Open Up Your Eyes

His room was dark. It was always dark. He liked it dark. Something about how the room became this dull gray, walls settling into a navy blue instead of their usual, bleak white, and how the corners of it –all the nooks and crannies –became obscure even to his well-adjusted eyes comforted the adolescent. It became more than just a room when it was dark, it became a post.

A post for someone he always looked to for safety, someone he called his guardian. He was a man, no doubt, Jack could tell by his broad shoulders and tall stature when he stood just right in the same place he always stood and the moonlight from the window crept into the room just right, rays spreading and dissolving into the darkness while still somehow expanding to every place in the decently sized bedroom.

He laid there, watching the silhouette of his guardian through the darkness of his world, not even the light of the moon being enough to see the features of his well hidden face through the shadows –but Jack was okay with that –and silently motivated himself to grow the balls to speak to the mysterious man standing feet away from his bedside. He had every word planned in his mind for years, every scene that could unfold, and he was ready for everything. So he thought.

Jack’s guardian had been showing up in his room for as long as the raven-haired boy could remember, though in reality it all started truly when Jack was about six. The guardian would only come late at night when Jack had turned off all his lights, closed his bedroom door, and tucked his little self in for a goodnights rest, and leave early in the morning right before dawn. Jack had lost hours of sleep watching his guardian watch him as he pretended it sleep, but it was all worth it to learn the man’s schedule.

Whenever he had first saw the man, Jack will never be sure of. He could only remember it always being this way, it was natural to see him there when he’d wake up in the middle of the night, no longer scary. Even in the beginning Jack hadn’t really been scared. The guardian comforted him. To see him there, watching over him, comforted him. His figure in the darkest places of his room reminded Jack that he was loved, cared for, protected. Jack admired his guardian, he always had.

They never talked, and that was both okay with Jack and slightly agitating. There were so many times Jack wished he had a shoulder to cry on and would love more than anything for his guardian’s shoulder to be the very one, but Jack never asked and the man never came, even if Jack was aching so badly for someone to hold him, anyone. Jack, in his younger years, was much too shy to call out to the man, even if he was in the room with him, mostly because even as a young boy he had developed some sort of crush on the elder, and Jack assumed the man never approached him because he either didn’t know Jack knew he was there, or was shy too. Being a six-year-old boy this always made him giggle, to think a man as strong as his guardian shy, but it was a possibility the six-year-old didn’t rule out.

They had watched each other grow as the years passed –Jack watching the young adult turn into an adult, even if he could only see a simply outline of his guardian’s figure, and he watching the child turn into a teen –still neither ever talked to each other.

As for Jack’s parents, well, he informed them of his guardian one night while at dinner. The young boy had brought him up as if his parents had known all along he had this man watching him sleep at night because he really thought they had known. The guardian had been around for so long Jack had only thought his presence natural, and that everyone got their only special one kind of like a fingerprint.

“He’s always in my room,” The six-year-old had said after swallowing a mouthful of spaghetti noodles and wiping his face of sauce as he continued, “He never talks, but he’s always in my room.”

“Who is dear?” Joyce, Jack’s mother, had asked, giving her husband a playful smile because their son was just so adorable, making up all these cute little stories to tell at the dinner table and proving he was just such a creative boy that showed signs of growing up and doing great things. Bassam had chuckled at Joyce’s response, obviously ready to hear all kinds of silly, childish, and undeniably cute excuses of who exactly was in his son’s room, assuming it’d be some kind of imaginary friend he made up.

“The man! My angel!” Jack had said, sounding exasperated that his parents didn’t already know and he had to practically spell it out for them. Slowly he repeated, “He’s always in my room. He never talks, but he’s always in my room.”

And, of course, an imaginary friend is exactly what the two adult Barakats had took Jack’s little story as, chortling at the boy as they both said he had “such a wild imagination”. Jack didn’t take lightly to them laughing at him, having grown quiet upset and running upstairs while slamming his bedroom door and flinging his tiny body into his bed to cry his little heart out, but after that the boy never brought his guardian up again.

It wasn’t until he was eight did Jack bring his guardian up to anyone again, having had to write a small paragraph about who he considered his best friend for school. He was forced to read his paragraph out loud to the class like everyone else, and so when it was his turn he proudly strut to the front of the room, standing with a grin stretched across his face as he recited, “My best friend doesn’t have a name. I just call him Angel. Angel comes to my room every night and watches me sleep so he can protect me from monsters. He is very tall and I think he’s old, but I really don’t know because he doesn’t talk and I’ve only seen him at night. He’s my best friend because he keeps me safe. And that is my best friend.”

