By S. Clarke
“Cawk cawk.”
Beams of light sent the flapping shadows of feathers down onto a line of red brick buildings. Puffs of dark grey smoke seeped out of black iron columns upon their rooftops. Swooping in circles between the curls of smoke, the birds continued to caw with no sense of urgency.
Their cries were drowned out below by a busy army of cars racing through the street. Across the road, a young girl was chased by her mother, carrying a backpack and a wary look on her face. Not far away an old man sat on a steel bench, his eyes glued to a newspaper with a wide smile on his face. A loud crash caused both to stop and glance at a group of men in aprons shamelessly scratching their heads as they pointed with choked voices at an overturned cart of fish between them.
In every inch of this place, little bits of life carried on, crossing each other and doubling back again wound into a string of bustling activity.
Yet in one particular red brick building on an particularly unremarkable street, through a glass window covered in dust and smattered with the corpses of insects long forgotten, a young man in oversized pants and a long black hoodie snored restlessly, unaware of the busy world outside. His face was smothered in the pages of a textbook, its multicolored cover falling half off the desk, leaving only the words “2026 Introductions to Engineerin…”
A ray of light hit the man’s eyes. They fluttered before raising, revealing a brown, hazy pupil underneath.
The snores turned into a low murmur. He blinked, raising his head to slowly sweep over the textbook. His mouth opened, and a tired groan escaped it.
“When did I go to sleep last night… was it even night anymore? I don’t remember.”
My eyes twitched at the bright light present. I could barely think. My head was clouded by a thick layer of fog which threatened to smother me back to sleep. How long had I been studying nowadays? Perhaps it was years, though I’m guessing the police would have come looking for me if that was the case. I doubted anyone else would.
For the last part of my life that my hazy memory could recall, I had spent every second of it pouring over the textbook. Still, I didn’t feel confident in my own abilities. Each subject felt disconnected from the last, and my brain had become so full of charts and equations that I had begun seeing them in random numbers on my appliances. From the corner of my eye, I glanced suspiciously at the textbook resting on my forearm.
“I fear whoever made this must have suffered greatly and now wishes to make us experience the same.”
I let out a small sigh, letting my head fall back down onto the table. I couldn’t quite remember the exact day (I could hardly remember my own name!), but I knew that there was less than a week left until the final exam would take place. If I didn’t pass it, well…
A flash of pain coursed through my abdomen, causing my face to tighten. I let out a heavy breath, speaking to the walls.
“My scholarship… ah, my future. Worse… my parents.”
I sucked in a breath of air, feeling it escape from between my lips.
If it wasn’t for those teachers who I was sure at this point had it out for me. I suspected just because I was the quiet type. I might have a better shot. Of course, I never mentioned my suspicions to anyone, not even my classmates or my family. Despite the bitter taste it left in my mouth, I didn’t want to waste their time on such trivial things, nor did I consider seeking pity from others to fit the persona I had been meticulously crafting over the course of my life.
Yeah, as if I would give up being the cool mysterious guy that never had any problems!
Still, each second my thoughts lingered, my chest grew tighter. My sore muscles clenched despite the fact that I had lacked any real kind of physical activity since exams had started.
This feeling had become all too familiar to me recently. There wasn’t a day where I didn’t wake up to a load bearing down on me like a sack of bricks, or in my case, paper.
“This stinks!” I mumbled, flipping over to lightly flick the pages of the textbook between my fingers. Even looking at it made me want to run away. It wouldn’t exactly be hard; my heart was beating like I had begun that course of action some time ago.
Still, I remained seated, my thoughts racing endlessly. I glanced toward the window. I could hear a bit of cheerful laughter on the street below. It was faint, deep laughter. I resisted the urge to smirk, or perhaps I was simply too tired. What was there to laugh about? I always knew that life is just a bunch of past mistakes all mashed together till they grow big enough you can’t push them away. I suppose in a way that could be funny, but that type of laughter could never be so merry.
