Train of Thought #10 - Story Fragment

Written December 28th, 2023 at 10:30pm. Published March 23rd, 2024

Originally part of the “Train of Thought” series. Now that I have started to write more similar things, I split it off into it’s own series, called “Story”. This is a fictional story that I began after reading the Hunger Games. I wanted to experiment with that writing style. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish the story.

I wake up, my alarm’s ringing. I check the time. The clock reads 5:00am. Slowly getting out of bed I put on my shirt light jacket and pants. This is a regular morning for me and I’m leaving early to meet Rose. As I walk out the back door, I see the flowers waiting for the dawn. I start walking down the path from our house to the woods. The woods are my favorite place to be right before dawn. The stillness, the calm that precedes the life of the morning.

As I walk down further into the woods I spot Rose sitting on our rock. When I first met Rose I was sitting on the same rock, on the hill overlooking the forest. You can see the stream that flows through the woods and the lake in the distance. Beyond that I can make out the peaks of the distant mountains, still topped with snow. On that day last spring, I was sitting there, crying because everything was going wrong for me in school. I had seen Rose before at school, but didn’t even know her name.

While I was sitting there, she came and sat next to me in silence. Eventually she asked me “what’s wrong” and I needed someone to talk to so I told her everything. About how my teachers hated me, how my grades were terrible and how my parents kept pestering me about it. The next thing she did caught me completely off guard. She gave me a big hug. All I could do was return it and it made everything seem better. In those woods one whole year ago, I felt for a second what it meant to be complete.

Since then that has been our rock. Our special place where the world disappears and we come alive. Where we can truly be ourselves. Now every other day we come to this spot just before sunrise to escape the hell of our lives and just be. As I approach the rock I hear Rose singing to herself. It’s a song I recognize, about how life is like a stream, winding this way and that, trying to find somewhere to rest. I sit on the rock next to her, and she wraps her arm around me and we watch the sun come up over the mountains.

As the sun slowly appears, I hear the forest come alive with life. The birds start singing their morning tune. The squirrels begin to scurry around looking for acorns. I can even hear the faint buzzing of the bees in the valley below us. I turn to Rose and smile. I can see the radiance on her face as she watches the woods bursting with life. She turns to me and smiles. This is our favorite part of the day. Just her and I in our own world, enjoying life.

After sitting for a few minutes, I suggest we take a walk. “Sure” she says. While we walk along the stream, we talk. “How was school yesterday” she asks me. “Just wonderful. Mr. Goodheart still hates me since we pulled that stunt last year. He gave me a C on the last test.” Rose laughs “That prank was so good though”. Mr. Goodheart is our history teacher, but his lessons are so boring that half the kids fall asleep. Last fall we got tired of his lectures and rigged a bucket of ice water to fall on his head as soon as he sat in his chair. Rose set up a string on his chair that would pull out a stick that was holding the bucket up and I filled the bucket with freezing water from the stream. When he came and sat down in his chair the whole bucket dumped on him. The expression on his face was priceless. Rose and I couldn’t stop laughing, so we got caught and he’s hated us ever since.

“Other than that school was pretty boring. How about you?"

Sorry it ends abruptly. I never finished it, but maybe someday I will.