Callahan: A Gothic Tale

The Solitary Transient

4 The Solitary Transient

Through the twisted dormant brambles and wrought-iron turrets I must have gone, battlement by aged battlement, though I could not recall having passed them in our haste to press onward. Perhaps orbing was a possibility in this world, one never knew; the brownstone exterior instantly gave way to burnished crimson brick buried beneath a glossy umber sheen from the reflective flooring onto the adjoining walls, creating the illusory likeness of a below-ground migratory tunnel of sorts.

I gasped, recognizing my surroundings immediately for what it was.

Boarding school.

I was a new student, catapulted to this endroit, courtesy of a family friend of the reverend (such friendship had endured three years' long, sufficient enough to establish credibility in my father's eyes). Without a fellow student to meet me, I was left alone, lost in what I believed to be a nondescript church corridor. Lacking direction of any sort, I wandered left, stepping up five small, slight stairs to the children's section—for I was a child, was I not?

Thought like a child, breathed like a child—posited I—though my outward appearance, melanin-hued coltish legs and long curly hair told a different story. Then, a kind laywoman or nun with grey-streaked cropped hair called out from the cubic stairwell, directing me upstairs straightaway. I hastened to follow her as my subconscious attempted to shelve my innermost sentiments as far away as they could go—

We were always moving, always sending our regards; perhaps this was a home—but in the deepest recesses of my being, I knew it was neither 'the home' nor 'my home.'

Blushing, I nodded hello to the aged woman and swiftly followed her, landing almost simultaneously within a 2000s-style acoustic room, carefully-cut class size of ten—this was no doubt a costly education. But for whom? The child or the father? What of the mother? I recalled my father's stony refusal to discuss her supposed mortality that had struck when I was a mere infant. Smoothing the uniform I realized I had donned, I sat upon the grey carpeted flooring, indecision plaguing my frontal lobe as I debated between the higher miniature stair, and the lower, but there was, yet again, no room for me.

I never belonged. Never. Not once.

The people nearest me had maracas. I had none, and no one offered theirs. Pinching myself, I felt no pain, wondering if I was invisible to all parties but the instructors, who couldn't decipher between a corporeal pupil and a transient memory. Do I sit on the lower step or the higher? There never seemed to be any room. A tussle broke out across the room just then, interrupting my thoughts, between a lanky teen and shorter boy, as they scraped and tumbled near the metallic luster of the xylophone. The reverend's sons. He didn't stop them. I knew he never would.

Then a van ride, as an escape—a joyride perhaps—a surprise visit to father—with two other female student hitchhikers, one appearing in ornate gold-ribboned hairstyle typical and required of her Nomadic Eurasian royal roots or so she claimed—reality blended with the surreal, and I understood as a youth to accept the reality laid before me. To never investigate. To keep one's head down, studious and diligent, even and especially if that meant venturing out of my hometown, leaving my neighborhood behind.

For I was traveling, always traveling.

A celebrity alum, a pale ambitious brunette from the boarding school, sat one seat across from my own, but never bothered to hand us over to administrative authorities, the lot of us. Perhaps she too, was making her necessary escape, I mused, taking note of the passing visions of townhouses outside my window, seemingly made entirely of Swedish worn timber as I pointed them out excitedly to the alum, that they reminded me of home though I knew not what home was. Understandably, she was far less invested in these observations than I.