Cyrus

Have you ever had an English teacher who forces you to delve into every little bit of symbolism in a piece of work? How the solitary tree in the middle of a field stands for 'the character's sense of alone-ness and need to stand guard over his family...' or something to that extent. Have you also ever just wondered if the tree was just supposed to be there for shade?

My thoughts upon completing this story ran along the lines of, "Ha! Let's see them figure out the symbolism in that!"

...Mostly because I haven't a clue what it's supposed to mean myself. 

Make of it what you will.

Cyrus always wore his backpack. Aside from that, there was never anything unusual about him. He was a tallish blonde boy, with gray-blue eyes, a cheerful face, and a sense of style that was somewhere between a Victorian gentleman and an English professor. The backpack was an old, ratty, black nylon thing with a golden star sewn crookedly on the front pouch, with a zippered pocket on either side, a small pouch for books in front, and one main pouch that fastened with a buckle. He never went anywhere without it, and there was something alive (or very close to being alive) inside it.

No one had ever seen the thing in Cyrus' bag. Not properly, anyway. People heard it from time to time--vague growling, squeaking, and shrieking noises that echoed in a way they shouldn't have--but no one had ever seen what the thing actually looked like. When asked, Cyrus always replied that it appeared exactly the way you would think it would and left it at that. Whether that meant what one would think it meant (or not) is unclear. 

Cyrus brought his backpack and the thing inside it to school on the first day he arrived in my hometown. One of the teachers asked him to put it in his locker, and he refused. The thing itself then demanded, in whatever gargling, roaring, squeaking language that it spoke, to be allowed to stay. The teacher said no more on the matter, and rumor has it that an e-mail was sent around warning all teachers to leave the backpack alone.

I sat with Cyrus at the lunch table and we talked about video games. From time to time Cyrus threw and apple core or one of the less identifiable chunks from the school meatloaf into the bag, and they would disappear with a satisfied smacking sound. I asked him if I could try, and he said I could. I threw in the top bun off my hamburger, and I snuck a quick peek into the mouth of the bag when Cyrus opened it for me. All I could see were two golden pinpoints of light with dark slits down their middles. I asked Cyrus if they were eyes, and he told me they were exactly what I thought they were. I didn't know if that meant yes or no, but I do know that, if they were indeed eyes, the rest of the animal that belonged to them would be far too big to fit inside that bag. 

Cyrus never took off the bag. He would have worn it to his dying day, if he'd ever died, but for whatever reason, he's gone on living for two hundred years now since I met him. I'm long-dead now, of course, but I still see him from time to time, walking down the street in his Victorian/English professor outfit and with the even rattier black backpack with the golden star hung over his shoulder. There is still but one person in the universe who knows what's actually in that bag, and he will never tell anyone for as long as he fails to die (which, I suspect, is forever). 

THE END

Yeah, studyhall. 

Happy Reading!

S.R. Koch