NEW STATS INITIALISING...

STATS UPDATED

He was not completely awake, but not at the same time completely asleep; he was in a confused state, sometimes unthinking, sometimes imprinted with vivacious images of things that he had no memory of occurring. His stomach ached. At times, however, it was as though these things that he was dreaming of were in fact something that had happened; it was of people who knew him intimately, they spoke to him as though they had known him a great while. Then he would be a mere several inches away from the white, granular ceiling; the city and its inhabitants had vanished, and now only existed in the recesses of a forgotten experience at the back of his mind, stored there in some loose box in some dark corner of the abandoned stage; initially he tried to return to find it, to open it, to search desperately its contents; he had a feeling that it contained something important, something that he would perhaps give even his life for...

He cracked a smile. His life? Is he crazy?

Then he remembered someone, vaguely; was it a woman? Why? Who is she? Is she a teacher? He could not remember, and this frustrated him. He could not remember who the other woman was either, nor the men, nor where he was, nor the people around him. What was he doing in a hospital, in this classroom of grownups? He began to feel very scared, and it even showed up on his face despite not being much of a crier. The images in his head were like flickering candles cloistered together. He did not know for how long he had been lying there; nor did he know why he was lying there in the first place. And that – and that also he did not remember, but this forgetting strangely did not distress him. All it did, if it did anything, for, as has been said already, nothing appeared on his face to signify such dishevel, was make him feel as though not everything was quite just right. Then he tried to scream, would have looked around him, but a giant invisible weight upon his body prevented him, and he sank back into the mattress, into the world of imagination. Finally, he was brought back into the world.

It was one of those mornings where you could just know in your gut the exact hour. From the sunshine pouring in waves, sometimes too much, sometimes not enough, cut into thin pale sheets by the blinds, you could further tell that it was cold. There was a certain joy in the light, which hurled itself on the single strip of Winnie-the-Pooh wallpaper running along the wall and across the door. The world was not at all like the world from the nightmare. He was alone in his bedroom.

His room was crowded. He had just woken up in a place he felt vaguely unfamiliar with for some reason; he felt as though this was not his home even though rationally, intellectually, he had no evidence to the contrary. He looked down from the top bunk and saw that his large black computer was still there, sitting menacingly on the desk, connected to the wide black monitor which bore into him like a black hole wanting to suck him in forever. There was his old office chair... What did he mean by, ‘old’? His stepdad had only got it for him the other day... What did he mean by that? It was a long time ago – it felt like. Yes, everything felt so long ago. The layout of the room as well felt off to him somehow, but he could not quite place a finger on it. All of this deeply disturbed him.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and the back of his mother appeared first, followed by a towering plate of melted butter waffles, bacon and fried eggs, as well as a cup of creamy coffee. The warm, sugary smell instantly evaporated all doubts.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She was a short woman with huge expressions, wearing a bright red wholly robe knotted at the waist. “Wakey, wakey, my handsome boy!”

“What time is it?” yawned Rod. He sat up and stretched his arms to the ceiling.

“School time. Last day of school!” she exclaimed.

“School?” repeated Rod, tilting his head slightly with a perplexed frown.

“Now get this down you while I get your brother sorted,” his mother said as moved his keyboard out of the way to set the plate and mug down on the desk. “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

“School?” he said again with a gulp. His mind felt blocked.

She looked up at him and frowned. “Rod,” she said, dropping all pretense of warmth and friendliness, “you’re going to school.”

“I feel sick.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Something is wrong.”

“You’re going to school,” she repeated, stone-faced.

Satisfied that he had heard her, his mother shut the door and vanished. She never listened to him; not really. She was effectively a single woman to a child she hoped would not go to prison one day, and Rod knew that and so he felt guilty. Why did he feel guilty though?

He brushed his teeth before eating his breakfast. His mother then drove them both to school when it was time. She dropped him off at the playground. Of course, he had to have been intimately familiar with it since he had been going there for the past 6 years, but he felt sort of strange when he entered through the school gates. His mother had already driven off because she had to work, and his brother had disappeared to play with his friends.

“Why... why do I feel strange?” he asked himself, standing dumbfoundedly in the corner of the playground. He watched his classmates play together as though nothing was awry. He sat on the mound of grass beside one of the courts, waiting with anxiety, hugging his knees to his beating breast. A tree stood at the other end in the corner, where the two adjacent stone walls joined in mischievousness, and it beckoned him closer.

This was the last day of primary school for the Year 6’s; the day had come to say goodbye to the happiest days of his life, even though the last few months had not been so happy. Although most of his classmates had chosen to attend the same secondary school, not all of his friends were going, and this made him feel confused; all of his classmates were his friends. It had always been like this. Yes, sure, perhaps not everyone was nice to him all the time, but he had always thought of them as friends. What would it be like in secondary school? Would he still hide in the toilets? Would he still want to... die?

