The Tree Top Actors

Chapter 1

The vibrant autumn leaves crunched under Jaiden’s feet, breaking the peaceful silence of the forest. She felt a silence as well, but not a peaceful one, a hopeless silence that made her soul ache. Her eyes fixed forward on a large oak tree in the distance, towering over the other trees, like an old spinster of a teacher to her classroom. Jaiden felt nothing but the slight wind biting at her cheeks and ears, and the round bottle of pills her cold fingers clenched to. The name on the bottle was unpronounceable, but Jaiden knew it was the same magical pills her mother had used to fall into the ultimate sleep, forever escaping the bitter hypocrisy of their world. Jaiden knew it would only be moments before she joined her. She let her mind wander.

Life just seems to hand me all the wrongs cards at one time. If I had been accepted to the drama team, maybe I would have found an escape. Drama On stage, I can be a crazed medieval lover, simple farm girl, mischievous fairy, or whoever I want. She can melt into her character until nothing remains of myself.

Jaiden learned a different kind of acting off the stage- the kind that her mother had pressured her to do as soon as they stepped out of the car into the parking lot of the church her dad pastored. The kind of acting that drove her to put a smile on, answer in short, polite rehearsed answers when folks asked her how she was doing in school or how come her brother Todd wasn’t there again. Her mother was a great teacher in this area; she always played the perfect part of a southern dignified beauty, each curl always in place, her bright red lipstick straight and her extravagant foreign looking jewelry neatly accessorizing whatever gaudy outfit she happened to come up with. Jaiden would watch her mother walk down the aisles of the large auditorium of the church, her French-tipped fingers gently touching people as she walked by, greeting them with, “How ya’ll doing? God bless you!” Complete with a toothy smile that made snow look black. People smiled back, in awe of her like she was a celebrity.

Jaiden felt like a victim of the tabloids, she knew this celebrity was really going down hill fast. She knew by the bitter silence between her parents the few moments besides Sunday morning that they were in the same room. Jaiden knew that day, the day she came home to see her mother sitting on the couch, still in her pajamas her eyes glued to the local news showing her father and their familiar church, that the acting was over.

The memories of that day flooded Jaiden’s mind like a tsunami. There was no going back, no rewinding and fixing what she had done. Her Aunt Carol did her best to try to tell Jaiden it wasn’t her fault that her mother had died, that it was her father’s own actions that had pushed his wife over the edge. But Jaiden knew that wasn’t fully the truth, and she pushed thoughts of her aunt out of her head as she walked forward into the forest.

The closer Jaiden got to the oak tree, she lost herself in thought.

I am far enough into the forest so no one will find me right away. I don’t get how anyone could be selfish enough to kill themselves in their own home…She had to have known I would have been the one to find her. Did she have any idea how it would lead me to do the same thing she did? At least I have the decency to go into the woods were Aunt Carol won’t have to find me. At least here I am alone… Or am I?

Suddenly, Jaiden had the strange sense that someone was watching her like when you walk in a room and you can literally feel someone’s gaze resting on you. She looked around but saw nothing. She approached the base of the tree trunk and sat down, her back pressing against the rough bark. She peered down at the bottle lay gripped in her left hand. The lid came off with a little struggle, those child-proof caps always made her felt like an idiot. She poured several pills in her hand and studied the smooth round blue thing like it was a creature under a microscope. Funny how something so small could do so much damage. It wouldn’t take very many to do the trick; Jaiden’s five foot three skinny frame could get blown away by the next gust of wind like a leaf. She raised one of the pills up to eye level, rubbing it in circles between her thumb and index finger. She wasn’t sure why she was delaying.

Maybe I am not in as much of a hurry to die as I thought I was.

Or maybe it was because the eerie sense she wasn’t alone had just gotten stronger.

“Hushhhhhhhhhh.” A whisper caught Jaiden’s ear, and she looked around confused.

It must be the wind.

to be continued...

To Get Away

(This is just a first chapter I wrote during fiction week at school.)

I walked alone in a desert that stretched out as far as I could see. There was nothing but sand, and my own foot prints trailing behind me. No wind, no clouds in the sky. Not even a sun- just nothingness. I couldn’t tell if I had been walking for minutes and hours, but the silence and loneliness was excruciating. Suddenly, the ground opened up and I fell into a black hole. Down. Down. Down. Into the blackness. Screaming. No one to hear me. No one to save me. If I was walking through nothingness before, now I was falling through it. Something had to stop me, to catch me.

