Throwback: Parasitic Form Exercise

Second post! Old one from my college experimental fiction class. Played around with the eternally preteen Magic Treehouse characters in it. I still work in parasitic form, even in my academic work.

Annie sat on the porch, smoking and taking in the familiar summer twilight of Frog Creek. She had picked up cigarettes in college. Her husband was unaware that she even had them still, but he was out of town and the children were asleep. A beer sat half-drank on the ledge of the stairs.

When she was alone, Annie finally felt like she could breathe. How did she remain here after all these years? She loved her children, her husband, and knew that Frog Creek was a good town for raising a family. That was what mattered, wasn’t it? With a smile, she thought of the summers that Jack and she had spent in the old treehouse in the woods reading.

He loved books. She had never been as good at reading as him. Taking another sip from her beer, she couldn’t help but think that, regardless of how easy pretending and playing along came to her, it was her own lack of passion that led her to continue to have a supporting role even into adulthood. College had just been another game. For Annie, it was an opportunity to play pretend some more: what would I look like as a psychologist? As a teacher? What if I went by Anne? Who am I when I am no longer with Jack, in Frog Creek?

Whoever I had been, Annie thought, I must have not liked that version of herself enough to maintain it. She was here again, still only a short walk away from the woods and her childhood home. Her husband found it “quaint.” He was a good husband. At their wedding rehearsal, Jack had given a toast and said that he was glad that Annie now had a “new partner in crime.” She had smiled then. Marriage sounded as magical as some of the events they had imagined living as children. Had she been the same Annie, even then? Is that one who she was, now?

Ashing her cigarette on the porch and kicking at the marks it left, she picked up her phone and reread the email her brother had forwarded to her. It was from some do not reply account, and, even with out a baby clinging to her, Annie found that she still couldn’t make out much about the event. She assumed the email was an invitation to the conference that “John Smith'' would be presenting something at. There was no sort of RSVP link on the email, though. Annie laughed rather angrily and finished her beer with a clean swig. It was like Jack to send an email that could just as easily be a brag as an invitation.

 She put her phone down on the patio and stood up. A walk would clear her head, and Annie figured that she deserved to give into any emotions she felt. There was one good reason for remaining in Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. As she started down the road to the woods, she took in the evening air settling around her. The crickets were always louder around this time of year, and the country sky had only lost a bit of the brightness it used to have when she was younger.

“Jack doesn’t get to see the stars at all,” said Annie to herself. She rubbed her eye and paused for a moment to look up.

The tall oak where the treehouse stood had been hit by lightning several years ago. Her mother had called her, fearful that she was still going near the tree. Annie had made some snide remark and promised her mother she would see her for lunch again that Sunday. She hadn’t had the heart to admit to herself that sometimes, she missed Jack but didn’t feel like discussing it with her husband or calling her brother and interrupting one of his meetings. Even worse, she thought as she climbed the aged rope ladder of the tree house, he might try to talk to her about what he was presenting on and writing reports about in his firm in New York.

It wasn’t that Annie didn’t care. It was just easier, sometimes, for her to make her way to the treehouse and sit in it sometimes. She liked to think that enough of her imagination still lingered around for her to reminisce.

So many of the books that she had her brother had poured over as children were still in the treehouse. A few, like the one on Egypt and another on penguins, had grown so mildewy and old that their pages couldn’t be moved without a crunching sound coming from them. Mostly, though, she used her time in the treehouse not to read, but to just sit.

Tonight, as she found herself a spot under the window, she couldn’t help but absentmindedly pick up a book. It was small, with a yellow and black cover, and the title was printed across it in white bold letters:

“Financial Risk Management for Dummies!” Annie said. She laughed to herself. She had half a mind to send Jack a text about it, but, feeling in her pockets, she remembered she had left her phone on the porch at home.

“Shit,” she said. Annie flipped through the book. None of it seemed to make sense to her, but there was still something funny about finding it in a space she had considered so magical as a child. “I guess it makes sense we never had any adventures in accounting as kids.”

Holding the book up dramatically, she said, mostly to herself but also to the ghost of Jack she pictured following her, “Can you imagine? ‘I wish I could go to Wall Street.’ We would have been really clueless as to what to pretend for that one.”

Annie tossed the book to the ground. After a moment, she stood up. Maybe what she really needed to feel better tonight was just another beer. She stumbled, though, and realized something was wrong.

“What the fuck?” cried Annie.

The wind whistled louder. The leaves shook harder.

The tree house started to spin.

It spun faster and faster! And faster!

Suddenly everything was still.

Absolutely still.