No Sunrise

Jarrett Callahan


Six am came around the corner, and the five year old boy awoke to a startling noise. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

“AHH!” He rolled over stretching and searching for the alarm to turn it off. Once he found the alarm clock he felt for the button that shuts the alarm off he laid there for a moment, wondering as he does every morning why it was so dark. Finally, he gets up, finds some clothes, and finds the zip for his tent. He unzips the tent and climbs out, realizing that it’s not even that cold out. He takes off his jacket and puts it on the picnic table beside the tent. After doing this, he walks over to his father’s tent and feels for the zipper to his tent. Once he finds it, he unzips it yelling in, “Hey, Dad! Wake up.”

“Ok be out in a second son,” the father says to the boy. He gets dressed and climbs out of his tent. The father then makes eggs and toast for breakfast. About 6:30, they sit down at the table to eat and watch the sun rise. About an hour passes and it’s still the same. No sun, nothing, just darkness. They continue to sit there for the next few hours. Hour after hour the boy asks, “When is the sun going to come up?”

His father replies, “When it wants to son.”

Finally, around nine o’clock, they start to get ready for bed. Before they go to bed though, the boy asks, “Dad, Why didn’t the sun come up today?”

“Maybe, it didn’t want to. Maybe, it was having a bad day son,” says the father.

“Do you think it will come up tomorrow, Dad?”

“If it feels like it.” The father then kisses his son good night, zips up the tent, and goes to climb in his own tent. He lies there for a moment thinking to himself, trying to figure out how to tell his son that he was blind.