Come Back Now - Excerpt

I was lost – truly, I felt like the only option I had was to give up. I didn’t know my way in and I certainly don’t know my way out. I just ended up in one place and then another. I try to distinguish the patterns but there aren’t any.

This place, like all the others was quiet, and it felt like I was the only one who and what was capable of creating any sound.

The grass here is a vibrant green – not obnoxiously vibrant, but just so that it was able to evoke a feeling of belonging. A warm hug accompanied by the wind as it blew in my direction.

It went on forever – green hills stretched on and on, brightly colored houses speckled throughout the new landscape. But I already knew nobody was home to occupy them.

Bright pinks and yellows and blues and many others among them like purples and oranges and turquoises. Colors so bright that they contrasted greatly with the dark and purple clouds in the sky. It was like the sky was overcast, but the sun was still shining on everything.

No, that’s exactly what it was like. But the sun was nowhere to be seen.

The wind continued to blow. The clouds’ movement moved with it – but there was never a break in the sky. I take a step forward. The grass wasn’t higher than my shins, but it was so thick it looked like the ground beneath it was nonexistent. Though given the obscurity of this place to begin with I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t at all.

I take another step. And then another. Where did I think I was going? I don’t know – my brain just told me to keep walking.

The hill became steeper with each step. Maybe if I was lucky enough eventually one of these steps will take me to another place, possibly home. I told myself it was wishful thinking. Very wishful thinking.

Though, this place didn’t seem so bad. Nothing had threatened me yet, but it is a place I can still become seamlessly lost in. I already have, I think.

I stop walking halfway down the incline.

My brain tells me to keep walking, like before. My body gets lower and lower to the ground; when eventually I find myself seated and concealed in the height of the grass.

The silence was scary. I had noticed that before – normally the silence was fine. However, here, it was just me. I was alone, and I knew that.

I felt the wind against my back – it must’ve shifted when I wasn’t paying attention to it.

“Jenna,”

The voice was my father’s. The same one I heard when I broke the window of my childhood bedroom, when it lead to the hallway of an empty hospital – it was his voice that was static over the intercom. He wasn’t visible, but I could hear him here like he was next to me whispering into my ear.

The grass slowly turned a shade darker, like it was dying, and the bright colors of the houses disbanded and were replaced with an extensive meadow, with trees and dully painted trailer houses. Where I had been sitting turned into an old deck, the wood stain worn down enough to expose the raw wood. I didn’t feel a shift in the wind, the wind was still here. But nor did I feel a shift in my body – I was just simply sitting in another spot now.

There I was again.

The smaller version of myself, playing in what we called a yard.

I remember this day, much more than I’d like to, I’ll admit.

Mom and dad were fighting – but it was one of the first big fights. I was scared and confused, and I relived that sensation as I saw my younger self look up from the flowers growing as weeds in the gravel driveway and into the screen door located behind the wooden stair I now occupied.

Part of myself believed I was visible to her. But maybe that’s why I was so deeply unsettled. Was this a paradox or my mind playing tricks on me? I know for her, nothing was more surreal than mom and dad fighting so violently – maybe this contributed.

The shouting continued, because I heard it just as well as she did. However, she sat down crossing her legs in the patch of weeds and continued picking the dandelions and daisies, carefully arranging them into a bouquet.

I remember arranging that bouquet.

I made it for mom.

But even after it was finished, I continued sitting there, waiting for her to come out and tell me that everything would be perfectly fine and there was nothing to worry about.

And that’s exactly was she did. What we never expected was the fact that my mother wasn’t the one who came out looking for me – it was my dad.

He slammed through the screen door – walking right through me and directly towards her.

He had tears streaming down his face. Before that day, I had never seen him cry. Not even tears of joy when his team won the Superbowl, or when I placed first as a violin soloist in the state music festival. He walked toward her, tears burning his skin so badly his face was red.

“Daddy?” She asked.

He didn’t say anything – he just leaned down and hugged her. I remember that. Her arms reciprocated that embrace.

I still remember the feeling of his tears staining my fleece jacket. The blue one with the white geometric patterns on it that I wore until I literally couldn’t.

“Jenna,”

He had said it in the exact way I had heard it spoken to me earlier in the safe world.

“Let’s go out to eat, yeah?” He asked, picking her up and carrying her in the direction of the run down covered truck, opening it’s doors and making sure she got inside.

“Here, I picked these for you,” I heard her squeak, handing him the small batch of yellow dandelions and white daisies with a thousand petals.

It was lie.

I picked them for mom, but seeing the way dad had cried – something had taken my heart, pulled it out and tore the strings apart, letting it bleed. It had made me happy to see a small smile form on his face when he took them from her tiny hand.

“Thank you, princess.” He had made sure to place them visibly in the front pocket of his blue and white flannel shirt.

And that was the last of it. Except my memory of it was much more than that, but the world faded to black. Kind of like the end of a movie. At least that’s how it felt.

I guess I had fallen asleep. I must have. Because that world ended and I ended up waking to a purple stormy-looking sky – laying sprawled out in the grassland with the many vibrant houses in the distance.

I wanted to try and break into one – just to see what I’d be able to find. But I was comfortable where I was – I felt immobile; incapable of moving.

So instead I laid there – with the wind and the grass and the sky and the houses. Nothing can hurt me here.