“Only the good die young.”
I’d said that to Julia at some point.
The saying wasn’t totally true.
Everyone dies.
The good and the bad.
There was a place between life and death, between consciousness and unconsciousness. It was a hidden place that few lived to talk about, a place of both harmony and terror. Dreams took on a vivid reality as people, surroundings, and understanding morphed in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of life’s choices.
Does anyone know the meaning of dreams?
My mind told me they weren’t real.
Yet each scene and each encounter sure as fuck felt real, in all meanings of the word. My senses were alive, alert, taking in each and every confrontation. I saw, smelled, heard, and even tasted and felt.
A man in a boy’s body saw his life with a different perspective. Childish stories of monsters beneath the bed were less frightening than the knowledge of true monsters who lurked not in shadows, but in sunlight—humans who preyed upon one another.
We’re the only mammals who do that, who aim to hurt and kill our own kind.
The walls of my childhood bedroom materialized with the details I’d long ago forgotten. The unmade bunk beds where Lip and I slept, the posters tacked upon the walls, and the ever-present scent of preteen boys. Dirty clothes littered the stained carpeting, and with the closet door ajar, the disarray within was on full display.
Each and every article of clothing inside the closet was duplicated.
One for Lip.
One for me.
As if we were forever to be identical.
Our mother thought it was cute.
The kids at school were more critical, even cruel. “Are you wearing your brother’s dirty clothes? Didn’t Lip wear that yesterday?”
He hadn’t.
Standing within the confines of the bedroom, the thoughts and emotions of the childish me came back until my jaw clenched and my hands balled into fists.
I remembered.
Going to the Jurassic Park poster by the electric keyboard, I reached out and lifted the large picture. A hole. I’d punched the wall. It was Liv’s idea to cover it with a poster in the hope that Mom and Dad wouldn’t find it.
Our parents had seen the one in the closet door. Hollow doors smash with ease. Lip and I were made to pay for the repair even though I wasn’t the one who assaulted the door.
Forever identical.
My fingers went to the plastic keys upon the keyboard. I stared down, seeing the hands of a child on the white keys smudged with dirt, yet I wasn’t a child. I was a grown adult. I pressed down.
Nothing.
Not a sound came forth.
It was then I noticed the headphones.
Dad wouldn’t spend the money on a real piano. Boys were supposed to excel in sports not music. He thought he could crush my interest in whatever didn’t interest him.
It wouldn’t happen. It would never happen.