Yes, there was a time when I could laugh freely despite myself. I nearly smiled at the memory. When my heart was free from burden and worry. When my friends sat around me, sharing together in common happiness.
I let out a lethargic sigh, settling deeper into my position.
If this was to be my life from now on, I wouldn’t have anyone to blame for it but myself. What could someone else change about my failures? Would they keep me from driving my friends away or from failing my classes? I had a feeling that if anyone was to hear the thoughts in my head, it would only end with ridicule.
At this pessimistic thought, an image flashed through my mind. It was from an old memory that had been slowly chipped away with time. Still, for a reason I couldn’t fathom, I found myself immersed in it.
The sky was a deep, rich blue with a few clouds floating in it like ships crossing the ocean. The world around me was full of lush greenery, and flowers dotted the wild grass at my feet. My hands in front of me were tiny, but in proportion with the rest of my body. My heartbeat was slow, my thoughts emptied into a peaceful calm.
I heard a familiar shrill voice beside me, perhaps only a few feet away. Unable to identify it, I turned my head to its source. A young boy sat on the grass smiling at me, his face half stained with dirt. He spoke while plucking at the thin stalks of a flower.
“I think we should be heading home now, it’ll probably get dark soon.”
My lips fell slightly as I glanced up a little.
“But whyyy? Mom said when it’s dark and if we go home, they’ll force me to go to school in the morning. Why don’t we just not go home ever? Mmm, nobody even cares about me anyway.”
The older boy shook his head, slowly raising to one foot. He lifted himself off the grass and stuck his hand down towards me.
“Let’s go. School’s not that bad, and besides, what will your friends do without you to throw mud balls at them?”
I shook my head, my eyes narrowing into a glare.
“Easy for you to say. You do great at everything, and everyone always says how amazing you are. I always hear how you got this and that. I wish I could just be a little great like you.”
At the moment I felt the words come spoken from my lips, I felt a lump grow within my throat that seemed to have nowhere to go. I wanted to panic and run, but my legs were too tired from the day’s play, so I simply glared at my brother defiantly.
His cheeks pinched in a bit, and he got down on one knee in response to me.
“Little bro, yeah, I know how that feels.” He smiled before continuing. “Everything was the same way for me at that age. Oh, your cousin did this or that. Ah, it got on my nerves.” His tongue clicked lightly. “But you know what? I found out that who I am has nothing to do with who anyone else is.” He smirked.
“Yeah, I know it’s hard. You might not be the best or even that good, but that’s okay.” He continued, growing a little melancholic, and the world of my dream began to blend with my room. “There’s many times when you will doubt yourself, when you will look at everything you’ve done and not be satisfied. That’s okay. Don’t hide it. Let it out like you did back then on the dirt where the only worry in your heart was about how you would add one and one. Why should what’s on your mind be of any less importance, least of all to yourself? Look inside, and you will find your heart still beats the same as it always has.”
My vision grew blurry, his words rolling together until it felt like a wave was washing over me. My head spun, the grassy field in my vision slowly fading away. My eyes creaked open, the words my older brother had spoken still rolling around in my brain.
Absently, I looked around, mulling over the storm in my head. Why would anyone care about my worries? It’s not like I exactly deserve anything. Besides, care about myself? Why should I? I’ve spent years in this pain. My arms and legs still burned from old injuries. That… that was a tough time.
Even as my heart burned with pain and the words continued to spiral in my mind, I felt a tension that I had grown to see as natural begin to slowly release from within me.
I wanted to cry or scream, but neither would come. There was a noise resonating in the room, one that had nothing to do with my current state.
In the corner of the room, a thin plywood door was shaking, evidently because of the rhythmic knocking coming from the other side.
As if by instinct, I stood up and opened the door. As it swung open with a creak, a pair of eyes met my gaze. If I were to describe them, they were very much like the boy’s in my dream, yet a bit deeper, darkened perhaps by age. Indeed, it was unfair to say they were anything but the same. My mouth opened on its own.