This paragraph only resulted in a classroom full of laughter, children instantly calling Jack names he never even heard of before, and the poor eight-year-old to be shunned. The paragraph had concerned Jack’s teacher which caused her to inform his parents of his odd best friend to which they had only responded, “He’s talked about Angel before, he’s just an imaginary friend.” And though it was brushed off, there was one person who had heard and read the paragraph that kept it dear to their heart.

Jack had, in a short week after his Best Friend Paragraph, began to be bullied by a few kids in his class. They simply picked on him for being what they said was “a loser with no friends”. It was about three weeks when they began beating Jack up, that being his first actual fight and, it being three against one and completely unfair, being his first lost too. The day after that all three children went missing.

It was shocking at first, nothing like this ever happening so suddenly in their town, and it wasn’t long before the entire school was being interviewed. Everything led back to Jack Barakat eventually. Of course it did.

It was ridiculous, really it was, to have an eight-year-old as a prime suspect in a kidnapping case, but little Jack Barakat and his family where the closest thing to having a perp as anything. The small family was interviewed and even watched for some time, but without any evidence against them there was not much the Baltimore police could really do except for hope and pray for some evidence against someone, but until then the mystery case was left in a stack of unjustified crimes in their own preserved box left at the end of a long, untouched line of unsolved cases.

After the Baltimore Snatchings Jack’s parents began acting distant towards each other and their son. Their marriage was crumbling, whether they wanted to admit it or not, and in due time so where their lives. Bassam and Joyce had already became outcasts to their neighborhood and friends, gossip spreading like a wildfire about them and how they “murdered children and got away with it”. Their lives, both at home and, for Bassam, at the job, become rough and almost intolerable. It led to some very neglected months for Jack.

It was his ninth birthday, during the summer on a warm Monday morning, when he had woke up, expecting presents and cake and praise, everything a young nine-year-old boy would hope for when waking up on their birthday –the one day of the year when it was all about them and they could get all the Legos their little hearts desired. He had got up and raced excitedly to the kitchen downstairs, expecting birthday breakfast from his mother, birthday greetings from his father, and his present to be pulled out of the closet somewhere throughout him eating his pancakes and rambling on about how he was finally nine years old, and how exciting it was to be just a little bit older now.

But the thing was, Jack’s birthday breakfast wasn’t there, his father’s coat and shoes already gone along with his morning paper and his bowl of cereal left to be picked up and washed along with his half-drank glass of orange juice, and no presents were pulled out of the hall closet like they usually where. There were no birthday wishes from either of his parents, no cake, not even a smile from the young boy on the one day of the year when it was all about him and he could get everything his little heart desired.

It was funny how he had woke up hoping for Legos or a guitar, maybe even a new video game, and went to bed wishing someone would just notice him.

The next morning Jack had woke up with a big red box at the foot of his bed. He had cocked his head to the side, wondering if he had somehow missed it somewhere or maybe he had just forgot that today was actually his birthday and not yesterday. He crawled to the end, grabbing the little white card from the top and reading the simple to and from, “To: Jack. Love: Angel”

He opened the card, inside a funny little cartoon dog and something about getting a year older and how he was already getting wrinkles. It was enough for the nine-year-old, the bottom of the card having a simple, “Sorry it’s late, bud.”

He set it to the side and pulled ripped open the present, finding multiple things inside. At first it was simply a Raven’s jersey with a leather bracelet set on top, inside the bracelet having a silver tag that had his name engraved in it and small patters of swirls and hearts around it. The top of the bracelet had a silver heart and his birthstone on it. He smiled at it, albeit a little girl he didn’t really care, and pulled it around his skinny wrist, it hanging loosely on the bony arm. He reached back into the box, finding a stuffed animal inside which was a husky which is a type of dog Jack had always wanted that he squeezed to his chest instantly and smiled at while deciding mentally he’d name later. He reached back in and pulled out one last thing and that being a DVD of his favorite movie he had loss long ago. He jumped up instantly and ran to his television, pushing the DVD into the player and turning everything on while running back to his bed and pulling his Jersey on, almost missing the note at the bottom of the box.

