Fiction logo

Through His Eyes

Stories of life and loneliness

By Annika Johnson Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 14 min read
Runner-Up in Return of the Night Owl Challenge
Like

Just as dusk dissipated into the horizon, and the moon floated up into that great ocean of New England sky, a single barn owl came to roost on the branch of an old aspen tree. He landed, grooming himself briefly, and then settled in. Always watching, always alert, his eyes seemed to swallow the night whole. The forest was still, waiting for some indefinable arrival. The owl blinked once, eyelids sheathing this great reflection of sky. He is almost omniscient, the way he takes the forest in, totally, completely, without remorse.

Two points of light crest the horizon, they cut through the nighttime, cones coming from the front of the old Volkswagen. The owl turned and, briefly, the moon of his head was illuminated by the headlights.

A girl and a boy sat in the car as it ambled up the road. This was the end of their first date, just having gone out for burgers and milkshakes at Jimmy’s Joint (Home of the Triple SmashBurger!) Everything was all very civil- he picked her up at 6:00 sharp, dressed very nicely in slacks, a button down and old leather jacket which was his father’s. She came down the steps, rather sheepishly, in this nice cream dress that he had complimented her on, at school, the week earlier.

They ate quickly, talking about classes, hobbies, nothing in particular. He held her hand on the way out. Their drive from the restaurant, as he understood it, was the main part of the date. Based on what he had heard from the boys at school and the movies he went to see on the weekends, this was the moment he was to emerge, proving himself- the contrast of his personhood against the backdrop of the female body. He hadn’t been particularly attracted to anything other than her availability, the particular femininity of her small habits, the fact that she allowed him the small intimacy of holding her hand, at the end of their meal.

She was young for her grade, and new in town. She said yes to the date one part due to her friend’s encouragement, and another part curiosity; who was this boy who seemed, in all his gruff awkwardness, to promise her everything that her youth had been withholding? So, when he asked her out that one rainy day after school, she said yes. Not really to him, but to the adventure this boy promised; this date would smash the monotony, the same-ness that was her life. She had gotten ready, suddenly anxious with the boldness of her agreement.

When he picked her up, it calmed her to see the effort on his part, the little details that he forgot: a bit of cowlick sticking up there in the back, shirt coming untucked, a hesitation before he got out of the car to open her door. She felt at ease as she sat down next to him. Dinner had been nice enough, she was surprised he had taken her hand on their walk to the car, but she tried her best not to let him realize this; her eyes widened briefly and then she turned to smile at him, feigning confidence.

As they left, he turned the radio on to some classic rock station, and by the time they got to the turn off for the woods, Meatloaf was only vaguely coming through the static. They drove a ways down the road, flanked with trees that had shed almost all of their leaves. Being late fall, the sun had set a few hours before, and the forest was once again alive in the darkness. As the car came over a hill, they briefly saw the face of a barn owl. They both stared for a second, acknowledging the creature silently, each sensing it would be wrong to speak in that moment. They drove up the road for a while more, and he stopped the car at a small clearing in the woods. Static mixed with some type of jazz song was spilling out of the radio while he parked.

The boy and girl sat there for several moments, each trapped in their own world. Without the steering wheel to hold and the road no longer calling for his attention, the boy fidgeted nervously. Each allowed the silence to grow to an oppressive weight, let it gain momentum, until neither believed they could break it. Finally, from the dark of the driver’s seat came the boy’s voice:

“Can I kiss you?”

Her voice had caught in her throat, so she nodded. More silence. Realizing the boy couldn’t see her, she responded, a taught:

“Yes.”

He leaned over the center console, and taking her face in his hands, pressed his mouth to hers. Immediately, she did not like this feeling. She felt trapped in her own body, in the physicality of herself; it made her recoil internally. Of course, with your first kiss, you are not supposed to pull away, so she held herself there, slowly giving to him something she didn’t know she possessed. After too long, he pulled away. She could see the silhouette of his head against the window, and she knew how he was looking at her, even there, in the pitch dark of the car. He turned the radio down.

“Want to get in the back?”

And she agreed, because that’s just what you do if someone proposes that you get in the back seat of the car with them. She agreed, because, what else was she supposed to say?

