floatingcitylights | to walk in the night (Reply)

a story about lonely people being lonely, missing our loved ones, and how being different is a gift and a curse all at the same time.

The world is a different place at night. When everyone is asleep, when nobody's looking, things change.

I'm not everyone. That's how I know things everyone doesn't. Any human being with a shred of normalcy in his bones would have a heart attack. Which is probably why thins only change at night, when the world is still and the only sound is the wind playing with the moon. We can't have people dying left and right.

But you wouldn't know, you're just like everyone else, after all.

The trees move at night. They turn into all sorts of amazing creatures, the likes of which have never walked in the sun. They prowl our neighborhoods when everyone is sleeping, watch you twitch and mumble in your dreams. They have to go back to exactly how they were before the sun arrives or they'll crumble into dust, blown away by the wind.

(Does it hurt? I ask them, two nights after I witnessed a poor mare disintegrate, the shock in its eyes burning into my brain. Does it hurt to disappear?

It hurts to watch but I can't look away. I never turn my back to them. I am their friend, their only friend, and they are all I have left.

Their silence is answer enough.)

You don't believe me. You don't, do you?

No. No, wait. I can prove it. Stop, listen to me! No one ever listens! Just listen to me.

Please.

-----

Why are you back here? You didn't want to know. Before.

I don't belong here. I'm not crazy, I'm not. And I'm not stupid, either. I know the secrets of the world and I know that you're here because it's your job to talk to nut-jobs like me. You don't really care. You don't have to pretend, you know. I know you don't care. I just…I need you to listen. Please.

I'm not crazy. I'm not.

-----

They found me in the cemetery. I was asleep and they woke me up. A gun and a badge does not a gentleman make. It's a serious flaw in the system! They can't just barge in on a 80-year-old man's rest! No one was even vying for that bench! It was just me, alone, trying to get some sleep in the cemetery. I didn't hurt anyone. There was nothing to wake me up for and those people woke me up!

-----

I can't sleep at night. I have never been able to, after I found out when I was a kid, maybe six years old. It's been over seventy years since that night and I have never been able to forget.

I was with my mother, and we were having a late night picnic out in the yard, just to see the stars. It's different to see the starts in a city like this now, nothing but harsh concrete and a permanent haze over everything. But we lived in the outskirts when I was young.

Mom lay flat on her back watching the stars. She was so beautiful, my mom; she was the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world and I knew it at six years old. She smelled like cinnamon and baking powder and felt like the sun, just like the sun. She taught me everything she knew and more, and I loved her. I didn't have a father, but it was okay because I had Mom and she was enough for me.

"Now that," Mom pointed, "that's the Little Bear." Her voice sounded like the wind.

I squinted, wrinkled my nose. "Looks like a…like a hammer."

Her laugh rings out like a clear little bell. "That's why the stars are important. They teach us imagination."

"Does the baby bear have a mommy bear?"

"The Great Bear's over there. No, no. There. See? they're close. Always close."

"Like us?"

"Just like us." Her voice softened into a breeze. "I'll always be right beside you, Jack. Even when you can't see me, I'm right here."

A comfortable silence descended upon us. The forest seemed so close I could touch it, and touch it I did, with my left eye squeezed shut and my hand carefully put over the forest in the distance.

How would it feel like? Velvet? It seemed foresty enough, velvet.

Something shifted.

What?

The forest moved.

"Mom…?"

A living being. Moving towards us.

I stood, drawn to the edge of our little garden, squinting through the night. Trying to see, like the child I was. The earth trembled slightly with the forest's footsteps, coming face to face with me at the whitewash of the wooden fence around our yard, the last weak link that divided my world from theirs. My hands gripped the wood as tightly as my little toddler hands could handle.

There were so many of them. Large hares bounding up to the fence, poking their waffly noses through the gaps and staring at Mom with strangely curious eyes, some of them shying away and leaping over each other to play out in the raises. Elephants, elephants moving lazily towards me, then stopping feet away from the fence. So many of them; bears, owls, badgers, wolves, even eagles, all staring at me with the same curiosity.

