I haven't written anything for months. Not even a grocery list. But tonight, this story popped into my head and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it down. I guess you could call it fan-fiction...but for some reason the words "fan-fiction" give me the heebie-geebies. They bring to mind asthma-ridden 40 year old men wearing argyle socks with sandals that live in their mother's basements and spend their days in front of the computer, playing World of Warcraft and typing up fantasies about themselves stepping through their screens and entering the world of World of Warcraft. Anyway: this, essentially, is a vignette from Peter Pan's life after the book has ended: the lost boys have left with Wendy, the Pirates are all gone, and Tinkerbell is dead.
I'm a hypocrite, I know, as I have the compulsive habit of setting Peter Pan-knockoff-books on fire and feeding the ashes to whales so that they'll take them down down down to the depths of the sea, never to be seen again...but oh well.
Here goes.
A great crowing rent the air as the rusty scabbard went "thunk!" into the heart of the tree. Peter wrenched it out again and stood back to look at his handiwork. Hundreds of notches from the scabbard peppered the bark.
Peter frowned up at the tree. "Fight back!"
He waited a moment for the tree to retaliate. The tree did nothing. Peter stamped his foot. "Fight back, you coward!" Again, the tree did nothing. Peter breathed heavily for a moment. Then the boy flung himself at the trunk and pummeled every inch of the bark that he could reach.
"WHY WON'T YOU FIGHT ME?!" he yelled over and over, delivering punch after punch after punch to his indifferent foe until his fingers were scraped and bleeding and his voice was hoarse. He ran back a few paces and dropped to his knees to rub his sticky scarlet hands in the mud before taking a running leap towards the tree, trying to grab onto the branches and tear them down.
He fell face first onto the wet ground and did not bother getting up again. Hot tears filled his eyes and he let them fall. Silent sobs shook him.
And then...
"Boy! Why are you crying?"
With a gasp, Peter lurched to his feet, whipped around and cried out "Who's there?"
There was no answer. He cocked his head to the side, listening, before he took off into the trees, running as fast as he was able, his eyes wide and moving furtively, his dirty hands outstretched. He knew he'd heard those words before, but he couldn't remember where. He had to find them. He chased the words.
After a time, his pace slowed and his arms fell. Then he stopped altogether.
He was alone.
