“Crushed”
A short story by Miles Johnson
The phone glows as I stand waiting on line for my beverage. I stand only slightly away from where the music pulses so loudly it seems as though the darkness itself is undulating in time to the deep boom of the bass. Peasants writhe and glisten with sweat as they dance; they form a mass both dense and slick, as so many fish in a sea. I stand larger than them all, an outsider, an observer, but also an unwilling participant.
My cellular is the only stark bright in the cellar, and it shines as unwelcome as a piece of heaven in the deepest depths of hell. Indeed, the basement of the fraternity truly is as hot as the fires of the damned. I am sweating through my wrinkled button-down.
I glance back at my cellular to quench my consuming and sudden need for distraction. The line is sluggish, the peasants too greedy. Soon the keg will empty and the mysteries of this night will die; an emaciation of the memory both taken gladly and freely; poisons protecting the mind from the flesh. I pity them.
I realize that my deep subconscious has overtaken me then, for, out of the myriad of applications that I possess for auto-amusement, the one I select, the one I am drawn to as a moth to a quivering flame, is Candy Crush. I feel acrid repulsion, the vibrant bright lights like a big city, the dark of the fraternity’s basement lit momentarily in color by my mistake. I feel my irritation, wrath, grow like grapes on a vine. It is a peasant fad. A pursuit of the sheep, an occupation to distract them from their misery. I prefer to feel my misery, to understand the deep bellows of my subconscious, to grapple with my inner mind and to tame the Balrog of my genius.
I close the application. I shove my phone back furtively into my pocket. My hands are sweating, but it is not just from the indomitable heat. The peasants flitting about like flies do not seem to have noticed this moment, a moment that made my heart pound nearly past the confines of my breast.
I glance up at the unmoving stream of people awaiting the serving of beverages, waiting for this feast to move. My heart only pounds harder.
And then.
“Are you in line?” The fragile feminine voice pierces the night like the spear of Agamemnon.
I raise my gaze to meet her eyes, a matrimony of the irises. I am hesitant to answer, to break this unlikely bond, but she is brazen.
She holds out her hand. “My name is Daisy Buckman,” she says.
Her voice is soft, and yet I can hear it so clearly above the music and shouts echoing about this place, a cacophonous valley carved into the earth and encased not with glorious mountains, but with walls made by the dirtied hands of men. And yet in this bastard valley filled with drunken dolls, there still appears before me her. A dryad, a muse. A chance at love.
I swallow. Even in the darkness I can see the shining glory of her green eyes. The orbs flicker under the party lights. I can barely make out the other features on her countenance. All I see is that she has dark bangs.
I accept her hand and allow her to lead me out of the valley of darkness and into the light. Together, we cross the threshold into another world, one of light and sound and fury and speech. Her hand is soft. I squeeze it gently, as I would the stem of a fresh-plucked rose.
We halt near a table, where there are no chairs, but there is space to move. Daisy hands me the drink that she has procured by some sorcery. I see that she is fresh-faced and beautiful. Innocent, despite the rank corruptions of this modern world.
“What’s your name?” Daisy asks me softly.
“Myles,” I reply. “Myles Hemingway Lonergan.”
“That’s an interesting middle name,” she says. She giggles.
I laugh, too, a small chuckle. “My parents allowed me to pick my own middle name,” I explain. “I thought that there could be no better choice.” I am unembarrassed. It is the only thing in my life that is interesting. Until now.
“I read The Old Man and the Sea a few years ago,” Daisy says.
“Not just for school, I hope?” I say.
She giggles again. “Ninth grade.”
Well. In order to be human we must all be flawed
somehow. I move to take her hand. “Do you want to leave this
place soon?” The question escapes my lips as barely a whisper. In the moment that it takes her to answer, I cannot breathe.
“I know some people upstairs,” Daisy says. She cocks her head. “Have you ever seen the roof?”
“No,” I say. My heart is pounding, the beating drum to my conquest. “I have not seen such wuthering heights.”
Daisy giggles again, that irresistible peal that sets my blood ablaze. “I love that book,” she says.
“I haven’t read it,” I reply. I do not know why. She makes me honest, somehow. And bold.
“Then why would you quote it?” Daisy asks. She takes my hand and begins leading me towards the stairs.
