So I wrote...and it's really dark again. I guess I just like to write about things I don't understand very well to try to understand them. There was a reason I wrote it and I really hope that if anyone guesses the reason, they don't find it disrespectful or irreverent. I was only using writing to explore an idea I'm unfamiliar with. Do I like it? Well, I just don't know!
Humming fills the tiny bathroom. It is an eerie, doleful tune of times come and gone. It doesn’t come from a fan, a light fixture, a pipe; it floats out of the breathless lungs of a man. He stares at his reflection in the chipped mirror that graces nearly every college dorm in America. His face is gaunt and lifeless. The mirror looks back at him. Every emotion he feels is reflected there. The mirror pities him all the way to his very core. It looks into his eyes, traces the shape of his face. His cheeks, at one time so rosy, now hollow. His lips hang slack, although usually pinned up in the permanent goofy grin that so many people know him by. Where there were once endless oceans of blue, only flat, grey iris remains. The mirror glances quickly down to his hand before bouncing back up to his eyes. His fingers are clutched around a cold, hard object no larger than one of the many screenplays that has come to define him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He whispers. A note of desperation hangs on his tongue. He tries to swallow it but it gets caught in his throat and he coughs to clear it out. His breath comes out raggedly. His heart beats wildly. His hands shake uncontrollably. “Stop it.” He pleads. “Stop looking at me.” The mirror averts its gaze apologetically. It glances again at his hand. He moves it off the counter, out of view. Guilt threatens to engulf him but he pushes it away. He made a decision. Nothing is going to stop him. He can’t let anything stop him. He continues to hum.
He closes his eyes and is transported back to a place that wasn’t so dark. He feels the stage beneath his feet. The smell of freshly painted plywood fills him up. A huge spotlight shines down right on him. Thousands watch as he turns into someone else. He is Curly. He is the Phantom. He is Beast. He is anyone he wants to be. He can make them feel anything he needs them to; sadness, happiness, tension, anger. He makes them feel like part of his world. They make him feel alive. He opens his eyes and the audience disappears. The stage, the lights, the houses and rooms on wheels all disappear. It’s only him and the mirror. Those times and those people seem so very far away. He wonders if his name ever crosses their mind.
He thinks of people to keep his mind off what he’s about to do.
His grip tightens on the object in his hand.
He thinks of his friends, now all over the country striving to become something.
His hand pulls above the countertop; the mirror gasps.
He thinks of his first love, married to another man.
His chin rests gently on top of the cool metal.
He thinks of his sister, just about to graduate high school.
His skin aches from the pressure as his finger settles on the trigger.
He thinks of his parents. His mother. Her face fills his mind. He can visualize the way her petite eyebrows knit together in confusion when he does something she doesn’t understand. If she could see him now, her eyebrows would knit together. He was sure of it. He felt guilty that he didn’t explain it to her; couldn’t explain it. He left no reasons or justifications, only one small piece of scratch paper that read “There is no one to blame.” That’s really all he could think to write. That one sentence followed by his name: Denver.
