May 5 ( UTC-15:49 )
It was a chilly spring day. All was well as all should always be. Yet, despite the mundane nothingness, an impending sort of feeling seemed to carry through the city, subtle as breath and as unnoticed as such. There wasn't anything palpable, of course. No eerie feelings, nothing even remotely suspicious, and no odd calm or over-business. Just normalcy. Plain and simple, terribly repetitive normalcy.
So, amongst the casual disregard it would seem that impending thoughts were considered normal. Given American society as it is, perhaps that is true. With everyone in a constant state of disarray gallivanting hopefully from one job to the next with promises to keep and many more to break until sheer exhaustion ceases man's haste. Only, then, to trudge through dreams and desires and fears one is likely to never experience. And yet they are the only things we cast a second glance towards.
Building after building, the city gives way to more casual and less identical housing, the new diversity only slightly lessening the maddening repetition a long and constant travel imbues. Roads stretch farther, trees grow higher, and the stream grows wider with each passing mile. The music itself only mimicking the songs of yesterday as it has for two years now as overlooked as the motor's purr.
Birds, previously so content in the trees attempt suicide for brief adrenaline; a quiet blinking echoing about as the bus plows onward towards the somber streets of home. Symphonic commonality erupts about as neighbors fret over their caged gardens and square grass ignoring the bitter reality revealing its uselessness. The city doesnt offer a green thumb, after all.
For a blink of a moment, the incessant roar of the city is drowned by the sharp squeel of the bus door whooshing open. The lone gasp reverberating as the driver pulls the gears shut once more.
Two long, muddy converse clamber on up the drive leaving sopping muck as a lonely trail until they pause, a mat beside them stating, "WIPE YOUR PAWS YOU FILTHY MUTT." Ignoring the rugged reprimand, the high tops sidestepped nearly mirroring the shadow that casts over the offending accessories as they pause on the doorstep of the grungy apartment complex. Only the simple sounds of a city neighborhood resound, chittering about in it's own reckless ambiance.
Two equally dirt-ridden Nauticas pause catty-corner to the Converse, the feet shuffling back and forth as their owner shifts her weight perpetually, their previous yellow coloring exuding energy and life.
"Hey." The Nautica's state, a soft curiosity and solemnity laced within the greeting.
"Hey yourself. What are you doing you out here? I thought you were supposed to stay inside. You know, heal?" Converse answered, the owner's voice loud with concern.
"I like to do that stuff outside."
"Yeah, except it's cold." The unamused voice questioned, the tone rather chiding but the thought a failed comfort.
"Whatever. Just open the door, I have to pee." The Nautica's responded, her tone light.
The Converse stood still as the sounds of keys jingled throughout the oddly not-awkward of the moment. A tan hand slowly slid towards the door, shaking in an obvious fashion yet stiff in hopes of covering the unavoidable.
A light crash resounded, the wad of keys now directly in front of the grungy converse. The hand returned as the man bent down to grasp the fallen keys revealing shaggy brown hair and a blindingly blue sweatshirt- also caked with dirt. Defensive navy eyes glanced toward the girl, her hair the same warm brown which reached just past her waist, the locks the epitome of barely-contained chaos. He looked past her then, towards the sky. A look of utter penitence absorbing his features. The sun seeming to illuminate his face revealing the stark contrast between tanned skin and the wide spray of darker freckles along his cheeks and mainly his nose as if they were splattered as an after thought by the dying star itself.
Standing to his full, tall frame, the young man began round two, this time successfully opening the heavy door.
Wasting no time, the dirt-covered laborer strode towards the kitchen, the quick footsteps of his sister scuffling the opposite direction.
With a crestfallen sigh, Lance pulled the sweatshirt over his head releasing a cloud of dry dirt as he quickly tossed the soiled clothing on the floor. His hands reaching towards a glass and filling it with water- habitual- as he watched the particles settle on the mound of unopened mail that covered the wooden table.
Silence engulfed the room, light brown decorating nearly illuminating white, the result of which resounded a firm filthiness. An uncleanliness of extreme fallacy. Lance grimaced, his eyes lingering even as he turned around to stare out the window. A barely audible flush resounded down the hall.
Walking far slower this time with a step of exuberance and timidity, the girl- still clad in her Nauticas, stood in the doorway of the kitchen. She didn't say a thing as she observed her brother, his gaze farther than the stark-white letters he supposedly stared at. He was an average height, standing a meager inch below six feet. Though, his thin and lanky frame seemed to market him as taller than he truly was. His grey shirt was still wet with sweat, his muscles still pumped from a long and arduous work day. His converse drowning his feet in a wet and used way.
It was a beautiful day filled with vivid greens and strong oranges all wrapped in a soothing yellow.
The indoors were simply too blue. Too cold. Too dismal.
"So," the girl ventured to ask, "Um, how was your day?"
The brother blinked, his head shooting up to regard his older sibling, a mask covering his true emotions even in the short time it took for him to blink.
