GASTBEITRAG: Eine Kurzgeschichte

Ich freue mich riesig, Euch heute einen Gastbeitrag präsentieren zu dürfen. Es handelt sich um eine Kurzgeschichte einer Elftklässlerin, die als Schulaufgabe eingereicht werden sollte. "Klaus" hat mir erlaubt, die Story mit Euch zu teilen; das wollte ich unbedingt, weil ich die Geschichte für jugendlich-erfrischend, modern, erwachsen-ernsthaft und in erstaunlich gutem Englisch halte - so etwas trifft man nicht oft in einer elften Klasse, das ist eine anerkennenswerte Rarität.

Ihr seid herzlich eingeladen, Eure Kommentare zu dieser Geschichte zu geben, damit die Autorin etwas Feedback erhalten kann.

"The Greatest Gift Anyone Can Be Given..."  

(by Klaus)

Furiously, Samantha was speeding down the street, always making the traffic lights just before they turned red. She didn’t know what to do. Her whole body ached, especially her chest, it was like she herself was burning. The next traffic light came up and turned red before her eyes. With extreme force she slammed her foot down on the brake and stopped just in time. She had been holding her breath, but as she tried to breathe again, she saw an ad on the side of the road. She just read the first line, then the breathing acted as a trigger for the crying. Her whole body cramped and her head fell onto the steering wheel. “Your future is important to us.”, the ad said. She didn’t want to see it anymore. The cars behind her started honking and she looked up, the light was green again. Still sobbing, she slammed her foot back on the gas. “I’m leaving.”, she thought. “I’ll get my stuff, and then I’m gone. I’ll just go.”

She arrived in the small street where she lived with her roommates and didn’t even park her car correctly. Somehow she managed to get it off the street, jumped out and ran up the stairs to the fifth floor. Probably having heard how she tried to unlock the apartment door with haste, her roommate Derek opened the door from the inside.  “Sam, hey, what’s up?”, he said as she rushed by him into her room, leaving the door open and Derek standing in the hallway by himself. “Are you okay? What happened?”, he stupidly asked and followed her. “What, does it LOOK like I’m okay?!”, she screamed at him, pulled a travelling bag from under her bed and threw the most important things in. A blanket, a hoodie, some undies, that’s it. 

“Sam, please. Calm down and tell me what…” 

“I got FIRED! That’s it. Laura got my job. They liked her articles better or whatever, I don’t know, she… it’s over. IT’S OVER!” She almost ripped out the zipper of the bag closing it and turned to look at Derek for the first time today. She almost couldn’t, because of all the tears, but she still managed to get some words out that had been bugging her. Just as her other roommate, Jessy, was peeking through the crack of the door behind Derek, obviously only wearing underwear, she screamed: “I know you two were getting it on while I’m gone, I’m not that dumb! LOOK AT WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE WEARING!” Derek looked down at himself. He wore boxer briefs and his sleeping shirt. Sam continued. “But don’t worry. You can do whatever the FUCK you want when I’m gone for good.” Shortly after, she burst out the door and down the stairs. Derek’s “But where do you want to go?!” was echoing through the staircase and made her burst into tears once again. The truth was that she didn’t know where to go, she had nowhere to go.

Once again, Samantha was speeding through the city’s streets, it had started raining heavily and all Sam wanted was to get out. She looked around for an exit to the highway and couldn’t find one. Someone on the radio was babbling something that couldn’t be understood because of the rain, and she turned it off in anger. Distracted, furious and still speeding, she didn’t see the pedestrian crossing the street right in front of her.

She had never experienced a greater shock than in that very second. The bump of the car’s hood hitting the person made her heart stop and left her breathless. She didn’t remember hitting the brake, but she definitely did, because the car had stopped and she found her foot on the brake pedal. For a short time her body was frozen and she couldn’t move, but then it got out of the car almost by itself. A person in a black trench coat and Doc Martens got up from the ground and cleaned themselves off. They turned and looked at Sam, who was still in shock. She had stopped crying, but she looked at the person with big eyes, smeared make–up and a red face. The person had short, black hair, but longer bangs that reached up to their eyes, and seemed to be a girl. At least the black eyeshadow suggested so, and she was too short and slim to be a boy. “Well, for that you’re gonna have to give me a ride.”, she said and smiled at Sam. 

