Me, My Prussian Blues (and That Guy With the Horns)

My bike looked so sad...just lying there in the dead yellow grass...and probably a little grumpy too. I didn't mean to just dump it there by the sidewalk, but its kickstand doesn't work very well, see?

I stood. Back to the road, facing east, I stood. Before me, the Bedford Mansion, in all its stubborn and royal glory.
It's not really a mansion; we just call it that. It's a wealthier-looking house in the district, is all. It was dark brick, from what I could see. It perched atop a low hill, and a few steps in front of me after a short stone wall was a row of hedges I could just barely see over. I don't like the Bedford Mansion.

I don't know who lives there. I don't even know what street its on. It's the Bedford Mansion. The grass is not lush and green and chemically sprayed; it is crispy and yellow-brown, but rigid and cold in demeanor. I don't like the Bedford Mansion's grass.

There is a sort of fountain structure after a few yards of yellow grass and just before the hill begins its ascent. It is a dirty white, with no elegant design, dead oak leaves blowing around its empty stomach.

I stepped over the stone wall. Without thinking, I crouched in one of the larger gaps between the hedge trees.
The setting sun cast an even darker and gloomier expression on the Mansion and its plain fountain and wiry grass.

Now I can see it. The bricks are dark and rough, but not crumbly. The shutters are a dusty blue, and the windowpanes are white, as if they've just been replaced. But the windows are black. Perhaps they are tinted.
There is no charming white porch with two rocking chairs set up beside each other facing the road and/or the setting sun. It was an unconventional stoop-deck thing painted a lighter shade than the house, but still a dark wood. And behind this plain old stoop the bricks are indented to allow stark white wooden planks, painted to look like pillars, to rest. Y'know how some houses paint pretend-pillars by the entryway just to make them look like real pillars from afar? Nothing about the Bedford Mansion is predictable.

There are two cars in the driveway: a small blue Volvo and a smaller red Audi. They look out of place; so shiny in a place so seemingly cheerless.

And then I wondered why I was there. I was trespassing.
I crouched there, in these people's bushes, wondering what my purpose here was. And I realized... We wanted to hurt the Bedford Mansion.
Just tear a blue shutter off or kick the faux-crumbly brick or throw a rock through the window...or break in. Anything.

I felt bitter. The Bedford Mansion made me oh so bitter. How could it sit there, a mansion, and not follow the rules of a mansion? Why isn't its grass green? Why is the fountain ugly and decrepit? Why don't the bricks seem ancient and strong? Why is the front porch so stoopy? Why are there pretend white pillars on a dark brick house so unfit for such decoration? Nothing adds up. Nothing is what it's supposed to be. Maybe if I upset its lack of balance, They will fix it with new balance. They must not realize how strange their house is. We will help them.

But what if they see me trespassing—flattening the crispy yellow grass of their front lawn—before we get to show them their fault? How will we help them then?

My ankles were just about snapping in half from squatting for so long. A broken branch from the hedge stuck awkwardly against my neck, and the leaves were caught in my hair.

I realized that the only reason I considered capture was because I was scared.

I felt the Fear in the pit of my stomach, now rising. And I didn't swallow it. No, I let it come, and I delved into it, searching for its weaknesses. Have you ever taken fear and tried to strangle it? It's rather difficult. Once I immersed myself in the Fear, I began to forget its purpose. And once fear has no purpose, I become reckless.

But then I figured I couldn't be reckless, because then I would forget my purpose.
That was Reason speaking. Reason told me to remember that I had to hurt the Bedford Mansion, that's all.

I fell forward onto my hands, looking warily around. Very well, I had swallowed my fear, now we had to venture forth from the shrubbery. I stood.

And as I stood, just outside the barrier hedge, I hated the Bedford Mansion and all its fallacies, inconsistencies... all its loneliness. I hated its sallow, unkempt grass; its crude and so obviously disused fountain; its unmatched blue shutters and tinted windows; its harsh white excuses for fake pillars; its brick that can't make up its mind whether to be cleanly or foreboding... I hated its wrongness.

I realized then that the Bedford Mansion was far too real. Too awake, too aware.

Hearing the rumbling of a garage door, I took one look at the emerging figures, and I ran.

I crashed through the hedges, and in leaping over the stone wall, my foot caught on the creeping tendrils of ivy. My hands scraped against the asphalt, but I was up and grasping at my bike before I could feel the torn skin. However grumpy my poor little Diamondback was, it rode well for me in those few moments of frenzied flight.

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