I jolted and found myself lying under my old dinosaur blanket. My heart raced. I should be used to this repetitive nightmare by now, but every time I woke up sweating, fear in my heart like I was a seven year old boy again. A loud rumbling sounded over head, and at that moment my mind and stiff back reminded me what I was lying on wasn’t my familiar futon, but the hard ground. I peered over the smiling stegosaurus print and took in my surroundings, illuminated by daylight for the first time. I lay pressed up against a concrete wall tagged with bright offensive words, sloping gradually above my head. A few feet in front of me, I could see the over the ledge onto a slow two lane highway. It was the first night of this new way of life, and I had spent it sleeping under an over-pass.

I had moved to Freeport to try to escape the madness of the growing up in a city that swallowed you alive in its endless crowded streets and blanks faces. Yet the small almost mid-size town life wasn’t much more tranquil. I floated through three semesters of college only to hit a crisis wall and decide that whatever I wanted in life didn’t depend on a degree. All the talking heads had convinced me that it would be in my best interest to pursue business. It was what made the world go round, they said. Part of my wall hitting experience was the shocking realization I didn’t care who “they” were and how they ran my life. Whatever made the world go round, it surely wasn’t business.

So I plugged my ears to the pleas of my perfectionist mother, and got a job at a local coffee shop, where I got to know musicians and other college drop outs and drank way to much chai. I guess if you’re going to be addicted to something, why not chai? I was just that ordinary guy that works in that local coffee shop who would make shallow talk with the musicians and businessmen and give the cute girl with the eyebrow ring an extra pump of vanilla in her non-fat latte. I’m Just Dillon Ked, that scrawny white dude who always needed a haircut and wore black emo glasses but secretly loved pop music

I sat up, carelessly folding my dino blanket and shoving it into my forest green hiking backpack, which was the size of a child. I noticed broken beer bottles close to where I made my bed and shuttered, relieved I hadn’t rolled over on them. I made my way down the slop of the overpass and headed down the west down the highway. I walked, watching a few passing vehicles look at me and decided not to stop, and thought about how I had ever gotten to this point.
The morning of the day I had the break down and left, seemed ordinary enough. I was in the coffee shop making a drink for a tall angry looking man in a dull grey suit who came in every morning and chugged his Grand Café Ole in about three minutes. He was always on his cell phone- even when he was ordering. I looked up from the man when I heard the door open. I stared at the girl walking in. I couldn’t help it. She had thick brown hair that fell a little past her shoulders and a little yellow dress that complemented her petite frame. I locked eyes with her as she made her way to the counter and stood behind the business man. Her eyes sparkled a brilliant sky blue like she held the world’s greatest secret. Her thin lips curved into a smile which said the same. I snapped back into reality as angry grey suit man began to get angry at his cell phone- or whoever was on the other end. I handed him his drink and he stormed off in a frenzy, nearly bumping into beautiful-new-girl. She walked up to the counter and I felt myself draw a deeper breath. For a moment we locked eyes and all of a sudden I forgot who I was and what exactly I was doing there.

“I’d like a small hot chocolate... Please?” I mumbled something that hopefully sounded like “Any thing else?” she shook her head, laughing at me with her eyes. I rung up the total, my hands briefly shaking when she handed me the money and our fingers brushed for a second. I swallowed something invisible lodged in my throat and accepted the cash, quickly handing her back her change without looking into her eyes- those deep, laughing, blue eyes. I made her hot chocolate quickly.

I had given up on anything more then a few short term flings her and there. My heart just wasn’t in it. What was my heart in? Certainly not classrooms or business. As much as I loved the free chai, I wasn’t about to spend the rest of my life in a coffee shop in Freeport. I’d seen those guys, I worked with a few of them. Spent their weekends trading on ebay or going to shows of some band nobody but them ever heard of they discovered on myspace. I hated myspace.

Lately, I had begun to doubt the very existence of my heart. Beyond being some muscle that pumped blood around my scrawny body. My mother was always nagging me to go to church, she was convinced I was going to hell and needed to “accept Jesus into my heart” for some kind of fire insurance. Last time I went to church, I walked out feeling about as big as those communion cups they serve warm grape juice in. God was out there, somewhere, but obviously to preoccupied with important things like who’s bombing who, and who they next moron to get into office was. At least that’s what “they” said.

