Do you know what it feels like to have your brain explode? I do. To still wake up after the fact is what really drains sleep. Most think I already rest little, they could be right. Even with everything against me, I find my days to be rather average. Only when I fall asleep do I see the other side. The ocean's edge, a castle on a glassy sky, still waves like the world froze. I couldn't imagine it, it was as if I lived in another's dream. Truly "scary." They walk beside me, the voices, they shout and tell me not to end it yet; but their words scare me such that it makes me want to. To end it all. The pungent scent of gunpowder was in the air, I couldn't recall the cries around me, but it wasn't something for me to worry about. For I had returned from the future.
"Do you believe in time travel?" I thought it was ridiculous when I heard him ask me that. A man at least a decade older than I, he went by V. He would always stand by the school gate, which I believe to be concerning. What would a man his age be doing around a school for children. Though what do I care, moments like these were the only times I would pull out 'I'm a child' card. Not like I wasn't concerned, for he had asked me before. Since the first day of middle school…middle school or secondary, they never clarified. Not like it mattered. Why did he ask me this? Did he ask anyone else? I had no clue, nor did I care.
"No," I would reply every time, but something within would always cringe at the fact. Maybe I knew I was lying, for at the time I truly believed it, but as though the future knew better I could not accept the answer given.
"What type of man will you become?" He would ask me occasionally. Not that I minded the questioning, but it was slightly annoying. In which case, does that mean I mind? They don't teach such things in school. I would always answer with something vague every time, but similarly with everything I say, it seemed I always had four answers and always stuck with those four even if I alternated between.
I first said, "an honourable man." Next time I would say, "a free man." After that, "a content man." Or I would answer with the go to to everything in my life, "I don't know." He would find the latter always unfortunate. Not like it mattered to me. Every morning it would be like that, my patch work clothes, dreary eyes as some kid put it, and an overall lack of passion. Passion is a scary thing, like an old man said at the pawn shop by Jimi's place, passion is cultivated. Not born with, for no being is brought into this world knowing everything. Something like that, would I have to quote that? Not like it were his exact words.
Walking home at night isn't as scary as some children might find, for out of every seven children there is at least one who bears no fear of the dark. I believe I am one of them, I hold no fear, for I have died before. What is scarier than death? Nothing I assume, the darkness is brighter than death. So fear can't claim me. Even more luckily, on this particular night near the cusp of the season's cold, light from above is shown. I always forget to remember things from class, but I believe that the moon was long ago destroyed, or altered as some put it. Resulting in the planet's night light to come from the celestial being La Luna and her sons. The problem comes when half the time you only get to see two or three of her sons and barely ever her. A real pain.
"Hello Papa," I said. It was the time in which I arrived at our home, my father was a saddened man. My mother was gone and his money was apparently spent. I felt for him, but at the same time I never wanted to get close either. Call it my instincts, but just as those instincts would kick in the voices would vanish. My father was both a cure and a disease of his own.
"Winter. We will have to prepare for winter." Every once and awhile my father wouldn't slur his words, those were the moments I feared the most. That night I was beaten till I could not see my own hands. I had some pride in my sight, for we possessed just a couple candles and matches for light. I thought I could see in the dark well enough, but that night I slept blind.
Morning was never my sign to awaken, rather the banging of pans and the shouts accompanied by the clinking of empty bottles. I slept with the clothes I would wear to school, as I would shower only ever occasionally if my father allowed it. It was still somewhat dark outside, so I would find a way to run around him leaving our grey slab house. With the winding of the dusty road I would sometimes stammer in exhaustion. On this normal morning I saw him, a boy a few years older, my senior. At the time he was just an eccentric figure bizarrely met, the brother to a friend, one of five I should have been more wary of.
"Mother has brought me an egg," he would say. Every word he spoke was a word I had a hard time forgetting. "Little egg, what do you desire?" He asked nude lying atop a boulder larger than a millennium tree.
"I'm just trying to get to school," I replied.
"Education," his smile widened, ensuring me that it possibly was bad of me to continue this meeting. "How lovely. Some advice, don't sour your youth."
"I-I'll try not to."
Yes, truly a normal day I had. Days such as those would occur more frequently than I would have liked, but what can you do about it? Such is life, I must continue on. I somehow would arrive on time to see Mr. V. standing by the school gate once again.
"Do you believe in fate, as though you are the main character?"
"What?" The first question in a while, that was quite different.