He pulled it out and looked down at it, the same handwriting of Angel being scrawled across it carefully, obviously trying to be neat, and read what he assumed were lyrics. Being nine Jack didn’t much understand what they meant, but he placed them in his folder nonetheless and kept them with him always.

After that meals stopped coming for Jack, his mother seeming too engulfed in her own worries and sorrow to even care for her young son whom she left to fend for himself. Jack had went a number of two days in total in the long month of his mother forgetting him and to feed him without having food, and after that he was brought nice, warm, home cooked meals every day. Whenever he’d wake up he’d find something for breakfast on a plate beside his window, and when it was lunch and he wasn’t paying attention, had left the room, or even turned around for a mere second he’d receive sandwiches, and for dinner he’d get all sorts of delicious foods. Jack didn’t even have to come out of his room for the entire summer, and no one even came to check on him.

One day, something had gone wrong at Jack’s father’s work, causing Bassam’s boss to dock his pay and for them to lose that month’s check for the mortgage bill which caused Bassam to fear being evicted. Of course, the man’s only real solution for this was to get drunk, which meant he blamed Jack for his problems. He was too drunk to realize what he was saying to his nine-year-old son, or to really care (not that he would anyways), and had struck the boy. Jack had tumbled to the floor, hand instinctively cupping his burning cheek as his father slurred, “If you had never been born nothing that’s ever gone wrong in our lives would have. I wish I had drowned ya’ when you were a baby. Would’ve saved me the trouble.”

The next morning Jack’s father had gone missing.

A day later they found his body, beaten to death and leaving bruises much like the one he left on Jack’s face.

When Jack had been asked kindly by the police if he knew what had happened to his father the young boy had replied simply, “My guardian took care of him for me, so he’ll never have to have a bad day in his life ever again, and I’ll never be his trouble.”

Joyce had grew depressed with her husband’s murder soon after, not being able to handle living without him and take care of their son alone –so she claimed. It always made Jack laugh bitterly when he thought back on it. No one ever took care of him except for Angel. Jack had come home to her twice with pills shoved down her throat and broken bottles of alcohol shattered around her, her arms slit from the pit of her elbow down to her wrist. The second time she never attempted again.

Jack had come home finding her the same and walked over to her. She had blood smeared all across her closed, her eyes closed and her mouth left open, the blood dribbling down from her fingers onto the floor. She looked like she was asleep, though her skin was papery and the usual swift motion of her chest rising and falling was absent, and almost peaceful. Jack didn’t want to disturb her.

He let a few stray tears slip from his eyes as he backed away from her body and walked up stairs.

He didn’t report her death, knowing he’d be sent to a foster home and wanting to see his guardian one last time that night before he had to leave –assuming Angel wouldn’t be coming with him –and left the body there all night. When he laid in bed he waited all night while silently crying for his guardian to come, hoping the sight of the man’s figure would sooth his pain just a little bit, but he never came and Jack felt absolutely alone. He had never felt so alone in his entire life, always having at least Angel to look to for friendship even if they never talked, but that night he was completely alone in the world and crushed.

When Jack woke up and walked downstairs, fully prepared to call the suicide in and to see his mother’s body for a second time, Joyce was gone, as if she had never been there in the first place. Jack didn’t bother making a call then, why would he? Someone had obviously already come and went with her body, and now he played the waiting game. He waited to be taken away, but never was.

Somehow or another the bills to the house were still being paid after that day, the fridge and pantry restocked with fresh food, and the death of Joyce Barakat going completely unnoticed, as if she had never died in the first place.

It had been that way for a long time now, and Jack never questioned it. He was always alone in the house. Always. Except for at night. At night he’d turn off all the lights, climb into bed, and watch the corner of his room. The one closest to the window.

For years that window had stayed unlocked. The entire house stayed unlocked now. It was for Jack’s guardian. He didn’t care if it was unsafe, if murderers or burglars could get in, because he always felt safe with his guardian by his bedside.

The room, it was a soothing mixture of dark and pitch black –the moon and stars starting to illuminate through Jack’s window now and a simple ray of a soft, yellow light allowing the boy to see the foot of his bed, his dresser, and that honestly was about it. He could faintly see a picture frame hanging on his wall of a once happy family, a shadow of what the house used to be full of. Now, though, now it was as empty as Jack’s heart.

