A quote that I was thinking of before I wrote this short story start:
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”- Henry David Thoreau
Here's the beginning of a story:
13 past 1300 hours 13 years to the date after what folks around here now refer to as “the incident.” Each year at this time I always request the day off work, in order to go back to the site where it happened those years ago and I really look forward to it, whether that makes sense to anybody else or not. Call me nostalgic, but I just can’t seem to get it out of my head- the luminescent beams of a tidal wave, is one way of desciribing it. Most people think I’ve got a few screws loose, so I don’t do too much socializin round here. I don’t really mind, I’ve always got my memory of that fateful day, and I guess it’s what keeps me going. I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I’m the living breathing example of what you might call a saint. I’m not trying to toot my own horn or anything, facts are facts. After that day 13 years ago, in any case, I would never be the same. None of us here in podunk-USA would be. But the others, the others are different- they want to pretend like it never happened. They’d prefer it hadn’t that’s for sure. Sometimes it makes me sad to think about that. I wish somebody else could remember the way I remember, it does get lonely for an ‘ol feller out here sometimes. Like I said, I try not to mind too much because what good would it do? Folks I guess have to believe in something, and so what if I believe that I became a saint with the blessings of our visitors, who am I to say that they are wrong to believe that it wasn’t just a big old storm, the likes of which this town had never seen, nor would ever see again. I’m just saying that it’s funny how people can fix theirselves on a lie, and base their entire lives on it, build the whole dang things out of this thing, that’s really nothing. I don’t really know. I’m just Justice the Saint, but everybody round here just calls me Just.
Sometimes I wish I’d never seen the lights that night, that I hadn’t felt that stirring in my chest, that pushing, that urge, to go out to the field. I coulda just stayed in my bed, and read some comic books, and pushed it out of my mind, but I was just the most curious kid back then. Always my nose into something, that’s right, like a cat. My mom and dad back then were always giving me some spankings to beat the fire out of the devil back then, cause I was always in trouble. Whether it was falling headfirst into the mud pit the rain had caused in my sunday school clothes cause I wanted to was after one of those purply black frogs, i forget the scientific name of them now, or it was stealing looks at old Ariana, the neighbor girl through her bedroom window at night. So, that’s how it goes I guess. Funny the visitors should choose me, now that I think about it. I wasn’t exactly the greatest kid ever.
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