His eyes were filled
with glitter.
He would trot down the
road, turning his sparkly gaze on anything in his path. The trees, so tall and
colourful, would fall victim to the rays of his luminescent eyes. He would see
giraffes with manes, swaying with the wind.
The cars would become
giant beetles, the houses were space ships, the people were pirates and
ballerinas and astronauts and presidents.
Everything was his and
his alone. He was the master of the world.
The adults didn't
understand though.
When he told his
teacher a tale of the alien he saw eating a banana on the way to school, she
simply frowned and asked him to wait outside. Assuming she wanted more details
on the alien, he complied, clutching his bag straps with dimpled knuckles.
She was less concerned
about the alien though, and more concerned about him. She took him the
Principal's office where they called his mother and father.
When his parents got
there, his teacher gave him a book and told him to wait outside. He did as he
was told, flipping through the pages and trailing his fingers over the
colourful pictures. After what seemed like a lifetime to his idle mind, the
door opened.
His mother came out
with teary eyes and picked him up, placing him on her hip. In the way that
mothers and their sons often do, they instinctively embraced each other. His
soft, young arms wound themselves around her neck, and her motherly embrace
tightened around him, holding him tightly to her chest. She asked him about his
tales. He saw no reason to lie and told her of the things he saw. He told her
about telling the other kids in his class. She got very teary at this point.
The Principal then
started using words like 'psychologist' and 'delusion' and 'recovery.' The
words scared him so he looked out the window and watched as the buildings
danced in the wind.
After that day, he
didn't go to school very often and when he did, the other kids would treat him
strangely. When he offered to tell a story, instead of jumping at the chance as
they once would have, they shied away and left him alone.
On the days he didn't
go to school, the lady in white would come and talk to him. He didn't know why
she always wore white. He thought that must get boring after a while.
She would ask him if he saw anything
unusual in the room, other than them. He told her he wasn't sure if the
lollipops stuck to the ceiling were unusual or not.
As the days wore on
and his mother started giving him pills with his breakfast, his eyes became
less and less filled with glitter. He no longer saw the pretty things as he
walked down the street. He saw ordinary people, spilling their coffee or
talking quickly into phones. He saw dull coloured cars with loud motors, and
grey buildings. The world was such an ugly place when you took out the patterns
and colours.
The boy grew as the
years passed. He got a haircut, his dimples faded, he was no longer chubby. In
the place of the young boy with a larger-than-life imagination, was a lanky,
moody teenager with headphones and snarky replies. His mother would try to talk
to him but he would simply put his headphones back on and ignore her. As his
world had darkened, so had he.
He didn't have many
friends at school, preferring to sit on his own at lunch. The teachers labelled
him antisocial and his grades, once nearly flawless, were slipping, swirling
down the drain with his morale and ambition.
The days grew long,
the nights even longer. Sleep eluded him and he was forced to analyse the
cruelties of life all night long, and god was he tired.
Day by day, he grew
sadder and sadder, angrier and angrier. He was fed up, he was livid, he was
melancholy. More than anything though, he missed the days when the trees would
sing and dance. They had stopped dancing, becoming more solitary with every pill
his mother gave him to swallow.
One night, as he sat
at his desk, contemplating the injustice of the educational system and drawing,
he felt a tear slide down his nose. Just one. And that opened the flood gates.
With no-one awake in his ghostly house to hear him, he sobbed heartily onto his
notepad. He was tired, so tired.
They had done it.
The world had broken
the sparkly eyed boy.
That was just a short story I threw together. Its kind of bittersweet, I think. Let me know what you thought below.
Until next time,
Jimmy xo
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