Contest Entries

A Ray of Happiness

Let me tell you something, folks.
It ain't easy being an umbrella.
There you sit, left by the door by humans who forget all about you until they need you. You can't even walk around! You just gotta sit put where the humans stick you, wether it be in the back of a car, stuffed away in a dusty closet, or propped up next to the door.
And don't even get me started on being used. It starts pouring out and humans just grab you up, shove you open, and hold you over them so they stay dry while you get soaked.
It puts one in a pretty foul mood. After all, it's hard to be all happy and joyful like the teapot, whistling away and always with that stupid grin. Nah, we umbrellas are almost always in a foul mood.
Yeah, that's right. I'm an umbrella. Just your plain old black umbrella, carelessly tossed on the floor by children who drop you in mud and forget to clean you off.
Whoop-dee-frickin-doo.
There weren't any bright spots in life for lil' old me. Just gloomy gray skies and dark clouds, cold and damp.
This particular day started out lovely. I'd been sitting in the back of the closet for about a month now, growing mold and housing spiders. Every day I amused myself by shouting profanities at the humans, or at least thinking them. It ain't easy living without a mouth.
As usual the door creaked open and I swore at the human, who started digging around while yelling over her shoulder about raincoats and rain boots and umbrellas. Out went to raincoats, tossed on the floor, followed by the boots, and then two pretty little umbrellas, their edges trimmed with pink lace.
More digging around and a hand closed around me, yanking me out of a mass of cobwebs and snapping me open in the brightly lit hallway, different from what I remembered. The paint was new and the furniture had been moved, plus the people I saw were different from the owners I used to have, leading me to wonder exactly how long I'd been forgotten in the closet.
On my grandiose exit I expelled shower of dust, causing the human woman and two young girl humans to start hacking, waving away dust. Instantly the two girls started whining.
You think you got it hard, kids? You ain't got nothing to be whining about. Now me, I got stuff to whine about. I've got a whole ocean full of things on whine about. But do you see me whining? Nope, I'm jus' happy-go-lucky me, stuck here in a dusty closet till you need me, and you have the nerve to whine about it?
I muttered to myself as the woman snapped me back closed, dropping me on the floor to help the kids put on their rain gear. Not an ounce of respect for poor me.
Now, you may be wondering how an umbrella such as me can see things. I'll take a moment to explain while that lady finishes torturing her kids.
I've never really talked to another inanimate object, since I don't have a mouth, so I don't know if the see the same way as I do. But pretty much I don't see so much as sense the things around me. For some reasons colors manage to appear to me as well, except red and blue, for some odd reason. And I don't got a brain, I just have a soul. Stuck in my handle, if you care to know. My soul is where everything happens, my sensing of things and my talking to myself.
Anyway, back to my adventure about to happen.
What's that?
Oh, yes, I said adventure. You didn't think I was going to drone on and on about my miserable life, did you?
Well I'm not. This is actually a story about an adventure. A somewhat unusual adventure.
So shut up and listen up.
Now, where was I?
Oh yes, a hallway with a woman and two girls.
Once the girls were all dressed, the woman handed them their pretty umbrellas, threw on a coat herself, and picked me up, throwing open the door at the end of the hallway to a gust of wind and rain.
Hustling the two girls out, the woman snapped me open again and I felt the strong wind tugging at me, whispering about the places it wished to take me like it always did. The wind was always very persuasive.
The girls were nearly tugged away by their own umbrellas, and then the woman was bustling them in to the car waiting in the driveway and set about closing me, before the strongest gust yet grabbed me and yanked me through the air, leaving the last stomping and shouting something.
The wind whispered to me of Peru, which sounded nice but a bit far, and then New York City, which was to much of a bustle, before settling on Washington, DC. There an honest umbrella might find a bit of status in some high state officials home or closet, the wind whispered to me, or even might become an umbrella for the president.
I spun through the air, carried by the wind, rain brutally beating on me and houses passing by below me. With the wind telling me all about how my new life would be in Washington, DC, I didn't even feel as grumpy as I usually did.
At least until the wind forgot about me, as it was, and dropped me in a gutter.
Instantly I started cursing again, feeling human feet troding on me and leaves clinging to me. Wonderful, just wonderful. I might as well be relaxing on a beach in Florida for all the comfort I was in.
I don't know how long I sat there, people not bothering to pick me up and just stepping on me, before a hand wrapped around my well-worn handle and I was lifted up by a stooped over old man, gray hair and beard tangled and his eyes filled with sadness. The clothes he wore were tattered and he was shivering.
Finally, someone as miserable as me.
The man lifted me up against the wind, hurrying towards a dirty alley and following it to an even dirtier alley, then through more and more alleys, until he suddenly plopped down on a tarp, lifting it and a blanket and wrapping it around himself, then using me to block the cold wind and rain.
For some reason, instead of anger I felt pity for the poor man who was stuck in an alley during a rainstorm as bad as this. I tried to position myself the best way possible to keep this man from getting soaked, suddenly glad that I was as large as I was and sturdy as I was.
The sky grew dark and the man started snoring, his shivering subsiding. I kept watch over him till the sun began to rise again, and the rain slowly let off until it was more of a drizzle.