“You, but, are you… shouldn’t we go to the hospital?”, Sam stuttered. She felt on the verge of fainting. This was too much.

“I don’t know, maybe? You don’t look too good.”, the girl said.

“No, you…”

“Me?”, the girl interrupted. “I’m fine. I fell on top of your car, not under… So this was basically a stunt.” 

Sam still couldn’t breathe and held onto the open car door. She saw a quite big dent in the metal of the car hood and immediately felt dizzy.

“You should sit down.”, the girl said and softly pushed Sam back onto the driver’s seat. Her touching Sam’s shoulders calmed Sam in a strange way. The other cars drove by, since supposedly nothing serious had happened. For a while the girl was just standing above Sam and they waited, while the inner part of the car door, the girl’s hair and her trench coat were slowly turning soaking wet. When Sam had calmed down, the girl looked at her and said: “I’m Vicky, by the way.” They shook hands, though Sam was still confused. “I’m Sam.”, she answered and added “Shouldn’t we get off the road…?”

“Will you give me the ride you owe me?”, Vicky asked.

“Where to?”
“I was thinking I’d take the same destination you’re headed to.”

“I don’t really have a destination…”

“Even better.” Vicky went around the car and sat on the passenger’s seat. “Let’s go.”

Sam slowly turned to face the streets again, her legs still shivering a little. Vicky turned on the radio and “Walk like an Egyptian” by The Bangles was on. She whistled the melody and moved her arms to the beat. “Have you seen an exit to the highway somewh…” 

“Down the road there’s one on the right.”, Vicky interrupted. 

Sam swallowed and nodded. “Thanks.”

And then she just took off. Slowly first, but she regained her confidence again, as she changed into the lanes of the highway. 

Vicky had taken off her coat and thrown it onto the back seats, leaned back her seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy the music and the wind through the window that she had opened up as soon as the rain had stopped.

Sam felt like her head had turned off. She didn’t even care about the visible dent in the hood, which is a thing she would usually have gone crazy about. She just concentrated on driving. Driving was a thing one could concentrate on and still think about nothing. In a way, she was enjoying that.

Near midnight, Vicky suggested to get off the highway to have a break. Sam and her hadn’t been talking much, it was like Vicky knew that Sam’s head was either too full or too empty to have small talk with strangers. 

They arrived at a modern-styled gas station near a small forest in the middle of the countryside. All Sam knew was that she had driven through the state of Alabama going north for a couple of hours without paying attention to any signposts. She slowly began to feel like she was getting away from her problems far enough. Just some more, and maybe she would be able to think straight again. She felt calmer. But in that, also very tired.

She went inside the station and ordered herself a tuna sandwich. Vicky returned from the bathroom she had gone to when Sam had gotten gas outside and grinned at her. “Do you want a sandwich, too?”, Sam asked unsurely. Vicky’s eyes lit up for a second.  “Do you guys have double cheese?”, she asked the cashier. He shrugged his shoulders and got her a double cheese sandwich. Vicky dug her teeth into it and blinked into the neon lights on the ceiling, still smiling. Sam was watching her and found herself fascinated by how careless this girl was, but not in a bad way at all, it was just that she had never met someone so indescribably different before. She had to get herself out of a state of trance, before she paid and left. Before she got back into the car, Vicky stopped her. “You’re extremely tired.”, she said. “Let me drive.” Sam had to assure herself that she hadn’t misheard her. She looked down at her and made the first real eye contact. One green and one blue eye stared back at her, glittering in the light of the lampposts. Even this was unique. “Who has two different colored eyes?”, Sam thought to herself. 

“Why would I…”, Sam begun and got interrupted. “…trust me? Easy, because I can’t take you somewhere you don’t wanna go. I mean, since you don’t have a destination and all that. Plus, I wouldn’t drive your car to shit either, because I also still have to get home with that at some point in the future. Alright? Now please lie down on the backseats, before you fall over.” Sam couldn’t help but smile as Vicky said that. She did was she was told, had an eye on whether Vicky had trouble with the car or not, and as she realized Vicky was fine driving, she felt more and more content with her situation and finally fell asleep.

