Wonder Road

Eli began to climb the steps of the lighthouse. Being a man just shy of 90 years old, every step was hell. His legs were filled with horrible and acute pain. Outside a storm was roaring and pounding against the walls of the lighthouse. It was like some enormous creature was trying to break in. Eli could only see by a single candle. He looked up at the complete darkness above him, and couldn’t see how tall it really was. He could barely remember the last time he had to go up to the lamp.

He had been stationed on this lighthouse when he was a much younger man. At first he went up to the lamp everyday, but he quickly learned that no boats ever come anywhere near the island, and even if they did, they very clearly see the island’s many mountains and rocky terrain and know to stay clear. As Eli got older and the climb to the top of the tower got more difficult, he would find very little motivation to tend to the lamp. The lengths between his trips got longer and longer, and on this stormy night, he believed it had been no less than a decade since he made the climb. Not that he ever needed to, no ships came by, no planes, no raft full of survivors. It was just Eli. He was without any connection to the world beyond the sea, and the endless horizon Eli would often stare at for hours at a time.

Eli continued to climb, one painful footstep at a time. It felt like the length between the steps got higher and higher. The rain was seeping through the roof of the lighthouse, slowly dripping down the tower and often landing on Eli’s head. Every time a drop hit the bottom of the tower, the sound filled the whole space and rang in Eli’s ears. One hand was still holding on to the brass candlestick, and the other was grasping the railing of the spiral staircase with every bit of strength Eli had. This was the worst storm he had ever seen while being on the island. The clouds masked the entire sky and the waves made the ocean look like swirled brandy. And it was in this chaos people called mother nature, Eli, only 5 minutes ago, saw the first boat he had ever seen in decades. Coming directly towards the rocky coast of the island.

Just then, one rain drop fell directly on Eli’s candle, leaving him completely in the dark. He was now only illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning. He dropped the candlestick, leaving it to clatter down every single step. The brass hitting the stone almost deafened him as it echoed through the tower. He reached his arms above his head as he continued to climb, waiting for the feeling of the cold metal mesh against his finger tips. His body was struggling to keep up with his determination. Every step was agony. The tower seemed ten times taller than he ever remembered it to be.

Finally the tip of his finger felt the cold hard metal of the grate floor of the lantern room. He blindly ran his fingers along the grate looking for the latch. He felt all his energy start to escape his body. His eyelids became heavy. He finally found the handle, and threw the grate open and climbed up to the lamp and flipped the light switch with every ounce of strength he had left.

Further away, yet getting closer and closer, the captain of this poorly destined ship was struggling to keep his eyes on the ever wobbling horizon. He see anything but the rain, and the occasional flash of lightning would only illuminate the dense fog behind the endless parade of raindrops. He was struggling to stand while being tossed around by the waves. Suddenly he saw a bright light only about one hundred yards in front of him. The light struggled through the fog to illuminate the rocky coastline he was only about ten seconds to colliding with. Almost blinded by something that wasn’t endless fog, the captains muscle memory kicked in, and immediately the captain grabbed the wheel and began steering the ship away from the island. He was almost eager to do something other than hopelessly pray. The captain continued on, going around the island, leaving the light behind, unaware of the extinguished light right next to it.

Missy felt like she was in a horror movie. The classic high school girl, driving down a dark road, alone, at night, in the middle of nowhere. She could practically hear the creepy music. She had the feeling of a little kid who was left alone for the first time. Taking every little noise to mean that she was gonna die. That “low gas” light had been staring her in the face for what felt like too long. She was praying that her piece of shit car could just get her a little further. The constant humming of the engine and the wheels spinning on the road consumed Missy’s mind. Along with the repetition of “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She couldn’t see anything ahead of her. Her awareness ending where her headlights faded out into the night. Like the world was being created directly in front of her. God knows what was happening behind her. All of a sudden, Missy was 6 years old again. Letting her imagination create demons, creepy dolls, and smiling clowns. Then Missy saw a small light in the distance. And as the light grew closer, her monsters started to fade away. And they vanished entirely when Missy saw that the light was coming from a gas station.

Missy’s temporary happiness quickly left her when she realized she was at about the shittiest gas station she could have possibly imagined. It looked like what you would find a couple days after all of humanity went extinct. She pulled up wondering if the pumps still worked. As she stopped, she saw a man walking towards her car. His clothes were so dirty that it looked like a chunk of the run-down wall had started moving. Missy wasn’t sure whether she should be happy to finally see another person or worried about this stranger who she was hoping wasn’t a serial killer. She was worried about how the man was getting very close to her car. He was limping so much that it almost looked like he was hopping. With his hunched back and long hair she could barely see his face. She just sat there, not knowing what to do as he came up against the window.

“R-r-regular m-m-m-ma’am?”

Missy released some of the air she had been holding in for the past couple minutes and nodded. He nodded and hobbled back to the machine. Missy was able to breathe a little, but she was still very far from relaxing. She was thinking about how after her tank was full, she would race out of there and not look back.

