My Hometown of San Diego, the El Cortez Hotel, and The Flash.
From the Living Room:
"The Adventures of the Flash: Part 1"
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San Diego: the city with a
perpetually sunny atmosphere. At night though, there is no sun. At night, the
lights of the skyscrapers reflect like little pearls in the bay, the sea side
bars fill up with people out to enjoy a cold beer on a lazy evening, and airplanes
fall upon the skyscrapers, leaving only the glittering lights of their landing
gear and the roar of turbines, as the evidence of their descent.
At the top of a Balboa Park
ravine, underneath the landing airplanes, Jay stood and listened to the trees
blowing from the wind. His dad stood next to him, holding a fist sized rock.
With a quick toss, the rock was thrown into the sewer pipe at their feet. It
disappeared into the darkness, and Jay put his ear to the pipe, tuning into the
poetry of the receding fall: skip, chunk, twink, piddle.
After
the noise had finished, the father handed over a smaller rock. Jay kept it
there, a tiny star big enough to fill up his hand, and thought for a moment.
ow did the rocks get
here,?the boy asked.
hey were always here.?o:p>
ow do they get back??o:p>
hey don.?o:p>
Across
from them, the red neon sign of the El Cortez Hotel burned across the sky. Jay
bought his first copy of The Flash comic book from the Hotel newsstand, and he
immediately became a fan. Faster than sound, faster than time, even faster than
Superman?nothing was faster than The Flash.
Jay
threw his rock into the sewer pipe and wished he could run down and catch the
rock before it hit the bottom. Jay wished he could run faster than the wind blowing
past, faster than the airplanes overhead.
Jay
wished he was the Flash.
Somewhere
at the bottom of the dark pipe, the rock came to a stop, never to move again.
For
many years, Jay had the recurring dream he was just underneath the decaying El
Cortez. At the top, just near the neon O, was a small boy. A huge wrecking ball
was swinging across the roof, towards the child. Jay ran into the lobby, across
the Spanish theme red carpets, and up the stairwell. He ran fast: fast as the
wind, fast as light, fast as the Flash.
On
the roof, Jay looked down into the city, where the lights were as numerous as
the people wandering the streets. He ran over to the child and in dream after
dream, before Jay could get there, the wrecking ball knocked the little boy
over the side. The nightmare would end with the screams of the falling child
still in the air.
Years
later, during one of those clear summer nights where the red neon EL CORTEZ
shone like a beacon upon the city, it came to occur that Jay father found himself
driving past a burning tenement building. He stopped his cab and ran inside, up
the smoldering stairs, to a pair of children trapped on an upper floor. The
fathers days as a High School track athlete were long since finished, and age
had taken away much of his speed. By the time the children were reached, the
fire had already covered up any means of escape. He gathered the children into
his arms, said a final prayer to God, and jumped out of the window. He sang to
the kids during the fall, keeping his back to the ground and his eyes upward,
where the stars whispered insufferable promises.
He
hit the ground, never to move again, his body protecting the two children.
Skip,
chunk, twink, piddle: Jay had been taught by his father about everything but death, and now it was too late
to learn about anything else.
End Part One.
Note: part two HERE.
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