The Ward (Part 1)

It’s like being back in the womb except for the temperature, its bitter cold. He can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed because he can only see the same black emptiness. He can’t scream, not when his lungs are full of water. He can’t kick or punch his way out, his foe is formless and all encompassing, like wrestling with God. His limbs might as well be in chains, bound in leaden chains and thrown overboard to sink helplessly to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean like a cask of spoiled cargo.

-The hell was that?

The brown skinned kid with the Caesar fade was almost blinded by the fluorescent lights when he awoke. After rubbing his eyes, the room gradually came into focus and he realized that he was in his high school cafeteria.

-Another one of those crazy ass dreams. Why’m I always drowning in my damn dreams? Why can’t I dream about good stuff, like flying or havin sex or something?

A slight smirk came over the boy’s face as a subconscious joke about the phrase “wet dream” crept into the back of his head. Looking around the room, he realized that he had been sleeping at one of the round tables at the end of the lunch-line. A strange sinking feeling came over the boy, not unlike the way he felt the time he saw a dead cat lying in a ditch on his way to school last week. Though he was completely alone in the spacious room, he had the feeling that someone was watching him.

-What the hell was I doing?

The boy felt as if he was grasping at smoke as he tried to recall his most recent memory. As he looked down at his shirt, the memory began to return. He was wearing a gray hooded jacket with a pair of white basketball shorts which had a pair of green lines running down each of the legs on synthetic fabric. They were the same grays all the athletes wore as well as a few of the team managers, and the shorts were the same ones the coaches gave to him at the beginning of the season. He unzipped his jacket to see what else he was wearing. All he wore beneath was a white Jersey with the word, “Bulldogs” written across it in green letters above his number 13.

-That’s right, we played the Bobcats tonight.

With this came the memory of walking alone across a bridge, the bridge on Liberty Street that spanned the flood-control canal. The canal was full of dark rushing water. It wasn’t yet sunset but it had been raining all day and by that time of day, the gray clouds had turned black and all the light was the darkest gray. It was like Hell all day, but fortunately for him the rain had ceased by the time the day was over.

-No, that was weeks ago.

A more recent memory came into view; at least it felt like it was more recent. He was in the cafeteria sitting right where he was at that moment. It was after the morning workout and he was eating breakfast with his friends, cracking jokes and exchanging stories about girls they’d messed around with. A more recent memory came into view; at least it felt like it was more recent. He was in the cafeteria sitting right where he was at that moment. It was after the morning workout and he was sitting in the cafeteria eating breakfast with his friends. They cracked jokes and exchanging stories about girls they’d messed around with. All lies, at least for him it was. He was still a virgin, but not from lack of trying. The closest he’d ever came was in the back seat of a Mustang that belonged to this rich White girl he had met after a game a few weeks ago. They only got as far as the zippers of each other’s jeans before they saw a police car roll slowly by. It sort of ruined the mood for the two of them, so they left the parking lot and the girl dropped him off at his house. The kid had to settle for nothing more than an intimate kiss in the front seat of the car as well as his own vivid imagination beneath the sheets in the privacy of his own bedroom. Though she was cute, the boy knew that she only wanted him because he was on the varsity team.

He heard his coach’s voice from behind him saying, “Hey Josh, c’mere I wanna talk to ya for a sec’.”

Josh sighed before standing up from the table, quick to hide his disdain before facing Coach Hunter. Coach Hunter stood almost a foot taller than Josh, but he was considerably shorter than most of his team’s starting five. His face was always a perpetual shade of red even when he wasn’t yelling his head off on the sidelines. Red to match his hair and his freckles, he had a crew-cut and the freckles more or less covered his face.

Coach Hunter spoke as he handed Josh a stack of papers stapled together, “I wanted to talk to you before you went to class.”

Josh looked at first packet the coach had handed to him. It as the collection of plays, but the coach normally only gave the hard copies to his starters, all the rest just studied the board at practice and before games.

Looking back at his Coach with a curious expression Josh asked, “What’d you wanna talk to me about?”

The coach replied, “Josh I’m starting you tonight instead of Rodney.”

Josh asked, “Okay, but why?” to which the coach responded, “Our offense against the Bobcats will be stronger with you in.”

Josh shrugged and replied, “I guess, but I’m not that good.”

The coach said, “Yer better than you think, you just gotta apply yourself more.”

Josh looked at the paper and then started rubbing his shoulder in that nervous way he always did since he was a little kid.

Coach Hunter asked, “What’s wrong?”