When the man came back to her window he was different. He somehow looked even crazier. He irises weren’t touching his eyelids anymore. He looked deranged. He was shaking but making a significant effort to stay still.

“Th-th-theres a p-problem w-with the g-g-gas”

“What!” Missy yelled through the closed window.

“J-just come t-t-take a l-l-look”

Missy knew what she was doing was stupid, but she figured, if it came to it, she could fend him off long enough to get back in her car. She had nowhere to go. If she left now she would be stranded within 30 minutes. She opened her door and stepped out. Suddenly, the man grabbed her arms. He whispered in her ear,

“C-c-come with me. Th-th-“

Missy struggled and screamed and was able to pry his fingers off of her, all while he screamed unintelligibly. Missy shoved him to the ground and got back in her car and drove away.

As she faded from his view, the man stumbled to his feet and screamed,

“TH-TH-TH-THERE’S SOMEONE IN THE BACK SEAT!”

“DAAAAAAAAAD!!!”

“What?”

‘”There’s a monster in my room!”

“Sweetie come on how many times do we need to do this?”

“No there is I swear!”

“Sweetheart please go back to sleep.”

“I can’t the monster will get me.”

“Sweetheart there is nothing in here I promise. There’s nothing in your closet. See? Or out your window. See? Or under your bed. See? What the…”

“Dad help me, there’s someone on top of my bed.”

Eric wondered why his last days would have to be spent in a damn hospital. He was given the ability to know when and how he was going to die, yet he still had to die like everyone else. In a germ-filled room surrounded by plain white walls and in a room full of people he knew nothing about except their names. To be honest, he probably forgot those too. Who the hell cares what your name is when your next sentence is “So, your cancer’s back.” He had gotten so sick of that place. You know it’s a bad sign when the person working at the front desk at Mount Sinai stops saying “welcome” and starts saying “welcome back, Eric!” The amount of thermometers, IVs, and Purell became just as much a part of Eric’s life as food or sleep. The one thing he hated more than anything else though was the heart monitor. The constant BEEP-BEEP-BEEP wouldn’t stop ringing in his ear. He already knew he had a ticking clock, but to literally have something beep every single second to remind him that he was alive drove him crazy. It was like his entire life was dependent on hearing that next beep.

“I know this is a tough decision Eric. There’s a 10% percent success rate.” 10%. Eric wondered if there might have been an 11% or maybe 12% if the doctor had just studied a little harder in med school. Could he have had a better chance of living if Doctor Whoeverthehell had just done a bit more work before bed one night. For Eric, it wasn’t that tough of a decision though. Either go to sleep in a hospital now with a chance of waking up or go to sleep in the same bed a couple months later with no hope of opening his eyes. He had already come to terms with it. He wasn’t going to reach Nirvana or anything in the couple extra months that he would have.

So there he was, walking into the hospital, taking the elevator, saying hi to people he didn’t really care about. And then he walked into the room he was pretty sure he was gonna die in. Shaking hands with people that were responsible for him seeing his family again. Lying down in in final resting place of a shitty hospital bed. There it was again. BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Then came the blood pressure monitors, then the IVs, then the doctors saying a bunch of shit he didn’t understand. And a pillow, because that’ll help. Then they put the anesthesia in. It was like a cold balloon being inflated through his arm.

Eric didn’t remember anything after that except darkness. A lot of darkness.

But then he heard the greatest sound he had ever heard:

BEEP…BEEP.BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

If Elliot could take back anything he ever said, it would be the phrase “I’m not leaving until I get this done”.

He had been staring at an empty word document for hours, imagining it as everything but blank. He saw every story, every character, every word, on that page. He had infinite routes before him and yet took none of them. Too scared by the possible flaws of his non-existent stories. His prejudice of his own work keeping his fingers firmly above the keys. His acknowledgement of the stupidity behind his procrastination did not make the situation only better. Elliot somehow was able to overthink, yet not think hard enough at the same time. When an idea entered his head, he only thought about it long enough to find a reason not to do it, then, once he found it, all of his thinking would cease right there. It was a perfect storm, but instead of killing Clooney and Wahlberg, it killed Elliot’s chances of getting out of his study within the next two hours. He kept telling himself “This is supposed to be fun”. As if just saying it would make it true somehow. He know he loved this, just that love was getting kind of hard find the longer he sat there. He thought about all these strangers inside his head, waiting to be granted life on a Google Doc. He didn’t like it very much. Too much responsibility. His plate was full enough with his own life. He thought about that for a second, and then, for the first time in hours, actually wrote something.

If I

No wait, third person. He wrote:

If Elliot could take back anything he ever said, it would be the phrase “I’m not leaving until I get this done”.

