Red Glass

Red glass

            I handed him his nickel, as I did every Wednesday. He was so excited, because he didn’t have to do his homework. It always made me smile to see him this happy, so I was glad to do it. But of course, that wasn’t my only reason.

            He ran out the door, and I smiled weakly as I waved good bye to him. I then stumbled over, sat down in the chair, and started crying. What had I come to? I hated not being able to provide for my son, to the point where I had to send him to the movies every Wednesday just to get glassware.

            I was crying my eyes out, when I looked up. I saw the figure of my husband, but I knew he wasn’t there; he had died in the war. He stood over me, as though to comfort me. I was grateful to feel his presence, even if he wasn’t really there.

            “Why? Why did you have to die in that stupid war?” I choked out between sobs. I realized I was being loud, but I didn’t care. I was too upset. I lied like this for what seemed like hours, when I heard the door slam shut.

            I got up, and forced myself to smile. “Hi sweety.” I said as he handed me the glassware. I held it in my hands, staring at it. It was red, as always. But I was so grateful, yet so depressed. I hated this, but I had to do it. I needed that red glass.

Time

Time

            I stood at the graveyard, staring down at the broken grave. On the grave it was marked as R.I.P. Abner Thornton, 1790-1852. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared at it, thinking of everything that happened. The worst part was the unmarked graves, all those people never to be remembered. Even I didn’t know who all of them were.

What happened truly was a travesty, and an unexplainable one at that. Everybody attributed it to a disease, which in a way it was. Though not entirely a disease of the body, but a disease of time. I say not entirely because in a way, it was a disease of the body. I’m not entirely sure how it worked, but I know it was linked to the person affected.

We called it the shadow disease, because it snuck up on you like a shadow to the shadow caster. It was silent, and almost unnoticeable, but once you had it you were doomed. No escape, no way out, nothing to do but spend your last days in seclusion so you didn’t infect anybody else.

The way you knew you had it was your eyes. Your eyes had a second pupil, which slowly grew larger until it took up your entire eye, and it looked like a shadow at first which also gave its name. Nobody but me could figure out how to save everybody, and as the leader of the town it was my job anyways.

Nobody knew exactly what the disease did, and now I’m truly the only one who can. What it did was strange, and I’m not sure how it works. Once you had it, you could infect anybody. You started becoming nervous, shaky, and sweaty. Then it progressed to full blown paranoia, making you a train wreck of a human being. Then you attacked everybody you saw. Finally, after your eyes were eaten entirely by the shadow, you disappeared.

But now, I know where you go. You get sent to the future, where you live out your age and die. But you can infect other people in the future, thus spreading the disease. So the disease needed somebody to stop the infected from spreading their disease, and contain them. Of course, as the leader, that person was me.

Since I was the only one who volunteered to do it, they made a marked grave for me it seemed. This was the last time I’d see anything. I had gotten infected with the disease in keeping them contained, and transported with them. Apparently I managed to stay sane through it all, though nobody else did.

I had put them all, one by one, in the graves made for them as I had instructed before I left. Now I was the only one left. I worked through the night, digging the marked grave six feet down. I put myself in, and he came. The descendant of my best friend, as he had promised just in case something like this would happen. He looked shocked to actually see me, as if he had thought his ancestor was crazy and he was just doing this to upkeep the tradition.

Without a word, I lied down in the freshly dug grave below the marked headstone, and he started shoveling. Out of all of it, the saddest part was the people who had died from this disease wouldn’t get proper headstones. That resonated with me the most, and they were the last thoughts running through my head as the dirt hit me.

Darkness

Darkness

They say that darkness envelops everything, slowly consuming life until everything is dark. It did seem like everything was slowly becoming dark in my life, as the light faded away and everything started to become gray. But even in the dark, there is light. Without one there cannot be another. There is always light at the end.

This is like a storm, it seems really bad right now, but it will pass like all storms do. It’s still awful now though, and it gets worse every day. People never know what to say, and don’t want to be around me. But I know it will pass again, as it always does.