Josh replied, “Its jus...Isaac’s gonna be pissed, now that his ‘perfect five’ is gonna be messed up.”

The coach said, “Well he’s gonna have to get over it. It’s not his team it’s all of ours. You make sure you look at that sheet, I’ll see ya after school.”

The memory of that morning seemed to dissolve like leaden circles in the air. Josh rubbed his head; even though the conversation with the coach happened just that morning it seemed like it had been months ago, like he was watching ghosts of his past acting out his memory in clouds of smoke. He stood up from the table and looked around the room. Something was wrong. He walked over to the double doors next to the lunch-line entrance and looked through their windows to the stone pavilion that covered the school’s east entrance. The only light in the pavilion was coming from the single wall light protected by a cage of thin metal bars. The area where the student parking lot should have been was engulfed in a gray haze. He couldn’t even see the sky, it was so thick. He pushed on the door, but it would not budge.

-Damn janitors must’ve locked it already. But still, I should be able to open from the inside, shouldn’t I?

Josh turned around and surveyed the room once more. It was like a church, with the stage in the front off to the left of the main hallway.

-This place is pretty clean for a game night.

The floor was spotless, every tabletop shined. The fluorescent where much brighter than they should have been, in fact there was almost always at least one or two which flickered over and over, but not now. Everything was all too perfect.

-Are my eyes messed up or is somebody playin a trick on me?

Josh had never known the cafeteria to be very aesthetically appealing, but at that moment it was like watching an old silent film about his school. Everything was black, white or gray. The chairs which had once been dark green were now black. The tabletops, once blue, were now a lustrous white. Even the once red fire alarms were now black with white lettering. As if that wasn’t enough, it seemed that someone had taken the liberty of replacing all of the vending machines with empty black trophy cases. The four large windows which once allowed a view into the basketball court were now sealed with white cinder blocks and four extra empty trophy cases had taken their place.

-Maybe the front doors are still open.

Josh was walking toward the other end of the cafeteria when he heard the faint yet unmistakable sound of a metal door closing in the gym.

-Someone else is here.

Josh cautiously approached the metal gym door, the light reflecting on its black surface making it difficult to see. He was hesitant before opening the door, not entirely sure he wanted to find out what type of person hangs around inside a school at nighttime. He opened the door and was relieved to find that the lights in the gym were not nearly as bright as the ones in the cafeteria.

-The fuck is going on!

The gym was nothing like Josh remembered it. The bleachers were gone, the murals on the wall were replaced with a pair of horizontal green bars that ran parallel across all four walls and the walls themselves appeared to have been forced inward to occupy the space left by the bleachers leaving only about four or five feet between them and the court line. There were no scoreboards and the American flag which used to hang on the wall opposite the gym’s entrance was replaced by a simple white sheet, like a sail from a ship. The speakers had been removed as well as most of the hanging lights so that all that illuminated the gym was a pair of dim naked bulbs hanging from opposite ends of the ceiling.

Josh looked to the center of the court where a solitary leather basketball was resting on the half court line. Alone, the ball seemed to whisper the word to Josh, “Alone.”

-I’ve had worse dreams I guess.

Josh walked over to the half-court line and picked up the ball. He turned to aim at the goal on the cafeteria’s side of the gym when he realized that the goals themselves had changed as well. They were not the regular white boards which were usually mounted on the wall, but more like those cheap plastic ones on a metal pole, not unlike the goal in the drive-way of his house. Josh took a shot and the ball fell through the rim with a swish.

-I sure hope Freddy and Jason don’t come runnin out the locker room at me.

The locker room; the ghost of the hours past returned and Josh saw himself in the locker room, suiting up for the game. He had heard rumors when he first entered the locker room, whispers that some head-hunter was in the crowd that night, scouting for new blood. From what school he belonged to, Josh never knew but he thought he might have seen him on his way inside. There was a strange skinny looking White man whom Josh had never seen before, he was wearing brown khakis and a gray polo shirt. Josh couldn’t have cared less. He never planned on playing ball past high school anyway. Intramural All-star was good enough for him. Josh was listening to his “Blazing Arrow” CD, his favorite Blackalicious album on his music player. On game nights Josh normally listened to Linkin Park or Jay-Z or something similar, but he was in one of those moods. He wasn’t exactly angry and not really depressed, but some weird combination of the two. Either way, he didn’t feel good and the only remedy was to listen to “Chemical Calisthenics” on his black ear-encompassing headphones.

