Judgement and Wisdom by Jack Nudel (best contemporary novels .txt) 📕

Johnny's glimpse into the Future

Johnny was walking along a path in the forest. He had left his whiny sister behind. Sisters, they are a pain, he thought; always watching not to scuff their little shoes. Don’t get your hair messed up. Don’t soil your dress. Frogs and tadpoles are icky. Girls can’t climb trees and they are always afraid they’ll get lost. So, he was very happy when today his mother took his little sister to play with their cousin Emily.

Jonny knows this path leading into the forest in the back of his house. He is familiar with every twist and turn; every little hill and every rock. This is the place where he can let his imagination run free. He crouches down and examines every little creepy-crawly he finds along the way.
This is exactly what he was doing on this sunny Sunday afternoon. He is meandering through the winding path as usual. Slowly it dawns on him that something is different. These are not the same trees that he knows. The little hills and rocks look different. He has never seen so many different colors. He stands up on a rock and reaches out to examine a tree branch and just as he touches the branch the rock tilts to one side and he slides down and he continues to slide until he hits bottom and lands on his bum. For some strange reason he isn’t frightened. He gets up, dusts himself off and begins to look around.

Unafraid, he begins to stroll through this strange place. As he continues to stroll down the winding path, he hears some leaves rustling. He turns quickly to look but he doesn’t see anything. He continues to stroll down the path. There’s that noise again. This time he turns around faster and out of the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of a strange looking creature just as it disappears again, behind another bush. He is not frightened. Johnny doesn’t frighten easily. As he continues walking, he begins to feel a strange sensation all over his body. He looks down and his feet appear to be bigger. Not only are his feet bigger, but, his legs are longer too. Then, he notices his reflection in a nearby puddle of water and he is very much surprised. The reflection is that of a young man.

A strange looking creature jumps out of the bushes and stands in front of him, blocking his path. Still Johnny is not frightened. He stands his ground and looks at the creature in front of him. It is not very big. It’s about the size of a sheep. It stands on two legs and has two hands like regular people but the rest of it is covered in wool-just like a sheep. Its head is the strangest of all. It’s shaped like a large watermelon. It has three large eyes running vertically instead of horizontally. Its nose looks like a door knob. Its mouth is like a jack-o-lantern and on top are two little horns.

It begins to speak with a raspy voice. The jack-o-lantern mouth doesn’t move, yet he could hear him speak. “You have no doubt noticed by now that you look different. That is because you have tumbled into a time warp. There are many different paths that fork off this road. Walk with caution and deliberate carefully before you choose a path. At the entrance to each path you will be shown what’s at the end of the path but none of the obstacles you’ll have to overcome to get there. Each time you decide that you don’t want to continue on the path you can decide to go back but that will present you different obstacles than what you encountered on the way in. The further you go down the path it becomes more and more difficult to go back.

"You must use your Wis-dom and Judge-ment in order to decide which path to take.”
As the creature spoke its three eyes sparkled. Then, it was silent and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Johnny walks over to the place where the creature was standing. He checks behind the shrubs and trees; nothing. He goes back on the trail and stands perplexed for a few minutes. Suddenly he hears,

“Hello Johnny, I’m glad to meet you.” Johnny turns around and sees a man dressed in a pin striped suit and necktie. He is immaculately groomed, right down to his finger nails. “I’ve been waiting for you. I will be your guide through this part of your journey. Please follow me.”

Johnny looks carefully at the man. He appears to be neatly dressed and well groomed. Johnny follows cautiously. They walk a short distance through the path leading into the forest.

Suddenly, there is a clearing. The man beckons to Johnny, waving him on to walk quicker. As Johnny steps into the clearing there’s burst of thunder and lightning and Johnny and the man are picked up by a twister and carried through a funnel, twisting and turning for what to Johnny feels like an eternity. Then, just as abruptly, the twister dropped them in the middle of a busy side walk of a large city.

The man dusts himself off and beckons to Johnny to follow. He walks quickly so that Johnny has to practically run to keep up with him. They go through a turnstile of a glass door of very large office building into an elevator that carries them up to the seventeenth floor. When the elevator door opens, Johnny is confronted by the strangest view he has ever seen.

It’s a very large place, with rows and rows of fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. There are people sitting behind rows and rows of desks starring into boxes that give off a strange blue light that flickers over the their faces. Every now and then an automated trolley drives up to each desk and dumps stacks of paper onto it. The people take papers from the stacks and put them closer, then looking at the paper; they use their fingers as if they were playing on a piano keyboard.

The man turns to Johnny and says, “You must use your wis-dom and judge-ment. Stay in school as long as you can and study hard. If you don’t stay in school, you’ll become a drop-out. These people are all drop-outs. If you don’t stay in school, you will end up in a place like this and become like one of these lucky people.”

Johnny turns to the man and stammers,

“But...but I want to go back to my world. I haven’t examined all its beautiful creepy crawlies and all the colourful leaves on the trees.”

The man turns to Johnny and says,

“You’re past that now. You cannot go back. You have wis-dom and judge-ment now.”
Johnny starts to sweat, his heart is racing and he screams a silent scream. He yells as loud as he can. But, no one is paying any attention to him.

Johnny feels the wet tongue of Buster. He is slobbering all over his face and hears his sister’s voice...

“Johnny...Johnny....wake up, wake up. Did you fall asleep? Your knees are scraped. You must have tripped over this rock and knocked yourself out.” Johnny felt the bump on his head and winced, “ouch”.

As Johnny, Buster, and his sister are walking back home, Johnny hears the man’s warning in his head.
“Stay in school.... Stay in school......” over and over and over.

Publication Date: 11-14-2010

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