Pebbles: A Collection of Short Stories

Gaia Gardens

Pablo Picasso once said, "everything you can imagine is real." My mom once said, "there is nothing under your bed; now go to sleep." Ok, my mom said that often. I always found these two ideas to contradict each other and made me second guess my perception of everything.

I am not as neurotic as that sounds. Well, maybe I am, but when I moved into my apartment as I started at a local university, things started to change—the best thing about an apartment; one door. Even better, I was on the second floor, so it was unlikely that anyone would be climbing in my windows. It made it much easier to sleep when there was only one point of course entry, even with my neurosis.

Things were looking up, but as I started classes, people had an unusual reaction to my building. "Oh, Gaia Gardens," they would say wide-eyed. No one would elaborate more, so of course, my imagination swirled. I began to obsessively Google my address expecting to find a serial killer's or cult's horror story, but my searching yielded nothing. It was an actual black hole, which felt even more unsettling.

Finally, I cornered a meek boy in my Greek Mythology class. Through frightening squeaks, he divulged silly rumors that Gaia Gardens was home to the Gods of Ancient Greece. He was mocking me and too lazy to tell a better story than the literal subject matter that surrounded us.

When I returned home, I was still glowering, content to hunker down in my bed and ignore the world, but my walls were rattling from the music blasting from the unit next door, dashing my cozy plans. I banged on the door to both slice through the volume of the music and make my lousy mood known.

He opened the door casually and, from the look, casual was the only way he could do anything. He leaned against the entrance looking like an effortless rockstar as the music continued to pound around him. My eyes naturally squinted as though looking at him was like looking directly at the sun. "Hello." His tone dripped with poetic verse.

"Loud." I managed to mumble only to elicit a rhythmic laugh from his lips.

As though drawn to my failing attempt, a voice called out from the hall behind me, "turn the damn music down, Lo, you're making the whole building vibrate."

"Oh, Arty, always the protector." Lo scowled.

"You'll have to excuse my twin; he never learned how to treat a lady." She flicked his forehead as she passed. She was his polar opposite; if he were the sun, she was the moon, intense and mysterious.

I backed away wide-eyed as they continued to bicker in the open doorway. Twins, Lo & Arty, one was exuding rockstar creativity and the other the personification of wilderness and feminism. Were these the famed twins, Apollo and Artemis, of Ancient Greek somehow living in 2B? Everything you can imagine is real.