The Boy Who Believed

Once upon a time, in a land oddly similar to here, there was a place where the sun never came up. A place where all manifestations were truths, and the darkness enveloped the horizon as clouds did the blue. To the left were collective sorrows, and to the right were the eaves of decaying homes with the poor folks living beneath. 

The roads were as silver as the illuminations above, all draping the world in a monochrome lens. Each lamp post aligning the stone pathways were like interrogation lights, a white circle drawn on the ground that was so bright it burned to look at, especially compared to the dullness everywhere else. The school yard had no children playing inside, the swings would only move with the weeping wind, and the monkey bars were dusty from abandonment. 

The bakery didn't smell like croissants or muffins; the smoky char filled any hopeful mouths with blackness and coughs. The walls didn't have welcoming signs, or a cute doormat. It had a glass pane, without delicacies on the inside, just cubicle seats where drowsy people ate repugnant snacks, barely looking upwards to talk to one another. They would take nibbles, then set it down and wipe their face with a napkin to shoo off the ash. 

Down the street, approximately four houses past the second, lived a little boy named Samuel. And Samuel was one typical boy from the outside. He walked down the street, a foot plunging in the puddles from rainy days and soaking his socks before school. He'd avoid the bright lamp posts since they were so revealing. He'd pay attention to the moping teachers who would use the white chalk to scrape formulas into the black top, reflecting into a classroom of black desks and white papers, with black letters and white space between them. On the trip home, the puddles would have dried away, but only to welcome the next downpour, where young Samuel would lower his head towards the Earth as the inky rain drops fell atop of him. 

His home was just like the four before it, standing parallel but sickly to the rest. The matte shingles would fly off with the rain, and the supports almost creaked like the weight on Samuel's shoulders, making it heave over and lift, lift, lift up the people above it. One day, Samuel saw the cracks from below, spreading down the paneled bottom like the spiderwebs draped among the cornices, the dirt floor housing a family of stray tuxedo cats. It made him think that many families lived within this rundown abode, not just his own. And even the tuxedo cats seemed beaten.

He'd walk inside the shivering wooden door behind a thin sheet of glass, welcomed by a gloom only described as love. A mother blacksmithing some supper, in which Samuel would not eat, and a father reading a gray-black newspaper that he picked up from a pearl-gray trash can. His room had no posters or figurines, just books and the sound of silence. His metal bed frame would gladly squeal as he met it, the mattress sinking extra low as the days set on. His dresser had a journal, with a ball point pen connected to it with a ribbon, tied to a ring on the side, looping throughout in the way he'd tie his shoes. 

It was a way to live, just like the others, uniform and timely. His parents must have done it before him, and his grandparents even beyond that. The family tree was a shriveling bush, dying under a canopy in a rain forest, so close to the water but suffocating in a helpless veil, that nobody dared to just lift. 

Though one day, Samuel awoke to a different thing. One not like his casual differences; a tuxedo cat meowing from the wood floor below, or even a crow gawking from the top of a barren tree. It wasn't a towering voice such as his fathers, or the substitute of a teacher in the classroom. It happened right in front of his very eyes, and his darkened pupils couldn't help but blink rapidly at the sight. It wasn't anything normal, or even natural.

When Samuel looked from his bed into the window that morning, there was a beam protruding from his window, through the curtain and onto his floor. Pitch black specks of stardust were flying across it in episodes, and the beam was sizzling into a peculiar spot on the floor. It was a silver lining in a cloud, just not at all the same, and it stayed there for quite some time.

Samuel didn't dare to move too excitedly. The boy felt around at his bed sheets, the fabric tussling at his small fingers, until he hesitantly reached his notebook. He tugged on it using the ribbon, the pen at the end clicking with his thumb as it opened, and he drew. 

He drew for possibly minutes, maybe an hour. He couldn't determine how long it had been since his pen hit the paper, but he drew that beam and all it was, until no part of it could be drawn again. On his paper it was black and white, but before him, it was golden. A streak of paint spilled onto a Polaroid image, it was shiny and magnificent. The crevices of his lips went upwards into a cheerful grin, and he set down the journal to look longer. There was nothing that could replicate the beauty of the beam. 

Though his door opened hastily, and the beam dissolved into thin air, as if it had been a fragment of imagination.

"Good morning, my love." His mother eased inside, a plate full of thick bacon strips and sapped pancakes. Samuel quickly jumped out of bed, a look of shock and panic covering his face.

"No, what was..." 

"Dear?" 

"Mom, you won't believe what I saw! Right there, it was the prettiest thing I've ever seen, a, a-" 

His mother took a seat on his twin size bed, giggling profusely, even as the boy was trying his hardest to spit out such words. She was a fair woman, with black brunette hair and dark eyes, with similarly baggy sockets beneath them. She was natural beauty, but a life of turmoil and unfortunate living standards had mocked her blessings. The home was her counterpart, and as broken it may be, it was as striking as her.

Her arms began to console Samuel, but he seemed too rapid for her touch. He jumped onto his bed, gripping that journal as tight as he could so it wouldn't dissolve, too.

He pushed it into her lap, switching the journal and breakfast places with utmost purpose. She looked down at his sketch, her eyebrows furrowing with amusement. 

Samuel must have came off as a very imaginative child, because his mothers reply was anticlimactic. "It's wonderful, hon. Now eat and please settle down, you never have this much energy, you may wake up father with the noise." 

