Tick Tick

4th Place 14-17 Category Junior Authors Short Story Contest 2009
 
by Victoria Gomez
   
Tap Tap. Valerie’s pen beat to the rhythm of the clock. She added her fingers. Tick Tick Tick Tap Tap Tap Thud CRACK! Her fingers were silenced painfully with an unrelenting ruler across her knuckles. She looked up into the face of her agitated teacher.

“I’m hoping your tapping means I get to see an A on that next quiz, Valerie.” He walked back up to the front of the classroom and continued his reading aloud of the notes on the projector screen, which, really, was pointless. They could read perfectly fine. But no one mentioned it, because it occupied his eyes for a time and let the procrastinators finish up last day’s homework. Or in Valerie’s case, stare at the clock as if it would suddenly grow a mouth and announce a miraculous early dismissal.
Naturally, this never happened.

With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the notes. Something about Canada...a few dates…nothing exciting. If he would just shut up, maybe the time would go faster. The time seemed to go by just fine all on its own though, because halfway through the notes the bell rang, and Valerie’s desk was emptied within seconds.

The school field, on the other hand, was anything but empty. At 3:15, the Grade 10/11 girls’ soccer team milled around on the sideline, waiting for the practice game. The team captain, Sandra, jogged over just as Valerie had opened her duffel bag.
“Hey, you’re late.” Sandra said questioningly. “Yeah, sorry, I had to go back to my last class. Forgot my textbook again. Did I miss anything?” Valerie panted. “Nah, we just got everyone here anyways. Don’t worry about it. Put on your stuff quick though, I don’t want to go past 5:00 again,” the captain smiled, and ran back to the other players.

In a few minutes, Valerie had her knee brace strapped on, her cleats tied and was bouncing on her feet mid-field, when the ball exploded out of center. It ricocheted towards her team’s goal and she sprinted at it, narrowly dodging oncoming players. Her feet like precision instruments, she maneuvered the ball into an opening and made a headlong dash for the goal, swerving herself away from attackers and pivoting as gracefully as any ballerina. A wall of defenders cut her off, but she managed to sweep the ball around them and pass to a small Grade 10 from center. Positioning herself on the other side of the goal, she paused to take a moment’s breath. The June sun was beating down relentlessly, not a breeze to be felt as her teammates made several unsuccessful attempts to score a goal.

Valerie hopped on the spot, getting a jumpstart as she sprinted towards the defensive player with the ball. She was deflected, however, and staggered a bit on her cleats like many a stilts-walker had. As she swayed back into balance, she noticed a patch of grass next to her.

No, she wasn’t having some sort of heat-induced hallucination. Or at least, she hoped she wasn’t. She just noticed that this certain patch-more of a circle, she saw now- seemed a little brighter than the rest of the field. It was like someone had adjusted the contrast on that one spot, making the green more fluorescent and the shadows more pronounced. Her eyes fought to focus on it the same way it did the rest of the world, but it hurt too much to stare at it for too long. As she fought to keep her eyesight balanced, the grass seemed to ripple and waver from not-there-heat waves. Valerie thought maybe her eyes were watering and making it seem cloudy, so she rubbed at them hard, but when she looked back the patch was gone. The field was an unbroken ocean of dying trimmed life painted with white lines.

There was a sudden pain on the right side of her head, a thick gust of wind, something hit her front, and her view went dark. Somewhere a whistle sounded, sending her jumbled brain askew again. For a moment she wondered if she’d been paralyzed, or gotten heatstroke or had a seizure. She wiggled her index finger experimentally; still worked. That scrapped paralysis. Seeing as how Valerie (oh good, she remembered her name) had no idea how to check for possible overexposure to sun or heart failures, she just lay there twitching her fingers until she was swept up by someone behind her.

“HEY, let’s get some first aid over here or something! Valerie, can you hear me? That’s right, come on, you’re fine. Shake it off!” Valerie’s eyes managed to focus on the anxious, yet somehow still aggressive face of her captain, “Yup, no worries, I’m okay,” she swatted away the first aid kit, “I’m fine!” The grass remained still.

Valerie pulled the zipper of her hoodie up and tucked her hands into her shorts as she passed through the chain link gate. It may have been June, but the nights were still chilly in the Lower Mainland. She looked down and saw the field’s faded white end line. She’d walked to the other end of the field in somewhat of a daze. Valerie swept her gaze over the field before her, trying to remember where she’d seen the weird grass (which, really, wasn’t all that unusual a concept these days).

Once she found it, she sat on her heels and ran her fingers through the green. Nope, nothing. There was no changing of vision, no ruffle in the windless air.
After a good 15 minutes of staring at the ground like a moron, she stretched her cramped muscles back up, and walked away.

Just as her foot left the field, her back arched, her head thrown back, legs knocked under her. Her spine exploded into a million shards of sharp pain. In milliseconds, her brain raced to try to come to terms with the sudden agony she felt as she fell forward and hit the rough gravel path. In only milliseconds more, her body was suddenly still, with no evidence of the bizarre spasm of torture. She scrambled up, surprised at the way her limbs managed to do so without after-effect. Stumbling around, she looked back to the spot she’d been investigating.

The grass was rippling, an almost incandescent brown-orange glow radiating outwards, slowly spreading to the surrounding blades of turf, trying to consume the entire field. From the originating spot there came flecks of dull red light, emitting a sound like the outward breathing and sighs of millions of mouths. As Valerie leaned against the fencepost like a deer in headlights, she could hear humming, low and treacherous; no tune, just an endless cacophony of notes forcing its way into her ears, her inner thoughts.

With a mental jerk she pulled away from whatever called her in and was horrified to find that she had one shoe in the field. The noises started to swell up around her again, the endless despairs of thousands filling her with an ache she’d never known. Hands that weren’t there clawed at her face and arms, begging for her. She could feel the small insecurities and desperations in her expand, until they threatened to consume her. Her mind was being torn into bits, each sigh and breath trying to take a piece.

Wrenching herself away, she tried to pull her foot out of the field, but it remained fixed there, seemingly unwilling to cooperate with her demands. Now desperate and panicking, Valerie looked up again at the writhing mess of…something where she could almost make out a solid, tangible light, if that was even possible. It rose and swiveled to the sounds piercing her brain, turning towards her, calling her. It ached for her very existence, and just as she thought it would manage to pull her in, her foot came loose and she was thrown backwards onto the path again. Her consciousness snapped off into blackness, the last echoes of those voices swirling in her head. The last thing she saw was the fence post, a golden-brown tendril creeping over it.

“Valerie…Valerie!” THWACK! Val’s looked up to see her English teacher looming over her. “You should know better than to have your ear-phones in by now. Take them out and pay attention, please. “Now, as you will read for tonight’s homework, the novel we are studying is based on the philosophic concept that what we perceive as reality is actually fabricated in our brains. In short, everything’s in your head. Now, imagine that I don’t really exist, but am only a figment of your imagination, and that you aren’t really in English class at all.” There were a few snickers. “Imagine that your whole world is a lie! It’s rather mind-boggling, yes, rather hard to wrap your mind around. But it can be an exciting idea, don’t you think?”

The class continued. Valerie stood outside the fence of the field. The grass remained still.

Victoria writes...

"Tick Tick" was inspired by a conversation my friend and I had once. It was centered around what holds our world together, and the nature of life itself. I suppose it was enough to write a short story!

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