Arthur often felt he lived in slow motion. Everyone around him always had something to do or someplace to be. When he chose his new house for his retirement, he didn’t expect all of his neighbors to be so high-strung. He found on the first day there that the people clearly had better things to do than stop by or welcome him to the neighborhood. Still, he wished he could be blessed with the ability to be late to something really important. He thought it would be nice to have a full schedule or a long week ahead of him. He lived in the center of his town. He was the eye to his town’s hurricane. While in other houses you could hear, screaming, or laughing, or crying, there were very little signs of life from Arthur’s house. Not even with a grand piano taking up a fourth of his living room. He figured since he had played that all his life, it would be nice to get some new hobbies. He had been playing ever since he can remember. He felt like the only thing that defined him was his skills at the piano. So it just sat there for months, ignored while Arthur tried out knitting, and photography, and Shakespeare. But all of those felt like chores for him. And he felt his piano staring him in the face while he started new activities he knew he wouldn’t really enjoy.

Eventually without doing a single thing, the piano wore Arthur down. He woke up one morning and felt the most incomplete he had ever felt. Playing felt as necessary to him as eating or sleeping. He came downstairs and sat down on the bench. Somehow that bench felt more comfortable then his bed. He sat there for a second, thinking about all the times in his life he was in this exact position. The perfect balance of focus and relaxation, of anticipation and fulfillment. The dead silence of expectation. He pressed the first note. The sound was quiet, yet it still scared the silence away. It sung in Arthur’s ears, ringing in his brain. The second note resonated throughout Arthur’s entire body. The third note filled his soul with nostalgia and joy. When he played the chord together, it sounded like it exploded out of the piano, filling every corner of his house. Then he started playing a song. His movements were second nature. He didn’t have to think about what notes to play. He wasn’t really thinking about anything. His train of thought had been hijacked by the music. He was at the complete mercy of the notes. The sound surrounded him, burst through the walls of his house, and echoed through his fast moving neighborhood. And all of his neighbors on their way to work, and on their phones heard the music, and stopped. And in that moment, the quick heartbeat of the town slowed down, the music chased out all of the stress of daily life, and for a minute, Arthur wasn’t bored, his neighbors weren’t busy, everyone just was at peace.

Anthony O’Brian was the happiest man to ever walk into a emergency room. After nine months of waiting the day finally came. Anthony had never been more excited in his life. He always really wanted to be a father. He wanted to give another person something that he never had. Every birthday, every soccer game, every time he needed to tie a tie or ask a girl out, he thought about the guidance that would get to give but never received. He ended up not needing to much help with that last part though. Angela was the best wife that he could ever imagine. She was someone that he was truly happy to share this experience with.

Through the past nine months Anthony had set up every detail of his unborn kid’s childhood. Creating his kids life before it had even begun. He would tell these things to Angela and even write a lot of it down. He would play soccer, like his dad. He would be good at math but he would also love to write. He would write stories so good that his parents couldn’t help but pass out to the relatives on Christmas. Every Sunday night they would play a game. He would love playing Monopoly. He would play Monopoly for hours and hours and would never quit halfway through. He would be the final push Anthony needed to convince Angela to get a dog. Anthony would try his best to embarrass him as much as possible in front of his girlfriends. He wouldn’t be able to wait to learn how to drive. He would go to a great college but never too far away, and always come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then he would go and make a family of his own. His kids would love to visit because they know that Angela would spoil the hell out of them.

Right before the birth, this entire life was flashing through Anthony’s head. Like he had lived this child’s life for him. Seeing every beautiful moment he couldn’t wait to experience.

And then he saw his son for the first time.

Earlier Angela had asked him,

“So whats the first goal in this kids life long itinerary?”

And with one look at his son, his own, beautiful, perfect, little boy, he realized that it really didn’t matter what he became. Because he knew that this feeling he had towards his son, will never leave him, no matter what.

212 586 1018. I’m surprised I still know that number. It’s been what, 18 years? Yeah, 18 years. 18 years since I ran. 18 years since I yelled. Since I left. Since I gave up. 18 years since I’ve forgotten. Worst part is that in those years I never even wanted to call my childhood home. I always think it would feel weird. I thought when my brother picks up the phone, he won’t even recognize the guy on the other end. Or maybe he will recognize it, but not as his brother. As the abandoner. As the loser. As the most heartless brother he once knew. The last thing you told me is “You’re going to end up in prison one day. One day, just you wait. I’ll say I told you so. I can’t wait.” Well, he was right. It took a while but he was right. I barely remember what I did to get in here. I know it was something stupid though. He’ll laugh at me. But what could I do? I can’t run. I can’t hide. I can’t stomp off like the last time I got in trouble. I just have to sit here, and beg for someone to help me. So I dial. 212 586 1018. And it just starts ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. All the while I just think. He’s gonna hang up, he’s not going to recognize me, he will, and he’ll tell me I had this coming, he’ll tell me I told you so. Finally, it stops ringing. 

“Hello?”… There it is. That voice. The voice of my childhood, of my innocence, for the best part of me, somehow that one word took me back to when the time was simpler, where I had a family who cared about me, where I had a brother who would do anything for me, and I would do anything for him. I snap myself back to reality, 

“hey, … it’s me. I- uh, I messed up, I’m at the police station. Look I know it’s been awhile-” 

“Stop talking.” he said “I’ll call someone, I’ll be down there in 20 minutes.”

“Thanks,” I said. 

“No problem,” he said. “It’s what brothers do.”