“Brother, why… why are you here?”
The man smiled. “Before that, may I come in?”
My face grew red as I waved my hand from side to side.
“Right, of course. Come in.”
I cleared a pile of boxes off a chair and offered it to him hesitantly. He sat, stretching his neck out to look around.
“Yeah, I know it’s dirty.”
He nodded. “Reminds me of my uni days.” He shrugged, continuing to point at the textbook on my desk. “What’s that, your engineering class?”
My head bent down a little as I began to feel the pit in my stomach expanding.
“There’s no way I’m going to be able to pass this test. I’m going to fail… at everything.”
My brother’s smile grew wider, his eyes looking around like he was trying not to laugh.
“Is that why I haven’t heard from you in so long? Ha, even if you don’t do well on this test, it’s understandable. We can’t be perfect, you know.”
My eyes narrowed just as they had done many years ago while sitting on the grass.
“All my hard work will end with nothing. Besides, what will Mom and Dad think if they hear I’ve been wasting my life away doing nothing?”
As my words left my mouth, I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and looked over to see my brother leaning closer.
“It’s okay. You’d believe me if I told you it really was all over if you failed, right?”
I nodded, confused, as he continued.
“So trust me now when I tell you that no matter what happens, it will be okay. That you will go on. Many more times like this will come after this. Even if you stop moving for a while, I know you can get your feet up again.”
He glanced around the room, shaking his head.
“The pain and fear you feel…” His words trailed off as, for the first time, his eyes glanced away from mine. “They are not shameful. They do hurt, that much is true, but that pain is not a weakness.”
He looked up again, his breath catching as if a painful memory was moving through his mind.
“The walls of our hearts can only hold back the tides of our feelings for so long. No matter how many layers of defenses we build, they find their way through.”
As he spoke, I felt the pit in my stomach begin to rise up through me like a stone making its way down a great river. My eyes turned red, the pounding of my heart quickening its pace.
“We can never stop being ourselves. We can’t hide away what we feel or bury it away like a tomb. The only thing to do with a river that we can’t dam is, well…” He paused for a moment, patting my shoulder gently. “Let it flow. You don’t have to keep holding it all in.”
A brief silence filled the small room, yet my mind was not there in that moment. All I could feel was my own body, each twitch, each fiber seeming new to me. There was a terrible rush in my mind as all the emotions I had locked away seemed to compete with each other to race to the front of my thoughts.
Yet they did not stop there. My eyes began to burn as it felt as if the emotions themselves were rushing into them. A faint dampness soon covered my eyes, making the world around me seem blurry and unclear. My brother’s voice entered my ears. In that instant, a new fear entered my heart. I wanted to wipe away the tears running down my cheek, to turn away and hide. As if seeing through my thoughts, he smiled brightly.
“Don’t worry about how I will see you or the world. Your thoughts are yours, your emotions are yours. Let them. Why should anyone lock away what is already theirs?”
I closed my eyes, my heart pounding. I knew in my heart that I should let go of the pain inside me. Truthfully, I had always known, but it felt like the moment I did, the moment I let go, I would never be able to come back from where that tide swept me.
The emotions continued to pour out of me. I felt the energy in my body slowly draining. My mind ached in parts I hadn’t even known existed, yet in the deepest outcropping of my mind, carried out by the flood of feelings, I felt something new emerge, an odd satisfaction that, though not new, was so long forgotten I could hardly name it if I was asked.
I glanced up, the collar of my shirt damp and my mouth tasting of salt. I met my brother’s smiling eyes. Behind them, I could see the same feeling that was now coursing through me. The same sad confidence, the same raw feelings, and in that moment I finally realized what this new feeling inside me was.
All at once, a shiver went down my spine, not the cold dread I was used to, but one of dawning realization so strong that, as if not under my will, my mouth opened on its own.
“I feel hope.”
