The Fool

A modified version of my first story for the competition (continued in a book

Man lives on thoughts. Dreams. Hopes. They fuel our pitiful desires and our motives to keep going. We put them on our notebooks. Our houses. Our cars. Ridiculous stuff, really. "My child was an honor student" is something you see a lot. 

But what happens when the student dies?

Steven looked at the ceiling of his room, a dark one, with shades of black and blue filling up all the corners of the little box. He lied on his bed, with a length of rope in the trash and a small bottle of bleach back in the corner where he grabs it once in a while to do laundry. Not today.

He sits up and looks at his room. A pitiful dump really, the posters that littered the walls were now just litter in a garbage dump somewhere, leaving the cold looking walls bare and in the front. If it weren't for the shelves, the desk and the bed, you would think the place had been abandoned for years. The room with the lights off made you feel a strange sensation, as if you were drowning in the dark shades. Maybe he should put something up again, or at least make sure the room would be brighter, or paint the walls, or something, anything at all. Not today.

He turned to watch the clock tick. 6:24 AM. He'd had insomnia for the past... What was it? A month? Two months? A year? The past had blurred together, and the present melted into the past. He hadn't gotten a good nightof sleep in ages. Maybe he'd go to the pharmacy. Tranquilizers could help. Anything to help him sleep. Not today.

How long left until school started? He'd have to leave in roughly an hour and fifteen minutes. He should probably get ready, wash up and eat something. Not yet.

Maybe he should try to recount the dream last night instead of just staying on the bed thinking of nothing but worthless, time wasting thoughts. Not now.

He finally gets up and looks at himself in the mirror as he gets ready to dress. A mess, really, but mostly not visible on the outside. He could make it not visible on the outside. No-one needed to know. He doubted no-one wanted to know. The only think he couldn't erase was the small scar on his wrist, cutting across, half an inch long. He could have killed himself then. If he made the cut longer, just a little longer, it would have clotted up and killed him before he reached the hospital. He gently rubs at the scar and looks up again. Not yet.

He dresses in his school shirt and a pair of jeans, grabbing his socks and struggling to put them on before throwing them at the wall in annoyance and grabbing another pair. 6:35 AM. Too much time to do nothing. Nothing was dangerous. It gave you time to think, and thinking was bad. He slowly gets up, his socks loose around his feet and walks to the bathroom in front of his room. 

He grabs the shaving razor.

Maybe soon.