🚀 go-pugleaf

X-Orig-MsgId: <84jhat$p2r$2@news1.bu.edu>

I am at home, so I am rooting through a bunch of high school-era stuff. I
came across a short story I wrote based on 2 lines in 'Driver 8', and I thought
I'd post it for the hell of it.  Keep in mind: I was 15 when I wrote this, so
be kind :) Oh, and it's untitled, as is most everything I write.
Does anyone else have examples of REM-inspired creativity to share?

"The bells are ringing through the town again.
 Children look up, all they hear are sky blue bells ringing." - REM, Driver 8

The group of children prayed.  it seemed appropriate to do so.  They knelt 
under a tree, dirtying their knees on the moist soil, and prayed to a God whose
existence they were beginning to question.  They had been lost for a week now.
The only faces they had seen had been those of the other children and the 
reflections that stared at them from the cold, calm lake.

It was also appropriate to pray because of the silence.  There was no wind 
rustling the leaves in the trees, no birds announcing the beginning of the
day with thei beautiful songs, nor had there been a single word uttered
from the children's mouths.  It just didn't seem appropriate to speak, to
break the silence.

The sky was an amazingly bright blue.  Not a single cloud interrupted the solid
pattern of blue in the sky.  There were no moon or stars at night, and you 
couldn't see the sun during the day.  There just seemed to be an existence
of light, light without a source.

And nobody questioned this aloud.  They just accepted it as true.  Still they
prayed, for despite the silent acceptabnce of the circumstances, they questioned
it all the same.  For some reason, it didn't seem appropriate to discuss
their questions, their fears, amongst themselves.  So they prayed to a God who
acted in such silence as the one that was slowly engulfing them whole.

No one heard the rage vent daily on themselves within their minds.  Day after
day, they tore themselves apart, bit by bit, and they endured this self
destruction in silence.

Little did they know that only a breach of the silence would save them before
they destroyed themselves.  They themselves had created the silence, but of
this they were not aware.  They blamed the quiet, but in reality, only
themselves were to blame.

One clever child discovered this one day.  he knew that he and the other 
children were to blame.  This he discovered with dirty knees under a tree.  And
this he said aloud:

"If so it is spoken, then so it shall be."

The children's prayers to their God, who acted in such silence as the one that
had just been broken, were interrupted.  They stared at this boy, who was still
kneeling.  The others were standing.  the boy rose from the ground and moved
away from the tree and into a nearby open field.  The sky was bluer than
ever.  The silence was unbearable.  And then, in the distance, a faint noise
could be heard.  The noise seemed to be coming from up in the sky.  The
boy was the first to realize what noise was.

It was that of bells.  Church bells.  They chimed a tune very familiar to the 
children, yet they knew they had never heard it before.

No thoughts crossed their minds as the children listened to this beautiful 
music, music without a source.  The rage that had once torn their minds
apart was gone, replaced by these beautiful bells.

The God they had prayed to in silence had answered them, answered not in
silence, but in this beautiful music.

The children were not lost anymore.  They had let the silence carry them
away, and they let the music carry them home.

-- 
*------------------------------------------------------------------------*
|"Sometimes there's so	         			 Georgiana Cohen | 
| much beauty in the world,				  gvcohen@bu.edu |
| I feel like       				       Boston University |
| I can't take it."			  College of Communication, 2001 |
|   - Ricky Fitts,					   AOL: Rhysa814 |
|     "American Beauty"					    ICQ: 7297847 |
*-------------------------[ http://rhysa.8m.com ]------------------------*