Elevator

No one understands the boy’s friends.

He didn’t get along with the little boys at school, they’d pick on him, and tell him that he was a “wuss” and a “momma’s boy.” They would poke fun at him, it wasn’t just the boys though.

Oh, no, it was actually the girls who would torment him the most.

Oh how, the small boy hated going to school, he hated it oh so much, almost as much as he feared making June angry.

Which is what would happen if he told her he didn’t want to go to school…or what happened to him at school… a light shudder would shake his fragile bones just as the thought would cross his mind.

That was around the time he saw the Swan, it appeared right in front of his small frame, almost like it had been there all along.

It’s long ivory neck, and elegant body, just standing there like an elaborate statue.
Although there was something warm, and familiar about this swan, like he’d seen it before, or maybe he’d been wanting to see it his whole life.

The swan stared at the boy, in such a friendly and cordial matter, that he could have sworn that she smiled.
The boy wasn’t frightened, in fact, he was delighted.

The swan would come and go, and it was usually directly after a very upsetting event.
Or, right before he went to school, and sometimes when he was sent to his room, after dinner.

Then, there was a time where the swan wouldn’t come at all, the visits from the boy’s eloquent friend just stopped.

The boy was quite depressed after that, not that June noticed, oh no, she was preoccupied making sure everything was perfect.

Perfect, perfect, perfect, how the boy despised that word, that phrase and its definition. Although, at the same time , he envied it.

That’s what Momma always talks about, that’s what Momma always wants to achieve. Momma loves Perfect.

If Perfect was a person, the boy once decided, then he would kill him. Just a quick and short death, with a couple of drawn-out beatings, just so it could feel, what the boy always had to go through because of it.

Around this time, was when the goose showed up.

The boy was planning exactly what he would do if he ever came across Perfect, if by some chance this thing that Momma loves so much was a person.

And then, in his shiny, perfect house where one could hear a pin drop from miles away, he heard the sound of wet feet flapping sloppily on the ground.

There was no possible way it was June, no, not at all.
She would never make that much noise, plus, the boy decided, Momma’s feet were always clad in heels. Always has been, and she’s never missed a day.

Suddenly, the boy felt frightened, who could have been in his house? It’s not like someone could have snuck in, with all the alarm/ security systems June put in because she was so hell bent that someone was going to get her baby.

He stood very still, and continued to hear the sound of feet slapping the floor.

Then all of sudden he was elated, he thought maybe his new Swan friend had come to visit him, he turned around and ran towards to the kitchen, his feet loudly hitting the floor as he slid and bounced on the linoleum. Something that June would have completely objected to.

“MS. SWAN?” He screeched excitedly; but when he reached the source of the noise who he presumed was his elegant friend, the only thing standing there was a goose.

A small goose.

Instead of screaming or staring in confusion or disappointment, all the boy did was grin.

“Let’s play.”