Don't Trap Me--It's Not What It Looks Like!

I went down into the basement—a creepy, empty gutter of a cold, void place exuding loneliness—to fix the light dangling, flickering, from the concrete ceiling.                                                 

I looked away from the ugly ceiling to see shadows appear. They weren’t your typical shadows a flickering light would illuminate. Actually, it showed leaves—big spaded ones. Their silhouettes made me feel like an invisible person was holding up a pair of leaves to the light. I reached out my hand. No person held up anything to the light. The magical source was just—that. A magical source. I wandered up to the wall--a whole shadow world illuminated before my eyes. Curious, I raised my eyebrows, thinking “Wouldn’t this be a nice adventure to go on with my friends?” Pulling out my cellphone, I turned it on.                                      

Hey Nicole, you want to hang out? We can go on this cool adventure. 

Gotta study for those finals. Sorry!

Ernie and Sam, want to join me? We’re going on a jungle adventure! Right in my basement.

Sorry, we’re at the mall, shopping for Ernie’s mother. It’s Mother’s Day in four days. Hope you have something for Mrs. Erns, too.  

Billie, do you want to swing by? We could pack a lunch.  

For what?

An adventure! You’ll never believe it.

*Cough* *Cough* Fever of 102 degrees. Sorry. So sick.

Oh! So sorry to hear that. Hope you feel better.

Snapping my phone shut with irritation, I pursed my lips. Guess I’m on my own, again. Like always. As I tramped through this weird world, I noticed animals— anacondas, Poison Dart Frogs, scarlet macaws, Spider Monkeys, vipers, spiders, ants and Howler Monkeys— hanging from shadows of branches, on tree trunks, the forest ground and leaping from one leaf to the next or just carrying it across the ground. They were shadows, too, but when I reached out to touch one of the monkeys, it was real. The Macaw’s feathers were soft. I wanted to stroke them forever.   

But what if the snakes or spiders bit me? I started heading back.

“No!”       

I jumped, spinning around cautiously. “Who’s there?” I grabbed my phone. “I can throw this at you. You better watch out!”     

“No—it’s okay.” A person with beige khakis and a swamp green T-shirt—possibly an Amazon jungle tour guide uniform—emerged from the foliage, showing his hands. I pocketed the cellphone, wishing I had some pepper spray or dart gun. He beckoned me, and I narrowed my eyes.

 “Why are we here?” I asked later as we dodged snakes, ducked under looming branches and jumped over huge logs, crashing down into the leafy ground that crunched and snapped every five or six steps. “My hiking boots are back home. I just have socks. I wish my friends would bring them.” I sighed sadly. So,” I turned when I saw mud, “I need to return home.”

“Here.” The tour guide, I paused with irritation, grabbed a map, shook it open, and walked over to me, holding it out in front of us. Slightly annoyed that a map prevented me from getting a pair of shoes, I turned around, grumbling that—

“No—we can’t go back. The flickering light will go out any minute unless we befriend this world. It’s too lonely. We need to beatify it. Color it. Only when it stays in color will the flickering light not matter!”                       

I widened my eyes. “How?”

The tour guide of two (including himself) gulped, shaking his head. “We follow the map. This world needs us. Literally. The world is lonely. We—”

“Don’t need anything but shoes. I’ll just go get them and then come back. What’s so wrong about that?”

“This place won’t let you leave without me. And I can’t leave this place.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he lamented, “I went back to get this map. I thought I was just going to get something. This world needs to be fixed. It’s dependent on that flickering light. If it goes out, everything becomes—and stays—a shadow forever. So...”          

“So…what?” I gulped this time. 

“I don’t know…” He shivered. “This map lights up the things that are important to us.”                           

“Why can’t I just step out of the world, turn the light a little bit and be done? Besides, I have a life. I don’t need some guy telling me to do something I already know. I’ve been screwing in light bulbs since I was ten. My father taught me—he’s a constructionist—and I’m a mechanic having just studied from a great college. I have work. I have a Mother’s Day gift to give Mrs. Erns. I don’t need—”

He smirked handsomely. “Yeah, well, you’re here. And you’ll stay here until we get your shoes.”                                    

