FORSAKEN: Chapter 1

 

FORSAKEN

By Aryan Mukherjee

To my mother…

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,

The angels, whispering to one another,

Can find, among their burning terms of love,

None so devotional as that of “Mother,”

… and because you never failed to protect me from the world when I was young.

“This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

                                                        - T.S. Eliot

1

I still remember the time Jason and I were kidnapped.

How can one forget? When a thing like that happens, it finds a way to stay with you, creeping into every dream like a cloud of black smoke, rising all around you until you have tears in your eyes and are coughing so hard you can’t breathe.

Momma says she still remembers. She says that she still cries every time she thinks about it, and that her pain always finds its way into anger at the end when she remembers how Papa dealt with it. How he just let it happen, when the whole thing was his fault to begin with. The thought of Papa incites a strange feeling in me too, something resembling betrayal laced with pangs of pity. He used to be so resolute, albeit a sickly man. He’d keep his chest high, boasting a set of values so distinguished it set him apart from the rest of us, even for the times. He could talk his way out of any situation, and always used to keep his end of a bargain; at least, that’s how we thought he was like until the summer of ‘71 when this whole affair started.

Back then, we used to live in this quiet town called Seamsville, which was a couple hours south of Santa Fe. It was a quaint place. The air was unusually still and observant. The creaking roof shingles aboard every tavern were always on the verge of falling but were never replaced. The polished white walls of every resident's home looked exactly the same, and the tranquil energy of the place was only ever disrupted by the stirring of a mouse or a tumbleweed.

With hardly 2,000 people in the whole town, everyone knew each other in Seamsville, and the whole community was like one big family. We would all go to Sunday church service together, and a lot of the grown-ups would hold a barbeque on Saturday evenings at the Myers’ or the McLeans’ while the rest of us would play red rover out front on the Great Big Cul-de-sac connecting many of us in the town’s main neighborhood. Business was forever slow in Seamsville, but it was always enough to get the food on the table, and I could never remember a day before that summer when spirits weren’t high all around.

But ‘71 was different. The heat came in waves that year, but summer boasted the highest temperatures we had ever seen in Seamsville, by far. A man couldn’t walk half a mile without perspiration pulling so emphatically at his pores that you’d think he was melting from the inside out. Religious folk called it the second coming of Satan, and warned children that if they weren’t extra good that summer, he would pluck them out of their homes one by one and scalp them. Albeit a morbid way to admonish a child, these warnings seldom scared the lot of us. Still, we could hardly ever leave the house even when going somewhere close like the arcade or ballpark, so I was left to explore all 1,200 feet of our house in excruciating detail.

At first this felt like it would be okay, like idleness was but a bitter aftertaste that disappears with a couple glasses of movie milks and board game cookies. But as the weeks passed on like this, boredom turned into anxiety which soon traded places with loathing, and it didn’t help that Jason was always tugging on my shirt and asking if I could make comics with him.

That was when Papa had his idea. You see, news doesn’t travel fast in Seamsville, but once people hear about some new form of business in the more urban parts of the nation, they give up everything they’ve ever worked for to enter this once-in-a lifetime portal to the Land of the American Dream. After all, as much as people at Seamsville were tolerant of their town, the notion of riches beyond one’s wildest dreams had illusioned all of us at least once in our time there. Yet, every time someone brandished a novel-and-high-flying idea, they would fail to such a calamitous extent that they crawled right back into their homes and re-molded themselves into the lives they were once comfortable with, staying there until the day they died.

Still, when news reached Papa about these new “waterparks” - acres upon acres of equipment and water generating millions in revenue to U.S. proprietors every year - he knew that this could be his chance. Better yet, he had the support of the whole town, who vouched that their children were driving them so crazy at home that they would send them here every day just to get them off of their backs. So Papa called up Uncle Pete, his brother who was managing one of the biggest hedge funds in New York, and told him his plan. Even though Uncle Pete was skeptical at first, Papa assured him that the situation had gotten so bad in Seamsville that people would be trampling over one another just to get in, and Uncle Pete agreed to sponsor the initiative.

