The Walk

Is it just me or my stories have become so monotonous and vague? I don't know. I think I could really use an honest and deep critique right now so as to see what underlying invisible monster is bugging me constantly. Ha-ha. Or maybe it's because I started writing this a long time ago and now when I am finishing it, it feels boring? Uh-oh. That's a forbidden word in the world of writing. There's so much to say, but so little time... 

The sun looked like a tiny ball of fire, which was spewing out golden flames. The clouds seemed to engulf it in an endless abyss, leaving the streets of Rochelle with a murky evening. She got a soothing vibe when she peered out of the windscreen. A sense of calm which was so serene and the surge of contentment so eclectic that all the shitty things happening in her life seemed like nothing but water which were going to evaporate soon. It seemed as if it were going to rain. She was driving so fast, like a storm raging, like there was nothing in the entire universe that could stop her. On the radio was playing one of her favorite songs ‘Sweet Disposition’ by The Temper Trap. She put the volume loud. It felt like as if everything around her had vanished into forgetfulness and it was just her, the car, music and the sky. Becket, saw the mountains emerging from far away and knew she was where she belonged. She missed her mum and dad more than anything right now, but she told herself it was okay. They would be proud of her when she’d break the news to them. Her screenplay had just been nominated for an Academy Award. It was her debut and she nailed it hard. 

Still, studying at Perkin Oaks High school, in Rochelle, Becket was nobody but just another random human being treading through those bricked corridors every day. Driving her old Toyota to the school, which she got as a gift from her grandparents when she turned eighteen, she was a hardcore recluse. Nineteen years of her existence, but known to not many people other than Daniel her year old brother, Cilia; her year older sister, parents and grandparents. She always wondered if it mattered, being known. But in the end, the conclusion to what she reached was that in the end it mattered what you do and what you remember doing that actually made you feel satisfied and something you loved doing. Something that made others smile and would stay in her memories until the time would fade away forever. And what mattered to her the most was that she had some people who loved her unconditionally and she was thankful for that, without any boundaries. They knew her worth.

She was battling a fatal disease for the last two years and it was getting hard. It was a sheath of little tumors in her shoulder at first. But after getting the MRI it turned out to be in the neck and back too. She knew she had to fight hard to make it. She stopped at a grocery mart near the towns’ intersection to get some basic supplies, paints, books, records and shitloads of milk, Kit Kats and Nuts. And of course a gift for Alan, her neighbor; she used to give random presents to people in her town. It made her feel content and nice. After parking her car, she went through the back door and popped into the kitchen where everyone was having dinner. Her mom almost jumped and threw the celery-filled pot from her hands, which her dad saved from smashing onto the wooden floor, thanks to his cool reflexes. Daniel ran from his chair and got over her and started hugging her like he hadn’t seen since forever. Becket had gone to California to meet her agent who had arranged a meet-up with some directors who wanted her to write scripts for their films. It was there when the call came. Her sister had sent her the script ‘The Lake of Light and Fire’ to the Academy. And they really loved it. It was something, they had never come across. A rare style with a fiery and passionate determination; they’d said. She kissed her folks night as she was awfully tired and went to her room to doze off. Her house was on the northeast side of Harrington town in Rochelle, Ohio. It was a two-storey mansion with a huge backyard where she grew veggies with her dad and siblings. It had a swing on which two people could sit and it would just keep swaying until either got off. The living room was normal with some comfortable black and off-white futons, almost in the shade of light turquoise, the walls were painted were painted dark blue and there was this gray-bricked wall that had a fireplace and a gigantic TV above it. Her room was a normal cube shaped one. Loads of books, DVDs and sketched were seen to cover the shelves that filled the whole room. There was a red led lamp beside her bed. She put the pillow under her head and with her boots still on drifted into a calm sleep. When she woke up, she saw Tulips of almost every color placed on the windowsill in the black case. They had a note attached to them. 

‘Come over when, you turn eighty.