A sigh erupted from me. “Can’t we just go back? You want to, too!”  

“No!” He jabbed his finger at me, and I gloomily trudged up next to him. “Ditch the attitude so we can go back.”             

We walked and walked, me being stared at by the boringly grey, strangely creepy creatures crawling, flying and walking about. I asked the tour guide whether these animals are going to have any other distinction to them other than a shadow.         

 He didn’t answer but kept walking. I hoped so.

As we trudged farther and farther, listening to the map (for it lit up the place to which we would venture), a tiny sliver of hair or a little bit of feather displayed color. I, smiling excitedly, grabbed the map.                 

“Oh, so now you’re on to getting those shoes!” He grinned as I scanned the map for clues to getting those shoes. Every step I took, I took with gusto. My smile grew radiant especially when we reached a cabin.

“There!” I jerked my pointing finger, impatient to grab them and then zoom home. “There! We just have to go in there and look for the shoes. How hard will that be?”

“Yeah…about that.” He sounded mysterious. After licking his assumedly dry lips, the tour guide said he had to explain something once we got inside this apartment building.

“Huh?” I looked at him funny, and went quickly ahead of him—not out of fear or suspicion. When he told me to slow down, I snapped at him, running now. When he yelled up to me to ditch the attitude, I ignored him, halfway up the hill. Spotting a trail of rocks, I followed it.   

“Wait! I have to be with you. Don’t be so selfish!”  

“Hurry up, and you will. And I won’t have to!” I was almost there. Almost there—

The tour guide got to me, a little out of breath. “Whatever your name is, look around you. How about you help color the world around you? You won’t be so lonely, either. Neither will the world. In other words, it wants you to brighten its day!”

“It’s RJ. And FYI, I’m getting my shoes and heading out of here. I want to be with friends. My “friends”  are sick, studying, at the mall, but I can sense a change in them already. Oh, hey! They’ve texted me about a S’mores party this weekend—”     

“What’s with the attitude, R? What’s ‘RJ’ stand for—Really Jilted? Like, why can’t you lighten up?”

“Sir—”  

“It’s Jaguars. My parents didn’t name me—they abandoned me after my birth. I named myself, I guess. It just fit, considering I’m always looking around, like a bunch of jaguars when they’re looking for prey to eat. Jaguars are solitary animals. We do stuff alone. That’s what I like. Loneliness. And besides, you’re just going to reach into a closet and put them on and shut that door. You’re not even interested in learning anything. Do you even want to be here? I bet you don’t. I didn’t—until loneliness cheered me up. Maybe I’m blunt.”

“Well, I’m lonely, too. My friends are constantly busy—leaving me out.”

“I’m not as old as you think.”   

We hiked up to that door across from the parking lot. Once we went inside, I scrunched my face and wrapped my arms around myself. “Weird.”     

“Yeah— it’s just a hologram. It looks real. You are deprived of reality. It makes you feel empty. Sad. ”

“Lonely.” I walked around, growing despondent. “Hey, you put the map right on the table. How is that?”     

“Because it’s a map to guide us. It’s basically this world’s map now, that I escaped this world—”

“That’s how lonely this world is.” I shivered. “Wow—guess we’ll have to befriend it, huh?”

Jaguars shrugged one shoulder. I blinked sadly at the wooden boards. Then I bit my lip, furrowing my brows: I’d never graduate high school. If I didn’t, what’d happen? I shook my head. Then—

Could we turn invisible? Could we have some kind of power to evade the world’s eyes?

“Could we talk to the animals?”

“Once color comes back to this world!” Jaguars encouraged me.

