Behind Polite Smiles.

The boy sat, playing with his stone pendant that hung tightly around his neck, noosing him almost. He fondled it between his fingers & began to feel strange. It was as if he’d fainted, but was now somewhere else.
He found himself surrounded by bleached white walls in a long corridor that stretched a few meters in front of him & a few meters behind him. Silence encapsulated the entire area so that he could even hear the sound of his own heart beating abnormally quickly & out of tune. The essence of silence was furthered by the desolation of the place. No-one else was around, just the white walls & himself.
He began to move forward, with a hind of trepidation & thought to himself, ‘where have I seen this before?’ His footsteps made louder by the abstract silence sounded like thunder clapping in the night sky.
He rounded a corner, his nerves went into overtime, sweat built up on his forehead & across his top lip. Heart pounding & voice shaking a pure fear, he called out,
“Hello!” He shouted into the corridor, hoping to get no answer. His voice echoed off the white walls & reverberated back to him in a variety of different tones.
“Is anyone there?” He tried again to check, but still no answer, just a rustling sound from down the other end of the corridor. He followed it, compelled by it’s deviance in this place. As he reached the end of the corridor, the noise became silent. A door stood alone in the middle of the blank wall, corrupting the perfect minimalism of the building. A memory flashed in front of him. A young child, stood facing to door, his mother clutched his hand. He felt like he was there, like he could reach out & touch the boy as if he where a living part of the corridor as he was. He swiveled around & with back against the wall, he could see the boy’s face. Gasping with horror, he remembered where this memory was from. The boy was him, aged eight, and with his mother going to the hospital after a group of teenagers attacked him in the street. His face was swollen & bloody, his nose at the wrong angle & one of his eyes was surrounded by malignant black lumps. He even remembered the surgeon’s name, Edward Feltz, a strange man who enjoyed working on mutilated youths. He said it was the satisfaction of bringing the youthful softness back to a child’s skin that was the reward. He remembered his mother listening intently to every word, buying every word.
Suddenly, the memory disappeared. The mother & the boy vanished from existence to return the abyss of his own mind.
Euphoria flowed through his veins as he pushed the door open, it’s hinges squealing like the doors of a submarine that hadn’t been opened in decades. As he saw into the room, however, the euphoria disappeared.
The walls where awash with blood, smeared & sprayed. Splattered & projected across all four of the once pristine walls. On the floor sat rows of people, around five of them, all looking at a central boy, like disciples.
The naked boy turned around to face him; he was about, if not the same age & height as himself. The boy started to walk towards him, drawing in close.
“Hello.” The boy was beautiful. His hair was flowing & blonde, his eyes where a pure Mediterranean sea blue. “So, you’ve come to look at me too, have you?” The boy gave a delighted chuckle & turned around to his disciples.
“HE HAS ARRIVED!” He announced to them. The disciples all stood up & lined themselves in rank behind the boy. Comparatively, they where like Pigeons to the Peacock boy. Their hair looked grimy & coarse & their eyes where the dull brown color that you only find in the dirtiest of landfill sites. Next to him, their mediocrity was surpassed only by the boy’s radiance compared to them.
He backed away slowly out of the door & into the corridor, the boy & the disciples followed.
“I know you came to look at me, they all will…eventually. Right now they’re too busy concentration on their little flings with each other to notice me. Come; let me take care of you.” The boy kept advancing on him & he kept on retreating until the boy appeared behind him & removed the glasses from his head. “Ah…so much better.” The boy spun hi around so he faced him square on. “You look so much better without those silly things on.”
Before he knew it, he was as naked as the other boy & his first reaction was to cover himself up.
“You see, that’s what I want you to get rid of, this –ness that you have.” The other boy shook his head in disappointment. “What have you to be ashamed of…eh? What’s wrong with your body?” The boy put a finger under his chin & lifted his head up. “Let go of yourself.” Uncontrollably, he let go of the grip he had on himself & stood upright, gazing into the eyes of the other boy.
“There, there, see. Was that so hard?” The other boy embraced him, he felt their flesh touching & then he felt a surge of something, like they where fusing together & he instantly drew away.
The other boy began to speak, as if enlightening him. “Thou art I & I art thou.”
He shook his head in frustration, he couldn’t be him, he isn’t some pretty-boy with followers & a desire for people to love him, and in fact…he’s the opposite of that.
“Y…you aren’t me, I am not …thou!” He shouted at the other boy calling himself him.
A huge cut appeared on the other boy’s naked body, across the right side of his chest. It began to heal & then scar instantly, a hideous mark on the boy’s perfect body.
“You’re damaging me! What you could become!” Tears built up in the boy’s eyes & his face began to crumple like a small child about to throw a tantrum. “Get out! Get out! Take your clothes too if you must. But just remember, you are me, underneath. You have the potential to be me, beautiful, smart, talented & loved. Next time, you’ll realize!”
The corridors began to fade away until the only thing left recognizable from that place being the other boy’s voice. “The clothes aren’t a metaphor! YOU ARE ME!”
He woke to the college scene again. He was still sitting on the bench & out of the corner of his eye he saw his friends in the more familiar doorway. Still confused, he checked himself to make sure he had his clothes. Feeling satisfied with concerns of his dignity, he walked over to the open door where Kate stood beckoning him inside.
“Hey, where’d your glasses go?” Her face looked deep into his. She was tall; around four inches taller than he, so she looked down upon him, making him feel quite intimidated.
“Um…I…Lost them.” He replied after nervously fumbling around his pockets to find them.
“You look nice without them. You can see the color of your eyes better. There blue. I never noticed before. I like them, kind of a Mediterranean sea colour.”