Chasing the Abyss

Don’t get me wrong. I love it here. Who wouldn’t? It’s quaint. It’s cute. It’s redundant. It’s boring. Everyday, I feel like around a million people have only bright smiles to offer me, mustard instead of ketchup, and the seafoamy shade of green dirtied with the brown. Oh, sure if is perfect. Anyone would dream of living in America’s “good-neighbor city” of Middleton, Wisconsin just not me. I am suspicious of that sunshine of a grin that must be hiding something. I think it is nothing big or notable that we house a Mustard Museum. (Mustard, seriously?) I only notice the dirt when I look at the ground and am, I supposed to be happy about that? I’m no farmer. I’ve always been a runner through anything I could in the small Wisconsin town. Tell me how it’s the #1 small city to live in America. Make me want to run away from it even more. (It is actually the worst town in the universe.) That Middleton mug that you bought for your dad last time you were here, the yellow one lettered by thick, black letters in saying something corny. I sure hope you kept your receipt. Like I said, Middleton is the worst. My name is Zechariah Taylor. I’ve been a runner my whole life. As soon as I could stand up straight on my legs, I was running. I probably would run, even if I had no destination, such as “out of Middleton” (as it is right now). People say that I’m a dreamer (almost like that is a bad thing). Ideas always bursting out and entertaining themselves underneath my cinnamon hair, finding a quick exit by way of my ecstatic electric blue eyes, that are always more in a raincloud here at home. I’ve been a runner my whole life. I ran before I could walk, my mother, Melody keeping me in reign as a child by playing no running games with me. I’ve been a runner my whole life. I was winning all the running matches long before I was on any track or cross-country team. I’ve been a runner my whole life. I can’t wait until I get the chance to leave this too frigid and cold town for somewhere with wide open, sunny spaces like California, or I’d even take a brisk Wyoming summer rather than this. It is only a matter of time. I had the chance to leave, a few years ago. I don’t know why I let it slide me by, smugly grinning a mock at me the whole time, as if it knew something that I didn’t. As if it had seen my future and I would never leave my own sweet, little Middleton. The chance was seen at my graduation, when I was looking at plenty of colleges, and they were looking at me with my ultra-swift, sonic speed legs that would surely lead their organization to plenty of success. I was seriously considering the ones in California, where I could already see myself gliding along the waves on the beach, sun kissed skin rusting to a bright tan, sweat gliding off my body, always warm, it was a dream. Or maybe I was considering Notre Dame for my mother’s sake since that university is religious. In that dream, maybe I was running to church in the binding black outfit, but I was still running. That was all before my dreams were shattered before I had anything resembling a decision made. My mother and father had always been close. I had dreams of someday meeting a russet girl that had actions and sweetness almost identical to my mother (except I hadn’t had any success yet, because who could possibly be that sweet?). Then, the cue would fall on me. I would bring her flowers every week, even if I had just picked something like wild daisies up off the side of the road, like my dad did. Telling her she was way more beautiful than any flower could possibly be. My graduation from Middleton High School was the beginning of the end and not in a good way (and in more dreadful ways than having to stay in Middleton forever, though that was a close second). My parents tried to hide it from me, but the way that my mother acted on that supposed-to-be-joyous day, and the way that my father was a lot more clingy to her than usual on there often lovestruck days, I knew something was up. They were attempting to have a whispered conversation at the light brown, decorated with blue (my favorite color at the time, though now it just means sadness) banners, front door, as he was grasping her hands with his love, she harshly whispered, like a broken air conditioner to him, “I’m doing fine, Andrew. I’m sure it was just something that happened in anticipation for today. Today is Zechariah’s day. Please give it to him.” I heard my mother with graying hair, and a slow-quicker deteriorating body and shrugged my immature, just recently became a legal adult, couldn’t wait to run away from home body shoulders. You never know what you have until it is gone. I’m not speaking of Middleton, of course not. I am elaborating on the few moments I had left with her. She did her very best in giving that cloudy day (as if the sky knew what was going to happen) to me, but she became more and more ill over the next few days, demanding that it was just a bug, but she vomited much more than once or twice and was horribly dehydrated. All the color in her cheeks left, even before she did. Father wouldn’t leave her side, more so than usual and I wouldn’t go inside to check on her from the outdoors. I was running, dreaming, letting my eyes become their shocked shade of blue. I thought I would finally get to leave. I was wrong. My mother died the very next week. My father tried to bring her demanding little sickly, mixture of pale green and dark white body to the hospital, but she refused. (If there ever was anyone more determined than my mother, I hadn’t met her yet.) After that run, I came home breathless, as I always was, but