#skatingwhump

That landing was effortless, Roman thought to himself, beaming with pride as he looked to his skater mates hanging out on top of the mini vert, who applauded.

“Nice job, Roman, but we’re gonna bounce.” Shouted one of the onlookers. And after a pause: “you coming?”

He thought about it for a second, his eyes wandering up to the fluffy white clouds that hugged the baby blue horizon. “Nah too nice a day.”

“Too damn hot is more like it,” chuckled his excited viewers, leaving the concrete park and the loan skater to their own devices.

Roman shrugged his shoulders as he watched his friends disappear behind the tattered gate. A rusted sign read; ‘KEEP OUT unless the gate is unlocked’. Not that that stopped kids breaking in, anyways. Roman took his board to the top of the park and let the sun melt into his clothes, his arms, his face. What a truly magnificent afternoon it was. This was his favorite kind of weather: in the dead of summer, with humidity and heat pounding into him like rain on asphalt.

The town all around him looked like it was straight out of the darkest part of Hollywood. The streets were littered with people and trash, and all around the buildings were carved out of stone and built out of brick. The look achieved was somewhat old, like a western film plopped into the middle of the mountains. Boom Town was a place old people moved to and young people moved from. As soon as the students graduated from the dilapidated high school, they hit the road and hoped to never return. As it was, many that graduated later described a supernatural- like pull that led them home. Roman didn’t believe it for a second and knew that as soon as he left, he was never coming back.

He dropped his board on the hot concrete and rested his foot upon it, breathing the scalding air into his lungs. Hopping on his board, he let the wind flow through his hair as he took a couple of laps around the pipes, diagonals, and runs that had been carved into the hill above Boom Town. He was just getting started.

Roman tugged his board back to the top of the hill, already warmed up and ready to start practicing more tricks. His friends were long gone and he relished in the silence of the mountains. Here, the oly noise were the songbirds passing overhead in their playful circles, and the occasional rustle of the breeze in the pine trees above the skate park. Pretty soon, as summer turned into fall, thousands of honking geese would disturb the silence; but not now.

As Roman cruised the drop, he hooked his board with his toe and flipped it, landing hard but safely. Cruising up the other side, and coming to a stop at the top, Roman couldn’t help but glue a wide smile to his face. This was what he was meant to do. There was no purpose, in this moment, other than the connection between his feet and the graffiti board.

Tipping his torso and his board forward once more, Roman soared down the halfpipe. He flipped his board at the bottom, and while the jump had been smooth, the landing was anything but. Catching a crack that had long been in need of repair, Roman spun out of control quickly. One moment he was flying, and the next he was lying on the ground, his cheek pressed into the hard asphalt, pain sizzling up and down the right side of his body. His board was completely still, lying on its side a couple of feet away. He blinked.

Must’ve blacked out, he thought, slowly urging himself to sit. How long had it been? A minute, max. He rubbed his head and winced when his hand brushed his cheek. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he examined his face with care. It looked worse than it was, he told himself. There were a couple of long, shallow scratches stretching from his cheekbone to just below the corner of his mouth, and already a dark welt was forming near his eye. It was beginning to swell, too.

Roman examined his arm and leg, too, which both had a series of deep cuts running along them. They were painful, but even so Roman forced himself to stand. As he righted himself, dark spots took over his vision, and he swayed, struggling to stay upright. Come on, Roman, it’s not that bad. Don’t be such a girl.  He tightened his jaw and walked slowly to his board.

He picked it up.

Tenderly scraping the dust off of the wheels and the top, he then proceeded to make his way again to the top of the halfpipe. He breathed in. Out. He let the hot air wash over him like a wave of steam. He let the pain roll off of him in vibrational waves. He let the birdsong enter his mind and cleanse it. He let the gritty texture of the board scrape against his arms and fingers. He let the breeze blow his blonde hair into his eyes and out again. He let the moment sink in. And then, he dropped his board to the concrete, fought through the sea of nausea, and rolled down the halfpipe at a leisurely pace.

Ahead, the gentle blue skies birthed ominous storm clouds.

When the rain started, Roman was halfway down the hill. The blood had been oozing out of his cuts steadily and showed few signs of stopping. His right eye had swollen deeply, and a plum purple color-tinted his eyelids and brow. The rain washed his sweat away.

