Marooned - Avery Collins-Mance

The snow fell, winding down on one night’s road covered in gravel, pock-marked and sharp. From above and below, there was only static. But behind the veil, stars fell, and on this night, the wispy fingers of foggy remembrance peeled back the nothingness. Light shined down on warm half-shut eyes and all-too-comfortable hands. There was a boy falling asleep in the back of the cradle which floated down the road, gently rocking to the ebb and flow of the curve. He was sheltering a shape in his arms and lazily watching the treetops play against the passing sky. 

At his other side, there was an invitation stamped with a cloven print resting on the seat. The man had given him the letter before they left. In the eyes of the morning sun, he had stood there in the doorway as the boy and his father were leaving, casting a shadow through the house. He had smiled and let them pass, but not before slipping the letter into the coat pocket of the child. Then he led them to the docks, patted their heads, and sent them off, clopping back to the door as they sped away from the forgotten house. 

The boy had waited until they were far away to open it, and at that drowsy moment he broke open the red wax. He looked down and read, trying to hide his look of wide-eyed shock. He decided he would go. He was to see the sandman and his castle. It is not an invitation one refuses, but he was requested to arrive with a plus-one. When he looked around in the back, there was no one to take. He was distraught, but he had no choice but to accept. Besides, there were no worries. There was no need to keep watch. The boy’s father was captain on these windy nights. He would take him there. The storm raged but did not escape him. But the boy’s father? That boy’s father? There were no worries of bedsores and amputees, brain-bubbles, multiplying little cells under the magnifying glass. He was alive in dreams. He was more well than he had ever been, then he ever could be.

Oh, there he was! Buhless’d precious! He was nodding off to the sound of the carousel’s horse as it pranced round its circle. He followed round its track from which it could not twist away. Nodding up and down. It reminded him of mother’s love. Why yes, he loved mother’s love. Grandmother’s love. The ship was heading that way. There, between the whirlpool and a sea serpent on the map, the captain should have thread the needle to get to Grandmother and her thread needle before the wolf got home from work; then the navigator could have thread the needle and sow skin. But there, as they passed the point, they were both fast asleep, and the ship’s helm swung against empty air and a starlit sky. The white horns of crashing waves took them and bucked them against the maw of the beast, who had the black eyes of the abyssal sea and scales made of mirrored glass.

The spring leaves had taken off and came pouring out of the branches like rabbits out of burrow, and their green rustled on by as it was pushed by that brisk wind. They danced with each other, creating a delightful and soothing song. Nature was nudged and took off up and over the ground where songbirds dove and volleyed, picking up twigs for their nests, and into the air, where they glided and swung themselves through the currents. And it was then that all the forest seemed to move as one, fluently and placidly. An observer could sit and bear witness to one living creature flow into the next, giving and taking life as the cycle flew ever on in its constant metamorphosis. All life needed was just one push and a fall to be put in the balance. It was free from gravity and the constraints of Earth; it exceeded earth. Life was good and aspired toward the heavens.

But it began to burn, and the wind picked up sand and flung it into every corner that ever was. It was a strange sensation as sand took lift under the boy’s arms and made him weightless. He desperately desired to see the change that had befallen such a beautiful season, but he could scarcely peak an eye without being blinded. But when it finally seemed like he was going to get carried away into the scalding atmosphere, the storm halted. Everything stood still, and the boy could see himself in a desert, agape. He turned and saw all had evaporated and burned to nothing. Shadows stood unmoving. There was no sign of the man, and in every direction, there was a great wall of sand, only sand. The sand moved as one, but it was strange and unalive. Every fine particle was made to appear as the next, and they did not appear to move at all. It was a great swirl of nothing, and there was no shade in its eye. The sun bore down, turning the boy red and blistered as he rose. His skin began to peel, exposing the flesh underneath.

Here was his fall, because the storm did not stand still. He could not freeze time and hide in a dusty toy box, but he took one to remember-it-bye. The boy had taken one stuffed brown rabbit with him on the journey, whose name was Nemo, and that toy saw it all happen. Even right before they sprung, Nemo grabbed wildly at the boy’s shirt and tried to wake him up; the boy could rescue the captain, who was swept away by obsession. But all Nemo received in response was a spittle of drool which fell down onto the seatbelt. And so, the contents of a father’s chamber pot meet the future box of waste in their flight off the foul smelling precipice, once flung by the hands of little boys, numbed by the cold and coerced by the same bleating imposter. The boys embraced as they fell in the cradle, led off the path by a goat pretending to be a wolf. 

As they fell, angels flung themselves out against the darkness of the night sky and made the boys light and soft. They were red, white, blue and black. There was blood dripping from an arm. The boy saw a face against the sand, which lay affectless and luke-warm. Then he closed his eyes, and as if nothing had happened, the boy was returned to winter night, rocking in the cradle on a gravelly road as a disconcerted look shifted on his brow. Sweat glistened on his face, and he clutched the shape of a stuffed rabbit. The invitation sunk into the cushion.

Avery Collins-Mance is a junior and a double major in English and Philosophy.