No Summers, Only Winter
It’s so cold this time of year. Our end of the Earth faces away from the Sun, and it’s colder at the poles because the light is spread over a large area rather than concentrated at the equator. “It’s also cold because you’re not there for me.”
And the answer has always been the same. “I can’t be there, I’m too busy.” I have no idea what the big emergency is. Mom never told me why she was so busy; only that she was busy.
I wish it stopped at just feeling lonely. It doesn’t. I’m struggling to sleep because of it. So the last little while, 8:00 PM was always bedtime, regardless of whether or not you actually felt tired. Homework, practice? Too bad, 8:00 PM is bedtime, so off to bed you go. It’s because Mom was done with me.
It almost always took me two and a half hours to get down, and when I finally did, Mom would barge into my room in the middle of the night and stand in my doorway and ramble on the phone for hours. She would go in and out. She sounded angry. I would start to fall asleep again and she would turn on all the lights. I would get up to turn them off, and she’d get mad. She said she had to have the lights on because she was doing work. Either that or she’d thump around as loud as possible at 6 in the morning looking for something and losing her temper because she couldn’t find it.
And it doesn’t stop at not getting enough sleep. Our economics teacher gave us an essay about conditional probability and how we experience it in our daily lives. Usually, when high school teachers give you big essays like that, the deadline has sub deadlines that you need to meet so that it forces you to pace. Our teacher didn’t do that this time. Instead, there’s just one deadline, like there is for papers when you go to college.
I was smart. I gave myself some deadlines so that I didn’t leave until the last minute. This was the kind of essay you were supposed to spend half the school year on. It would be unwise to let it pile up until the last minute and get it done in a mad dash of flop sweat and caffeine. I put together an outline to organize my ideas that I planned to show my mom before I started writing. She looked at it, made some suggestions, and then I got started. We have a rule in our house that if I write a major essay like this, I have to run it by Mom before I hand it in.
“I want to go to bed. I’m exhausted,” I said as I toddled up the stairs.
Mom put up her finger like she was telling me to wait, but she actually told me to stop where I was. “You can’t sleep yet, kid, I need you to stay awake.”
“I have something important tomorrow”
She folded her arms and scoffed, “You should have thought of that before leaving this to the last minute”
“You made me run it by you first. It’s your fault for sitting on your ass until the last minute,” I said impatiently
“I’ve told you, I’m busy!” she shouted. The pitch of your voice went high enough that a couple of dogs overheard.
I was sick of not getting a straight answer with why she was so busy. What could possibly be the big emergency? I don’t notice anything different, only that you were never around for a very long time. Surely, it must be over by now. “Busy with what?”
Mom folded her arms and rotated away from me so she could look out the window. “Watching everything get worse,” she sighed.
“Then why did you say you’d help me if you’re so slammed?”
“Because I hate awkward silence, now go away and get to work!”
I went off and did my essay. I had to fight to stay focussed on what I was doing. I had to integrate the feedback. Doing so would’ve been easier had I known what it said. The words jump around on the page. I can’t tell if Mom’s feedback was garbage or if I’m just too tired to understand anything.
I don’t remember the last time I slept. I don’t even know what day it is. That’s not good. If you can’t remember when you last slept, you have a serious problem. Your body needs sleep. Your body needs sleep more than it needs food. If you forget when you fell asleep last, you’re so sleep deprived but you can’t tell when you’ve last gone to sleep.
And then you’re really screwed. You start seeing things. You start hearing things.
I can’t stop looking at the TV. There’s nothing on; only static. But there’s something buried in the static: Morse code. Someone’s asking me, “how are they communicating to you?”
I don’t know who “they” are. I think they might be the weird little blobs appearing in my peripheral vision. What could they be? Maybe their souls who manifest as blobs of vapour. Maybe they inhabit the house, long after their host has died.
It soon became clear that They’re all around us. They come in a wide variety of colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. The colour suits their mood. The colours don’t mean what you think. Green is sad, red is frightened, yellow is indifferent, and blue is angry.
They don’t come in peace. They scream, they’re loud, they’re territorial. They get upset when the living beings encroach upon their turf. They’re coming at me. They’re telling me it’s time to go.
@loveactivist
