"Suburb." Written By Colton M. Snuffer

                                                                SUBURB

                                                       By Colton M. Snuffer

    The cars outside had just begun to rev up.  Businessmen, factory workers, pet groomers.  All alike but differing with age out ready to leave for work for the day.  She had already been awake; far beyond awake, in fact, already holding up her second mug of black, steamy caffeine for the morning.  The clock struck six-am and the basement grandfather bell could be heard slightly off key when played with the neighboring motors outside in the cool winter air.  The house still was darkened as she moved through, silently padding on her toes so as not to wake the parental guidance that had been asleep two rooms away.  They would not wake for another hour still.

    She strolled into the living room.  A glassy dark-blue filled the in the walls around her engulfing family pictures that hung framed on the wall.  Good morning.  She was still becoming used to the existence of a Christmas tree in the living room.  It caught her off guard every other day or so.  She thought of the mass amounts of needles on the growth and wondered if something had lived in this old wood, or if it was still there in hiding.  She drew back onto the couch just as the blue started becoming a bit brighter.  She could as the same question for herself.  Had something once resided in her?  Was it still there?  Could it have been innocence?  Or a stone?  Could it have been what bullies used to call her virginity?  Oh well, no matter she still felt as though she lost something nonetheless.

    She retreated from the couch and the sweet-smelling tree and herself in the kitchen.  Nothing in the fridge, oh well, she didn't want to eat anyway.  She wondered what a fish may do in a fridge of this size.  Would she seal it and fill it with water so the little thing could live?  Would it even live long without any food?  How long could she go then?  Was she the fish or the fridge?  Another sip of coffee held that thought for a moment, then burned it with the warmth now in her stomach.  Maybe the fish was just hopeless to begin with.  The mug was finished and now resided in the kitchen's sink.  She thought now of her bedroom floor and pondered the interests she had to eat off of it, whilst the aspiring's of a great novel took flight before her eyes.  No more school.  A day off work.  Well why not?  Of course then a crisp ringing noise revealed to her ears that the parents had awakened.  How high her mind flew as she fled away from the blue-rise kitchen and living room to the sweetening bliss that was her bedroom.

    Looking on she could see the careful pondering of written on paper hanging above the black desk in a lined fashion held together between with clips and fishing line.  She could think of the times in which she had written on the parchments; the thoughts, troubling and seemingly unceasing.  She had been deciding whether or not to line another with pen and ink above for her mind to flood.  Her eyes were well adjusted and stomach full of coffee and her eyes fell upon the old sketchbook, aged from freshman year, but still barely written in.  The none-lined pages provided endless forms of what some call "free expression."

The sketchbook was always here for her, as was her heart and the coffee with eyes that seemed to be constantly adjusting now.  She may just consider the eating off of her carpet, but instead, perhaps she will write the aspiring novel.  Maybe someday it will flutter in one's eyes such as on a morning like this with the blue-rise and black coffee.  The idea excited her now, or maybe it was the caffeine.  Whichever worked in enough time for her to dive her hand into the pen-filled mug on the desk and grasp the Bic black ink pen while her other hand grabbed the old sketchbook from the desktop.  She took a breath and tore out two pieces of blank white from the old book.  These will be the first two if she could even get that far with the blind motivation.  Above she heard both her father and mother depart from their bedroom a few doors down.  She thought of their eyes beginning to adjust as did hers o the magnificent blue of another day in the suburban paradise.  A perhaps title?  After all it is her place of living that reflects the state of decay that resembled a dream that novels tried to embody.  A vision of a lone house in the desert then hit with a draped over roadkill beside fallen upon with no water.  Dead in fact and fictional.  What shall be a good story then?  If not a paradise in her mind, whats more to write about?  One would need a someone to write about.  Slowly the written exercises of high-school drew a blank in her mind.  A day in paradise may be reflected as children in small swimsuits, playfully enjoying a yellow blow-up kitty pool, between lit glasses of lemonade setting sugary fires in their stomachs as did coffee, but that was saved for the adults sitting beyond the blue sky and beneath a shaded umbrella with lawn chairs.  They could be a leisurely family in a working-class paradise lit up in little suburbs.  The nostalgia flew to mind now of the old red truck and the fear of boys with cooties which related to the old dog named Ralph she used to hide behind when the bickering of other such kids arose.  A shy daughter of two whom moved into to the little suburb a number of years after they had been marriage and born in that house there she and they still lived.  Now she had it.  At the top of the first of the torn pages she had scribbled: "Another Day In The Paradise Suburb."

