“Perfect Universe”

The little boy spends too much time in his head. All his friends stand outside and yell Come out and play! But he doesn’t hear them. And Mrs. Johnson opens the window and looks down at them. “Sorry boys, Jimmy’s not feeling well.” They hang their heads low and frown and saunter back to the schoolyard and talk about how Becky showed them the elastic of her panties earlier that day. And Jimmy misses out on all of it.

Jimmy is crafting his perfect universe. He doesn’t need to hang out with his friends. His mom knocks on the door of his room and asks, “would you like to come out and eat dinner?” He yells back about being in the middle of something and leave me alone, bitch. She would love to smash down the door and wring his scrawny neck but she loves him too much and tries to give him the space he wants.

His perfect universe is a dark place. Distant suns and planets provide enough backlighting to produce a subtle but meaningful halo around his universe’s subject. The main source of light comes from inside the subject. It’s that burning feeling you get when you run more than your out-of-shape body can handle. That “just one more, this is the last” sip of whiskey you stole from the cupboard and hoped no one would notice, but they all notice and may you puke your guts out and miss your math test tomorrow. You don’t really want to build space shuttles that much anyway. That flame that burns inside our hero, who is so sure of his future with Anne even though they’ve never spoken a single word to each other. The fire burns, and when it starts dying out, he stokes it with masturbation. Vows renewed.

The little boy spends too much time in his head. He will never grow up to be a man. He will play games and pretend he knows what it all means. His friends will go away, his family will go away, and he will not understand what he did wrong. They’re just sore losers, he’ll tell himself as he takes another sip to stoke the fire. His insides will glow brightly and the distant stars will separate him from his environment. Don’t blend in too much or you will go unseen. He wants to disappear but just enough to be remembered. “Where’s Jimmy? I miss him,” all his friends will say. They’ll come searching for him. The fire will rise and light the way.

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