She woke up on the second day of the journey, when the first few sunbeams touched the car seats. She had fallen asleep on Vicky’s trench coat and Vicky must just simply have tucked her in it, because she was basically rolled into it, together with the blanket from her bag. The car was standing and Vicky was nowhere to be seen. She got up and looked out the window. The car was standing on an open field, at the edge of a forest, and fog stood over the grass. Sam was more than surprised. But looking at the big trees of the forest, the beautiful fog that was colored in red and pink from the rising sun, she found herself stunned. She got out of the car and there was almost no sound. Just her own breath and her steps on the grass. Except from the tracks of the car’s tires, there seemed to be no connection to the world she was used to. She sat down on the driver’s seat again. What if Vicky had left her here? How would she ever get back and why was she here in the first place? She turned on the radio. Vicky had adjusted the station and now some “Chill Beats” channel was on she didn’t know. The small screen showed that the title of the song playing was “Equinox” by one “Chris Mazuera”. She wanted to switch stations back, but the song had spoken samples, and one of the voices said “Wait a minute”, so she stopped and looked straight ahead at the rising sun. The trees casted long shadows towards her. “You know that they’re out there, don’t you?”, the voice said. She stared into the forest, then looked down at herself. A white blouse, dark blue, ironed trousers and high heels, just like they wanted her back at the editorial department. Just her make-up and her perfectly braided hair had suffered. She untied her hair, washed off the make-up with water out of a water bottle she had also bought yesterday at the gas station, and changed into a hoodie and blue jeans. She had not brought any other shoes and the high heels had caused some big blisters on her feet. She kicked them off, picked up one of them, ran a few feet and threw it into the forest with a mix of anger and entertainment. When she turned around, Vicky stood next to the car wielding a paper bag. “I brought some breakfast.”, she yelled. “And also you seem like you wanna talk now???”

They spent the whole day near the forest, watching nature silently or talking about the clouds or how the trees looked like bronchial tubes and basically did the same thing as lungs, but reversed. But they also talked about Sam’s past, the magazines she used to write articles for, even about Derek and Jessy. Vicky always listened carefully and didn’t interrupt Sam anymore, which also was a thing Sam thought about this day. Vicky only interrupted her, when she was being severely insecure or unconfident, as if she tried to discipline her into being more confident. Vicky was mysterious to her, wise, unique.

As the sun set and stars began to show, they continued their journey. Vicky sat on the passenger’s seat again, her seat leaned back, and it was her turn to sleep. Sam had given her the blanket and now she was properly tucked in. Sam just drove, she still had no destination and just gazed into the stars, but this time she was happy. She didn’t know why. On the side of the road was a signpost, that to less important matters told her that she was somewhere in the state of Kentucky, but as she followed it with her eyes, they got stuck on the cutely tucked in Vicky. She watched her breathe softly and her eyes move under her eyelids. “Cherry blossom” by Lana Del Rey was on the radio. As the lyrics “What you don’t tell no one, you can tell me” came on, Sam caught herself smiling and her body felt intoxicated, it was almost like… A fright went through her body, that made her stop smiling. She held onto the steering wheel, her heart pounding and feeling hot. “But it isn’t possible to fall in love with someone that quickly”, she thought, “and I’m not a lesbian.” 

She drove two more hours and then parked on the side of another field. The landscape was getting hillier, but there was still a forest nearby. She also leaned her seat back and tried to sleep facing Vicky’s direction. And then it hit her. What if Vicky was an angel? She sat up and looked at the dented metal of her car hood again. Would a normal human have survived being run over by her without any injury? Would a normal human know how to take her to places that make her feel better? She actually didn’t know. All of this was so disconcerting and new to her, that Vicky being an angel would be close to the only reasonable explanation for this.

While these thoughts were clouding her brain, she slowly became very tired and eventually fell asleep.

The smell of coffee woke her up again. God knows where Vicky had got that from. She sat up and Vicky handed her a to-go cup. “Thanks”, she mumbled. 

“How are you feeling?”, Vicky asked.

“Better. I mean, like… I don’t feel like I’m at rock bottom anymore. Which is strange, because as far as I know, I am.”