He craved love, guidance, and comfort now. Jack had missed a drastic amount of love and attention he was meant to receive in his years as a child, and now being sixteen Jack longed for even the littlest bit of love and affection. He had tried many a times to make his own friends, even lovers, but he was “that freak who killed all those kids and his dad”, no one wanted to associate with him.

He had often come home crying from days like these, days where he was lonely and begging for some sort of human contact from anyone, and grew angry when he was denied what he desperately deserved. He had even blamed his guardian a few times for being such a freak, but he never meant it, and he knew Angel knew that.

When he would go to sleep he’d wake up with another present, one he’d usually get only on special days like his birthday and Christmas, which had a necklace inside. It matched his bracelet he never took off, except to shower, with a silver heart and his birthstone in the middle. It might have not been much, but it meant the world to Jack.

He was staring into the darkness now, thinking about the lyrics his guardian had wrote him so, so long ago.

I’ve been here before a few times, and I’m quite away we’re dying, and your hands they shake with goodbyes, and I’ll take you back if you’d have me, so here I am trying, so here I am are you ready?

He could see his guardian’s silhouette hiding in the shadows and how the darkness cascaded his body, engulfing him in a blur as the clouds began to roll into the sky and slowly cover the moon and stars while a low growl echoed over the house, causing the wood to shake and creak in protest.

Jack could hear the buzz of the air conditioning shut off along with the rest of the power, the house becoming eerily silent suddenly. He watched his guardian’s shoulders move with his breathing, observed how strong they looked and how much Jack wished he’d come lay down with him and wrap his arms around him tightly, promising him he’d never let him go.

Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you. Always. Kiss you, taste you all night. Always.

Jack sighed tiredly, letting his eyes flutter across the room as the thunder grew louder, shook his house harder, and the lightening began to strike. Jack wondered, actually did so often, what Angel’s voice sounded like, almost opened his mouth to begin talking aloud, something he’d do randomly throughout the day what with being so anti-social and not getting many opportunities to talk to anyone besides himself, but quickly closed it, knowing Angel would never reply.

And I’ll miss your laugh, your smile. I’ll admit I’m wrong if you’d tell me. I’m so sick of fights, I hate them. Let’s start this again for real.

He continued to watch Angel and how he moved. Jack figured he was swift, stealthy. Of course, he had to be in order to sneak into Jack’s room every night and out every morning. To do all the things he did for him every day. If he’d give Jack the chance, he’d kiss him in thanks. Jack often imagined a relationship with his mystery man. It was as close as having a lover as anything. He wondered if Angel ever imagined one with him himself.

Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you. Always. Kiss you, taste you all night. Always. Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you. Always. Kiss you, taste you all night. Always.

The lightening suddenly struck, his entire room illuminating for a split second as bright as day and that’s when Jack saw him, he finally saw him. Their eyes locked for the second the light had caressed both of them. His eyes were golden, not a normal brown, probably due to only being active at night and adjusting to a nocturnal view rather than the day, and sparkled as he stared at Jack from across the room.

The lightening disappeared before it was even truly there, and so did the view of his guardian. Jack waited for the lightening again, but before it could strike again and help him see the rest of his angel he felt arms wind around his body from behind and the most beautiful voice hiss, “I know you’re awake.”

Jack was turned onto his back, two pair of hands wrapping around his neck as a weight held him down, “I know you’ve seen me.” The voice continued, his angel’s soft hands wringing tight around his throat now.

“Pl-please.” Jack squeaked, his air being cut off lightly but still enough to talk, “I d-don’t c-care that you’ve been wat-watching me. It’s o-okay.”

And Jack was sure that his guardian would let him go, realize that they could have a normal life together where he didn’t have to watch him from his place in his room, but he was surprised to feel Angel’s hands tighten around his throat as he hissed, “I know you’ve seen me… You can’t see me.”

I’ve been here before a few times. And I’m quite aware we’re dying.

Jack’s air was fully cut off now, his hands reaching up to be placed on the man’s arms as he looked up at him and choked, “Why ar-are y-you do-ing th-this?”

His hands became vice-like around Jack’s fragile neck, a cracking noise sounding in the struggle and Jack’s body suddenly going limp as he whispered, “Because I love you. Always.”

Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you. Always. Kiss you, taste you all night. Always.