I shook up the whipped cream and made a perfect swirling white tower. Hot girl was watching me, with that all-knowing smile still on her face. Usually a look like that would annoy me, but not from her. She looked like someone whom I would listen to no matter what she said, even if it was about the best brand of paper towel or the stock market. I slid her drink across the counter smoothly and said “Here’s your drink sugar.” winking at her.

Ok, so that’s what it looked like in my mind a split second before it happened. In reality, it was more like a clumsy slapping of the paper cup, my perfect white castle of sugary goodness drooping and hot chocolate sloshing out and burning my fingers. I pulled away quickly hoping she didn’t notice. She just looked at me knowingly and said thank you. She then turned and walked away. I wiped the chocolate off my hand and watched her head to the door. Wow, she was gorgeous... She then suddenly stopped and turned back towards me. I knew it. She had seen me check her out. She walked back towards the counter. Time seemed to stop still as she looked at me; her eye’s shone in a way I had never seen. Like she was truly... alive?
For a moment we just stood there and I felt like I was frozen. What did she know that I didn’t? Then she spoke, boldly and knowingly as if she’d known me her whole life.

“There is more to life. Don’t run away from Him.”
Then she turned and walked away.

I used to think if I tried hard enough, I could conqueror the world. Then I turned six and discovered the reality of life. My parents divorced and the world suddenly grew ten times the size I thought it was. And eleven times harsher. I began to see life in chapters, each beginning with a tragedy, ending with me coming to some kind of resolution in myself to refuse to let tragedy bite me in the back once again. I saw repetition of the cycle of pain: the denial stage, the breaking point, the slow painful acceptance. I was a pro at this. I memorized it and categorized these painful chapters of life like an anal textbook editor. It wasn’t like I had ever been beaten or molested or put out on the street. It was all the normal things an American kid deals with: divorce, getting picked on in school, peer pressure, depression, my grandma’s death, attempted suicide. Oh yah, I forgot to mention that last one.

When I was a junior in high school, I locked my self in the bathroom with a bottle of Advil. I remember how smooth the bottle was in my hand, how cold the tile floor was. The details in the wall paper pattern and how they blurred together with my tears. It was like everything in front of me was so vivid and clear. Painfully clear. My life before hand had been muddled, and here I was moments from death and it was as if someone had taken a towel and wiped the steam from the mirror within. I saw the pain and hopelessness as in inescapable reality, the only way out was to end it.

I would have ended it all that day had I been able to. Unfortunately, I have this quirk where I have the hardest time swallowing pills. I took about five before I gagged and gave up. Stupid gag reflexes saved my life. I never told anyone about that one. Like I said, I am just the typical ordinary coffee shop guy.

“Honnnnnnnnnnnnnk!” A blaring horn interrupted my thoughts as a semi truck flew by me. So much for hitchhiking, no one wanted to stop! My stomach growled and I decided I wasn’t going to get very far on an empty stomach. I looked at the empty fields stretched out before me, and realized any spot would do for a picnic. I jumped the fence lining the highway and sat down on a patch of brown grass. It was September in Kansas and the cold was getting ready to settle down and kill all signs of green. I dug through my huge backpack looking for my bag of beef jerky. I pulled out a magazine and stared it, lost in the pictures on the cover. I chuckled at the irony of it all. This magazine was one of the reasons I was here instead of still back at my dingy apartment eighty miles away.

I have this weird phobia of supermarket, so it’s strange I went to one after work yesterday. Maybe it’s some suppressed memory from when my mom would drag me to Stop and Shop when I wanted to stay home and try to save the princess in Mario. I was getting pretty sick of pop-tarts, or at least needed some milk to go with them. I walked into the super market with this strange sense like everyone was looking at me. The ancient crusty greeter man gave me a toothless grin. If I wasn’t careful, I would end up that guy, exposing every poor soul that walked into Savers Mart to his rotting gums. I gave him a smirk and walked purposefully forward.
Where did they keep the milk in this place? I walked past the isles of cans and packages, healthy, fattening, slop and delicacies. If it was one thing this country had was choices, a million choices just to figure out what brand and percentage of milk to buy. Anything but that skim crap.

