Friday, December 29, 2017

M

y head was everywhere. I needed to concentrate. To recollect myself.

I sat on the floor, surrounded by the other boys, their backs to me. . . We were all silent. Today was Friday night, which means for Travis it was Shabbat, Jewish time of rest, and he brought a purple Manischewitz wine bottle for the five of us to share, so we could calm down. It's amazing what certain substances can do to the mind, and to the body, and to the spirit. I had my glass.

I never drank much, so the effect was loud on my system. I lay sprawled on the carpet like an angel, looking up at the candlelight as it flickered orange on the ceiling the same way a fireplace would on any white wall. I watched the fields of orange flicker, and in their illustrations, I saw a boat riding through the sea, and a boy with a sack of food in his lap, and made ripples through the stillness as he sped toward a land where someone, anyone, would find him. But as I hoped that boy, Craig, would soon reach for the shore, for civilization, he never did as long as I watched him sail. Onward he went, and he would dig his hands into the sack of food every so often when he became hungry. The sack lost its contents until it was flat in the figure's lap, and soon the boy in the boat dropped the oars, looked up in exhaustion and finally lay flat in the boat. The rippling orange on the walls turned still now, and the ceiling's colors disappeared like a snap of the fingers. I dropped my gaze from the ceiling, and spotted the smoke floating through the air from the finished candle like a silvery centipede. The candle was mopped over the candlestick in a river of wax frozen in time.

The room was all darkness now except the moonlight that peered down on the floor and on the other four sleeping boys' bodies as their stomachs rose and fell with each snoring inhale and exhale. I soon closed my eyes too, and thought the Manischewitz and the candles might have done away with my worries for Craig, as I wished he will make it safely on his voyage. I assumed he did escape the burning house with food and a boat.

But my worries reappeared in the form of nightmare after nightmare after nightmare. Each one worse than the last.