Josh was lacing up his clean white Jordans on the bench in front of his locker when he noticed number 50 approaching him with his lackey number 46 at his side. Number 46, Andrew Hunter, was the coach’s son which was evident through his blazing red hair. Unfortunately for Andrew his acne had taken the place of his father’s freckles. Josh thought to himself, your face looks like my back, as Andrew approached him with that same goofy smile on his face. Number 50, Isaac, was a senior in every sense of the word. He was the team’s captain as well as its oldest member. If it weren’t for Justin, the six foot eleven monster, he would have also been the tallest player on the team. Isaac had medium brown skin with low cut hair and a little white patch on the left side of his head which was about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar but not quite the same shape.

Isaac looked down at Josh with that same arrogant sneer which he gave to all the underclassmen on the team before he said, “Guess you’re starting tonight, huh?”

Josh pretended not to hear him through his headphones and went back to lacing up his shoes.

Isaac continued, “You know it’s a scout out there tonight, right?”

When Josh didn’t respond Andrew chimed in, “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You get the ball and you pass it to me or Isaac, got it?”

Josh didn’t acknowledge either of them, but brushed off his shoes and turned back towards his locker as he turned up the volume on his music player.

Isaac stepped forward and pushed the headphone off of Josh’s right ear as he said, “Hey, Drew’s talkin’ to you.”

Josh batted his hand away and shouted, “Get the fuck off me!” as he pushed Isaac away.

Josh’s push had a considerable amount of force to it, despite how short he was in comparison to him. When Isaac regained his balance he stepped forward and grabbed Josh by his Jersey and said, “You don’t fuckin’ push me, nigga!”

There would have been an all out brawl if Justin hadn’t run over to the three of them and pried them apart with his gigantic arms. Isaac and Josh were still going at it until Coach Hunter grabbed Josh by the shoulders and pulled him away from Isaac.

The coach yelled, “What the hell’s goin on here?” his red face growing even redder.

Josh said nothing as he glared at Isaac. He simply picked up his headphones and mp3 player, tossed them inside his locker and slammed the door. As Josh left the locker room, the coach glared at Isaac for a moment and then the rest of the team.

Hunter said, “Alright, all of ya get yer sorry asses out there. Let’s go.”

The leaden circles dissolved and the ghosts of the past faded away as Josh went to retrieve the ball. He took aim at the old rusty goal with the dirty plastic backboard and mumbled, “This game used to be fun,” as he took another shot. This one bounced off the rim, shaking up the metal chain netting and sending the ball bouncing toward the opposite end of the gym. Josh sighed and walked lazily to the other side of the court to retrieve the ball. He looked at the walls were the bleachers should have been as he walked past them. It wasn’t that great a loss, the bleachers; they never held anybody who was there for him. Josh’s mother always had to work during his games and his father, well who knows. The only person who ever came to watch Josh play was his older brother Daniel, but he might as well have been on Mars. Daniel was now about three states away studying physics on some all expenses paid scholarship. Josh was glad for him, who wouldn’t be? But deep down, he was jealous, jealous of his brother for being so sure of what he wanted to be when he finished school. As Josh bent down to pick up the ball he noticed that something had changed in the locker room doors as well.

-Where’s that light coming from?

All that could be seen through the windows on the doors that led to the locker rooms was a pale white light. Josh carried the ball to the door to the right of the goal and looked through. Nothing but the white light could be seen, no ceiling, no walls, no floors, no up or down and no source for the light it was just everywhere.

-I wish Danny was here.

Daniel always knew how to explain things like this to his little brother. Josh thought back to when he was ten years old, lying on his back in the his bed room with the lights out, staring up at the plastic glow in the dark stars on his ceiling while Daniel laid in the next bed explaining to Josh what Dark Matter was and how it could supposedly explain the arrangement of all the heavenly bodies in the universe. Josh still talked to Daniel on a daily basis to tell him about school, the family and girls he almost got lucky with; but it wasn’t the same as having him there, it never was.

Josh imagined Daniel standing next to him while he looked through the window, talking in that funny voice he always used when he was talking about science and math, “You see Josh; we’re at the part of the black hole known as the Event Horizon, the point beyond which events from within cannot affect the outside observer. Black holes are made out of massive astrophysical compact halo objects, which have so much mass that not even light can escape the attractive force they exert.”

-Whatever you say, bro.

Josh walked over to the other door on the same wall and observed the same empty void.

-This wall is the border of Purgatory.

