Having some fun with a writing group prompt. The prompt: Use sensory language to bring this moment to life. Use sounds, smells, textures, and tastes to pull us into this moment with him.
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“Michael Is Leaving”
Diesel fumes from the bus outside wafted into the station lounge, inducing an intoxicating calm. Michael scanned the words he’d hastily written in a school notebook with a number two pencil. Fear and regret, long tangled in his mind, began to ease into conviction. The taste of strawberry Pop-Tarts still on his tongue, Michael softly read aloud his closing line: “You didn’t want me, so I am leaving.”
His whisper traveled and echoed all the way to the ticket counter. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw an attendant glance back toward him and the empty benches, polished to a gleam, probably by an overworked janitor who had worked the overnight shift.
Lingering cleaner odors reminded Michael of the working-man schedule his father, Joseph, had kept all his life. After eight graveyard hours, Joseph would rumble into the driveway at six, his Oldsmobile loudly announcing their arrival. He’d slam the ragged driver’s side door, stomp into the house, and drop his lunch pail and tool belt onto the linoleum floor with a thud. In the kitchen, he’d open the refrigerator, curse its emptiness, then pound on Michael’s bedroom door, yelling for him to wake up and not be late for school, ever again. Always trailing behind were complaints. About over used air conditioning, a too loud radio, and the ever present pile of bills.
Joseph would then shut himself away in his own room to sleep for ten hours straight, only to be seen again late in the evenings. He’d then insist on “peace and quiet” in the house he paid the rent for. No TV. No radio. No singing. No friends in the house. Michael referenced that never achievable objective in his letter in all caps. “With me gone, now you will have all the PEACE AND QUIET you want, and you can live out your days without the son you don’t want, the son you don’t love.”
Michael stared at the word “love” scrawled in his handwriting. It wasn’t quite right. He scratched it out. His edit: “The son you don’t even like.”
The chill of the station’s air conditioning wrapped around him like loving and consoling arms. And then the wall clock struck six. Its ticking sounded polite, musical, rhythmic, and soothing; not like the door-slamming cacophony of the human alarm clock he’d left at home. Morning sunlight blared through the windows, promising a day filled with something more than loathing, something more than existing in a life he had not chosen.
The station’s front door opened again. The driver’s voice called out that the bus to L.A. would leave in five minutes.
Michael looked down at his letter one final time, whispering the closing line to himself: I am leaving.
He crumpled the page in his hand, stood, glanced over his shoulder at the empty benches and walked out to the waiting bus headed for L.A.