Chapter 66: Chapter 64: What Makes a Man Smile (Part 1)

A towering skyline, the separation of land and space, and the only thing keeping humanity from climbing too high, the atmosphere towers over all. People look above them to see a starry night sky or a vast ocean mingling with floating white cotton, and they believe that someday, they can live above those reaches. Humanity is the next step of evolution, and all that’s left to do is colonize a world that begs for us to stay away and leave them alone. We don’t listen, however, because if we listen, then we can’t progress. If we don’t progress, then what’s the point in existing?

Despite the universe’s plea to keep land and space separated at all costs, there is one place that breaks those laws. Unlike humanity, it actively listens to the universe’s cries for balance, but chooses to mock it. With an ego even larger than its size, a mountain so grand and divine it pierces into reaches that shouldn’t house something of its magnitude. 

People all over the world look at that mountain who laugh and spits in the universe’s eyes, and they cheer it on. Those cheers are only to further humanity’s own ends, however, for there have been many a trip to scale its unimaginable peak. 

The first man to climb such a mountain being a woman who had the wish to see the world from the tip of its rocky surface. She scaled the mountain far past what anyone believed could scale to at the time, and she was never heard from again. The second to climb the mountain was a man with a shriveled heart but mighty lungs. He wanted to reach the top of the mountain, then jump from there, having to be the first to accomplish such an impossible task. No one saw his dramatic leap of faith.

There have been many more climbers since those two, and years after the first climb, I decided I would be one of the many who attempted the suicide climb. Not only would I be one of the many attendees, but I’d go beyond that. I’d become the first ever climber to reach the summit covered in snow so thick and cold it freezes through three layers of hard steel tipped boots. 

Even though I may have such an aggressive determination to reach the summit, I hadn’t always been like that. Once upon a time, I was an actual child. Hard to believe, but everyone around us used to be a child at some point in their lives or is currently a child, whether physically, mentally, or it could very well be a combination of the two. My life wasn’t as easygoing as many of the others that are climbing the mountain alongside me.

I was born in a city with a certain mountain-like formation of its own. My memory wasn’t as sharp back then due to the fact I had just been born, but according to my mother, I was a wailer of a child. As soon as my lungs could taste the sweet and sugary air, I wailed and screamed so loud my father had to cover his ears. 

Once the doctors did their thing and made sure I was completely healthy, they brought me to my mother. She held her arms for me, crying and begging to hold me in her arms. Even though my brain couldn’t process memories, for some strange reason, I could remember the feeling of my mother holding me for the first time. It was the first time I ever felt protected and warm. The way she hooked her arms around my body that was so fragile a gust of wind could send me flying to my death made me feel as if nothing bad could ever happen to me. Then she whispered something to me, and my brain failed to recognize those words she said to me.

When I turned eleven years old, my mother held a birthday party to celebrate the occasion. I remember hearing her talk about what she was going to do, and I couldn’t help but let a slight twinge of guilt touch me. Ever since I was born, I’ve never had a true birthday party. My idea of a birthday party was just my mother allowing me to stay up a bit later than usual and let me watch the more adult shows on air. Though there were always certain limits, like that one movie we watched where the couple was straight up fucking in the middle of the scene, and she had to cover my eyes and turn it off.

We weren’t the richest of families, and my father didn’t make it any better. The money we had was all borrowed coin from some extremely unsavory individuals. I never realized that until my eleventh birthday. 

When my father left for work that day, mother and I waved him off. As soon as the door shut, and the unmistakable noise of tires on pavement vanished into the distance, mother grabbed my wrists and dragged me to her room. I was confused at first, wondering what exactly what she had planned, but when she opened her room door, my eyes widened and the concept of breathing went forgotten.

Inside the room, scattered about and floating to the ceiling, were several balloons comprised of plenty of differing colors and sizes. Sitting on the center of the bed was a cake decorated with white frosting and whipped cream light dresses along the edges. I walked up to the cake, and written in pink whipped cream was my name and happy eleventh birthday. That was the first time I cried since I grew out of infancy.

She cut the cake into eight pieces, and she gave me a plate of my own. I grabbed the fork and lightly tapped the cake. Its spongy texture gave way to my prodding, and some of the bread stuck to the prongs. I lifted the fork, and the cake floated in front of my mouth. The sweet vanilla and strawberry scent wafted to my nose, and for the first time in ever, I realized cake actually does have a smell. 

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We ate on her bed, and mother turned on an episode of Family Guy. We laughed at the constant antics Peter and his family participated in, even if they weren’t all that funny. It was just nice to actually have a good memory to look back on when I was sad. No matter how childish the humor, or crude the jokes, I laughed because it just felt good to laugh. I smiled because it felt good to smile. Out of everything I forgot, or tried to forget, about my parents, I could never forget the fact my mother was the person who taught me how to smile.

Then I just had to look out the window. The screech of a car entered the front yard, and I checked out the window to see what exactly it was. When I saw a black van pull up with sketchy men in the seats, I turned to my mother and pointed them out. At first, a look of shock passed through her, but she shook her head, thinking I was joking. But when she looked out the window herself, a look of unbridled terror washed over her face. 

When she grabbed me by the hand and stuffed me in the closet, that terror transferred to me with little prejudice. I didn’t understand what was happening, but the look of absolute fear on my mother’s face let me know that something was wrong. But, when she crouched on her knee once I was in the closet, she smiled, and I believed that no matter what was about to happen, that at the end of the day, we’ll go back to eating cake.

She told me something, but before she could finish her sentence at the most important bit, something crashed in another room, and she threw me into the closet and closed the door. I waited in the darkness and curled up into a ball. The sound of a gun firing scared me, so I covered my ears and held in my voice and tears.

I could hear someone walk through the house, and I hoped it was mother. But the noise stopped, and I heard the car outside starting. The reality of what I had just heard seeped in as the screech of tires disappeared into the streets. Instead of leaving the closet, I stayed in it, ears covered, eyes closed, scared of what I’d see once I left the safety of the room.

I didn’t have to leave the safety of the closet, thankfully. Moments after the intruders left, sirens blared outside from the oncoming police cars. It turned out that one of my neighbors heard the gunshot while they were drinking outside, and they called the cops. He even saw the car, but couldn’t get a picture of the plate number.

The police officer tried to remove me from the closet, but I would always run back in. It was the only place I felt safe at the time.

I went to the funeral with my father, but he didn’t leave the truck. The day my mother descended six feet is a day that will forever be burned in my mind. No matter how much I try to forget it, it will always haunt me. 

Then a year or so passed after the funeral. I was in my room, playing the game that father bought to play with so I wouldn’t bother him. It was late at night, around ten, and my father invited his friends for one of his card games. Their laughter was heard around the house, and no matter how loud I turned the volume of the game. 

It got to a point where I jumped out of bed to see what was so funny. I peeked into their game from the hallway, careful not to expose myself for too long. My father and his friends were busy looking at the only computer we had, and they used it just to mock some people online. They said something about highschool, but I didn’t really catch anything about that. I was too busy looking at their smiles.

My father, someone who I’ve only ever seen with a scowl, actually had a smile. When my father’s friend mocked him for not having a beard as luscious as the person on the computer, he smacked him on the back of the head, and they laughed, and they smiled. I hadn’t seen such a smile for a long time, and that’s when the realization came to me. If I wanted people to smile just like before, then I needed to behave just like them. 

That was the first time I saw the mountain.

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