 Love,

 Jason’

She grinned and went downstairs. Danielle, her mom was making breakfast. Corn and tomato soup with croissants and limejuice. She declared an all-out offensive over her meal, as she had skipped dinner. Then she drove off to J’s place. She had always called him J. He was her best friend. He lived in a little, but phenomenal apartment, with her wife, Susan, across Dayton Avenue, which was two blocks from her place.  They got married when she was in eighth grade. Susan greeted her at their door with ever loving; warm hugs and they went inside. Jason was putting up some painting they had recently got from an auction at a NY art gallery, Susan told her. Jason was a man with nicely built muscles, and mild complexion. His hair was rather messed up. He was an exquisite art lover. Besides, he always had a knack for stacking art pieces. He painted as well and sent his drawing all over the states for display at various museums. They had lunch together. Then all three of them watched a movie and she went back home. Beckett took a short nap before waking up in the evening with a terrible fever. She took some aspirins and pulled her laptop from under her pillow. She thought of writing a story. Writing was something she felt connected to so much that it was her best cure, even the doctors said so. Sometimes she just felt she couldn’t ‘fit’ in but it was okay she always told herself. It didn’t matter. She started typing. It got dark and her mum called her downstairs for dinner, but she stayed in her room. She just wanted to walk on a road. A long never ending road which had no end or maybe which led to a cliff which had a huge fall. She was not quite sure. She wrote about her journey to Beverley Hills and people she met there. The feeling was so surreal and eclectic. She fell asleep while writing. 

The next moring was exhaustive. She skipped breakfast, to prepare for her history quiz, which was on French Revolution, which afterwards she realized, was a bad decision. She knew she would do well, but to assure her annoying restlessness she crossed swords with her id and went outside to the backyard where she had camped for the night. Her books were lying open along the wooden bench. There were black and white roses lying beside her chair, which she thought her dad had sat in the morning to give to her mum. Her mum loved roses and her dad knew it well to amaze her with little delights. A glass of orange juice with some crackers was also placed there with a post-it that read ‘don’t dare to leave these’. Whatever she said to herself and packed up her stuff after going through her notes precisely. Then she took her car keys from the hallway, it was paneled with wood and some old photographs hung beside the door which led to the entrance. An evergreen gave a lively touch to the place. She turned on the engine and drove off. She entered the school cafeteria after a three-hour English lit lecture with her friends Hans, Georgia and Kyle to have lunch. It was huge. The walls were painted in light red and orange with touch of off-white. The floor was marbled; there were eight long horizontal tables with chairs lined alongside them, which ended some inches before the food counter and drinks corner. The counter had all kinds of foods put up there. They did not need to pay to get food because they were the graduating class and they were given this privilege by their headmaster, Mr Stanley. There was a nutrition bar corner to the right of the exit door. A huge wall clock was mounted over the door, which had beautiful venetian art on it. Kyle got them places at the end of the second table. They put their bags there and Beckett banged her head on the table with a little nudge. And they all broke into silly laughter. They all shared the same subjects and were fun to be with she thought. Although she did not have ‘real’ friends, but they hung around with her whenever they could. Kyle went to get them food. Today tacos and truffles were being served. They were favs. Then she had a nightmarish revelation after some while. She had her drama and music club, hours after school until six. All of the others were going out to see a movie, but she had to stay back as she was the student council’s vice-president. They practiced for the upcoming annual play in which she was starring as Clara, an evil witch who had cast a spell over a whole village and turned them into butterflies. It was funny, she thought. The thought of human beings being so little helpless things, but everything was beautiful in its own way. So there was no reason to resent what God was doing. They got done with it by six-thirty. Everybody started leaving in a hurry. She went outside to see what made everyone leave in such a rush. 

