Rahbert Elliot {D3/FIN}
Apr 9, 2014 12:29:27 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2014 12:29:27 GMT -5
R A H B E R T E L L I O T I am the black, linoleum floor beneath my feet, the echo in deserted hallways. The stillness of a room that hasn’t been touched for years by anything but the wind. I am vacant. My blue eyes no longer hold life and excitement, no, they are empty. My dark hair falls flatter than it did just years ago, hardly ever anything more than a messy mop, as my mother would call it. However, she doesn’t say much anymore. No one in the house does. Not my father, who’s never home enough to see the son he always wanted grow into a tall, awkward boy. Not my mother, who shuts the door behind her wherever she goes, as if she’s hiding something from my tired eyes. Not my brother, who walked out one day never to return. And not me, because I have nothing left to say, nothing of importance anyway. There is no reason to be excited about the rising sun or the stars that twinkle in the night sky. No matter how many times I sit out on the roof at night, I can never quite make myself believe that there is something important. I can never convince myself that the way the stars flicker is beautiful, in the same way that I cannot believe that two plus two equals five. It just doesn’t add up. I’ve walked up to my mother and looked down at my feet and asked “Is there something beautiful in this world?” And every single time she says the same thing, “Something is, but you’ve got to find it for yourself.” It frustrates me, and night after night I pound my fist against the rough bricks and then run my bruised hand through my messy hair, because I simply cannot find it. Everything is wrong. Nothing is perfect enough to be considered beautiful. Not in my eyes. I am hollow and silent, nothing but a shell. A shell of a boy who used to be happy every morning. Every new day was an adventure, every new sunrise the start to something new. But not anymore. Now, every sunrise is a struggle, and every sunset is a relief. Because I’ve made it. I’ve made it one more day, one more set of twenty-four hours have passed, and I am still here. However, the relief is short lived, because often the nights I look forward to are filled with bad dreams and restlessness. The sheets are tossed to the floor, my heavy breathing and rush of adrenaline being the only things to wake me from something I couldn’t otherwise escape. It used to follow that my parents would rush in, throwing the door open so violently that it would slam into the wall. They would rush to my side and make sure I was alright, but not anymore. I still wait for the door to fly open, for looks of concern to pass across my parent’s faces. I’ve tried to busy myself with little things, like taking apart pens and locks alike and attempting to put them back together, but I never finish the job. It’s not because I’m not smart enough, in fact, I could give you a detailed step by step to assemble all of the locks that sit unassembled about my room. It just gets boring. It’s the same components, the only differences being color or size or something trivial like that. Before I gave up on the tasks I would look forward to the evenings when my father would come back from work, because he was always bring me something new to tinker with. Sometimes it was the same type of item as something I had done before, but often, he brought something new. It was like Christmas every evening, and I was hardly disappointed. But one night, he had nothing for me. I thought it was just a fluke, for he must have just had a hard day and didn’t feel like scavenging around for something for me. The next night, he had nothing. And every single night that followed I would stand at the door, and every following night I would walk back into the house empty handed. My brother never shared my interest in piddling with little things. He would watch me with sarcastic interest, asking what I was doing but never listening to my explanation. He was always one for more creative things, books and stories and art. He would sketch from our window, drawing whoever passed. He tried to teach me a couple of times, but I never quite got the hang of it. Besides, when what turned up on paper didn’t match what I had in my mind, I would crumble it in a fit of rage. I didn’t understand how he was so proud of the things he drew, because they were imperfect. Maybe a tree in the background didn’t turn out right or the brim of a lady’s hat was turned up instead of down. It was wrong. It was an early Sunday morning when I heard the front door slamming. The haze of sleep hadn’t quite made me aware of the situation, so with weary eyes and tired limbs I pulled myself from the bed. As I made my way down the main hall of our home I could hear my parents saying things about how “he’ll be back” and “it’s just a phase.” It didn’t bother me at the moment, but when I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and saw the broken glasses and smashed bowls, I realized that this was bigger than me. I didn’t need to say anything, my look said it all. My parents held me close for a moment, both of them rambling about how my brother was just “going to be gone for a few days.” But I counted. I made a mark on the wall every single night as I went to sleep. I still do. I’ve lost count of how many are up there now. I don’t have much of my brother’s, as my parents have boxed most of it away in the attic, even though they refuse to really get rid of any of it. I suppose they still believe the lies they told me that morning. They still hold on to the hope that he’ll walk back through the front door again. I find it amusing that they actually believe it, that they still can force themselves to believe in something impossible. A few of his things are still in the room that we shared, but I’ve pushed most of it to the corners. However, I keep a couple of his sketches on the desk. I would hang them, but I can’t bear to have them staring at me, because I would stare back. I cannot force myself to stare at the imperfections that grace the paper for more than a minute or two at a time. Despite the fact that he’s gone and he’s never going to come back, he was still imperfect. The lines that he drew were not straight, the crack in the desk or tremble of his hand to blame, I suppose. My parents used to always talk about him at the table in the mornings, as they were positive they had seen him around and were almost sure he would be home by the end of the day. I believed them for a while, and I would fix his bed and put his sketchpad and pencil under his pillow. But night after night I would pull them back out and stick them on a shelf. I kept this up for a couple of weeks, but eventually they got shoved to the corners of the room as well. My parents stopped talking at the table, the lights around the house seemed dimmer. He had wrecked us all in a way I can’t bring myself to believe he would’ve done on purpose. I wish I could beg him to come back, to fix us, because the silence that looms over this house is anything but beautiful. It is certainly not perfect. {other} Rahbert Elliot Age: Eighteen District Three Gender: Male Face Claim: Karl Straube Codeword: oDair Word Count: 1,350 template by chelsey |