He was giddy with the feeling of his own boldness, not necessarily the kiss itself, but the courage it had taken to ask, her acceptance of his offer. He climbed rather awkwardly into the back seat and she followed, almost landing on top of him as she sat down.

This new environment, with its array of possibilities, made the boy nervous all over again. The silence was back; it was left hanging in the air like a fine mist, almost palpable. He didn’t ask, he just leaned towards her, placing his hands on her shoulders this time. As he kissed her, he moved his hands down to her waist. The girl pulled away. She exhaled as if she had been holding her breath.

“Sorry.”

She said into the darkness. She moved away from him, and faced forward in her seat, like a passenger on some ghost drive; together, each completely in their own world, they sat. The silhouette of an owl winged by the moon.

He flew low and between trees, gliding effortlessly through the cold night air. The owl continued flying for a few minutes and then landed in a small oak tree by the side of a busy highway. Lights emanated from the vein of road, briefly revealing his roost as cars passed by. A truck’s headlights exposed the owl for a few moments, before barreling down the highway.

The driver smiled as his lights traced along the edge of the forest, revealing the creature. The road always insulated him from the stress of life, and, on nights like these, he felt himself to be the only real person in the world. Today had been easy, the truck gliding along smoothly, the dividing line of the highway seemingly being gobbled up by his left headlight. He thought of his family back home, to the warm nostalgic glow of their dining room. He knew they were all fast asleep by now, his wife having tucked the kids in and read them their stories long ago. He checked the clock on the dash, the fragmented numbers read: 10:04.

He had been on the road for several days now, and his home life seemed small, far away. He took a sip of coffee from his thermos and blinked several times; the longer the route, the earlier and earlier he got tired. Always a few girls, a little speed to break up the time, he was no stranger to vice- but then again, who isn’t.

He sat up in his seat, a familiar feeling creeping up on him… It padded down and settled at the very base of his stomach, like some alley cat. In a sense, it was comforting. He was, after all, a veteran of loneliness, having spent so much time between this place and that. It had worn him, mapping the creases of his face, dusting gray through his hair.

He had a complicated relationship with such a feeling. On one hand, he craved it, the solitary act of truck driving; it was an ice bath to him, painful but rejuvenating, warm, even, in its utter coldness. But, he found himself to be like a dog chasing its tail. Each time he thought he had some type of answer, he would find himself alone, naked, at the center of it all. He despised this feeling; it was one of lack, a hunger that could almost never be satiated. He drove, partially because it was okay to feel lonely out on the road. It was not, he assumed, normal to feel lonely around others. But, truth be told, he always seemed to be the most reminded of that nagging separateness when at a party or dinner with his family.

He sighed and rubbed at the stubble that had grown on his chin over the past few days. Merle Haggard was floating through the radio, singing some tune about love lost. He fiddled with the heat for a second. It was getting cold up in New England; summer had left in a hurry, scooping up the last of her sweet August days (not without dropping a few for them to enjoy), and running off with them. It was now late October, and winter already had his foot in the door.

He relaxed a bit, allowing the road to unfurl ahead of him. Soon though, it was there again, this desolate sense, it worked its way into his bones more than the cold of the north ever could. He sighed once more and closed his eyes for a second; it felt like a hole in his head where the wind could whistle through, all day long. He breathed in and glanced at the clock: 11:00, he was coming right into the cradle of the night, right into that sweet spot, where it seemed everyone had bit the dust except for him. Driving at this time, the road around him seemed perfectly at odds with his mind. He thought it a paradox that such a lonesome feeling was keeping him company, at this he chuckled.

The owl blinked and scanned the empty road with his great eyes. He crouched on the branch and then sailed forward into the air, the theater of his flight unwitnessed by any audience. He flew across the barren road and into the forest on the opposite side. From here he turned left, continued for several yards. Finally, he came to sit on a branch near a high bridge that ran over the dark waters of the Hudson river.

A few moments later, a figure appeared on the bridge, far away and shimmering with the glow of the surrounding street lamps. The girl looked down into the angry water below her; it had rained heavily the night before, and the river had swelled, now greedily lapping at the confines of its banks. She could make out the shapes of large sticks and other debris moving rapidly under the bridge; they looked sinister in the light cast by the lamp above her. She exhaled: her objective was not particularly to not live, it was just to stop feeling the way that she did, and the only way she knew how to do that was to simply purge herself of existence.