"Hm? Oh, yeah… it was good." He answered a little too quickly, his gaze sliding over the mustard-colored walls, "How about you? How was the doctor?"
"Fine. Nothing new." She chirped stubbornly deciding conversation was rather unwanted when directed towards herself.
"Order pizza for dinner?"
"Yes."
It's an odd thing to consider when one is a laborer by day and a dreamer by night, that the things many yearn to grasp are perpetually unattainable. When the roles one carries drips onto the blank page that is life, we often grow offended by the choice of color. The metaphorical grass always appearing so very green when being sliced by the swirling blades of a neighbor's mower. Danger seems a comfort when safety was your only option. Even stranger is to consider the eerie silence night provides. If night is a time of dreams and life, and day a consequence alongside a new page, the book one authors seems disconnected in the same threadbare way commercials advertise throughout a film and the volume is inconsistent.
A static, previously unnoticed, appears in the milky haze; a heavy sort of silence hanging about through the rest of the evening. It's sleek and inky tone palpitating through the atmosphere with each measured tick of the decrepit analogue clock. Disregarded at first, as all things tend to be, with a swift and steady drip through time's clenched fingers. Spiney. Straggly. And, as a whole, grotesque.
It lingered about, long after the disinteresting idle chatter was round into a nondescript pizza for two- bacon being the topping of choice. And though the moment was innocent, the scene itself was bittersweet because everything was fine and boring and an intoxicatingly normal which seemed to remain even as a shrill tone pierced through the listless night.
And that next day was normal for mostly all except five.
May 6 ( UTC-05:23 )
As someone who worked three jobs, Lance was often awake before the sun itself acknowledged the following day with it's uninspired arrival. So when he sat in the parking lot, head rested on dirt-ridden jeans in the cool air of a true May day, it was considered odd to see a heartbeat glow in the distance.
And the sudden inclination to walk towards the source might have been his curiosity or it might have been the puppet string which fate, destiny, or misfortune had tugged him on rather insensitively. Regardless, the urge carried him forward pulling him higher to what might be his highest height as a crater lead way to a tunnel which, in turn, gave way to gravity.
And while the height might be figurative the drop is rather literal and he knew he'd been knocked cold because he woke up that way.
In fact, everything was cold.
With a confused gasp, a foggy cloud of hot air wrapped itself around his head, entering inside and muddling his thoughts. There was a burning to his left and upon glancing towards it, Lance reasoned that it might be due to the ice which covered his shoulder connecting it to the floor where his own terrified face was reflected throughout the icy landscape. Cave-scape?
Involuntarily, he gave a single mad flap of his arm expecting resistance or a numb sort of shattering but instead the ice became water floating up in melted mischief. Blue eyes stared in quiet shock as time seemed slow to a crawling teeter, treading timidly and on its own term.
He blinked.
He blinked and the world righted itself as well as it could and the water which floated suddenly flooded dragging Lance under in it's thunderous waves and amidst the anxious ataxia - a general sort of lurch in brainpower allowed him to note that it didn't seem as though the water wished to drown him. Instead, it felt like it wanted help him.
And he supposed it did considering the drop he'd had entering in was now looking level with land. Land where the sun had already risen.
Land where in which he found himself anchored back into reality when he opened his phone and everything came crashing down.
May 6 ( UTC-11:09 )
Sickness for some, many, and possibly all- is unnavoidable.
We try to be healthy. We try to take care of ourselves and if not ourselves- then of those we love. But sometimes our own fleeting essence simply runs too fast for us to catch.
People handle pain differently.
Similar to allergies, only certain people react violently. And, seeing as death is sort of the over-arching anvil of life, then it would make sense that such a theme is healthy, almost. And, according to such a theory, it would seem normal that one would only react with extreme violence in far rarer instances.
Or so logic would imply. But logic always was a know-it-all.
Either way, the following days knitted into one terrible sweater. Wool and prickly with the thorns of life's rose garden.
And Lance was a laborer in that garden for 25 years of life. Sowing what the world had wrought even as the garden itself- full of thorns and weeds- grew smaller and smaller, one family member's passing at a time. And in that quarter-decade, he had lost both parents. His siblings, then, were scrambled into the foster care system.
A seizure. Unexpected. For Lance's last blood relative, Victoria, it was a chase she couldn't quite run anymore.
A race Lance would refuse to lose even if he had to lie, cheat, beg and ultimately- steal.
And if you were to ask he'd say it felt more like he was chosen. And if you asked what for he wouldn't quite know.
But something happened on that average tuesday.
Just before his world came crashing down he'd reached the highest high and at the time he'd thought it was coincidence. And with time he figured it was the game of life and it'd simply raised the stakes. Perhaps the reality is that he was given the key to change the misprints of fate.
A/N: Yeah so here's Lance's vague backstory. I know it's lofty- but tell me what you think and what you got from it! I really wanna know. (And leisurely chats are the jam within my PB&J so lay 'em on me lads!)