It had gone dark, though the clouds still glowed murkily and lit up like a vast sheet of glass, which was blurred by fog and was illuminated with a light coming from far away as if somebody had smudged the sky with dark gray sticky substance, as if a blanket of dark gray clouds covered all of the sky. She had worn her boots today luckily with her red fur coat, which her mum had given her as a gift when she came back from Seville. It kept her warm enough to survive. She thought how much she was going to miss all that, even though she would not exist anymore, but still she thought she would miss it wherever she would go after. Then she started crying, because she did not want to see her family in pain, but it was something she couldn’t choose. It was God’s will. The wind was cold, it pierced and it she felt as if some shrapnel were being thrown at her skin. Which made her feel numb and yearn for a warm place. She hurried towards her car which was parked in the middle of the parking area. The grass area which ran along the road was covered by a mixture of melted snow and mud. She drove slowly and carefully so as to avoid any accident and not die before her time. She still did not lose her sense of humor after so much bitterness, she contemplated. And that was a great achievement for someone like her who was so prone to submitting themselves to the mercy of pessimism. Her phone was on the dashboard when it buzzed. ‘Unknown’ the screen flashed repeatedly. ‘Who could it be?’ she asked herself and attended the call reluctantly. There was heavy breathing at the other end, there was a shrieking noise coming from far behind the person whoever was calling. It seemed as if someone had dialed and left the phone unattended. ‘Probably a prank by one of her classmates’ she tried to satisfy herself. It buzzed again. No voice on the other end, after a minute when she going to hang up someone answered it was a faint and feeble cry. The women spoke softly. ‘Pl-please help me, I’m near the lake… he’ll kill me…’ and then she heard a shot and the line was disconnected, she threw the phone with a jolt on the seat. What did just happen, she wondered. There was only one lake, Lake Mare near Rochelle, an hour’s drive away she recalled. Was it a bad idea to go there? ‘No, I must check it out’ she told herself. She left a voice message for Jason to call her up ASAP, but didn’t tell him that she was leaving for the lake and about the weird phone call. It was raining even harder as she got near the lake. The road that led towards the lake had a thin forest on one side and a mountain range ran aside it. She felt an unnerving uneasiness crawl under her skin and the place was giving her the creeps. She stopped her car where the road ended and led to the little deserted resort near the far east of the lake. There was nobody to be seen there at that time, of course she mused. At this time anybody would be an idiot to be out here in this weather. She saw somebody walking towards her, their hands held outwards as if they wanted to be found or they were searching for something. She picked up a stick lying on the way and took out her club-knife just in case. She had to be cautious. It could be a crook. Crooks were said to be out there by the local PD in the last week and the public was advised to be cautious. It was a guy, in his late teens, she deliberately thought, and he had a gun in his hand. 

She couldn’t see his face because he was far away and the rain was making it hard to see. ‘Oh shit’ she let out a muffled shriek and her foot was stuck between some stones. Luckily, her voice was masked by the rain splattering over the soil, making it hard to decipher petite sounds. She had to get out of there. Fast. She searched for her phone, but remembered that she put it in her bag before locking the car’s door. ‘I’m so damned’ she whispered to herself. The person couldn’t see her as she was behind some trees. But he was approaching fast. Maybe he had called her. Maybe that sound was not that of a woman, but a murderer. These days there were applications introduced which could even mimic the president’s voice. How could she let her thoughts be clouded like that? ‘Damn!’ she thudded the surface mistakenly. She tried to put pressure on her leg to get her foot out of there, but the pain was getting control of her and she felt a sudden pang on her head from behind and everything went black. When she gained consciousness, she found herself tied to a pole. Her knees were burning and she realized they had been scratched awfully. ‘No! Let me out’ she shouted, ‘let go of me, you prick, who are you… you scared asshole… why are you hiding? Did you kill that woman? I am not afraid of you’ she resisted. Her hands had started bleeding due to being rubbed frequently in her efforts to get them out of the rope. When the stranger emerged out of the dark corner she suddenly felt as if someone had shot her a thousand times in a second. ‘Cat got your tongue darling?’ Kyle popped in front of her with a razor. He was wearing worn off clothes. His trouser was cut from many places and there were streaks of blood all over his white cardigan. His hair was shaved off, not the gentle type he looked at that time as he did at school. White gloves covered his hands and he was wearing a dark thing on his eyes, which made him look even more horrific. His eyes had that repulsively heinous playfulness to them. He moved his hands in a wriggling manner, twisting Beckett’s wrists. ‘Well, well, well. Look, whom do we have here? The gorgeous miracle of my life, Beckett Clayton, eh?’ he mocked her. ‘B-b-but why—you- Kyle no... this is a dream… Wake up you fool, wake up....’ she told herself, ablaze with soreness, tears burning her face like chlorine on skin. ‘This, dear, is not a dream. I am very much here’, he moved the razor caressingly on her neck. ‘Oh, no! This hurts. Kyle why-- why would you do this to me?’ Beckett moaned in anguish. Then he told her. How he had developed feelings for her and she kept on ignoring him and avoided him. And how she just viewed him as a mere friend and not her love. ‘But you can’t force me to love you this way. I can’t Kyle. I am dying. Please do not hurt me. I feel so sick. I…’ her voice fainted away. She passed out in endless pain from the fresh cut on her neck. He went near her and moved the hair aside from her face. He held her face in his hand and whispered into her ears as if she were listening, ‘I am not going to let you get away, ever. You’ll be my slave and I’ll feed on your tears and blood. Your cries will the fuel for, my joy and your pain the strength of me’ he grinned and jolted her head and crushed her leg under his boots. She winced suddenly, but then fell unconscious again. 