He felt eyes penetrate him like rays of sunlight. A teacher whose turn it was to supervise the children before the school day started came up to him, inspecting him thoroughly under thick, heavy spectacles. They were the kind that old, judgmental ladies wore. She meant well, though. They always do in a weird, twisted kind of way. Her swamp khaki trench coat protected her from the cold blasts of wind.

“Why aren’t you playing with the other kids?” she croaked. She looked tall and broad with that long trench coat on, reminding him of his childminder. Her face was creasy and tanned like worn leather; but she was well-meaning, though.

Rod looked up. “What do you mean?” he asked squeakily, his eyes squinting in the foreboding sun. He was a beautiful child, and he was quiet.

“You’re not playing with the others.”

“I don’t... feel like it,” he said, his face flattened by his confusing thoughts. His body did not feel like his own. He felt adrift like the leaves falling from the tree next to him.

“You don’t feel like it?” This statement from the little child perplexed the old woman. “Is it because this is your last day?” She did not know what to do; what could she do? She then turned and left him there to contemplate.

Rod sat there on the small mound of grass, watching all his friends play football. He had half a mind to join in, to at least stop the burning eyes on his body, but he felt empty like the air and the leaves and the branches hanging nearby. “Strange,” he thought as he looked to the right of him at the stone wall and through the opening in its furthermost right-hand corner, where another, much smaller (than the one directly in front of him past the red brick wall as mentioned before), lay shielded from the pupils. It was a graveyard. He had never thought anything of it in all these years. But now? He did not know.

The young, solemn boy looked all around him with a deep sense of loss and grief, and he was equally as astonished that he was capable of feeling such intense emotions as these, for they were new. Not that he had never felt sad, or even depressed before. It was just that this time he felt extraordinarily different to everybody else, and he felt alone. Utterly, utterly alone. This world was not real to him.

Then the school bell rung and he followed the throngs of other children into the school via the three-story, white-paved ramp at the side. He moved at such a slow, slug-like pace that it was difficult to watch.

Our readers must know, of course, that the following events are not only possible but are as real as their own hands and feet, their own arms and legs, their own heads and pelvic regions, and have happened since the dawn of this stupid, self-serving and hypocritical race. It is in the interest of the group to attack that which threatens its existence. Is it not? A system, which all things are and will be, must correct itself or face annihilation, disintegration. It is not the fault of the group, however; in all honesty, it is no one’s fault particularly. It is just the natural order of things. Therefore, it must not be at all considered in the realm of fiction for a child, if he be factored as a person at all, to be treated as herein illustrated.

The sun was rampant on the backs of the white children’s necks as they leapt, or walked, or skipped up the ramp with an energy that would soon be stamped out of them in two months after the summer holidays. Rod’s eyes wandered and his attention turned inward. Meanwhile, the last of the boys were entering through the narrow entrance of the ramp, shoving each other against the black handrailing. He never understood why they were mean to him sometimes, but at other times friendly towards him. However, he knew that it was all due to Jack Pickleman; and so, he had tried with the greatest of efforts to appease that strawberry-haired boy like a sycophant, for his wellbeing depended on it. All his classmates acted in accordance to the whims of this chivalrous boy. Rod, however, had always shrugged off the insults and passive aggressions of this body politic, and had tried to remain civil. But inwardly it chipped away at him. Whenever he confided this to his parents, he got two widely different answers. Ultimately, however, it all came down to him being touchy. He would later fear his stepfather and hate his mother. But now, of course, he thought that they were immortal and all-knowing, even though his father had just died a month or two prior.

There were only thirty of them in a class, and he had been with them for six years. Jack ran up to one of the girls, Aiden, who was a pretty brunette. In those days, at that age, there was no great divide between the girls and boys, and so his thoughts were different, but of course he had no understanding or even awareness of this. He treated her like he treated everybody else because he believed that she was a person like him, even though he felt feelings of idolisation for her. In those days, he still believed that he was a person, and that everyone could be friends.

Aiden threw herself next to him, leaving the other girl who she was chatting with to talk to Jack, who in turn had thrown himself away from his body politic, his gang of cronies to talk to the pair.

“Why were you sitting on the grass by yourself?” Aiden asked.

“I don’t know,” Rod lied, ashamed of his own thoughts. He spent a great deal of energy trying to stop himself from crying.

“Aiden,” shouted the blonde boy from behind.

They both turned to look at Jack.

“Are you going to St. Francis, too?”