Glitter

A bittersweet short story. A bit of a sad one.

His eyes were filled with glitter.

 

He would trot down the road, turning his sparkly gaze on anything in his path. The trees, so tall and colourful, would fall victim to the rays of his luminescent eyes. He would see giraffes with manes, swaying with the wind.

 

The cars would become giant beetles, the houses were space ships, the people were pirates and ballerinas and astronauts and presidents.

 

Everything was his and his alone. He was the master of the world.

 

The adults didn't understand though.

 

When he told his teacher a tale of the alien he saw eating a banana on the way to school, she simply frowned and asked him to wait outside. Assuming she wanted more details on the alien, he complied, clutching his bag straps with dimpled knuckles.

 

She was less concerned about the alien, and more concerned about him though. She took him the Principal's office where they called his mother and father.

 

When his parents got there, his teacher gave him a book and told him to wait outside. He did as he was told, flipping through the pages and trailing his fingers over the colourful pictures. After what seemed like a lifetime to his idle mind, the door opened.

 

His mother came out with teary eyes and picked him up, placing him on her hip. In the way that mothers and their sons often do, they instinctively embraced each other. His soft, young arms wound themselves around her neck, and her motherly embrace tightened around him, holding him tightly to her chest. She asked him about his tales. He saw no reason to lie and told her of the things he saw. He told her about telling the other kids in his class. She got very teary at this point.

 

The Principal then started using words like 'psychologist' and 'delusion' and 'recovery.' The words scared him so he looked out the window and watched as the buildings danced in the wind.

 

After that day, he didn't go to school very often and when he did, the other kids would treat him strangely. When he offered to tell a story, instead of jumping at the chance as they once would have, they shied away and left him alone.

 

On the days he didn't go to school, the lady in white would come and talk to him. He didn't know why she always wore white. He thought that must get boring after a while.

 

She would ask him to look at black smudges and tell her what he saw, or ask him if he saw anything unusual in the room, other than them. He told her he wasn't sure if the lollipops stuck to the ceiling were unusual or not.

 

As the days wore on and his mother started giving him pills with his breakfast, his eyes became less and less filled with glitter. He no longer saw the pretty things as he walked down the street. He saw ordinary people, spilling their coffee or talking quickly into phones. He saw dull coloured cars with loud motors, and grey buildings. The world was such an ugly place when you took out the patterns and colours.

 

The boy grew as the years passed. He got a haircut, his dimples faded, he was no longer chubby. In the place of the young boy with a larger-than-life imagination, was a lanky, moody teenager with headphones and snarky replies. His mother would try to talk to him but he would simply put his headphones back on and ignore her. As his world had darkened, so had he.

 

He didn't have many friends at school, preferring to sit on his own at lunch. The teachers labelled him antisocial and his grades, once nearly flawless, were slipping, swirling down the drain with his morale and ambition.

 

The days grew long, the nights even longer. Sleep eluded him and he was forced to analyse the cruelties of life all night long, and god was he tired.

 

Day by day, he grew sadder and sadder, angrier and angrier. He was fed up, he was livid, he was melancholy. More than anything though, he missed the days when the trees would sing and dance. They had stopped dancing, becoming more solitary with every pill his mother gave him to swallow.

 

One night, as he sat at his desk, contemplating the injustice of the educational system and drawing, he felt a tear slide down his nose. Just one. And that opened the flood gates. With no-one awake in his ghostly house to hear him, he sobbed heartily onto his notepad. He was tired, so tired.

 

They had done it.

 

The world had broken the sparkly eyed boy.

Reviews

[mitchey]

A gradual but distinct change in demeanor, emotions and reception of the "sparkly eyed boy". It tells the tale of so many kids who at first are inspired by life but lose their inspiration; all thanks to society. Great work!

[Jazmin N.]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[Pax]

ahh, bittersweet, indeed!

So innocent and pure tainted with the cruelties of reality just to blend in of what is normal in the eyes of the society.

I truly enjoyed this short story, sad yet entertainingly good for its morale and truth of what society does to us or how reality affects us and drown us into melancholia....

great work!
welcome to wc!