The Alphabet of Regret: W is for Wanderlust

He started planning his escape the day he realized that he no longer had any room to move at all. The walls of the cage they kept him in gradually closed around him, so subtly he hadn’t even noticed until it was too late. He was surrounded by the sort of silence you hear on stock market trading floors – saturated in the white noise that you can’t hear until someone tells you to hear it. Beat beat, whoosh whoosh, thump thump, rinse, repeat.

For months, in the blackness that surrounded him, he searched for an escape, a weak point in the walls, a gap or a hole that he could push or pull or tear against to get out. All he wanted to do was to get out. The blackened redundancy of his entire situation was driving him mad. He had to run. He had to see. He had to explore. He had to live.

And one day, when the dark walls were choking him, when he knew in his heart it was do or die, he went for it.

He kicked as hard as he could. He pushed. He shoved. He tore. And then, light. Bright, blinding light. A man. A mask. A gown. Water and blood. Cameras. Towels. There were strange arms waiting for him and stranger liquids filling his mouth. He was weak, he was tired, and so he stayed.

For a while.

For 10 years, he sat, stifled, waiting for his chance to escape. The walls that surrounded him were too soothingly pastel, the floors too plushly carpeted. The sockets were all plugged up, the cupboards all latched, the corners all padded. His dinner came prompt at five, dinner at seven, bedtime at nine. His homework was completed in perfectly not-too-sharpened number two pencils, his sheets always smelled faintly macabre – the scent of desperation rinsed in the mask of April freshness. He was surrounded by crippling predictability that left no room for error, no hope of danger.

And so, one day, he started to ever so subtly push. He pulled and tugged and bumped until one day, when the pressed bed-skirts began to constrict around him, he went for it.

A lego, a doorstop, a distracted mother. A bicycle and a back pack and some goldfish for the road. A street corner. A left turn. Another. Another. An anxious mother on the corner around which he’d just circled. A popsicle and a snuggle. He was weak, he was tired, and so he stayed.

For a while.

He sat in his office, plugging sales specs into spreadsheets. Delicately framed photographs of people he barely knew lined the walls of his cubicle, sweet cubicle. Diplomas hung, mapping his journey down Complacency Lane. The stapler and paper clip cup and World’s Best Father paperweight laid neatly out before him – the weapons of his mass self-destruction. His costume fit his role, the props matched the characters he portrayed, but the drawer to his left cruelly betrayed him. He shoved his chaos into that drawer, leaving it to marinate in it’s own unsatisfied wanderlust. Newspaper clippings from far away places where untold stories were weaving their own tales, road maps leading to uncharted lands of hope and promise bore the fresh, inky fingerprints of desire. A pair of keys lay waiting, restless, anxious. On the days when he dared slide open that drawer, the keys jingled in the same chords as the buzzing in his ears.

He opened that drawer and breathed in the smell of his own wanting. He’d lived 35 years a captive from the beginning. From his conception to this very day, he’d lived trapped in cages. Life had slithered around him, hugged him tight, and slowly squeezed the air out of his lungs. Nothing – not the booze or the drugs or the herbs or the yoga – could restore him like the air that rose from that drawer and filled his heart and head and chest with the life he’d waited his eternity for.

And so, this day, when the florescent lights overhead constricted around him, he carefully arranged his desk the same way he did every day. He straightened his tie, he tied up his shined shoes, and he opened that drawer. He took hold of the keys of his own destiny, fingering them like a new lover, and he began to walk. He walked out of his cubicle, out of the front door, across the parking lot, through the fields, around the corner, and plunged his key deep into the insides of his own salvation.

The ignition rumbled. The engine roared. The lights flickered. The pedals bent to his will in the most delightful way under the weight of his feet. He knew this was his moment, that is was do or die, now or never. It was time to push. It was time for his life to begin.

And so William stopped waiting, slid into his Wranglers, wiggled in to the seat of his Winnebago, and went.

Comments

[kelly]

Fuck Yes! *pumps fist and reaches for her own keys*

[BusyDad]

You make me want to drop everything and go fishing (I'm not nearly as daring as your protagonist).

[Jett]

Whoever bet on you as a writer of fiction is getting excellent ROI.

Oh man, so great.

[Cheryl]

What a great piece of writing. You described the constrictions of life lived small to a T.

[TwoBusy]

Even in the midst of all that gorgeously-wrought constriction, I felt my heart pumping wild with something like anticipation — waiting for that heartbeat twitch of glorious discovery, where freedom becomes something more than a vaguely-defined dream.

I hope he makes it.

[Charlie]

Dude. Goddamn.
And to answer TwoBusy, he made it when he slid his ass into the seat.
This was a spectacular piece of writing.
Thank you for being a part of this.

[Kevin (Always Home and Uncool)]

My "S for Security" character and William need to hook up. How about tonight at the Rte. 22 Chili's?