I used to remember the boy at my window so fondly, with his moon-pale skin and silky soft skin, bones to fragile that the slightest touch to hard on his delicate, yet bulbous, head caused his skull to sink like half-set jelly. He never seemed to mind when that though, perhaps he couldn't even feel his head for all the tumours protruding like a crown of pus-filled balloons.
Every night he'd wait outside my window and I'd open it wide so we could just sit side by side, never speaking, just existing. If only such things were meant to last. He broke the silence after seven years of this routine just to ask me why I had bruises along my arms.
I should never have spoken back, should never have opened my mouth and let six years of unspoken abuse come flooding out until I'd named every last person to lay a hand on me. The list was longer than I realised but the boy had done nothing all the while, he didn't even seem to acknowledge that I'd said anything until I was well and truly done.
In hindsight I wouldn't have mistaken his silence for anything less than cold calculation. As it so happened I ended up sitting in an emotionally numb stupor until my morning alarm went off, the boy had left at some point but once again, years of pent-up pain let out in the course of a single night take their toll.
By the time I noticed that anything had changed, I was in class and everyone was asking where everyone had gone. Putting two and two together came slowly but as more names in each roll call were left unanswered, a connecting factor emerged, at least it did to me.
It was me.
All of the people who were missing that day at school had hurt me in some way, be it emotional, physical, purposeful or just a careless byproduct of some other cruelty. It was only after this realisation that I remembered my parents hadn't complained at my noise when getting ready that morning. They generally yelled no matter how quiet I was but that day they'd been utterly silent.
They weren't in the house when I got back from school, neither were my siblings. or my neighbours. Half the street was gone with no signs of a struggle. The boy never even came to my mind as the cause of this, I barely even remembered what I'd said the night before.
The police didn't pick up the phone, the emergency service's operator didn't believe that everyone had vanished because of me and eventually blocked my number. It wasn't until the boy came back that night that I found out where everyone had gone and what he had done with them.
Every night he'd wait outside my window and I'd open it wide so we could just sit side by side, never speaking, just existing. If only such things were meant to last. He broke the silence after seven years of this routine just to ask me why I had bruises along my arms.
I should never have spoken back, should never have opened my mouth and let six years of unspoken abuse come flooding out until I'd named every last person to lay a hand on me. The list was longer than I realised but the boy had done nothing all the while, he didn't even seem to acknowledge that I'd said anything until I was well and truly done.
In hindsight I wouldn't have mistaken his silence for anything less than cold calculation. As it so happened I ended up sitting in an emotionally numb stupor until my morning alarm went off, the boy had left at some point but once again, years of pent-up pain let out in the course of a single night take their toll.
By the time I noticed that anything had changed, I was in class and everyone was asking where everyone had gone. Putting two and two together came slowly but as more names in each roll call were left unanswered, a connecting factor emerged, at least it did to me.
It was me.
All of the people who were missing that day at school had hurt me in some way, be it emotional, physical, purposeful or just a careless byproduct of some other cruelty. It was only after this realisation that I remembered my parents hadn't complained at my noise when getting ready that morning. They generally yelled no matter how quiet I was but that day they'd been utterly silent.
They weren't in the house when I got back from school, neither were my siblings. or my neighbours. Half the street was gone with no signs of a struggle. The boy never even came to my mind as the cause of this, I barely even remembered what I'd said the night before.
The police didn't pick up the phone, the emergency service's operator didn't believe that everyone had vanished because of me and eventually blocked my number. It wasn't until the boy came back that night that I found out where everyone had gone and what he had done with them.
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