AS YET UNTITLED
by Stuart Matthews
That had been close. The car now raced off into the distance, but the Boy was still shaken. How had he forgotten to look? The first rule of the green cross code. Broken. Look right, look left, look right again. Cross with care. Everyone knows it. So how had he forgotten?
Crossing the road is as easy as riding a bike. But then, he couldn't do that either. No sense of balance, never bothered to learn. You could use every excuse going, but the truth was he had been lazy. He should have learnt. He could have learnt. But it was easier not to.
The Boy wasn't very happy. His heart was still pounding, that car had been so close. He doubted whether the driver had even seen him. Did anyone ever see him? Did anyone ever pay any attention to what he was doing. He wasn't important. He wasn't popular.
Away from the road, it didn't matter whether he looked left, right, up at the sky, or down on the floor. The car drivers couldn't ignore him, because there were none. It was an empty field. It wasn't being used for growing anything, except grass, and weeds of some sort or other, and it wasn't being used to keep animals either. Perhaps the animals had escaped. The gate had been wide open. Please close the gate.
He'd forgotten to close the gate. Back across the field he trekked. Back to the gate. Back almost to the road. It was because of people like him that animals escaped. Useless people like him. Useless Generation. That was such a cool tattoo. Perhaps it still is a cool tattoo. Somewhere. The Boy hoped so.
The gate now safely closed, the Boy made his way across the field once again. He wasn't really going anywhere. Just walking. He should have brought the dog. Saved his Dad a job. But then, he didn't think of that. He never thought of useful things. For someone who spent so much time thinking, it was unusual not to come up with useful ideas more often.
He was thinking, again, not usefully. Thinking about a poem he might write. He spent far too much time thinking about poems he might write, and very little time actually writing poems. He did have a little book of poems he had written. The book had a lot of pages torn out. It wasn't just poems, it had stories too. All of which, were as yet untitled.
The Boy had reached the other side of the field, almost to the safety of the trees. Not a forest, by any stretch of the imagination, not really even a wood. No witches, no legends, no disappearances, and thankfully, no cars. Just trees and a stream and squirrels and a bear. Ok, no bear. But the Boy couldn't help thinking it would be good if there was.
As soon as he considered the possibility of a bear residing in the wood, he realised it'd be no good at all. It would eat all the rabbits and squirrels and probably the Boy as well. Unless it was a friendly bear. Is there such a thing as a friendly bear? There was that one in the paper the other day, that had died. It had been in films and things, it lived in a house with it's owners. But was it friendly?
If anyone told the Boy he thought too much about things, he'd have agreed. But no-one ever told him. No-one ever knew what he was thinking. He sometimes wished he could tell people. Tell them about the bear in the wood, tell them about the alligator in the pond, tell them about his gorgeous girlfriend in a far off land. People would assume he was mad, of course, but wasn't he? What makes a person mad? How do you apply for madmanship?
Soon the new road would go through these fields. The bear would be living on the central reservation. And the central reservation is no place for a bear. He'd eat people that tried to cross. So not only would there be the danger of forgetting to look right, left, and then right again, but you'd also have to negotiate the bear's reservation. Unless it was a friendly bear. It might help you get across. The Boy reached the conclusion that there was no bear in the wood. It was a conclusion he'd reached before, many times, indeed virtually every time he thought about it. One of things he was good at was forming conclusions. Well not so much good at it, but he did it consistently.
The Boy kept walking, through the wood, and out the other side. He looked back, occasionally, to see if he was being followed. But no, no followers, who'd want to follow him? No one ever did what he wanted, or ever copied his lead, so why would they want to follow him?
In the distance, the Boy could see a figure ambling idly towards him. Of course, he had no idea if they were ambling or not, for they were too far away. He had to squint just to see if it was definitely a person, and not a strangely person-like tree, or maybe a gorilla. Or a bear. But no, it wasn't a bear; whoever it was, their head was far to small to be that of a bear's. So maybe it was a gorilla. Or a guerrilla, leading the resistance fight against the oppressive regime of this government.
It wasn't a guerrilla fighter. It was a dog walker. With a dog. Not a big dog, it was pretty much the size of a big cat. No, not a big cat. That would be the size of a lion or a tiger. Making it a bloody great big dog. It was more the size of a cat, but a biggish cat.
"Hello!" said the Dog Walker. He was a jolly old man, just making conversation. Or was he? Perhaps his pleasantness was just a facade, hiding years and years of torment. "Nice day for it!"
"Nice day for what?" asked the Boy, slightly bewildered.
"This! Walking in the countryside!" enthused the Dog Walker.
"Oh. Yes, I suppose it is. Thank-you, thank-you so much," said the Boy.
"Whatever for?"
"For showing me what a wonderful, wonderful day it is," said the Boy.
"You're a weirdo," said the Dog Walker. Well, he didn't say it, but he might as well have done. Instead he just gave the Boy a funny look, and went on his way.
The Boy stood still for a while, and then turned and gazed towards the Dog Walker.
"Well, good bye then!" called the Boy. The reply was inaudible. Perhaps there was no reply. He'd never know.
It started to rain. The Dog Walker had lied, of course. Everyone always lied. It wasn't a nice day for it. It was an ordinary day for it. It wasn't particularly sunny, but the sun had been out for a while. Now however, the sun had exploded. In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe. Or, rather, the sun had gone behind a cloud. And inside the cloud, in the rain factory where rain is made (and snow if the rain has run out), someone flicked a switch. And the Heavens opened. Not literally.
So the Boy was faced with a choice. He could either hide under a tree, and get wet, or run home, and get wet. He felt like getting wet, and he had boundless energy, as usual, so home he ran. He ran back across the field, through the woods, over the field where the new road would soon be. He crossed the old road, carefully looking right, left and right again. He climbed over the stile, he ran down the path that the railway had once taken, he went under the bridge that carried yet another road. Still it rained, and still he ran. He turned into his street, and ran to his house. He didn't bother with the front door (it was always locked) and went straight in the back door.
"Where on earth have you been, and why didn't you take your bloody coat?" demanded his Mother, "We've been worried sick."
"Sorry," spluttered the Boy, breathlessly, "I didn't think."