The Crash Years, Anonymous [ebook reader macos .txt] 📗

It was a cold afternoon, and Denver and Alec were walking towards Anzac Park. The breeze whispered behind their ears as Denver admired the two apples he had been carrying. One was perfectly ripe, and the other still sour. Denver smiled at Alec and sunk his teeth deep into the sour apple. Alec grimaced.
“Eww, why’d you take a bite out of that one? The other was perfectly fine.”
“Because I’m the bad twin. The good one’s for my brother.” The two neared the edge of Anzac Park, when Denver heard a not-so-distance cry of an infant. Instantly he looked up in frantic search to find the source of the cry.
Only a couple of feet away, deeper into Anzac Park was the baby, laying amongst the grass and daisies. It was crying not only from discomfort, but for attention. It had been left alone. Someone had abandoned it.
“Alec, I gotta help it,” breathed Denver as he neared toward the baby. But something was wrong. He saw someone lurking behind a tree. Immediately Denver knew that whoever it was wanted the young child. Hunger ate at their eyes.
Denver slowly crept up to the baby, inching closer, his back slightly hunched as if to offer some protection. His eyes were glued on the person behind the tree, and the person behind the tree mirrored his gaze.
“Alec, help me out here,” yearned Denver as he whispered to Alec. He still crept closer to the baby, but hadn’t heard a response from Alec. Just a slight wheezing. Alec must have been as focused as Denver, careful not to mutter anything too loud.
Finally, Denver grasped on the soft flannel of the baby’s blanket. As if his arms were made of steel, Denver gently picked up the baby, but kept rigid in case the lurker decided to attack at any moment. Then he looked back at Alec. But Alec was gone.
Instead, a man stood, old as time. Large half-moons dragged underneath his eyes, back arched from gravity, something that could easily be broken. Denver felt a most degrading pity.
“Are you ok?” asked Denver, reaching out his hand.
The baby cried immediately, and Denver pulled his hand back.
But as Denver pulled back his hand, he noticed that the old man looked weaker and full of sadness, as if his life wasn’t meant to be over yet. The old man sat back on a park bench, too frail to even stand. Denver reached out his hand again.
And the baby screamed. For a moment while Denver had outstretched his hand, he saw a glimpse of youth return in the old man’s eyes. But he couldn’t let the baby cry. He had to take care of the baby. The old man was already dying.
Reluctantly, Denver turned away from the old man and focused his attention back on the person behind the tree. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old man close his eyes for the last time, his expression full of unbearable sadness and loneliness. Denver bowed his head in guilt and shame, only to look up again and see that the person behind the trees was now running at him.
Denver took off deeper into Anzac Park, cradling the baby in such a way so that it wouldn’t be affected by his staccato-like footing. Suddenly Denver heard a voice in his head. It was Milos.
“You have to run, Denver. Run until I say ‘stop.’”
For some reason, a pain filled Denver’s chest as he sucked in a deep mouthful of air. He couldn’t recognize the pain, but it was crushing him. It was almost killing him. But he had to rescue the baby – he had to listen to his brother. His feet tore at the sidewalk.
“Stop,” Milos’ voice commanded in almost a whisper. Denver almost couldn’t hear it, but he had almost run a mile, and he couldn’t find the person who had chased him anywhere. He looked down at the baby. It was fine.
In front of him were a group of bushes, perfect for hiding anything that you didn’t want to be found. He suspected that this was where Milos wanted him to hide. He went through them, the thick branches brushing against his legs.
Past the foliage was a bed of long grass. Denver would be safe here. But what surprised Denver wasn’t how brilliantly his brother had saved him, but what lay near his feet. It was the other apple, the good one that Denver hadn’t had eaten. As if the apple had meant something to her, the baby immediately started crying. Denver’s pain intensified to pure agony.
Denver bolted upright in his bed. Sweat poured in bullets down his face, his hands shaking, and his breathing heavy, like the night he had to run after Alec. He felt like he was suffocating, the blankets were too hot. Denver looked at his clock to check the time. It was only five-thirty in the morning. Denver remained still until his breathing went down. Then he laid back down in attempt to fall asleep again.
“Forget it,” sighed Denver as he pulled himself from his bed. Thirty minutes had passed, and he wasn’t able to go back to sleep. And he certainly wasn’t going to now. Something from the dream shook him. It was too disturbing for him to pretend that it was just a nightmare. He walked to the bathroom, hoping that cold water to his face may calm his senses.
It seemed that the water only made Denver’s senses more acute. It was as if a thousand-piece puzzle had been solved instantly in his head. The dream. The park. Milos missing. The perfect hiding place. It all started to make sense now.
“It’s a sign,” gasped Denver as he talked to his reflection. Immediately he rushed out of the bathroom towards the wardrobe in his room. He was going to go on a run.
The smell of burnt toast wafted throughout the house as Denver left his room. He kept pulling down his old P.E. shorts, wondering where in the sands of time he had ever gotten taller. He quietly slipped down the stairs, careful not to make any loud noises that would attract his parents’ attention to him.
“Denver?” asked Mr. Barry as he walked into the foyer. Denver sighed. Bad timing. He bolted towards the door before his dad had much time to react.
“Denver!” yelled the obviously angry dad, mad enough that one of his sons was missing, and now having to add on the burden of his other son’s habits of disappearing. It was true, Denver felt pity.
As if nature was somehow on Denver’s side, a chilly breeze stung his face, inviting a surge of adrenaline to carry Denver down towards Anzac Park. He had never ran so easily and so fast in his life. Denver could sort of understand why Milos loved to run in the early mornings. He then shook his head, as if doing so would also shake the thought of Milos in his dream, too.
But as Denver reached Anzac Park, and was now slowly jogging in search of the group of bushes similar to the ones in his dream, it became clear that this search may not end as dream-like. It was weird to think about. Alec certainly wasn’t with him, and neither were the other characters in his dream. It also wasn’t the bright afternoon, and last Denver had checked, he didn’t regularly carry around apples either.
As Denver now stood in the center of Anzac Park, a breeze picked up again, and suddenly the meaning of this dream seemed very grim. He had found the bushes – it was only a moment of time before he would reveal what was behind them. His adrenaline had died off, and instead of the steel arms he had in his dream, spaghetti was now the substance he found dangling from his shoulders. He walked forward.
Before he had even walked through the bushes, Denver sensed that something was very wrong. And when he got past the foliage, his guess was made clear. Without having time to react, Denver went numb. He immediately fell to his knees, grasping towards Milos, who lay dead in the tall grass.
Air stabbed into Denver’s lungs, and tears gushed out his eyes. Stinging air stung Denver’s lips, mouth, and throat, and tears glistened down his face, jumping from his chin and into to the cold earth below. Denver clutched onto Milos’ jacket, which was soaked in rain and morning dew. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t pry away from Milos. It felt like he never would. This, his brother’s death, it wasn’t real. He had to still be in his dream.
This couldn’t be happening.

Publication Date: 01-28-2012

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