Tracks of the Past

Suicide has come knocking at my door tonight. It creeps through my family like a virus, picking us off one by one. I have prepared for this day for months. With my bag packed and hidden in my closet. I had hoped I could shield myself for longer than I have. That my mask would hold until the weather was warmer. I’m thirteen, and it’s February in Iowa, and we are in the middle of a blizzard, but now as the pounding on the door grows louder and louder, my only options are to open the door or flee through my window into the bitter cold.

I pulled the heavy duffle bag out of my closet and set it on the bed. I opened it to quickly check the contents one last time. Toothbrush, spare clothes, fire-starting materials, my lantern, and about $36 in cash. I grabbed my hoodie and threw it on. I know I should put on my heavy winter coat, but it will hinder my escape, and I am headed for warmer horizons. I shove my feet into my tennis shoes, grab my Walkman, and stuff it into my hoodie pocket. I opened the window and was immediately hit in the face by an icy blast of wind. I grabbed the duffel and tossed it out my first-floor window. I turned back and took in my room once more. I hope this is the last time I will see this place. It was a bittersweet moment. The house hadn’t felt like home for a long time. Honestly, I don’t know if it ever has, but still, there was a twinge of sorrow before following my bag out of the window and into the snow.

A foot and a half of snow was already on the ground, and it was still coming down thick. I looked around; it was dark. 11:30 at night, the heavy snow falling made it eerily silent. I could hear everything and nothing at all. My childhood home is on Railroad Street, and I was never far from the train tracks. I spent many days watching the trains roll through, hoping to find myself on one someday. The trains were the only thing that ever truly left town. It was only a matter of time before someone who had fled through conventional means would return. The trains, however, didn’t have to return, and they never stopped here. If I could find my way onto one, maybe I could also leave this place for good. I took a deep breath of that ice-cold air and knew my mind was made. I was running away from home. I grabbed my bag and heaved it over my shoulder. Leaving the window open, I turned and walked toward the tracks, away from that house and the virus within.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”

—W.B. Yeats

“When we are not sure, we are alive.”

—Graham Greene like

The Chocolate Hills

She wakes. The grass is not real. Her dandelions are not as soft as she imagines actual ones to be, but they blow even better, a man-made breeze blowing tiny white particles as they drift in perfect unison and land with grace. And the delicacy with which she blows on the pappi is so easy, soft unspoken vows that shall be kept until forgotten.

Vast. She cannot see the entirety of the world because this is the world. Mounds and mounds and mounds and mounds of green. All painted on the walls.

She wakes. The grass is real. The dandelions grow crooked but sway gently, surrounded by small, yellow, unripened versions of themselves. When she blows, several pappi stubbornly stick to the seed head. There is no breeze until after they’ve already danced their way to the ground, and they lie serene upon the grass until blown elsewhere.

Vast. She can see the entirety of the world.

This is the world. Mounds and mounds and mounds and mounds of green. The trees are scattered in the valleys between the peaks, branches bumpy and rough—if she

She lies, then stands, in a world of smoothly shaped round hills. Plastic leaves hang and create saturated, dark shadows on the ground, branches symmetrical and evenly distributed. The painted blue sky hovers, brightly lit, a ceiling constructed with the utmost care. The trees may be fake, but the fake trees are real.

How, she wonders, is this crafted world so beautiful, so artificially authentic, such a pristine example of the best aspects of nature. Beauty without the price of time. Without death.

There is a door handle peeking at her, seemingly floating in the space where the walls end but have the illusion of forever. She steps outside, into another world of hills, and sees that her own is really a white building, concrete and sturdy and— could touch them—with irregular patterns, making the hills appear all the more organic. She stands; a hill, muted green and uneven ground. The world is full of asymmetrical balance.

Oh, how horrid the ground looks! The grass is so dull, and patches of dirt taint the greenish-brown landscape. Her lime-hued, peaceful hill is now an imperfect, blemished vision, profoundly difficult to observe. The real world is so fake, so unconsumable, so difficult to appreciate.

The sky’s clouds break apart, filling the sky, veiling and unveiling the sun. Effortless.

She breathes, doesn’t always understand what she observes, but it evokes interest in its unpredictability. Unsure; alive.

Only one piece of this world is man- made: a white building, its placement almost startling and its presence clearly estranged from the organic material around it. There is a door just as white and plain as the rest of it, and when she enters she almost recoils.

The grass is not grass, but she wishes it were. It’s so intense, so much. The colors are overstimulating. The temperature stays the same, no clouds to shield from a sun’s glare, no too-bright sun to provide any extra warmth at all, too comfortable to really appreciate the coolness of the breeze, which overwhelms her in its consistency.

The morning is bleak, and she chooses to close the door she’d barely stepped out of, now back in the comfort of chosen reality.

She steps back outside and is calm.

Natural; real.

Nayeli Mejia