I bobbed my head. “Graduation is for being with friends!” I excitedly searched the closet. No shoes. I left the house confused and saddened, waiting outside. As we continued following the map, Jaguars asked why graduation really mattered. He wondered why if my so-called friends wouldn’t care whether I had an adventure of a lifetime. “Don’t you want to get out, too? You know, you’re so confusing. You want to get out of here—”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

I pursed my lips, squinting at him suspiciously. “You don’t know—whoa!”

We came across a swing bridge hanging between two great lands. I went to the ledge, and jolted backwards when seeing the bottom. Jaguars said something like 700 feet. I hurried backwards, eyes bulging.                  

“Not suicidal lonely.” I looked over at the bridge, and Jaguars, to my relief, tested it. He shook it, and nodded firmly. I, narrowing my eyes at him, walked shakily up to it. Clutching the sides with all my might, I stepped cautiously until my feet hit solid ground. My heart stopped thumping.

“Wow—crossing that bridge was a nightmare, huh?” Jaguars slapped me on the back, recalling times he had rock climbed the Grand Canyon—all 6,093 feet of it—downwards to the bottom.

“Yeah, well, you used safety harnesses.”

“No, ma’am!” He stretched, flashing a funnily familiar grin. “Nothing but my hands and feet.”

I gulped, and he cracked up. “Well, at least we’re—” I stopped dead in my tracks, staring down into another deep chasm. I looked to Jaguars. He had his hands on his hips, eager to cross the distance from here to—        

“There is the place we’ll get your shoes.”

“Oh…no.” I thought back. “Is this some kind of illusion?” I started creeping backwards. “I…my knees can’t—”

“Turn into pencil-thin things that soar out behind you as your wings keep you above ground?” He yelled above a screaming me. Suddenly, I sprang my arms out on either side of me and saw the red and brown dusty earth right below me. It was parallel to me! I looked up, shock and confusion mixing in my voice.      

Jaguars, a Scarlet Macaw, flew over to me and then we both flew side by side, me asking what I was. “Well, do you have scarlet, blue and yellow wings?”          

I looked. Yes, I did. After a while, I asked him his age. He said he was actually seventeen. He looked about forty. I said it was weird how he aged in this world. I said I was eighteen. He looked at me curiously after we landed on the other side of the chasm. “Are you—in my geography class?”                     

My eyes lit up. “Yes, yes! We all thought you had gotten expelled because you never returned to school. I…I didn’t know you were here...much older. You are eighteen, right?”  

“Yeah, well, let's keep going. I want someone with whom I can have a relationship.”

 People again, we walked the sun-burned, rocky terrain. I asked questions that brought back a lot of memories. Hiking up mini-mountains and escaping rattlers and avoiding scorpions in this desert, we sang some songs. He was good! But then Jaguars braked.                     

“No—I forgot the map!”

Suddenly, a bird flew in and fell to the sand, crumpled up. The map had shapeshifted! Scratching my forehead, I wished I had some sunscreen to block this aggressively cruel heat. Jaguars shook out the map, and it lit up the words, when you need me, I’ll come find you!  

“Yep--thanks, map.”

But I could tell he was upset. But why was he so mysterious about it all? “I didn’t have the parties, or the suit, or the aced tests or projects. I just went to school. Rode the bus. I thought I’d be popular because I’ve moved around a lot, but I never understood all the rah-rah at the football games. So I quit everything. One weekend when I knew you had left town for vacation, I thought I’d come over to fix your flickering light. Then I noticed this world. Attracted, I jumped right in. But I didn’t understand until it was too late.        

“Besides,” Jaguars became deep in thought, “isn’t Mother’s Day in a few days? I don’t know about time here, but…shouldn’t we get something for Mrs. Erns? Let’s just get the shoes and go. We’ve been friends with this weird world enough.”    

“My friends aren’t my friends anymore. They never were.” I sighed. “I’ve always chased them, but they never turned around. I’ve never had a relationship with anyone.” 

“Billie, Sam and all them?” He suggested.

