“Whatever,” he grumbled, stomping likewise back to his own bedroom. He heard his stepfather shut the living room door.

He felt paralysed and alone and only sifting through the day’s events seemed to calm him and give him hope that it would get better... eventually; especially of the new girl who was unexpectedly nice to him. He had no recollection of the System nor of his life outside the simulation, or the ‘phenomenal world’ as the logicians liked to call it, and thus thought and felt as an eleven-year-old boy should. This meant that the guilt and shame Rod had felt as his adult neurons were dying and being replaced by those belonging to his eleven-year-old self, consequently ushering in hormonal fluctuations appurtenant to that age group, had vanished because he no longer thought as a late-twenty-year-old would in that situation. However, given that he was now eleven in body and mind, it would be of course expected for him to be cured of his personality difficulties: this, unfortunately, could not be further from the truth.

The little boy quivered. He paced to and fro across the small dimensions of his bedroom. There was a winnie-the-pooh strip running across the middle of the four white walls surrounding him, and he was taken back to when he was a much smaller child and much happier because things were simpler then. Not like now; now things were serious, and life was not at all what it seemed.

Ever since the death of his father he had dreamed of joining him on the other side. His parents' constant arguing, dismissal of his needs and isolation from his peers only furthered that plan. His innocence had been taken away from him and he could not get it back no matter how hard he tried. How could it get better? He asked this question every evening to no avail. Furthermore, strangely enough, he felt somewhat more disconnected than usual, as though he was not at all present in the way that everyone else around him were present. Therefore, it had long been settled that he would settle the matter himself. But how to do it? Could he even do it? Had he the strength, the courage, the bravery to act against his baser instinct to life? Yes, yes, he believed in God. But God had betrayed him. God had taken away his joy. Therefore, he had to die.

As he dwelt on these cold facts, his face crumbled into a miserable, tear-stricken mess. He wept bitterly, remembering what the boys had said to him in Music class: “Weirdo... no one likes you.” Round and round like a merry-go-round it went again and again in his head, flashing lights and all, the sounds as loud as a carnival ride. It was a wonder he was not dead already, for this he had been subject to for many months. He had no friends. No, that was a lie: he had friends, but he would lose them to the other side. Always. And it hurt. It hurt like reopened wound. If he could also subject them to the same hurt he had been dealt with by them maybe things would stop hurting so much. The little boy dropped his weary head and continued to weep, drowned out by his parents arguing, and ruminated, the voices refusing to stop belittling him. “What is this voice inside of my head?” he wondered, his brows bent out of shape. “I cannot hear them, but I feel like they’re saying something.”

He wondered how much of this he could bear, and how much of this was his fault. He covered his face and felt humiliated. What if his parents saw him like this?

At last, the thought of the young Polish girl entered his mind and how she had smiled at him with such warmth that he thought for a second that she was his true mother. The sun once again penetrated the mist on his own bedroom window through the blinds, and he felt the skin on his wet cheek begin to glow. He wondered if she was the answer to his decrepit home life. What if she is? Why was she so nice to him? What did she want?

“But I am not good enough,” he told himself. “But then why was she so nice to me? It can’t be true... Maybe she did not know my true disgusting nature and that is why she was nice to me. It was just naivety then. People do that – they just think I am one of the ‘cool kids’ and then when they find out they abandon me. But then how can you explain her defending me to the teacher? She put herself in direct opposition to the rest of the class..."

All this hurt thinking hurt Rod’s head, especially today for some reason. Now that he had reflected on the day’s events, he wondered to himself why he was thinking differently. It was as though he was fixated on all the negative experiences he had been subjected to, filtering out all the positive ones. This of course led to a bias of thought. Perhaps he could think himself out of his misery?

Rod broke out into a fit of childish laughter. He rolled on the dirty carpet gasping for air. It was strange, he thought jovially, how he was laughing all the while his parents were yelling at each other from different parts of the house. Changing the way that you think? How had he not heard of this before? His smile had gone. He contemplated these words carefully, cupping his little chin in seriousness. He was sitting now with his back against the door and the tails of his coats hanging from the hanger hanging off the top of the door covering his scalp. Furthermore, his reflection left him more than a little curious. For instance, there were significant lapses in his memory he could not explain by just forgetfulness, for he could remember vividly like a movie scene his behaviour but could not at all conjure up the thoughts that inspired such series of actions occurring; it was as though he was controlled like a robot. Why had he wanted to kill the teacher? This terrified him utterly. He was a bad person undoubtedly. “I deserve to be punished, then,” he thought madly. So much was he ruminating for an explanation did he not see the shadow watching him through the window.

