old garage. For some reason it was always kept loaded. Why it was kept in such an awkward location, Jacob hadn’t the slightest. Should it be called into use, the time it would take to apprehend the gun would outweigh the necessity of its purpose.
He found himself eager to take the pistol out pop off a few rounds in careless, unheeding distraction. His father worked long hours, and there was a large cluster of trees in the distance that he deemed safe to shoot at (the nearest neighbor was a good ten miles there onward). The rain had stopped, and he could see a slight mist out through the garage door.
He stepped outside, and, hesitantly, with both hands on the gun, let the first and only bullet blast. There was a great thud in his chest, and a ringing in his ears. But, immediately thereafter, he thought he heard a mid-pitched wheeze dart through the echoing roar of the gun. Then there was another distant rumble of thunder. Followed by silence.
4
The storm had passed rather quickly, but a new storm was swelling in Jacob’s innards. He turned to go back inside with a kink in his thoughts.
- What the hell was that sound? He new he had said it aloud by the slight reverberation of his voice in the darkened corner as he entered.
It was now cold in the garage, and Jacob noticed a spider struggling to climb the face of the inanimate refrigerator near the workbench. The dusty webbing, in static gray, hung around the refrigerator, and dampened the steamy light on its face. The chrome faintly glistened through the rust of the handle as Jacob reached past it to grab a nearby set of pliers. There was a sudden allusion that he would need them, and Jacob then knew he had an excursion ahead of him.
He began pondering his course through the heavy woods into which he’d shot the stray bullet. He’d imagined it had buried itself in a tree, but his mind seemed to repel this imagery. He didn’t know if the cry he heard was that of his ears ringing, or perhaps that of a newly injured animal in the distance.
The clanking of old brown beer bottles skewered the musty silence as he stepped over them toward the weathered barn exit. Once Jacob passed through the doorway, he gazed upward, in somewhat of a self-blessing, trudged forward upon the wet grass and toward the confronting cornfield that stood between him and the forest.
He was briefly met with a feeling similar to vertigo as he approached the cornfield’s boundary. This was accompanied with a smell of rusted metal, and dirt.
Jacob stepped past the first few rows of corn with meandering attention. He could almost feel each blade-like leaf graze his cheeks, neck, and arms. At the same time he tried to focus on why he was walking through this field, but he became distracted.
As he scuffled through the organic surroundings, Jacob’s blurred silhouette was cast onto the cornstalks by the evening sun. He now moved on adrenaline-fueled curiosity. He trudged on with reckless abandon...