FICTION
The Mountain to Mohammed
by E. C. Myers
The trip was a mistake. They probably should have called it off, but Casey's father thought it would be good for him and Casey to get away for a day, as though either of them could forget for a moment that Tom wasn't with them. Tom had looked forward to the trip to Jones Beach more than anyone — he wanted to see the ocean, to swim in it, to build castles in the sand.
Casey's father risked a glance at his son before flicking his eyes back to the road. Casey had a large Styrofoam cup cradled between his knees, one hand clamped over the plastic lid. His father cleared his dry throat.
"Aren't you done with that soda yet?" Casey ignored him and continued to stare out the window as they passed stretches of wheat fields.
"It's probably gone flat by now," his father muttered. Casey clutched the cup tighter. His father was thirsty, but he knew that there was no point in asking for a sip. He shrugged and went back to worrying about Tom.
When they returned home, Casey submitted to a hug from his mother before racing upstairs and locking himself in his room. He placed the cup carefully on his desk and lay in his bed with his sneakers on. When his mother called him to dinner and his father knocked a while later, he ignored them.
Shortly after his parents went to sleep, he crawled out of bed, tucked the cup in the crook of his arm, and slipped quietly down the hall to Tom's room. He entered and paused as he always did, feeling his throat tighten as he saw his brother's prone body in the bed.
"What are you doing in here, squirt?" Tom wheezed. He coughed then spoke in a raspy whisper. "How was the beach? Dad said I didn't miss much." His eyes said that he didn't believe it.
"Close your eyes," Casey whispered. He approached the bed and when Tom protested Casey placed his fingers on his eyelids and forced them closed.
"You shouldn't be in here," Tom said.
"Neither should you," Casey replied. He took his sneakers off and turned them upside down over Tom's wool blanket. Fine white sand cascaded from them and formed a mound.
"What are you doing?" Tom asked, but his eyes remained closed. Casey retrieved an extra bedpan from the nighttable then placed it beside the sand. Tom's body trembled with a cough but he kept his lips tightly sealed. Casey poured the contents of the Styrofoam cup into the pan with a gentle slosh then fished in his pocket for the seashell. He held it against Tom's right ear.
"Open your eyes," he said.
Tom smiled when he saw the miniature beach Casey had created for him. He ran his fingers through the grains of sand and splashed them in the shallow water.
"It's the sea," Casey said proudly.
Tom brought wet fingertips to his lips. "It tastes like tears," he said.
E. C. Myers struggles to stay awake in the city that never sleeps. The products of his nocturnal writing have appeared in various places, including Flash Me Magazine, Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies, and From the Asylum. He is a graduate of the 2005 Clarion West Writers Workshop, where he learned the real meaning of "sleepless in Seattle."
Copyright 2006, Eugene Myers