“Yeah!” I lit up, relieved he knew. “Them.”

“Well…” His eyes went up in thought. “Maybe—”

I asked whether he drank or ate something to make himself older. “No. I just aged.” He looked at me, his eyes looking at my legs and then stomach. “You’re a little older yourself. Your legs are bigger and stomach is wider. Your hips are wider, too. See?” He held the map out, chuckling. “Look in its mirror.”

 “Wow, I am older. How old are you?” I flipped the map around.

“54.”     

“55. Wow! This place really wants…”

“Friends.” We said in unison. I scratched my head. “Memories of friends. Well, better get going. The more, the merrier, right?”      

He laughed stiffly. 

By the time we scaled rock walls, slogged through mud puddles, dodged angry volcanoes spewing fire out of its gaping mouth and traversed mountains (as snow leopards, of course!), we could see something in the distance. “Come on!” I beckoned Jaguars, grabbing about hundred feet of rope from somewhere and starting down the cliff.   

“Hold on.” Jaguars pulled me up, and I reluctantly returned to him. “We’ll never graduate!” 

I swallowed hard, harder than when I had stared down that rocky edge way back when we were about to cross that bridge. “What…what do you mean, Jaguars? That…we’ll never graduate, go to college, get married and have kids? We’ll be doomed to look for shoes we’ll never find?” I balled my fists. “They’re just shoes! Geez—you know what? Forget it. We don’t need shoes. I don’t need shoes. I’ll slip my socks off.” I did. “There. See? Feet! Bare feet to get tan in the heat!”

Jaguars voiced a plan. We abandoned the map. Returning to the abandoned apartment building, I rejoiced at finding shoes—maybe the world was nice after all, and we just worried too much— and Jaguars and I hugged after I donned them. We soon found ourselves back at the flickering light!   

Scrunching my face, I looked around at the empty, cold basement. “So…that was supposed to make me love shoes? Or…” I thought. “The world was merciful.”     

“No—just weird.” He motioned for me to take off my shoes, which I did. Then he told me to shut my eyes. Something clapped together, and he told me to open them. I did. “Here. Here’s a gift of friendship.” He grinned, handing back my shoes, those familiar green eyes sparkling. I smiled, shaking my head. His black hair, all wispy from the days when I “tidied” it up, stood all haywire. It was cute as a rat’s nest.          

“Okay. Thanks for my shoes…but—”

“Shh! Listen. Peterson’s speaking!”

But I had a feeling we weren’t really sitting before our class’s valedictorian. I narrowed my eyes, ticked. Why, world, are we “graduating”?! I hissed over to Jaguars. He looked at me, wild-eyed. It was like Allegory of the Cave. We were “leaving” P. Richards High!         

I opened my eyes that night in my apartment. Jaguars was calling me from his apartment.

“Yeah!” I sat up, looking out my window at him. “What’s up?”    

“What’s RJ stand for?”

I snorted. “Riley Jens. Pretty ugly.”    

“Pretty cool.”  

We left our apartments. Back to reality.  

The beautiful scarlet, blue and yellow of the Scarlet Macaws, oranges, whites and yellows of the Howler Monkeys and awesomely black shade of the Spider Monkeys took my breath away.

“You know, the animals are nice company. But we’re good company for each other, too! Thanks—for sticking around.”

“Thanks—for hanging out.” I said cheerily.             

The following morning, I waved to Jaguars through his window in his apartment room, sitting on his bed in his pajamas. We eloped one day, using my apartment to store all our real world’s belongings, as his was our home. Only our deaths could remind the world of its former loneliness.    

“Together, forever.” Jaguars grinned, wrapping me in his arms that night. “No more illusions.”

I loved walking and observing this world. Being my own tour guide made me invite Nicole, Ernie, Sam and Billie, who hated the jungle’s heat. After watching them leave, Jaguars joined me. He set down his basket and laid out a blanket. We feasted, gazing in awe at the animals’ hopping, flying and running all around us.