Staring at the Sky
A short story
Hi friends,
Recently, I made some ideas into a short story and it’s called Staring at The Sky.
Imagine a story about a man. This man has a life, for all intents and purposes, a good one. He goes to work, he mingles with people he considers friends, he even has a partner he considers good, which all seemed fine. Until one day, he ventured outside and saw the sky.
He didn’t just go outside, for he often went on walks. No, this time he ventured off the beaten path he always walked and ended up in a space completely new to him. He ended up in a place that he’d seen from afar and assumed that he knew but, once there, he realised that he didn’t quite know what or even where it was. In this fine place, he saw the sky, and not only that, the sky saw him.
After looking into each other's eyes for quite some time, the man got up and walked back. Strangely, he hesitated. This was the first of many strange things to come, strange because the man had never hesitated on his way back before. You see, he always went back to what he knew, and when he went, he went promptly! But this time, he found himself procrastinating and even getting "lost". Eventually, the man was back outside a familiar place - home.
He walks into his lovely home, hugs his lovely kids - a handsome young boy and a heavenly young girl - then kisses his wonderful wife on the cheek and says, “Honey, I am home.” Great, grand? or maybe gruesome and grotesque? The man, for the first time, was not sure.
His wife then asks him, “Honey, what’s wrong?”
The man looked up and said, as he saw, “Nothing, nothing at all.”
The next day, the man went to work. His work was a wonderful place, with lots of glass, lots of light, and no windows on the ceiling. He walks in, and his boss greets him gratuitously. To the man's surprise, his latest work on the company's most important project was a successful endeavor and just made the company a lot of money - for that, his boss was ever so grateful - and so he called the man into his office.
In his office, sat behind this magnanimous mahogany mound of a desk, he asked the man to sit. The man sat. The boss told the man that he was getting a bonus. The man said thank you. Then he said, “You know, I was wondering about when I can get a promotion to fill that senior position which has been vacant for a while now?” His boss smiled, then frowned, then seemed to occupy a superimposed space between both smiling and frowning - a pleasantly foreboding expression, terrifically terrifying. The man was unmoved.
“The position was filled today,” said his boss. “We brought in someone externally. We think that you do a great job where you are, that role would not be fun for you; there is too much paperwork - we want you here!” The man heard him, as he had heard him many times before, but this time, he felt what felt like sunlight on his forehead.
“That’s just how I look at it, how we all do. You work this role like nobody else does, you are the best at it, you were made for it - I’m telling you!”
“That’s how we see it, but what about you, what do you see?”
The man looked up and said, as he saw, “a ceiling.”
It was Friday, one week to the day which the man had ventured off his beaten path. Every day since had been strange to him. He felt like something, no, almost everything was missing. In fact, that it was not just missing, but that it was being kept from him. The man felt like someone, something, or some things had erected a barrier between him and something else, something his own, something his right, something he is.
He was at the office, again. Only this time, he was not in the office, he was on top of it. He had walked his way to the roof, the other side of the ceiling. He had to. Every time the man looked up and saw his ceiling, no their ceiling, he felt wronged, wrought with rage, certainly wanting rebellion - which was odd, as he was typically okay with everything.
The man looked out towards the horizon. He was standing as close as he could stand to the edge. Yet the sky still felt so far away. Vexed that his view was blocked by the city-scape, he heard the door behind him fly open. In came the man’s wonderful wife and his boss, their hair and clothes much scruffier than usual.
The man could have wondered why the both of them were here, at this time, together, when his wife was supposed to be at Flexi-Fridays for after-work yoga - but he didn’t. They seemed to be saying something to him; he couldn’t quite tell. It’s not that he couldn’t hear them, just that he wasn’t listening. The man was focused on something else. His wife asked him to come back down because it’s “dangerous up there”. His boss urged him to “come down, where it’s safe and you can’t fall”. At that point, the man smiled and looked as if he had finally come to his senses.
Just then, the man remembered what he did when he got to that pleasant place off the beaten path, before he locked eyes with the sky and the sky locked eyes with him - He spread his arms and fell flat on his back. So, without a moment's notice, the man did just that.
On top of his office, at the edge of the building, facing the door where his wonderful wife and boss were standing, shouting, and flailing their own arms, the man spread his and fell back. The man saw it again, his old new friend the sky. This time his friend brought a gift - a strong breeze, a bigger breeze than he ever felt before. The man noted that it looked like he was getting further away from his friend the sky, even though it felt like he was getting closer.
At this point, he heard his wife and boss yell, “What are you doing!?”
The man looked on and said, as he sa-
The End.
Hope it made you think - O