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All of this befuddled him, and he stood up finally to distract himself from his own thoughts and feelings. Suddenly, the arguing throughout the house intensified and he put on a movie about a girl and boy with mental health problems falling in love, and the girl saving him from dying by his own hand. “I need a girl to save me,” he thought sadly as the movie started. He turned up the volume to a level high enough to drown out the arguing. “Maybe Klaudia can save me... Come on, Klaudia, save me,” he mumbled, laying on his side in bed with his saliva drenching his pillow. He had not washed his sheets for two weeks. “Is my life always going to be like this?”

His stepfather banged the door like a police officer. “Hey! Turn it down!” he roared.

“No!” he shouted back. Rod’s muscles tensed with rage. He did not know where it came from, but he felt violent like a firecracker all of a sudden. His hand wandered for the remote while his eyes were on the door, and he paused it.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” and the doorknob started twisting and shaking. “Damn this bloody handle!” he shouted.

“Stop arguing then!” Rod screamed back.

“I’ll take that damn computer away if you don’t turn it down,” he yelled with fury.

Rod’s heart leapt into his throat like a fish rushing upstream. He curled up in his sheets into the foetal position, his eyes trained on the quivering door. An intense fear overwhelmed him like an electric shock as it had done in the classroom when the boys penetrated him with their words. The computer was his only way of escaping his life.

“Fine!” he said exasperatedly, “I’ll turn it down.” He felt sick and stifled.

“Bloody hell,” he heard his stepfather say before slamming the living room door shut.

Rod imagined himself punching the wall, but he knew better than to do that; and so, he picked up the pillow and started to whack it against the corner in tears. “Why? Why? Why?” he asked himself repeatedly, his body convulsing in rage. “There’s no escape. I’m trapped... Just like at school... They make me feel powerless: I am powerless, so fucking powerless...”

He jumped off the bed, reinvigorated by the anger surging through him, and started towards his computer station. “To hell with it,” he mumbled. He bent over the small, dusty wooden desk, held down the power button firmly until the internal fan stopped blowing dust into his face, and ignoring his own embittered feelings unplugged the computer. He tentatively slipped his hands underneath the tower and pulled it to his small, frail chest. The door was closed, and Rod sighed heavily with frustration when he realised that he would have to open it while holding the heavy piece of equipment. “Stupid,” he admonished himself. He tried to open it while holding the computer under one arm, but it was too heavy, and he almost dropped it which scared him terribly; and so, after several frustrated attempts he settled the black metal box back on the desk, the nerves in his arm pulsating with ache. He stretched out his hand into a fan, cracking the tiny joints within, making them pop with satisfaction, and pulled the stubborn door open. Then he seized the tower again and with two steps was out of his bedroom and in the corridor and with another two steps was in the living room where his stepfather was sitting quietly on his laptop. The television was on, and he used to watch it with his stepfather when he was younger before he had the computer. This computer was his life.

The living room was about three times the size of his bedroom, and the large window was about three-quarters the size of his bedroom wall. A large square table sat underneath it surrounded by empty dining chairs. He heard his mother's door open and felt her presence behind him. Again, rage consumed him to a perplexing degree, and he vividly watched himself in his own mind punch the wall to scare her, to make her feel as he did; these thoughts of course drenched him with inordinate levels of guilt.

“Where are you going with that?”

He decided to tell her the truth. “I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want it? Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m sick of you two arguing.”

His mother sighed. “Honey, it’s normal for adults to argue.”

“Is it?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes,” she pleaded. “Now stop this nonsense.”

“Why does she want me to have the computer?” he thought suspiciously, and he held it tighter to his body. “It is this computer that is keeping me chained here. Once I have destroyed it there will be nothing keeping me here. I’ll finally float, and float away.”

She looked at him as though she had not caused his demise. He squeezed the computer even closer to his throbbing breast and stepped determinedly towards the table on the other side of the room. He was now in front of the television, agitating his stepfather.

“What are you doing?” he said crossly.

“I’m not using this computer anymore.”

“Don’t be stupid,” grumbled his stepfather.

“Stupid!” cried Rod in a spluttering rage, it now leaving the safety of his mind and out into the world where it was dangerous.

“Yes, you heard me,” he replied.

“Stupid!” repeated the little boy madly as though he was a worn action figure with a broken voice box. He stood almost opposite to him, with the television to his back, and the window to his left. There the large, monstrous shadow was watching him with its big round head and invisible eyes, and it was joined by another beside it so that there were now two watching him with silent fascination.