I was standing on a bridge with rocks tied to my feet, prepared to jump. I was prepared to die. I sat there, crying, thinking about what I was about to do. I knew nobody would walk down this road, knew that nobody would see me. But deep down inside I wanted somebody to walk by and stop me.

As I was about to jump, I heard footsteps and a yell of “Wait!” And somebody came up to me and said “What do you think you’re doing?”

I started crying and let it out, let it all out about how my life was so bad and making me so sad, how I had no reason to cry, but I still wanted to die, still wanted to fly, but knew I’d end up in the flames so far from the sky. God hated suicide, but that wasn’t on my mind, all I wanted to do was die.

She sat there listening to the whole thing, and when I was done my heart pounded, she didn’t say anything, she just gave me a hug, said it’d be alright, and said that I shouldn’t want to die. She gave me the number to a suicide hotline, with her number scrawled at the bottom. She said to give either a call if I ever wanted to talk.

She then helped me untie the rocks, and I walked with her all the way to my home. She never left me alone until I called the suicide hotline. I talked for an hour, and then I was done. I agreed to get counseling, and maybe get medicated. She then left, and I promised to call every week until I was better, and maybe even after. I knew it was true then, there is light in every dark.

Eyes

Eyes

Eyes. They say that eyes are the gateway to the soul, and you can read everything in a person’s eyes. Eyes are the story tellers of the truth, the window to the heart, the opening to everything about a person. However, some people manipulate this belief and change their eyes. They become masters at making the world see in their eyes what they want. They use eyes to deceive, to lie, and most of all to intimidate.

And in his eyes I saw anger. I saw death, pain, hatred, but most of all anger. The way they furled up, and the way they had a glint to them that made them terrifying. I was scared, I wasn’t just scared; I was immobilized by his angry hatred towards me, and his intent to kill me. I knew he would do it, I knew he would destroy me and everything that there is about me.

And that’s not the end of it. As Banksy said, you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time. I’m sure somebody else said it, but he’s who I know it from. He would be killing me twice with one bullet, because nobody knew I existed. I was his son, who he had kept locked up for my entire life.

I looked into his eyes once more, as he held the gun to my head. I saw what would happen in his eyes. He would pull the trigger, whispering “I’m sorry.” While he was doing it. He would get blood splattered on him, and then look on in anger and sadness while I dropped to the ground. He would slowly go insane over the loss of me that was his fault, and eventually kill himself.

He would be pacing around the cabin, freaking out and crying, maybe scream and punch out a window. He would grab his gun, hold it to his head, then throw it to the ground and scream again. He would do this multiple times, and then finally hold it to his head one last time. He would close his eyes, and pull the trigger.

I looked up one last time. He stiffened his arm, as though about to shoot, and closed his eyes. He opened his mouth, and I knew it was about to happen as I saw in his eyes. He then whispered, in the quietest voice I had ever heard him use, just barely loud enough to hear, “I love you.” He then turned the gun towards himself, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. My eyes died that day.

Happy Mask

Happy Mask

            Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! My alarm went off, repeating itself in a shout that could wake the dead if they happened to be sleeping right next to it, until I slammed my hand into it, shutting it off. I slowly draped my legs over the edge of my bed, and then pushed myself off, landing with a thud that resonated throughout my house.

I walked over to my dresser, and yanked open the drawers. I slowly, almost lethargically, and got dressed in a gray t-shirt, jeans, white short socks, and sneakers. I put on a light spring jacket over my clothes, walked past my locked cabinet, and went out the door.

I walked down the hallway, and took my first step down the stairs when my dad looked around the corner at me, covered his eyes, and yelled up “Get back to your room young lady, and get properly dressed. You know that you can’t go out looking like that.”