So sprouted Splashville, the first and only waterpark in Seamsville history. Wooden pillars the size of castles towered over the entrance, a cheesy buck-toothed cowboy with a red sombrero and overly exaggerated dimples winking at the whole city from the great blue metal sign that hung at the mouth of the park. Inside, the whole place followed the theme of our mascot, recruits being hired for lifeguards looking like they were born in the era of gunslinging and cattle riding. Food stands and game booths were positioned with brick red wooden slabs pieced together out front and a Western-style font embroidered in slanted metallic lettering to the pinned backboard broadcasting names. Even the slides themselves looked like they’d been re-designed from old town saloons and fortified by antique barrels of wine. It was one of the largest themed efforts I had ever encountered, and I have to admit, the days Papa let me come along with him and watch as the whole place was constructed, I couldn’t suppress the marvel leaking out from under my eyelids.

And Papa was right. The day that the park opened, the entire town - parents and children alike - stormed in. Lines were one, two, even three hours long for some slides, and Papa beamed and shook the hands of every single person as they walked in. I had never seen him so happy in my life. The park made over $10,000 that day, and I could see the relief emanating from the pores of Uncle Pete’s skin that night as he and Papa laughed and sang all night long over drinks.

It looked like things were really going to work out this time. Soon, Uncle Pete would gain back his investment on the construction of the park, and then, he and Papa would become rich. The news was saying that the temperatures every summer after this would be even hotter, and with every new report from the EPA about the dangers of climate change, Papa’s heart skipped a beat and his hopes were confirmed to a greater and greater extent: this would be a permanent business, and our whole family could live a life that the rest of the townsfolk would envy.

Of course, I was happy too. My friends - Mike, Josh, and Leo - came with me every day to the waterpark. I even reluctantly brought Jason, which didn’t matter anyways because he made his own group of friends on the first day and would run off with them as soon as we got there. We had a blast, as if out of each drop of water emerged Artemis flinging a thousand little arrows in the way of the sun. What had started out as a heat-ridden nightmare was turning out to be the best summer of my childhood.

Then, on August 13th, just about a month before school started, it happened. My friends and I were in line for The Hydra Mort, one of the fastest rides in the whole park which could reach up to 50 mph at the end drop. The wind blew gently with an almost eerie silence, coated with the low hum of machines, and the air was thick with excitement. Mike was showing me some of the different shapes he could weave from the spindly strands of his messy dark brown hair whie Josh and Leo were squinting at each other, cheeks flush from asyphyxiation as they competed to see who could hold their breath for longer. A kid about twice our age with broad shoulders and skinny, tanned legs suddenly brushed past Leo, knocking the air out from his lungs and causing him to lunge into the playful victory pump of the now-panting Josh.

“Hey, that’s no fair, he hit-”

Before Leo could finish his sentence, a gut-splintering shriek erupted from below. A chill caressed my spine as my friends and I all caught each others’ stares. We spun around and pressed ourselves against the protective railing bordering us, my eyes growing to the size of saucers and my stomach churning to the sight awaiting me. Callie, a 4-year old girl who lived down the block, was sprawled out against the pavement with her shattered skull spewing blood and brains like splutters of red paint hitting a canvas. A crowd quickly formed around her, men and women and children all running and shouting for help. Somewhere to my right, a woman screamed. Next to her, a sinewy man hugged his daughter to his chest, a frail girl around Callie’s age who was sobbing lightly. My friends all turned to look at me, faces twisted and aghast, and my jaw trembled in response to their prodding eyes.

It had all happened so quickly, as I found out later. Some kids had been messing around on their water tube, and Billy, a 200-pound behemoth who had developed a record of notoriety with kids our age for his brutish bullying tactics, had shoved Callie off the edge of the slide by accident. The crowd all around me was now bellowing, the same children who once trampled their way inside now rushing to trample their way out, far far away from having anything to do with this place.

It didn’t matter how this accident had happened. From that day onward, the moment people would think about Splashville, the image of that disfigured little girl would send a shudder down their spines and they would never want to go near it again. As soon as Callie was carried out, the park was placed on a temporary suspension. Then, a week later, Papa received notice that he was to shut it down permanently.

So, was that all? Another failed Seamsville dream had transpired, and Papa and us would go back to living our lives by the “lead standard” of this town cursed by mellow mediocrity?

Oh, how I wish.