Once
upon a time, there was a novelist.
More accurately, once upon a time,
there was a wanna-be novelist.
Even more accurately, it was a dark
and stormy night and a young man, a wanna-be novelist, awoke, the thunder, counting the seconds til the lightning hit, the rain whipped
trees crashing against the window panes, the steady drip-drip-drip of the leak from the skylight in the hall,
the leak that only leaked when the rain came down at an oblique angle, or when
the wind changed direction and carried
blackened dreams off into some wilderness, leaving ambition and hope a gritty
puddle on the tiled floor, the leak where the flashing had eroded and never been repaired or replaced, even
though the roof had been completely re-shingled.
And then the electric went out.
And the novelist, excuse me, the
wanna-be novelist, took his notebooks and his pens and his pencils and the big,
black Mag-Lite, the Mag-Lite Daddy gave him when Daddy caught him lighting
candles in the closet to keep the bogums away, the Mag-Lite that didn’t always
work anymore because once he dropped it in the intracoastal when he was scavenging. He took his blanket and Baby Moose and
Oye, his favorite stuffed Eeyore, the small one that fit in his pocket
so no one knew he still carried a stuffy everywhere and hid in the hall closet, way down in the corner with the old sneakers and out of season clothes
covering his head.
And he waited.
He waited for Daddy and Mommy to
come find him and tell him it was okay, he could sleep in their bed, but maybe
he’d like some cocoa and toasted jam first?
He waited a very long time.
He was eight.
Maybe it was a long time or maybe it
was an eight year old’s perception of a long time.
But it was once upon a time and then
and now.
His college professor explained,
“The enacted reality is reality. So it
doesn’t matter if it was a long time or if it felt like a long time. It matters
how you remember it, because either way, it was a long time to you while you
were living it and every time you recall it.”
He was eight.
And he was scared of lightning and
thunder and rain and things that reminded him of lightning and thunder and
rain, like when Mommy and Daddy argued and doors slammed and the police came
with the blue whirling light on top of the car and the police lady gave him a
grey elephant to keep Baby Moose and Oye company and then someone swept up all
the broken glass that sounded like drip-drip-drip, not tickle-shatter-tinkle
when it broke and washed the bloody footprints off the tile floor and told him
he could stay in the closet as long as he wanted and not come out until he was
ready.
He waited a long time, or perhaps it
felt like a long time.
He was eight.
But now there was someone tapping at
the door, asking him to come out, come out of the closet, come out of all the
closets he hid in, that it was safe and nothing was going to hurt him or Baby
Moose or Oye or Mastie the elephant. Prince Charming was here to rescue him, to
take him away on his Victory, off to the castle on the hill, where they would
live happily ever after in a Neverland of their own invention, where rainbows
sprinkled glitter snowflakes and the thunder didn’t come at all.
The end.