I groaned, but turned around anyways and walked back to my room. I walked back through the door, and turned to my locked cabinet. I took the key off the top of my dresser, and unlocked it. Out of it I took my happy mask. It was a black mesh mask, with a scribble of red in a smile in the general area of my mouth, blue with white around it where my eyes would be, and a cream-like coloring for the rest of the skin. The hair was a brownish, going from the top, to a little over the eyes, to over the ears, to all the way down the back.

When I was five, they came into my kindergarten class and asked us to draw what a happy, sad, and angry us looked like. They took our drawings, and came back with a happy mask for each of us, with our drawings on them where our heads would be. Nobody knew what they did with the other two drawings, until sixth grade.

One of my friends, Paul got depressed in sixth grade. One day Paul wasn’t in his happy mask anymore, instead he was in his sad mask. Apparently they had come into his house, taken his happy mask, and replaced it with his sad mask. Then, towards the end of the year, two kids got into a fight. It was Cain and Abel, where Hamlet was kicking Abel into the wall. When they came to school the next day, they both had their angry masks on.

The next year, I found out what happened if you didn’t wear your mask. Paul decided to not to wear his mask to school, and when he walked in the door police were waiting there, all wearing their happy masks. They took him away, and I never saw Paul again. That same year, Cain got into another fight, so he got put in stage two of the angry mask. This meant that he had to wear a red mask with all red turned blue for his mask, and was put in special classes away from other kids.

I slipped my happy mask over my head, and felt the cloth molding to my face as I had every morning for the last thirteen years. My vision was clouded by the black mesh, though it was almost clear through the mesh, it was a little foggy. My breathing was a little constricted, but I was used to it by now.

I walked downstairs, where my dad looked at me and said “Now that’s more like it, that’s how you should be dressed. I mean, honestly, do you want to be taken by the mask police?”

“No father.” I mumbled out. I got my book bag, walked over to him, hugged him and said “Bye dad.” Then walked out. It was my last day of school before regents, and then it was off to college. I was nervous, but it was a good kind of nervous, the kind that kept people from failing. And who wasn’t nervous at this time of the year?

I walked down the street, heading down towards the school. I checked my watch, and saw it was almost eight. “Oh crap, I’m going to be late.” I thought to myself, and started running. I couldn’t be late on the last day before regents.

I ran up to the school, and the door master was about to close the door, wearing his angry mask, which had a black mouth showing white, sharp, pointy teeth, eyes pitch black, no hair, and blank white skin. I managed to run up to the door right before he closed it.

“You’re lucky kid; I almost locked the door before you got here. Now get in, and get to class.”

“Yes sir. Thank you for not locking the door.” I said as I walked in the door, never forgetting my formalities. I walked down the hallway, and stopped at my locker. I took out my books, and walked down the hall to my class. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Paul. But when I turned he wasn’t there.

I shrugged, and walked on. I walked into my classroom right before the bell, and got to my seat. I managed to listen to the speech on how terrible a class we are before I zoned out. I zoned out for a few minutes before I heard a yell of “Mrs. Recalcitrant, am I boring you?”

I turned red with embarrassment before managing to mumble out a “No ma’am, sorry ma’am.”

“Do you know what’ll happen after you get out of high school? You will waste your pathetic little life, flunk out of college, and become a stripper. You will never amount to anything, and I hope your parents are so disappointed they disown you. You are a worthless parasite of a human being, and I expect nothing out of you. Now leave my class.”

I was tearing up at this point, and stormed out of the room. I walked over to my locker, sat down in front of it, and started crying. My mask let the tears fall out, but the tears still clung to the fabric. I closed my eyes and just let it all out.

I was crying for what seemed like an hour when I felt a hand tap my shoulder. I looked up, and there was Paul, without his mask and everything. It was weird, I saw his face once seven years ago and it was still burned into my mind.

He didn’t have to say a word, I knew what he wanted. I took off my mask, and stood up. He handed me a gun, and we walked. No more would I be told what to feel, no more would I be judged based on the mask I wore. This was the death of the happy mask.