I turned to Mom and her face, her eyes, her everything was all lit up by the fire of her smile.

"You see them?" she asked. "You see them too?"

I didn't know what else do to, so I nodded.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," she said. She got up, white dress stained with grass billowing slightly in the wind, crossed over to stand by me, faced the forest. She reached out a hand and the forest purred, purred, purred at her touch. "They are friends. Friends won't hurt you."

One of the dared to approach. It was a bear, fur thick with moonlight. It gingerly put its head close to the fence, looked into me with its dark eyes and leaned into my outstretched hand, growling softly at my warmth.

I smiled. And leaned back.

I never stopped playing with the forest since that night.

-----

Listen. Things change differently in different places. In the park, I spent weeks watching the elms become tigers, the dogwoods become wolves, the red oaks foxes, right there on my bench under the moonlight. It is gloriously beautiful, watching these magnificent beasts move. They have the grace that we have forgotten. No matter what kind of creature I watched they always had fur that was dusted with the silver of the moon.

Afraid? I wasn't afraid. Far from it. They were my friends. Mom told me so. They did nothing to hurt me, just circled my bench and watched me with those eyes. Maybe because they don't see many humans, and none of us have hurt them, so they don't know to attack.

It's different in different places (duh). When I was in the cemetery, it was peaceful, Surrounded by the stones of the dead, glazed silver by the moon, and the silent chatter of the grasshoppers. No one watching. Just the one silver eye hanging high in the sky. I would sit in the middle of the grass field and I would laugh, bright and unfettered, as the white of the bleached trees turned into the slinky coats of wildcats, the rough brown of the tall birches melting into the lossy pelts of slender-limbed horses, and the poplars shaking their leaves into glorious, proud birds with the songs of the dead caught in their throats.

They would run circles around me in the sea of grass. The wind would ruffle blades of grass into undulating, like waves spreading all around where I sat. Perhaps I was drowning, just that I didn't know I was. And one or two would come near me and allow me to sink my fingers into their rich coats. They would feel like moonlight on the sea.

Land ho.

-----

Come daylight, all of them would turn back into trees. The birds would shed their subtle plumage for the unassuming down of dark green poplar leaves. The horses would circle back to their resting places with a dignified snort, their smooth pelts taking on the roughness of the birch bark. And the cats would leap and bound over each other, still playing even when daylight was so near, climbing up on each other to form a whole column of white, the white of the time-bleached trees.

The sun would rise a few minutes later, bathing the world in its warmth. But somehow my heart always felt cold.

-----

I've slept on many benches in the sun. I've watched, even played, with the trees creatures of the night. But the cemetery gives me a peace I have felt but once before, wrapped securely in my mother's arms as she sang softly to me and rocked me back to sleep whenever I had a nightmare. A peace I have since tried and failed to find in the sun, ever since she passed and left me all alone.

Have you ever lost someone? Someone you love? The ache never goes away.

It's been over forty years, but I still miss her.

I miss my mom.

-----

I'm not crazy, you know. I just see things differently than everyone else. There's truth in every part of the whole, no matter how different the parts are.

People keep calling me crazy. Do you think I'm crazy?

Don't lie to me. I'm not stupid. I know things, I know the secrets of the world.

-----

I may never get out of this place. I know that, it's not a secret. If I never do….can you go to the cemetery for me? At night? Could you take her some flowers from me? She loves tulips. She's there too, you know. My mom. I always sit by her when I go to the cemetery. I think they sense it, because whenever one of them approached, it will touch its nose gently to the cold stone and settle down by my side until dawn arrives. Once, a cat snuggled up close when I couldn't hold it back, and my face was glazed silver with my tears.

You're the only one who has ever listened to me. People always call me crazy, because I am different. Because I am old, and no one ever listens to an old man's ravings. Because I walk in the night when they walk in the sun.

They won't hurt you. They are friends. There is nothing to be afraid of. They'll know why you're there. Mom will, too. They'll know you're there to say goodbye for me.

Please?