The Boy and the Sunset

The Boy and the Sunset


The boy gathered a few things from a drawer in his desk and left the room. He walked down the stairs and out the door. He thrust his hands in his pockets and slumped his cheeks down into his collar. The chill wind blew against him. He crossed the lawn to the street and turned south towards the waterfront.

He pulled something from behind his ear and pressed it to his lips. He paused his stride and cupped his hands to light it. He inhaled deeply and held it in, feeling its pull.

He walked down the darkening street enjoying his indulgence. Looking up to the pale shadowy sky in the half light of dusk, he stepped onto the street that ran paralell to the waterfront. He turned west towards the last fading light of the afternoon. He could still see a small bit of pale golden sky between the lengthening clouds and the shadowy trees that were sillouetted in front of it.

He walked the dusky streets, enjoying their emptiness. He couldn't help the feeling that the houses on either side held glaring eyes, following his steps. He threw the spent object on the ground and stomped out its flame. He kept walking as the shadows grew and the sky darkened, street lamps started to become a more prominent source for light.

He turned onto a dirt road that led him through darkened trees to the water. The road spilled into a parking lot, surrounded by a grass field, trampled and beaten by the fall winds. From this field he could finally look unobstructed to the water, down the ledge at the end of the field. He looked out across the rippling surface to where two shadowy points of land divided to reveal a long strip of horizon. The sky was dark orange where it met the sea, fading to pale gold, almost white, and then halting at the big black wall of clouds. Smaller purple clouds dotted the golden skyscape.

He ascended a weathered wooden staircase down the ledge to the rocky shore line. Rocks slid under his footfalls as he made his way to where the water lapped at the stones under his feet. He stood, and he looked.

He was now on the same level as the water. He realized that it was a rare occurance that he was not looking down at the water from ashore, up some hill, or on soome ledge or dock. He bent at the waist to be even closer to the water.

He looked out across the vast expanse of the water. It seemed to extend infinitely on before it met with the sky. The rippling surface gave the appearance of breathing.

It looked like he could walk from here to the sky.

He stood with the sea washing at his feet, staring solemnly out at the sun setting into the floor that the sea seemed to create. If he looked just right he could see the gold and orange, and the pink and the turquoise of the sky, reflecting off of the water in an irridescent way.

He stood there with the wind whipping at his face behind his collar. He could barely feel it. The feeling seemed to be coming to him from very far away. His eyes watered from the wind. The moment awed him. Even his thoughts were silent.

He was alone. There were people in the houses, back up the hill to the street, but they made no difference here. He felt as if there were no people for hundreds of miles. He thought about people who might be thinking of him all those hundreds of miles away. And then they weren't there anymore, nobody existed anywhere. He was alone, here on the rocky beach, watching the sunset. He felt so peaceful and yet so awed, that he momentarily ceased to exist. The suset was here on this rocky beach, with noone there to witness it. Nothing existed; just the sunset, and the rocks on the beach.

He came back to himself, there on the beach. He came back to the people hundreds of miles away. He wondered for a moment if this was how death felt, if every man at the moment of his death began to experience the area where he died, as it would be without him, without anyone. Maybe the dying man felt the prescense of humanity fade as his life faded, and he would drift into a consciousless slumber there in that moment for eternity. If that was death than he would have liked to have died in that moment. An eternity of that moment seemd almost more inviting than the eternity of nonexistence that death promised.

The wind ripped through his reverie, bringing him back to what awaited him beyond the beach. The mundane. A life, his life, the burden of existance. The burden that for a time, there on the beach, had been lifted by the sublime.

He turned from the beach, and looked past the expanse of dark stones to the stairs that scaled the hill. Night awaited up those stairs. Yellow lit streets under the darkened canopy of night, tiny diamonds embedded. He looked back to the sea, where somewhere a day still existed. But it no longer existed for him.

He turned and walked back up the beach, back up the stairs, back to his life, back to humanity, back to the watching eyes in the darkened houses. He followed the dirt road, a patch of light against the now dark. He glanced back and could no longer see any light through the trees.

He turned on to the street, back towards his room now. It was dark now, the street lights the only source for light. He passed a house and looked over his shoulder through the yard. There miles away was the water, and hundreds of miles on lay the horizon, with its last sliver of daylight; in all its golden brilliance. The inky clouds imposed overhead. He paused to drink it in one more time, one more for the road at last call. He turned and walked back.

He paused in the street for one more glance.



The End