A novel title, thought she, perhaps a bit of story may help now.  She pondered on what to write about.  A prologue of sorts had to be thought up o course, some form of an opener for the masses.  This was not to please, what is pleasing anyway?  If not to her than to no one supposedly.  She heard a toilet flush a few doors away, dad was awake now, that meant more coffee.  That may be a form of thinking, but no one is perfect.  The last of the warmed engines had just finished vacating the neighborhood.  Work everyday for some.  Some, she knew, managed never to get more than one cup of coffee for each morning, much less sit on their carpet and hear a toilet flush in the hopes that this day may be better than the last.  It was then that she realized that life could either be this easy or that hard, nothing less.  Perhaps the paradise life of the suburbs wasn't all that she had written in that title now gracing itself across the first page.  She studied it now and thought of the family playing in the summer yard. Now come to think of it, there may have been a pin-hole or two in the kitty pool and all the water may have risen then drained out.  She imagined the father picking up one of the tearing children, the mother holding the other.  She though of a phrase.  It wasn't one she came up with, but one that echoed between father and mother, husband and wife, a family.  A phrase that could be strewed as a lie perhaps by some who face reality regularly.  She scrawled it now atop, but below the title: 

"Everything Is Going To Be Alright."

    The phrase stabbed blindly at her mind as she confided in it's security.  It wasn't a hopeless phrase after all, just shallow.  Something you tell someone to shut them up, or maybe not.  A white light could be seen now beneath the crack of her door; television, news, connection.  The thought of of constant entertainment had been crossed by her mind, she didn't linger.  Behind the closed door and the television's sputtered noise, she could strain to hear the mutterings of the coffee machine, ever faithful with it's promise of sweet-smelling aroma and taste.  She noted the title once more and the phrase beneath it.  She could see her own parents in the place of the couple in the lawn chairs.  Mom looked great, even younger.  Dad had thinned out and got into shape.  They looked different, happier even.  She was the child in the kitty pool, splashing about with waiving arms and legs.  She thought of the unseeingly serious talk of a dire financial predicament that was being shared beyond the pool in lawn chairs tanning dark.  It was not all as it seemed in paradise.

    Whispers grew as she took the two blank pages, save for a title and an opening phrase, threw it to the bed and fled the darkened room.  The great outdoors never stretched past the living room and kitchen, at least not until eight-thirty, when work called.  The television flickered with motivated intent in sharing the world with the armchair and leather couch on which her father sat.  Mom was in the kitchen of course, busying herself with the morning chores and the preparing of medium roast.  She, the daughter, knew of the struggles of the older people.  Without coffee their faces wouldn't tighten and fit for the day, making them look older and fatter.  She then thought of herself as fifty years older in an dementia-ridden existence.  To wait around and be miserable enough to succumb to the cold, the heat, or at the very least a hand of her own.  This made her sad to think about.  That life just amounts to death as death is dealt in suffering.  Was that life's soul worth?  Perhaps so.  It looked as though it was going to be a hard day in her mind once again, but then she stopped.  The coffee pot was almost filled fresh.  She loosened her eyes from the parent's unhappiness and turned for her bedroom.  A small tear had sprung from the corner of her eye as the thoughts of getting older and dying sufficed upward in her head.  Standing in her room, she buried her face in the two small hands she had been born with.  Nothing more than two tools to dig her own grave.  The bed provided a comforting support for her heart, but was also deceiving with the blankets thrown to the floor.  She now thought of a death in the family.  The same summer family suddenly themselves without a daughter.  It was a wonder how something so perfect can fall so far in just under an hour, especially for this poor family.

                It was then that she read with a slight tip of her head and tears:

                                    "Everything Is Going To Be Alright." 

          End.                                                                    Written By Colton M. Snuffer.