I shrug, although she does not see, and I answer, although the loud music and the ever chattering peasants through which we must navigate snatch my words like the wind, throwing them everywhere except the place where I most desire them to be. It is an odyssey to reach the upstairs, and the winds of Aeolus are ruining me. But then, perhaps it is better this way. Thus, though she may not hear, I say, “All stories are the same.” Then even more softly, “And by using the titles of the greats in prose, we can be reminded of that, that every story is a great one, that every writer, if he is bold, is a light in the dark.”
Daisy does not react, she seems to not have heard. Yes, those words were gone with the wind.
We ascend the steps. Daisy pulls me up, although I stumble like an encumbered Sisyphus. It seems as though the drink has finally ensnared me. Daisy, too, seems ensnared, bewitched, dazzled. She catches her foot on the doorframe on our way into a lounge.
There are a few peasants inside. One is methodically prodding at the herb in his bong, the final step before he partakes in the beast. Idly, I wondered where this green fern grew, on what lolling hillside it was plucked, what pities it had at being consumed in the capitalistic greed for distraction.
“Wanna smoke?” Daisy says.
I shake my head. “I do not smoke that marijuana,” I say. I do not need any substances to open up the vast expanse of my mind. Except alcohol, of course.
“Oh, okay,” Daisy says. She pulls me past the peasants, through the clouds of the pyre, of the smoky earth being exhaled in swathes.
We climb through a window ajar onto a flat roof, overlooking the peasants still lined to enter, barred by the compatriots of the fraternity.
Daisy leans onto my shoulder. If this is paradise, then this side is the ultimate. The center of war and peace: the fountainhead of pleasure.
She pulls out her phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the orange color of Candy Crush, the color like a sunrise on this evening, coming up east in this Eden. A harsh dune instead of an oasis.
“Don’t you know that you’ll never reach the end?” I ask.
She blushes a little. “I can’t help it. I’m addicted.”
I shake my head. “I suppose there are worse addictions,” I say.
“Maybe. It’s so old, too. Everyone makes fun of me.” Daisy looks sad, suddenly. She will not meet my eyes.
I take her into my arms. “I won’t,” I say.
“Thank you,” she replies.
What peasants would mock her? How would they dare, to pester her like the pigeons of the City. I would kill those mocking birds, if I could.
Eventually we must descend, back to the floor of the party, back to the level of the peasants. After having gone to the lighthouse the darkness seems especially bleak.
Daisy and I speak with excitement, anticipation, savoring that time before the energy of drink and swirling bodies dissipates. We are both Cinderellas for whom the bell will toll, though we know not when.
“I like you,” Daisy says softly. She stands up taller and strokes the side of my face in a light caress.
Soon, our lips fumble heatedly and I find myself bound to a brave new world. I move my hands to hold her close to me. We share this moment, glorious and fleeting, and it is art.
I care not for the peasants who might be regarding this display. Let them watch.
Daisy pulls away after some moments, I know not how many, and covers her mouth with one hand. She giggles softly to herself, and the sound thrums within me.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, my mind still hurtling through the world on a streetcar of desire.
“I’ll be back, okay,” Daisy says. She steps away with gentle motions.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“The bathroom,” she replies. She now removes her final limb from touching my own. We are entirely separate, now, though just moments before I had felt lost within her, as though a storm of Vergil had entirely swept me, cast away. As she retreats, I watch her go, thinking that perhaps, even in the deepest dark of the witching hour, entombed in a basement prison of society, it is still possible to see the sun also rise.
I wait for Daisy, watching the door from whence she will return.
Time passes.
Time feels slow and pulpy, I think to myself. Pulpy, clockwork is, like an orange.
She still does not return.
I feel like I have waited for half my lifetime before I think to leave, myself. I stand, yearning, both noting the passing of time, marking the departures of all the peasants around me, coupled, grouped, or alone, and not noting anything but the slow gasping of my heart.
Daisy.
When I finally return to my meager abode, I do not flick on the light. I move to my desk, silent. The moon is full, coming through the window.
I sit at my desk, and feel my fingers drawn to the typewriter, ready and waiting. I would appear to any artist a portrait of a young man.
The words pour from within me, the agony flowing as Niagara. It is a story. It is the same story as every story that has ever been written. A story about love, loss, and despair. A story about the crime and punishment of life, and yet also the sweet, sweet candy.
Painstakingly, I type my new title: “Crushed”
