Depletion

 

            The creature lay at his feet, twitching, terrified and seeking to escape, one leg destroyed beyond repair and the other struggling to push the bruised and bloodied body away from its attacker. Raphael had been outside hitting small rocks with his brother's aluminum baseball bat, as he had no ball with which to distract himself. His mother had taken away his phone, his sole source of connection with friends at school, as he and his family lived in the center of a large meadow in the deep woods, so he begrudgingly escaped the house and the inevitable chores that would become his responsibility if he remained within shouting distance.

              He had specifically positioned himself out of line of sight, cracking rocks into the woods, each blow leaving a small dent in the bat, but he didn't care as his unrelenting energy needed an outlet. This pointless exercise went on far too long, causing him to pause, to look at the bat accompanied by a feeling of shame and regret for ruining something that wasn't his. Eventually he lay down on the grass to begin balancing the baseball bat on his forehead, finally succeeding at standing the tool straight up from his face. He began counting as it balanced, reaching a count of five before it fell, to then try again, reaching a count of ten, and then again, reaching a count of twenty.

              A sliver of a feeling of accomplishment came over him and he gloried in it for a few moments before realizing just how silly he was behaving, to find joy in such a menial accomplishment that accomplished really nothing. He lay for a few moments, motionless, staring into the empty blue sky, momentarily distracted by the occasional bird in and out of his vision. He wondered if the birds had any thoughts or acknowledgement of his existence, looking down on him as just another potential threat.

              Bored with his mindless looking, he rolled to his hands and knees, stood to his feet, and began flipping the bat into the air, counting how many times he could circle it on itself before catching it by the handle. First two, then three, and finally with a particularly robust heave, he reached four. The occasional bird that flitted past relatively high overhead, began dropping lower with each pass, until a rather morbid idea came to his mind. Holding the bat by it's handle, he waited, watching, mentally calculating the timing and motion of each bird, eventually flipping the bat, and knocking the bird from its trajectory.

              His attention switched from the bat to the bird, to watch it drop, motionless to land several feet away from him. The spastic motion of the clearly damaged creature brought a sick feeling to his stomach as he watched it struggle in terror, trying to escape from whatever had happened to it. He squatted down to get a closer look and could see so much damage, a bit of blood, and malformation of what was once a beautiful, peaceful creature that had done nothing wrong to receive such an injustice.

              He stood up, paused, looked upon the small creature as it struggled and hurried into the house to try to find something to assist the creature from the suffering he had inflicted upon it. As he should have expected, his mother seized upon him as soon as he entered the house, which transformed into a lengthy conversation trying to explain what had happened. After far too long, he hurried back out with a wet rag and a shoebox to find that the bird had somehow disappeared, just how he was unsure.

              There was no trail of blood, his family had no cat that would have loved a quick lunch such as this, and he stood in silence gazing upon the empty space and feeling empty, hollow, twisted up, and guilty all at the same time. Every day of the next six months were identical. From the first moments of sunlight, Raphael's time was spent scouring the meadow and the edge of the woods, daily crushed by the damage he had inflicted until he finally came to terms with the fact that that which was once beautiful and good was now gone, removed from any existence that he or anyone knew.

              The days eventually changed as less and less time was spent with moments of hopefulness, diminishing until they were completely gone, and his focus turned elsewhere. He began to undo other damage he had done. He replaced the baseball bat, apologized to his brother, apologized to his mother, and began pouring more time into being actually productive and interactive, spending less time in isolation and more time interacting with others.

              Though there was no undoing the death of the original bird, he reached out to others, building houses, hanging feeders and waterers, and coming to understand the nature of life in general. This exercise in understanding and connection took a strange turn as the more time he spent with people, the more he appreciated his time and connection with animals. A full year had passed, and he stood in the back meadow looking at the feeders and waterers, seeing an eerie correlation between their depletion and the depletion of his connection with people, only growing more and more disappointed in the direction of the culture in which he lived.

              "Depletion, depletion," he muttered to himself over and over, wondering if anything could be done about it but understanding as well that his inability to connect with that which was shallow and inane was actually a good thing, even if it moved him away from his fellow man. Like listening to colors, or tasting words, the dissipation he was feeling was a necessary discomfort and dissolution, confusing and unavoidable but appealing as well, as it was a move in the right direction.