Picturing her funeral, that was the easy part, thinking of who would deeply miss her (in a way that is inevitable when you truly know someone), now that… that was more difficult. It’s not that she didn’t have friends, she did, or a good family, that was obvious to anyone who met them, or nice things, she had plenty, she just…she just didn’t feel…quite right. It had started when she was little, this feeling, this sense, just that she was a stranger to her own being, that if some mutual acquaintance had re-introduced them, life itself wouldn’t have recognized her.

At first it had been easy to ignore, she could just go outside and distract herself with the small wonders that fascinate any child, but, as time wore on, this feeling grew more disturbing. Like an imaginary friend, it followed her around; when she ate, it ate, when she slept it slept. Sometimes, on a rare occasion, she was without it, but even then, it felt like it was just behind that tree over there, just around the next corner. Soon her friends, not even her family, were enough to cure this barren feeling.

She had tried dating, and got on with the boys her age quite well. But, in the end, they would get frightened when she finally articulated her burdens to them. It was always the same: nervous, she would begin to ask them if they ever felt at home anywhere. The dumb ones would say: yeah, at my house, and shake their heads at her. The smart ones would ask her what she meant. It was never her fear that she wouldn’t be able to describe this feeling, but rather, each time she tried, she was afraid she would get closer and closer to the actual truth of how she felt, so that rejection stung a little bit more each time; the boys gradually pushing away a more and more genuine piece of her.

She glanced down again at the water. She had begun to shiver in the cold night air; the small burdens of living. She wrapped her arms around herself. She looked over her shoulder to her car, which was parked right at the start of the bridge. Watching her breath dissipate upwards from her mouth, she gripped the guard rail and stuck her foot onto the lower bar. She hoisted herself up over the higher one so she was standing on the other side of the protective railing. She turned to see an old Volkswagen speeding down the bridge. As the car approached, she prayed they wouldn’t see her. Killing yourself was, after all, a most private endeavor. Luckily, the car continued, making her hair glow a ghostly white and then a deep red, as the taillights disappeared into the night.

She looked down. The water continued to rage below her. She hadn’t anticipated this act to require so much bravery. She laughed softly to herself, making light of her own cowardice. She wiped her face and was surprised to find that her fingers came away wet; she had been crying for some time. She glanced behind her again, estimating that she had been standing on the bridge for around thirty minutes– her family wouldn’t be worried yet, she had told them she was going to see a friend. Better to just get this over with, she thought. She steadied herself above the water and let go of the guard rail for a moment. Right as she felt herself start to lose her balance, she grabbed it again, knuckles turning white. She exhaled. You can do this. She tried to remember all the times she had felt so alone, so ill at ease in herself. She gritted her teeth. In that moment, all her energy seemed to come to a single pinnacle. She realized the time was now. She stepped forward. The night was silent. Suddenly, she noticed a shape gliding over the surface of the river. It dipped and then flew up to avoid the roughness of the water. She almost lost her balance, but grabbed onto the rail before she could plunge into the icy waters. She saw the form alight on a branch. Shortly after, a horrific screech came from that general area of the forest. She smiled, despite herself. Me too, me too.

She wiped the lingering tears away from her eyes, angry, now, that she was getting distracted. Come on, just jump already, what’re you waiting for? Again, the thought that she didn’t actually want to die; this frustrated her to no end- had she lived through all those years of silent, elusive torment, just for nothing to come of it? Deep down, what she really wanted was to go down in flames, to embody the grief of death, just to show the world how angry she truly was. But, she realized, the soft underbelly of such an urge was to let herself live. Despite her constant sadness, living would actually be the best revenge of all. She looked over to the cluster of trees where the owl roosted and hoisted herself back over the guard rail– a tragedy that somebody rewound. Her hands were shaking as she climbed into her car. She took a few breaths to calm herself, and then glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror; the smile was apparent in her eyes. This time, it was tears of joy that traced rivers down her cheeks. She started the car, eager to be home with her family.

The owl screeched into the night, but this time, no one was around to hear his call. He took in the rushing water of the river and then looked up at the bridge, where the shadowy figure had just disappeared. The cold night stretched on before him, and tucked within it, a plethora of lives unfolded silently still, without ceremony or witness.

Short Story
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.