He contested. "I saw it! You don't understand. I saw it. A big, old, um," Samuel paused. His mind was faltering as he thought, and somehow he crawled towards school. Learning about points, lines, and arrows. The beam he had seen; it was like one of those, where it started at his window and pointed into the floor boards infinitely. His hands clapped in success. "A ray! That's exactly what it was! I saw a ray, a bright ray, right there into my floor. A ray!" 

His mother rose, smiling as Samuel pleaded for her belief. She moved to the door and Samuel frowned. "Get dressed for school, darling." 

Samuel sighed, his hopes diminished: yet not dead. He threw on his normal school uniform, a black wool sweater with dress pants and odd flats on his feet. The ribbon dragged behind as he hurriedly pocked his journal. He scurried out of the elderly home onto the street, looking to the entrance to his window. Nothing from the outside of those rotten drapes. At least, not yet. 

He began his walk to school, the charcoal air seeming so depressing now, after what he had seen. That smell of the burnt bakery offended him, and the houses going down the bend were much too bland. 

Samuel saw a puddle of glassy water. He paused, before he would step in it, and looked around him. An empty street. The school was a couple more lengths away, and the nearest home was too advert from him to see what he would do. 

He jumped, his teeny legs flinging himself into the air as high as he could budge himself against gravity, and he plunged feet-first into the puddle. Water flew everywhere, soaking the cuffs of his pants and even brimming his sweater. It seeped into his shoes and socks, sogging the space in his toes and tickling his bottom. He laughed aloud, uncaring of who heard.

The water, as it settled, began to turn another odd color. The droplets that flew around him were now sapphire, not pitch black, and the blue was everywhere. On his clothing, on the road around him, even in his slick hair. He exclaimed to the world around him, screaming in delight, and bent down to touch the vibrant ripples, cupping it in his hands and rushing towards the school yard, smiling the whole way.

Holding the turquoise melt in his hand, careful not to let too much drip, he clicked his foot against the door with a pat-pat. The door was still, and he gave it another. Pat-pat.

Finally he heard the heavy footsteps, and his hands began to shake. He tried to stop the water in his hands from waving over his palms, but it spilled, and by the time the door had completely opened, all the water had fallen into the concrete ground before the school door, fading into a black smudge on the slate.

"In now, Samuel, class begins shortly. You are late!" His teacher stated from within the building, and Samuel looked to the previously dazzling water droplets, now nothing to prove.

The classroom was clicking with the press and release of white chalk. A clock ticked in the back, and each click reminded Samuel of the plop of dropping water.

He couldn't help but smile. The children around him all had drooping heads into their organized paperwork, but Samuel looked upwards. He suddenly crumpled his paper, throwing it towards the board with a satisfied grin on his face.

Another little boy's head rose at the sound, and Samuel even felt a little giggle. The boy crumpled his paper, tossing it to Samuel, and the boys began to play catch.

More heads bobbed up in the silence, the teacher still plucking at the chalkboard with determination. Little girls and boys all poked out of their shells, the previous gloom turning into something much more lively.

The ebony began to shed from the room. The desks turned a light, tannish-pink and the floor became speckled, all in a wave of the children's joy and excitement. They all were starstruck by the blare of bright hue, and the flames spread from the back of the room even to the chalkboard, where the teacher screeched and dropped the chalk.

The stick of powder became a coral cylinder, and the teacher picked it up, her skin no longer so gray, but a similar fleshy peach. She began to tear up, and the children all rose out of their seats to console her.

"What is this? It is just beautiful." She spoke softly, and the class cleared out for Samuel, who stood in the back of a crowd shyly. "Samuel."

He stepped forward. "Yes, Miss?"

"We have to show this to the world. It's impossible. Beautifully impossible."

Samuel smiled, and the class ran out into the hall, a zig-zag of color following the overjoyed giggles and imagination, even to the outside, where the grass beside the dull walkways turned green.

The class walked down blocks, the streets developing intricate patterns of silvers, reds, and green. The sky itself high above was beginning to turn teal, and the homes all got their own colors. The wooden frames of the houses turned auburn, windows got clearer and dropped the smog.

The bakery they sprinted by turned a beautiful creme shade, the eaves almost rising from a frown and the people inside beginning to look at their white-pink delicacies, taking gracious bites from behind the glass and spreading the newfound pleasure to anyone close.

Samuel led the children down all the houses, where they ran inside to their parents who held loving arms, inside bright homes and the true colors of love. They dispersed in joy, and Samuel assured they all returned home before he made his very last stop.

At the door of his home, young Samuel took a deep breath, and everywhere his feet stepped, a circle of color would begin to spread on the porch under a dark awning. He knocked patiently on the door, awaiting a reply. The door opened, and his mother opened it, her hands reaching to her mouth at the sight of the world outdoors. She began to cry, and dropped to her knees to hug Samuel.

"I can't believe this."

"I saw it, Mom. It was so bright."

His mother wiped her eyes, and as Samuel's father appeared behind her with a surprised smile, the sky finished developing, and a big bright sun mended into the top, giving the family a spotlight of their own: sun rays.

From then on was a day to remember, a story to be told. There, once upon a time, was a place oddly similar to here. A place where the sun never came up. A place where all manifestations were truths, and the darkness enveloped the horizon as white clouds did the blue.

But all that was possible to change with a sliver of hope: and a young boy who believed.