248 Homecoming

It was about time the elephant in the room was addressed. I could no longer ignore it. Or the others. One person's elephant is another's ex-lover.

Together since childhood in the only school in town, we were close from childhood to adulthood.

By first grade, we all knew each other. By third, we knew each other's mothers. By fifth, we knew who were abused.

Puberty brought preferences for others, resulting in broken hearts. As sophomores we knew the popular kids from the losers. By junior year, the jocks separated from those accused of being gay.

A body count rose.

Adulthood skewed ambitions, some falling behind others lurching ahead. The Gaussian outliers of the bell curve changed places: the body count accrued.

After graduation, the job market was limited. Some would luck out; others would be scooped up; some would miss out. Some strategized, fixing the outcomes. Grownup outcomes. Some navigated them with grade school sensibilities, to be were eaten by those who discarded the naïveté of conscience. Like babies, the conscience begins dying at birth.

Those wronging others forget whom they wronged, while the wronged remember who had wronged them—an elephantine truism as relevant later as it was on the playground.

We alumni sat together again for Alumni Day. The ones there represented a microcosm of the whole who had graduated together. Grown up together.

Grown apart, together.

My elephant sat firing eye-darts at me. In front of her sat the alumna who had broken my heart. The energy along this circuit sublimated exponentially. A bitter frenzy of emotion charged invisible wiring connecting us. Grievances and unrealized revenge powered the circuit.

Behind the ex-lover who had broken my heart, in front of my ex-lover whose heart I had broken, crossed several arcs of energy. Volatile, all it'd take was a short. Who'd short out first?

The tangled web of jilts, petty score-keeping, social and financial resentment, and the energy nodes of varied heads in this room straddled a kindling temperature verging on immolation.

It was a blood bath! Who could've known how people'd behave, suddenly on impulse?

Yet, this story has a happy ending. The body count and carnage happened quickly, but in only their minds.

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Wednesday, September 4, Day 248 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Accompaniment photos were AI-generated but the elephant in the room was not.

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THIS CHALLENGE BEGS ON, 366 ELEPHANTS AT A TIME.

There are currently three surviving, never-forgettin', always rememb'rin', Vocal pachyderms still remembering to write a new story a day in the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, (Alpha)

• Rachel Deeming (Beta)

• Gerard DiLeo (Damma)