I picked up a few more things and made my way to the register. I got behind an overweight man in khaki overalls buying about 400 pounds of dog food. I wondered if he actually had a dog. I eyed some tabloid headlines; they always made for a good laugh. Woman Gives Birth To Albino Siamese Twins from Mars, Jesus Found Playing with Elvis and Bigfoot at a Club in New Orleans.

A glossy, colored magazine in the middle of the tabloids caught my eye. It must have been out of place. The photo on the front showed a road- stretched out and disappearing into a brilliant pink sunset over some hills. It was beautiful, and for a second, I was caught staring at it. Before I noticed it was a Travel magazine, I noticed the headlines, in bold white across the pink sky and towering mountains. More To Life – How Traveling will change your world.
For the second time that day I felt something, almost like a beckoning itch beneath my tough interior. I brushed it aside, but still grabbed the magazine and put it on the checkout counter with my other items, behind dog food man.

When I was ten my mom decided we were going to go on a family vacation. I think I laughed in her face and said something like “What family?” Never the less, the next week I found myself packed in our little Subaru with our black lab Arthur, my mom’s massive suitcase that I could have easily fit in, and my little Adidas duffel bag. We drove about 250 miles to this little historical town where we spend 3 days wandering in and out of boring exhibits, my mom saying things like “Fascinating! Look at this Dillon; can you believe this piece of pottery is over 100 years old?” And me saying things like “Who cares, it’s broken. I hate this. Can we go? You promised we’d be back to the hotel in time to watch Fresh Prince!”

I remember that my mattress poked springs into my back, so I ended up on the floor with Arthur, and the ugly faded portrait of what looked like a rotting bowl of fruit, hanging next to the television. The room smelled like old socks and cigarette smoke. My mom ended up in tears by the end of our trip. I regretted making her cry, but I was relieved it was all over and knew we would never have a family vacation again. I think I set in my mind that traveling was overrated, I was just going to find a place far away from everybody where I would be happy and stay there forever. Why see the world when it’s just full of broken pottery? Why be disappointed? Only problem was, as life went on, I begin to think that maybe the problem was there was nowhere that would truly make me happy, no place I could call home.
That image of myself, a spoiled ten year old kid angry at him mom, mixed with my strange encounter with the girl in the yellow dress at the coffee shop plagued my thoughts as I drove home from Saver’s Mart last night. Even though the roads were slick, I got back to my apartment in time for CSI. I made myself some frozen pizza and plopped on the couch, staring glossy eyed at the bloody images. I usually sort of had fun trying to figure out the mystery of who pushed the sexy receptionist out of the 8th floor window and why. That night, my heart just wasn’t in it. I thought the hot girl again and wondered if she would come back and if I could get her number. A commercial for diarrhea medicine came on and I wandered to the kitchen for some whole milk. I grabbed the travel magazine off the counter. Why I felt possessed to spend almost four dollars on a travel magazine when I hate traveling, I don’t know, but I might as well look through it and get my money’s worth.

I opened it up and begin to skim through: page after page of colored photographs, each unique but beautiful in there own way. Endless plains, the color of burnt toast, speckled with cattle under a cornflower blue sky. Mountains with shades of blue and purple, snow like powered sugar dusted on the peaks. Palm trees standing in a row, watching aqua waves breaking over pure white sand. Couples fashioned in hiking boots and parkas carrying state of the art back packs with carefree smiles plastered on their faces.

Something about these images enthralled me, drew me in like a kid staring wide eyed at a carnival. I skipped several bold headings without actually reading an article. Passionate words speaking of people’s love for a seafood restaurant overlooking a crystal clear port in Greece, or the best kept secret- a biking trail in Sweden that ended in a meadow filled with flowers.
My eyes grew wide. Maybe my there was more out there then broken pottery and seedy hotels that reeked of cigarettes. I had never been concerned much about the world beyond my own life. I wasn’t really connected to any of it. It was just me myself and I, here now in this reality- however miserable or meaningless it might be. As my mind reeled, something unexplainable began to happen. As I looked at those colorful words and images, it was like my mind was suddenly opened up to the possibility, that just maybe there was more to life. Maybe there was something worth living for.