Trying to stand upright while fighting the nausea that was rolling in his belly, he staggered downhill, which was a feat in itself. But feeling the cooling rain on his skin helped him feel more alive than he had a few minutes before. He glanced towards his destination; the parking lot at the foot of the hill, which seemed like an impossibly long journey.

Thoughts of how he was going to get home without having to explain what happened to him were haunting him. These tremulous ideas, which included questions of how to call his friends for a ride, were interrupted as a familiar guitar rift erupted from the deep hidden cargo pocket on his shorts.

“My phone! I have my phone!” Reaching to his pant pocket and retrieving the ringing device he couldn’t tell if his legs gave out, or if he had tripped over his own feet. Regardless, the grassy incline came up to meet him, and the feeling of falling and rolling downwards was all he knew before his world once again went black.

Pain greeted him as consciousness slowly returned, followed by his internal alarm system. The shooting pressure in his chest signaled warning signs that screamed: “I can’t breathe!” Thrashing about on the hard ground, he rolled himself onto his side with the little energy he had left. Gasping as the air returned to his lungs and the red hot pain in his body receded, Roman rested his heavy head on the grass and closed his eyes. Maybe the crash had been a little bit worse than he had originally thought.

With a crash, the nausea returned to his stomach, eliminating any relief he had felt moments before. Roman groaned and crawled to his feet, swaying, then steadying himself carefully. I have to get home. Thoughts pushed his feet forward.

The rain fell faster.

Every beat against him was like an echo of his racing heart. Even when he thought it impossible for his heart to beat louder, or faster, it would. Faster. Louder. Louder, faster. Fasterfasterfaster it seemed to race as Roman picked his way down the hill. The hill seemed to stretch out before him forever, the parking lot continuously running away from his reach.

Finally, he arrived, breathing heavily, his body’s sweat masked by the pouring rain. Thunder cracked. Moments later, lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the darkened streets with an eerie glow. His house, only blocks away from the skate park, seemed like miles away as Roman wandered down the twisting streets. Nobody was outside, the windows were all shut and the curtains tightly drawn. Even the trash that littered the streets seemed to rest in silent fury, watching Roman as he passed slowly by.

His house was the third one down the street, on the left, tucked between a towering square right house and a dilapidated wooden house, whose paint job had chipped long ago, and in which no one lived inside. Walking up the steps, Roman caught himself on the railing, dizzy. His head swam as he retrieved the key from under the carpet and unlocked the door.

Safe from the torrential downpour outside, Roman shook his head free of raindrops and pulled off his shoes. His board he deposited in the entryway, and silently he tiptoed to his room. Nobody else was home. He hoped.

Using all the effort he could muster, Roman crawled his way up to the second floor. A wave of dizziness nearly overwhelmed him as he reached the top. Just barely catching himself on the railing, Roman hunched over himself, his breath heaving, fighting the urge to throw up.

Letting the wave a nausea pass, Roman slowly found his way to the half bath near his room. Still not positive if anybody was home, Roman made sure to make as little noise as possible as he closed and locked the bathroom door behind him. Roman gently eased the bathroom door shut, and in the pitch black of the room, he reached blindly for the light switch. Managing to stub his toe soundly on the vanity cabinet along the way, he doubled over in pain again, groaning, once again resisting the overwhelming urge to uproot his insides.

Cursing under his breath, Roman managed to locate the light switch. The bathroom instantly illuminated in a blinding light. Closing his eyes and keeping them screwed shut, Roman supported himself on the bathroom counter and blindly searched for bath cloths and bandages for his cuts and bruises. Slowly, Roman drew his t-shirt over his face, dropping it in a bloody pile on the bathroom floor. Opening the mirror cabinet, he reached for the largest bottle of painkilling medicine, downing five of them in one large swallow.

Turning, Roman tried to look at the wounds on his arm in the mirror. Wincing, Roman uncapped the hydrogen peroxide bottle and poured it down his arm. It flowed into the semi-coagulated scrapes, causing small shooting pains to dig into his body. He grunted, clenching his teeth and doing his best to focus on anything but the pain. Roman cursed out loud, and then clenched his jaw. He had forgotten to remain quiet, and hoped to God no one was home.