The man woke with a start and stood up, rubbing his face and yawning as he wrapped the tarp back around his blanket and set it down. Once again he hoisted me up and set off through the maze of alleys, emerging on a busy sidewalk filled with people going to and fro.
He seemed to have a destination in mind, not hesitating as he turned right and set off at a quick walk, carefully avoiding the other people. With the wind growing more silent and the rain simply gently falling on me, one might even think of this as a pleasant stroll.
Now now, none of that. You've got a reputation to keep up, you can't go getting soft.
I scolded myself and shifted just a little so the rain dripped down on to the man's face. The way he shivered and blinked wearily made me feel sorry through and through, though, and I quickly moved back.
Was I getting sentimental in my old age? Never before had I had an attachment to a human, not in all my long years of being in service to the ungrateful lot. But this human was different, right from the start.
I grumbled and tried to focus on the fact that the sky was still covered in gray clouds, and a bird and just pooed on me. But for some reason that couldn't drown out the feeling in my soul- the feeling that finally I was what I had always been meant to be. That this was what I had been created for.
So life settled in to a routine, with my human (as I now affectionately called him) keeping me close. Even when it wasn't raining, he'd carry me and use me as a sort of cane, allowing me to get a wonderful view of the world when it wasn't pouring out.
As weeks passed I noticed that my human would go to run-down places here and there, see someone who seemed to be in charge, and speak to them. The person he spoke to always wound up shaking their head and saying sorry, though few of them ever truly looked sorry.
My human was trying to get a job.
I was finding out a lot about him. He had a doctorate in some type of computer programming or something, and was quite a lot smarter than he looked. But a few years back he had gotten laid off from his high position at a well known place, on account of him getting old. Then he lost his house, and in turn his wife, who left him. With no one to turn to he was cast out on the streets, and now he was trying to make a little money for food or warmer blankets.
It darkened my soul, seeing my human like this. The poor man needed someone to look after him.
So when one day, with rain pouring again and the wind strong, as we passed a graveyard where a funeral was being held, I decided to take matters into my own hands- not that I had hands.
Carefully I tugged my human towards the somber funeral goers, dressed in black with umbrellas of their own. Of course my human didn't let go of me, and I led him towards the sound of sobbing coming from a copse of trees not far from the freshly dug up dirt and wooden casket about to be lowered in to the hole.
Finally I had positioned my human close enough to the copse that he could now hear the sound to, and I waited to see what he would do. At first he hesitated, but as I had guessed his kind heart took over and he headed for the trees.
Under boughs of pine, an umbrella dropped at his side, was a handsome young man dressed in stylish black clothes. His whole figure screamed rich, and once again my human hesitated, and once again he stepped forward and crouched by the young man.
"Good friend of yours?" My human mumbled sympathetically, and the young man jerked upright and stared at my human, surprised. He quickly recovered his senses and pulled a silk handkerchief out of his pocket, carefully dabbing at his eyes.
"My father in fact," the man said, his voice cracking. The silk wasn't helping to dry up his tears and my human hurriedly dug around in his own pockets, shamefully pulling out a wrinkled and worn handkerchief, though it was clean. The man seemed to see this and gratefully accepted it, his shoulders shaking as fresh tears ran down his cheeks.
"I'm sorry, lad." My human stared at the ground, his voice soft but full of emotion. The young man simply shrugged, and continued crying into the hanky.
After a few moments my human must have finally mustered up the courage to hug the young man, and he did, wrapping his arms around the lad and pulling him close.
I don't know how long we sat under those trees, me doing a careful job to keep my human and the young man dry, but soon enough the two of them got talking, about how the young man was starting out a company and had been looking for a skilled computer programmer for some time. Since he was young, though, almost no one was truly willing to work for or with him, and he'd nearly given up when he'd met a group of people who wished to help him. But still none of them were a computer programmer, and that was essential to the business.
Now, you may laugh and say it's ridiculous that I managed to lead my human right to that guy. But I tell you, fate is a funny thing. It twists things and pulls things along, and I'd been pretty darned close to fate for a long time. After all, it was the thing pulling me along.
So, many years later, when my human had sadly passed on and the young man, who my human had treated like a son and who had given my human a good life and plenty of love, grew his business into a formidable company, until he was well known across America. I had been hung on the wall in the main foyer of the main building, with large windows in front of me so I could see the sky in all its different ways. Though I didn't get taken out much, the view was enough to make me happy. And the plaque beneath me, which said "In Loving Memory of my good friend, Alan Banderman, without whom my dreams would have never come true", as well as the young man, now slightly older, telling visitors about how Alan would carry me around almost everywhere, rain or shine, and about how Alan believed that I had led him to the young man just when he was almost out of hope (crazy, right? Who would believe that nonsense?) made me the happiest umbrella in the world, no doubt.
No longer was I grumpy and growing mold. Now I was happy and aired out.
So maybe being an umbrella isn't so bad, as long as you let fate lead you, and follow the footsteps of destiny. If you truly believe that everything will turn out all right-
Well, what's to keep it from turning out well but you yourself?