It had stopped raining. It was the time of dawn. Kyle was not there. There were some blades and a saw lying there on the floor covered in blood. She puked with disgust. ‘No, no I can’t… I..’ she cried relentlessly. She felt pain ripping every fiber in her body apart, like infinite needles pricking her body making it wasteful to move. Even so, she had to escape from this hell. Or she was going to go mad here. She had to escape, she told herself. She was still feeling groggy due to the sedative Kyle gave her before leaving so she could not make noise or try to escape. Her pants were covered in mud and her shirt back was still wet from the blood that was still dripping from her neck. Beckett felt weak. But she managed to get her hands out of the rope. The door was locked. She found a steel rod and used to it to break the lock. Now she ran, and didn’t look back. The sky was washed with faint blue color and birds were flying above. The lake looked so beautiful she thought. But she must go on. Her car wasn’t there when she reached the spot where she had left it. Flipping, she gathered back her senses and went near the barn, she saw from far away. It was left to fade away as the time passed by. The hay lying around it had started to smell rotten and there was a deadly terrible smell coming from inside it. She wondered what was inside. There was not time to spare, but she had to get some water and something to defend herself in case she came across Kyle at this time, which she thought was unlikely because he must have been at school. Everybody must be looking for her, she knew. But how would they find her here, lake Mare was a spot known to a few number of residents of Rochelle, it was infamous for its eeriness. She cracked the door open and what she saw next shook her entire existence. There were corpses of men and women, teenagers. Which hung from the thick cord. They were naked. Their skin was scratched with weird inscriptions. She felt ghastly at once and wanted to scream, but somebody was within hail she could feel that. She hid behind the wooden boxes that created a barrier between her and the barn door. Kyle entered, whimpering. He was murmuring something indecipherable. He was holding that nine millimeter he had the day it rained. He smashed his fists on the wall. ‘Fuck them, I’ll murder them all. They want a monster they’ll get one. I’ll suck the blood out of them until their bodies rot away and animals feed off their skin’ he whispered in an evil manner. But what happened after that was something Beckett couldn’t understand nor did she feel like giving it a thought because it was too graphic to visualize or even recall about. Kyle held the black trigger against his head and blew his brains out. Maybe that was his reprieve she thought. A way of releasing the demon inside him, which had plagued his soul and haunted this place. 

She lay low until she got the courage to get up and walk. Everything seemed so calm. Not a ripple in the lake water. The Sun was out now. The sky still looked pale blue. Like page which had been painted with a pale blue watercolor. The birds that flew so high looked as if tiny pencil sketches had been drawn over that painting. The air was still, the trees looked lively after being washed away by the rain. Some stray cats were strolling around. A knife lay beside a bush, she pulled back suddenly. But tried to calm herself down. She breathed slowly for a while and got back up.  When she reached the road, she found out some police cars passing by. The cars stopped. Jason was in one of them. He ran towards her and took her in his arms. He told her he had her message and after calling her incessantly and not getting any answer, he got worried. He checked with her folks, but they add that she had not come home. It was not unusual for Beckett, but J knew something was wrong, so he told the Rochelle PD about it. They tracked her phone here. It had been a tiring walk from the barn to the road, but it was worth it. She had managed to escape from that hauntingly riveting place and felt secure now. 

Note: Lulz. I’ve become badly lazy and that’s so dangerous. Gosh.