“No, believe me, you’re not. You just lost your job, are about to be out of money and don’t know whether you have living relatives. That’s far from rock bottom.”
“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. Anyway, what do you wanna do today? I mean, apart from writing applications.”

“Alright, what did you do?”

“I rented a laptop and looked for jobs that include article-writing stuff.”

“You rented a laptop?”

“Yeah, apparently you can do that.” She handed Sam a croissant in a paper bag and then grabbed the laptop that had been on the backseat. “I just need your email.”

And then, with Vicky’s help, Sam just wrote three letters of application and a CV, which she sent to three different, new editorial departments, just like that. The photo they just took from her phone’s gallery. She didn’t think that she was qualified enough to apply to any of these three yet, but Vicky’s unshakable confidence at least made it sound like she was. 

After they brought back the laptop, they took a midday walk through the little village Sam had parked nearby, because there was a small funfair. The carousels spinning fast, the bell of the strength-meter you could slam a hammer onto, the people talking and the children screaming and laughing gave Sam a weird feeling of friendliness. It was not like those big fairs in the city, with all the neon lights and the people binge drinking and throwing up at night, where you could expect a couple making out behind almost every hot dog stand. It was not like Sam wanted to stay here forever. But it showed her that the world could indeed be different. She went back to the car with Vicky in the evening feeling nostalgic and hopeful.

Vicky had bought a big cloud of cotton candy on a stick and was eating it now, sitting on the dented car hood with Sam and looking at the sunset. Sam thought it looked kind of cute, but she wasn’t planning on telling Vicky. She just enjoyed the calm moment, the nature and the pretty lighting because of the sunset. 

“How do I deserve this?”, she said. 

“Good question, huh”, Vicky answered. “Let’s just say you were given the weird honor of being a living thing on this earth.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look at it this way. How big is the universe? It’s infinite. Probably. Humans can’t know, because they’re too dumb, but they assume that it is always expanding. The probability of there being life on any star or planet is so low, that you can probably say that over 100% of the universe is lifeless. Because it is expanding, you can’t define the universe as a whole, so that’s how it is possible that it’s over 100% lifeless. Okay?” She bit into her cotton candy. Sam nodded unsurely. Vicky continued. “But yet you’re sitting here, right in front of me, pretty damn alive, without even knowing how big of a deal it is, that you’re alive! You have been given a gift. It is called life. And you have been given this gift only once. So do something with it. It’s an honor. And know that, even if you lose all your money, your limbs or your home, you still have more that 100% of what the universe has. You get to experience nature, other living things, love, beauty, senses… You would dishonor the universe and nature, the two greatest and biggest things there are, by not making the best of your life. Existence is the greatest gift anyone can be given.”

Sam was rocked to the core by this. She just sat there for a long time, thinking about Vicky’s words.

“Could this be how people came up with religions? They looked for something or someone that gave them this gift of existence, and felt like they owed them infinite thankfulness for that gift?”, she finally said.

“Who knows, perhaps.”

Sam looked at the last few dark red sunbeams over the horizon and felt a tear run down her cheek, because the world had never seemed as beautiful to her as it did right now. The wind blowing in her face suddenly felt different than it did before.

“Shall we go? I’ll drive again.” Vicky smiled at her. She had finished her cotton candy.

Sam nodded and sat on the passenger’s seat and later, after a short stop, she laid on the back seats again, looking at the stars through the window and eventually falling asleep happily.

She dreamt of Vicky this time. In her dream, Vicky was a DJ at a small fair in a village, but she came down from her podium after a while, dancing with Sam, and after the last song sounded out at 3am, they went out to the big field with the forest, where they found her high heel lying in the ditch, and they laughed. Then Vicky said “You’re ready now. I’ll see you when you need me again.” and vanished into the woods, smiling back at her. 

This was when Sam was woken up by a car honking and speeding by hers. She looked up, her car was standing and Vicky was nowhere to be seen. She looked out of the window and it took her a moment to realize that she was back home. The small street was still the same and it was like she had never left. 

She never got to find out how Vicky had managed to drive her from Kentucky back to Alabama in a short night. But there was a croissant in a paper bag lying on the passenger’s seat and on her phone she saw that an email had arrived: An editorial department in Montgomery invited her to a job interview.