What Could've Been

The bed creaks with his weight as he turns in his sleep.

There's a noise.

Two eyes, suddenly wide open. Scanning the dimly lit room as another oncoming wave of sleep hits his fogged up brain.

Thud!

This time he sits upright, grabs his phone and wanders into the hallway, and under the light, looks at a boy : short, skinny to the bone, long, unkempt hair, slouched against one of the battered walls of the hotel corridor as he bounces a ball off the opposite one.

"Who are you? Are you lost?"

The boy doesn't respond.

He gets closer to the child, just about to touch him, when he turns.

He muffles a scream within, as he stares into the brown pair of eyes, though holding much more innocence, yet the same as his. A dark freckle marking the point where his nose met his cheek. A scar under the lower lip. Several crooked teeth, lips red with God knows how many years of impatient biting, on a face with skin yellowed and sickly from hours under the Sun. It was like looking in a mirror. A shabby and dilapidated mirror, one that dated back to 1955, the year he turned 7.

A much too familiar face makes him hard to just forget or push aside. Unlike the people he knew in his life right now, whose faces are nothing but fleeting shades on an ever-enlarging canvas of nobodies.

Oh and what a life it is! Filled with luxuries and fancies that know no bounds. He has it all, or atleast he thinks he does. His people adore him. They cheer endlessly as he steps into spotlights, which is much of his life now.

A giant, burning spotlight.

Crowds throng before him as he saunters down any lane of the big city. Afterall, he has it all. And who doesn't bow down to a king?

Then, why oh why did he feel the ground standing still beneath his feet when this mere excuse for a boy stared back at him?

Couldn't he recognise and make way for such a great man as himself? And definitely know better than to raise his head and look up straight into his eye!

Furious now, he yells "What?! What is it you look at, you scoundrel!"

Hoping for a timid bow, he's shocked to hear cackling escape those chapped lips.

"How dare y-"

The boy stops laughing and instead just sticks his finger in the air. The finger that's pointing directly towards him.

"Put down that finger this instant, who do you think you are?!"

He raises his hand in a fist and with a swift blow knocks the child out cold. As he drops down to the floor, a vicious grin spreads across his face. He is not someone to be jeered or pointed at. This will teach these lowlifes a lesson.

Turning around, to return to his room, he turns the doorknob, still trying to make some sense of what he has just witnessed. It is jammed. He tries again. And again. To no avail.

Curses break the silence of the still night as he shoves his body against the door. It does not budge.

Reaching for his phone in his pocket, he yanks it out and dials into it numbers he knows will answer.

The ring sounds..

beep

beep

beep

beep

And then dies into the emptiness.

The screen turns black.

No amount of restarting helps. It just doesn't respond.

Maniacal rage fills his eyes as he lashes out another string of swears and throws the device into the distance.

He had hired these people for a reason. And none of them, NONE can do even a quarter of what they've been asked! Come tomorrow morning, he'll fire them. He'll fire them all!

Still panting with fury, but very tired and drowsy, he slides down to the floor. Dust balls rise from the carpet next to his feet. Caught up in the frenzy of seeing that arrogant little wretch of a boy, he had not once noticed just how dingy the hotel was. Definitely he wouldn't be staying at a place like this! He was used to crystal-laden chandeliers lighting his paths with their incandescent glow along spotlessly clean and ornate passages.

Not this. Not some cobweb-covered, trashed up motel that smelled of stale cigarettes and cheap liquor. He had more than a bone to pick with his employees the next day. Just the thought of vengeance against them brought an evil glint in his eyes.

He looks around, wondering why no one has come looking for him. Did no one hear him shout?! Was there no one around in this godforsaken hellhole?!

With a start he scrambles to get up off the floor, just to fall back down again. He's much too tired for this. Perhaps, he could just sleep here. It must not be long till morning comes. And then, he'll figure out the rest.

Just as he's about to let his lids droop over completely, he catches movement through the corner of his eye.

He watches in horror as the assumed-dead boy rises up, wipes blood off his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. A shirt so worn out, you could see right through it. With a final sniff, he trudges slowly into the darkness of the unlit halls ahead quietly whistling a melody that fades with the sound of his retreating footsteps.

The tune. That melody. He had heard it somewhere before! But where?!

There's a loud knock.

And again.

And another.

He groans, barely able to focus his vision.

A third loud knock occurs.

He wakes up with fits and starts. It takes him some time to get his marbles in the right place. As he comes to his senses, a sunlit room sharpens to focus.

Getting off his bed he opens the door. It's his landlady, Mrs. Dee.

"Have you looked at the time Sir? It's 1 in the pm!"

He just nods, as though time bares no meaning to him anymore and walks back to his bed. There, on his nightstand is a locket. A young boy smiles back. His eyes widen with shock.

Realisation hits him like a bucket of ice-cold water. This was the same boy. The boy he saw. The boy he... punched? He looks down at his knuckles, except for a few age lines there's nothing that would suggest him hitting someone.

Mrs. Dee comes by again with a cup of tea for him, humming under her breath.

"What is it? That tune?!"

"Why Sir, you don't recognise what your own mother sang to you every night for 6 years? You taught it to me yourself"

"But that's-"

It all comes crashing down on him now. "It all makes sense!" he exclaims.

"It was a dream! A nightmare, more like! The boy looked so familiar because it was me! It was me just before my 7th birthday, a little after Mum died.

I was left all alone, with her gone. Alone against that cruel world, to fend for myself. Wandering wherever they gave me bread and a roof to sleep under. It was that same hotel where I lived for a while, working as a busboy in the dining area below.

But wait,

I punched my own younger self?!

How could I do that?! And who did I think I was? A rich, obnoxious snob? A self-possessed, pretentious brat! A vengeance seeker? Where did all that hate come from?! I've never owned a dime more than what was needed for me to survive. I still live under someone else's home, for Christ's sake! And to think I'd fire someone, no one bloody even works for me! What kind of animal was I pretending to be?!

Good Lord, I thank the heavens for not having led me down that ugly path; for who knows to what end my tragic-childhood fuelled greed would've taken me!"

The heaviness that once occupied the pit of his stomach with the overwhelming nature of his nightmare now seemed quickly fading, and for good. Boy, had it left him exhausted!

Still, having passed most of his life now, leading a simple life as a bookkeeper, this vivid yet terrifying dream had awoken him more than anything ever could, to a million ways in which he could improve on the days he still had left in this world.

Sighing deeply, he sits back down on that creaky yet homely bed and sips his tea as the afternoon light dances on the floor of his room and he whistles his heart away.

- B 🎈