Mother May I

The walls of his room were covered in words, all crying out from the crevices in which they lay, laughing, screaming, taunting. The boy buried his head deeper into the pillow, farther away from the screams, and into a new world. Here, all was dark, safe; the soft lavender scent of the laundry detergent filling his senses and enveloping him in such a soft calm that he forgot about everything else, outside of the fact that his glasses would mash uncomfortably against the bridge of his nose and the tips of his cheekbones. He forgot everything that was real; the dangerousness of his brother, his mistakes, the walls. The walls that screamed his every fear, every mistake, taking it all and spitting it right back into his face. It wasn't the place he was in. Oh, no. Every place he had ever been, ever slept, they all said the same things once the darkness came over them. And the process would repeat.

And when he would dare to lift his head from the soft, gentle world, he would remember- everything flooding back to him in a rush as his hands clawed desperately at his head, his eyes, his face, all trying to reach the center of this, his brain, his head, his heart.

Tonight was no different. Words rained down as the vain attempt for sleep tried to push its way through the common sense. The dreams were worse, Mikey knew. Much, much worse. And even through light seeped through the crack under the door, his best friends' room right next to him, alight and bright, and possibly as full of comfort and softness as that perfect pillow world (maybe a little less lavender scented, but its the same principle anyway), he wouldn't go. He'd come close, his hand inches from the door, his mind racing with the ways that he could explain calmly, simply, and in a perfect sort of way that made him sound like he believed this was totally normal (well, maybe not normal, but rather like it was okay, at the least).

But he wouldn't- couldn't, even. He'd back out, scurrying quickly from the wooden barrier and back into his little world, close to his problems but oh so far away. Was he torturing himself? Was it his fault? The walls certainly seemed to think so, shouting taunts and spitting hatred and growling things that anyone else most certainly would have identified as a lie.

And even Mikey was starting to realize this now, that the walls were wrong. They'd begun to tell him things that everything he'd ever been told contradicted. Even the pillow world was becoming less safe, swarming and filling his brain with notions of how the hell he was going to get himself out of this one, how he was going to save himself from his own personal hell, filled with walls that could talk and an ice that could even dull the warmth in his heart and shrink whatever bravery he'd had down to a little tiny grain that asked a simple question- How would he do it alone?

Would he do it alone?