with something more missing. My sweat darkened the deep blue of my favorite workout shirt (Aunt Penny had recently given it to me for graduation). My breath rushed up and down the halls, but something was missing. I walked to my parent’s room to tell them that I was home (as if they didn’t hear me slam shut our deathly dirt brown door), but something beckoned me away from that door. As if I didn’t want to see what lie there waiting for me on the other side. That haunted me, but still made me more dumbly curious. Made me want to see what was there even more. I saw it with the first step. I wish I could go back. I wish that my father had never lit the candle all those years ago. I wished I wasn’t always running. I wished I had learned to slow down at all the important moments. My father would know only a few moments later too, as I heard him tenaciously yell, “No…Melody. My Melody” That precise moment. That split second that everything would be forever changed, I’m not sure if I can describe it. The flood of emotions that hit me was so overwhelming, too overwhelming. It was kind of like that night that I discovered the secret to life, and that I thought that it only could be up from there. I suddenly wished that we all could have quick deaths, at least those of us who didn’t have the comfort of a mother to tuck us in to our blue, used-to-be-happy colored sheets at night, singing to us in pleasant lullabies that she will love us forever, no matter how big our dreams were or how unearthly distant we planned to move away once we could. Who names their only child a lengthy, farmer name like Zechariah anyway? In the vibrantly graying world, I would suddenly give away anything if I could hear her call me by my awfully unique, full name one more time in her sweet music of a voice. Zechariah Gideon Taylor. All I could hear in that moment was my own, plus my father’s rushed breaths in what felt to be our small box of the world. Please. Please stop. The distant light was a lie. The myth of hope was coming into clarity. I would never leave the incaving walls of Middleton, Wisconsin. Never again. Like I cared. In a moment, my father was sobbing much louder than could possibly be imagined. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone’s slowly dimming light was defusing at a much rapider speed suddenly. What should I do? The yellow walls were whispering, prompting me to do something anything to comfort my father, but I could never. Life was rushing at me in a much too quick way. Quicker than anything could possibly run. Quicker than my most offhand dreams and I hated it. What could I do? My angel of a mother had just barely passed onto the second realm probably full of flowers and butterflies and left my father and I stuck in meek Middleton, Wisconsin with nothing better to do. She was gone. Faster than anything I ever expected. Speedier than anything I ever imagined. Weren’t people supposed to cry when things like this happened to them? My tear ducts were growing dryer as I feel against the wall, that I wished wasn’t there as I slowly slid against it to the ground. I guess too much was happening, I didn’t know what to do or how to react. Was I glad? No of course not. Did I expect this? No, the thought hadn’t ever entered my quiet, vain mind. Was there such a thing as heaven? There better be or else my mother would have nowhere to go. Finally, I whispered something, meaning for no one but the spirits amid, or the heavens above to hear, “No, no, no…” I had to get out of here. Not Wisconsin, as my suddenly vague dreams demanded, but I had to get out of my house for the moment. My dad and I were both going through a process of grief and we both deserved to be alone for that, at least I believed. Our thoughts, and mom’s spirit would make swell company, at least I thought so in times like these. Any part of my mother was all that I asked for. The hope hit me like a ton of bricks. I never wanted to leave if it meant that I could be where she was with all of the used to be hopeless memories. I would never forget her. No, not ever. Who cared about Katy McKenzie? Who cared about Jean Dickson? Who cared about Julie Schmidt? Who cared about any of the women that I had said that I loved if I couldn’t have my mother by my side encouraging me. I had to get out of here, but couldn’t. I felt like my feet were cemented in the carpet beneath me. I would just give my father time, that was all that I needed to do. Just give myself time, that was all that I needed to do. That is what I did, but to no avail. I semi-felt like everyone had died a month later, when there were tons of flowers decorating our home and people were offering there condolences in a meek, meager, repeatedly sad tone that would try to connect at times. “I’m so sorry, Z. I remember when my grandmother died, it was so sad. I can’t imagine.” Jean was the last to speak to him on it. He only had a gracious thanks to offer in return, with a posed smile. He felt like a statue. Nothing on him was real nowadays as he accepted the bouquet of white lilies that he didn’t even bother sneezing, because that meant that he was still breathing. He almost told her, in her gorgeous black dress that looked like it was originally intended for cocktail parties, like the one that they recently attended and made love. A posed love, nothing like the one that his parents had shared. “My name is Zechariah.” Because that was the name that no doubt his Christian mother gave him. If he wanted to run anywhere nowadays, it was back to her, and her loving embrace. Wherever it was. He would find it, even if it took longer than a million years.