Potpourri of Tales

2. Shining Through His Broken Pieces

A child crouched alone in a cold, dark room, hugging his knees to his chest and staring into the abyss of despair. Shivering from the intense fear that clawed at his insides, he tried to understand what wrong he'd done to deserve this kind of damnation.

He desperately pleaded for mercy, but the callous door remained shut, as though it was impervious to his cries. Perhaps he was as good as mute, like those trees that fell in forests with no one around to hear. Or maybe the person on the other side was there... and choosing to leave him in this silent darkness.

He wasn't sure which would be worse.

Minutes passed. He fell silent, his throat dry.

Hours passed. His gaze grew blank, his eyes dry.

Perhaps even days had elapsed, he thought at his lowest point, through a muggy haze of half-delirium. Maybe he'd be here forever. Possibly time had frozen for everyone but him. Who knew...

But time hadn't frozen. Even in the chasm of desolation, time still advanced, albeit slowly. The child drew himself from his dazed stupor. Slowly, and deliberately, he folded up all the softest parts inside him, the parts that were wounded worst when the door had closed on him. He tucked these vulnerable pieces away somewhere safer, for they hurt too much when they were out in the open.

Eventually, the door flung open, and the child attained his freedom.

There was no trace of crying on his face. His cheeks were no longer wet, his eyes no longer red. But his gaze was cold, exposing the frost that bit at his soul.

Sent to the room by the person who was supposed to be his source of warmth and light, he no longer had the confidence in the verity of love. He stepped toward the unlatched door, distantly heartbroken, as a numbness took over.

And just like that, with each step forward, the child forever shut off the entrance to his heart.

Perhaps it was just in the nick of time that he learned to stop feeling. As the child grew up, things didn't get better, and he had to expend his energy on learning more practical matters instead.

In the cold place that should have been his home, he learned how to grow up quickly and independently. He learned to patch his own wounds, physical or emotional, as best as a child could. He learned to float away from his own body and shut down his brain whenever they locked him in the room.

And at school, he learned to be distrustful of his peers' sunny smiles, for he never had any of his own. His smiles had lost their ability to reach his eyes, and in time, no one noticed the difference because they'd never seen any different from him. He kept to himself, mostly, and learned how to strike up superficial friendships to survive. But no one knew his heart, and sometimes he wasn't even sure if he had one at all.

The one not-so-practical thing he allowed himself to indulge in was mindless doodling; because paper and pencil were abundant, and when his insides were choked up with ink-black pain, he could spew it onto a page until it was gone. He did it often enough that he got good at it. Then he did it well enough that people called it art.

In this way, he made it through his youth. No, his escape wasn't one of those grand displays of teenage rebellion in movies. He just scraped together some money from summer jobs and a few art commissions, and applied for student loans to make up the rest, and got himself to college.

He hadn't returned to his hometown since.

He was a young man now, graduated, pursuing his art—painting, now that he had the supplies for it—as a career because he wanted to live life his way and was an expert at subsisting on bare minimums. Still, in the interest of thrift, he shared an apartment with his roommate from college.