Purgatory, Josh brought up the topic with his brother one time a few months before he went off to college. Josh had read all about it in the Divine Comedy and he wanted to know what Daniel thought about it. Daniel went off on a rant about religious indoctrination and whatnot. Daniel thought it was a black mark on human evolution, Josh thought it was just a cool story but then again Josh seemed to be the only one who actually enjoyed reading those old epic poems. He was the only one he knew who liked to read much of anything in fact. They say it started when he was a toddler; he’d pick up anything that had letters on it from CD covers to the labels on Gatorade bottles. He had begun to read novels such as the Harry Potter series and a number of Paul Zindel’s more popular novels before he reached the second grade, but when his classmates had begun to read at that level Josh had went on to read the Catcher in the Rye. Lately he’s had a craving for older English novels having just finished Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein two weeks ago and currently in the process of completing Mrs. Dalloway.

That faint sound of doors closing returned again and Josh turned around to see that the window on the door between the gym and the cafeteria was now glowing white as well. He dropped the ball and dashed to the other side of the gym. Josh pressed his palms against the sides of the door and watched everything in the cafeteria rapidly fall out of focus until it too was consumed by that pale light. He grabbed the handle of the door, but it wouldn’t open.

Josh banged his fists on the door and yelled, “Lemme out! Open this fucking door!”

Josh grabbed the handle with both hands and utilized all of his strength to pull against it. It was no use; he barely managed to shake the door in its frame. The left side of Josh’s hoody began to slip down his shoulder as he fought to open the door. He did not let go of the handle as he sunk to the floor, falling to his knees and resting his head on the cold metal.

Hot tears began to trickle down his cheeks as he cried weakly, “Somebody let me out. I hate this place.”

For a moment, Josh thought he could feel the sensation of someone grabbing his right hand and squeezing it gently.

For a moment, Josh was sure that he could feel the sensation of someone grabbing his right hand and squeezing it gently. He could have sworn he heard Daniel’s voice whispering like a ghost in his ear, “Hey kid.” Daniel always called his little brother “Kid” for reasons Josh could never understand. Though it often irritated Josh when Daniel called him that, he would have given anything to hear his brother use that silly name once more. “Hey kid,” said Daniel’s voice, “I’m here. It’s okay, everything’s okay.”

Josh looked up at his hands. He closed his eyes forcing more tears down his face when he saw that his hands were holding the door knob, just the door and nothing else.

-You’re wrong, bro. Everything’s not okay, it’s all wrong. I hate this place. I hate this school, this gym, these clothes, this life. I want out.

For once, Josh was glad to be alone. The only thing he hated more than crying was for people to know he was crying. Josh imagined his brother standing over him, looking down at him as he cried like a child that had lost its favorite toy. Daniel would never have said anything, but Josh knew he would be able to see the disappointment in his eyes. Josh let go of the door handle, turned around and rested with his back against the wall and his arms around his knees. When Josh finally managed to calm down, he wiped the tears from his face and looked up at the pair of light bulbs hanging on the ceiling, dangling like a pair of lost sneakers on a telephone wire.

-This place is getting darker.

The bulb closest to the place where Josh was sitting had begun to flicker in a strange rhythm. It shined brightly for a fraction of a second, blacked out and shined a bit longer, slightly dimmer than before. The other bulb did not flicker, but gradually faded so that it was becoming dimmer in relation to the first. The rhythm of the flickering bulb reminded Josh of his grandfather’s heart monitor after he had his first stroke four years ago. A week after they visited him in the hospital their grandfather had another stroke which would take his life.

-There has to be another way out.

Josh remembered that there had always been two doors on the cafeteria side of the gym. He stood up, fixed his hoody and walked behind the goal to the other door and looked through the window. This door should have led back into the cafeteria, but all he saw was what appeared to be a short utility hallway with a tall, black metal door at the end.

-Don’t really wanna go in there, but if nothing else is open...

Josh grabbed the handle and pulled. He felt air rushing past him as the door began to give way. Much to Josh’s relief, he was able to open the door completely, but he didn’t step inside just yet. He turned around and examined the gym once more. By then the room was so dark that Josh couldn’t even see the opposite wall. That white light was gone and only the dying bulbs were left to illuminate the room. Their glow was so dim that Josh could barely see the outline of the basketball on the edge of the court. Staring at the ball again, it seemed to whisper to Josh, “alone”, once more. Josh sighed and turned back to the hallway as the light bulbs in the gym flickered one last time and died.

Part 2:http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic58833.html