False Start

Jumping from asphalt black to sidewalk grey, Ethan walks the street under a gauze wrapped sky. He passes pristine mini-mansions, freshly stamped and shining, only distinguished from one another by numbers that scale upwards on mailbox metal. On most days Ethan’s neighborhood is bursting with sounds that mark the suburban pastoral, the acquired dream: the growling of lawnmowers and leaf-blowers and the snip of hedge-clippers; dogs barking; the laughter of children in after-school play; brief neighborly conversations, full of forced brevity and swollen anecdotes, idle words punctuating the day-by-day march towards forever; bird songs and water in the gutter; the idling of motors; the slamming of doors, waterlogged and swollen, never to be opened again; the breathless excitement of jungle gym and swing set; the muffled passions of battle and sex.

Today, however, is different; it has been two hours since Darren rolled out of bed, wild-eyed and flushed with anticipation for Saturday’s infinite recess. Pulling on his striped socks and battered sneakers Darren walked down the cream-colored hallway, using the railing to vault pass the last few steps. And what greeted him from the living room and kitchen? Mother’s hush and breakfast warmth? Father’s advice, sensitive and tiptoeing around confrontation?

Silence greeted him, absent but bothersome, like an amputated limb. Wandering outside, stepping into the crispness of manicured lawn and autumn wind, he heard nothing, the audible absence like dream’s muted kiss, fleeing on the shores of awakening.

He has been walking for two hours and thirty-six minutes, and he has yet to hear a sound. The community seems entombed, the people wrapped in plastic and put away.