There once was a person named Harold Norman. And he hated his name. It wasn’t that anyone picked on him for his name when he was younger, but every time he went in for an interview, people would be surprised to see he wasn’t the middle-aged white man his name implied he would be.
He couldn’t blame his parents for his name either. They had done him the benefit of choosing the more modern version of his name, even though they were centuries old. He didn’t know if he could have survived primary school with the name Hereweald.
Granted, humans were much more open to change now. When his family and many like them had revealed themselves to the world, they hadn’t been shunned as they would have been a mere twenty years earlier. There were a few stares and whispers every now and again, but their community adjusted quickly and quietly, which Harold appreciated.
Of course, he should have known the acceptance wouldn’t last. He had grown up in a small country town where everyone knew everyone and anything that happened got around town fast. But when he moved to New York for college, everything changed. Though there were the massive crowds to hide in, there were so many people there, from so many different walks of life, that he couldn’t have expected acceptance from all of them.
Harold sighed, straightened his tie, and headed out for another interview. He hoped this one would be the last before he could settle down and have a normal life.
As he was getting a little desperate to find a job now—a couple decades of living in his parents’ dungeons were more than enough to make anyone wish to seek escape—Harold had recently applied for an interview at the local used Gucci™ store. The advertisement for the job had only read:
Required to have “Broke Boi Mentality”
Harold did not understand this requirement, but as a very wise guru once said to him, “Fake it till you make it.” And so as he waited outside the tent in Central Park that was the local used Gucci store, he repeated this mentality to himself. Of course he was intimidated by the fellow interviewees, especially that one kid carrying 236 pickles, but nonetheless, he was going to get the job. There was no other option.
He stood in line, sweating profusely through his suit as he waited his turn for the interview. Having been at many, he knew this wasn’t how traditional interviews went, but he was desperate. For one thing, he rather enjoyed sunlight and fresh air, and he didn’t want to spend one more day in the damp dungeon that smelled of decay.
There was a commotion up ahead and Harold squinted at the tent. The teenager with all the pickles had dropped them all over the grass, and the woman hosting the interviews did not look amused. As soon as the kid picked up his pickles and stuffed them in his bag, she sent him packing.
The pickles weren’t the only thing that caught Harold’s eye, though. As the embarrassed kid fished his bag out of his pocket, something else peeked out—something that glittered turquoise in the afternoon sunlight.
Dropping his briefcase, Harold broke out into a run after the teenager.
You might be wondering, if Harold was so desperate to get a job, why abandon his last chance? Well, the reason is quite simple, after all it is the same reason he was living in his parent’s basement in the first place; he simply could not help himself. Harold despised the color turquoise with a passion. Rather than calm him down like the color would for others of his species, he would be sent into a rage that made him see turquoise.
And thus as he charged after the teenager, blood roaring in his ears. He didn’t just despise turquoise. Every time he saw any hint of that color, all he could think of was what happened that night he lost everything.
He’d been doing a lot better recently, too, with his anger. The only reason he’d been staying with his parents for the past fifty years was because the Council thought he was too dangerous to be free. What they didn’t know was that though he was still seething, he was also hurting and healing. He definitely regretted what he’d done when he was younger.
Harold slowed down, clutching his stomach and leaning against a tree. The teenager with the turquoise thing in his pocket had disappeared, and he took a deep breath. He could not fail this time.
He felt this strange desperation take hold of him and as he took in another deep breath it dawned on him that he only had one option left. Harold would have to revisit his mindscape to find the missing memories of his Tragic Backstory™. Only they held the answers to the retrieval of the stone. Afterall, everyone in the community knew that it was his mission that successfully retrieved the stone for the first time, but also where everything went wrong.
The Pass It Along Column is a collaborative, ongoing column featuring new writers each month. If you’re interested in contributing to the next segment of the story, email literary@ihstattler.com or come to the next Tattler Writers’ Meeting!