The Boy

A boy sits inside his home watching a cartoon on television. He is eleven. His father comes in the front door, having picked up barbeque food. To the boy and his two brothers, the father says,

“Help yourself guys. I’ve got the runs.”

The father goes upstairs into the bathroom while the boys eat dinner together. Afterwards, they each go on their separate paths. The oldest, Jimmy, invites his girlfriend over and they go to the basement to “watch TV”. The middle child, Danny, goes upstairs onto the computer and plays some game. The youngest, the boy, goes back to watching a cartoon. After an episode or two he thinks of something he wants to tell his father. Heading upstairs now, he asks Danny where their father is.

“Still in the bathroom.”

“Oh, okay.”

The youngest knocks, but there is no response. He knocks again.

“Daddy?”

He tries the door, but can’t push it open. Must be locked, that’s unusual. Danny comes over now, sensing the boy’s panic, and knocks. He pushes the door a crack open, just enough to reveal their father on the floor, blocking the door from opening anymore. The boy only catches a glimpse of him. 

Two hours later the boy stands before his childhood home and his father is pronounced dead. He's eleven. His father died from a heart attack, leaving him orphaned after his mother passed away two years prior. His uncle drives him away, and he doesn't cry. For some odd reason he can't. The scenario is unbelievable to him, and his mind denies it. Father must still be alive, he thinks. That thought, along with any hope in a just world quickly fades away. 

He stands before his childhood home again. He's twenty-one. This is the first time he's seen it since he came to get his belongings a week after his father passed. It looks exactly the same. The new family didn't change anything. It's a cookie cutter example of a house, in shape, size, and happiness, at least as he remembers it. 

The gun in his waistband feels heavy. He wonders how his father carried a gun as a police officer for all those years. Having one right now terrifies the living hell out of him. He came for one reason and one reason only. If he's going to end his life, it'll be where it started. Where his father died. Where a boy should have became a man but remained a boy. Where his last happy thought was.

He's not in a car, he's just standing on the opposite side of the road, staring at the house. It's now or never, he thinks. One last cigarette first. He lights it and smokes it slowly, unlike how he usually does. Savoring the flavor of a prolonged death, he examines the house. 

There’s an old honda civic in the driveway. Must be ‘98 or ‘99 by his judgment, and he’s no car expert. The car solidifies that this house is no longer his, which he knows, but if the car weren’t there, he could at least fantasize of walking in the front door. 

The boy fantasizes a lot. It would only be appropriate for a boy to fantasize this much. He’ll imagine himself in a recent video game he was playing, in an active shooter scenario, or with the girl he has a crush on. But his most vivid imaginations are always what his life would be like if his father didn’t die. Would they still be in this home? Would he still have somewhere to call home? Would he have had more friends throughout high school? Would he have been more confident throughout his whole life because he would have actually had people that made him feel good, and perhaps raised his self-esteem? And, would this confidence have led to his crush saying yes to him on a date?

The other vivid scene he imagines is blowing his brains out. Not actually dying, but rather what the world would look like without him. Birds singing cheerful tunes, no longer being a burden to everyone he's ever known. He fantasizes of his funeral, and wonders whether the tears people shed will be because they realized they didn't help him, or because he was "too young to go".

The fantasies are all but coming to an end. Standing in front of the house, he tries to remember what he wanted to tell his father as he knocked on the bathroom door but his brain draws a blank. Everything else will cease to matter when he pulls the trigger, and maybe he’ll be able to recall in the afterlife.

As the cigarette gets down to halfway, everytime the boy hurt himself, and his reasons for doing so flash through his mind. Punching a wall for being so naive as to think a girl could actually like him. Scraping his knuckles against concrete so he can feel pain whenever he makes a fist for the next week. Putting a cigarette out on his arm, and wondering if anyone would notice the burn. 

Knowing he will never have to experience any of that again, a shred of happiness overcomes him, or at least what he thinks is happiness. It’s been so long since he’s felt anything other than utter misery, he can’t be sure anymore. 

The cigarette continues burning as he holds it by his side, although more slowly than if he were to inhale. He prolongs his life by doing this for no more than one minute throughout smoking the entire cigarette. He’s searching for a sign, anything to tell him life is worth living. It's not, he decides.

He takes another puff, and for a split second he wonders if he is depressed, or if he wants to be depressed, because if he isn’t, then that means their deaths were for nothing. Then he realizes the meaninglessness of that thought, because either way something is wrong with him. And he doesn’t want to exist as something “wrong” in this world.

The cigarette gets to the last quarter, where he would usually toss it, but he decides to smoke it down to the butt. Now, as if trying to get him ready to pull the trigger, his mind makes him think of his deepest regrets. Everytime that thought pops into the boy’s mind, one overwhelming thought comes to him. How did his father have a heart attack while he was in the house, and he didn’t notice? Could he have saved him? If he went back in time, and called 911 before his father had the heart attack, could the paramedics have saved him? Or was it an inevitability of his father’s unhealthy lifestyle? 

The guilt overwhelms him, and he suddenly realizes that he’s always thought of his father’s death in terms of what it meant for him, and not what it meant to his father. 

Did he wonder what would happen to us in his last moments? What the deepest regret of his life was? Did he wonder how none of us heard him dying? Did he call out for help, and we were all deaf to it, all just self-absorbed children at that time?

He drops the cigarette onto the ground, and stamps it out. As he reaches towards the gun in his waistband, he hears a child’s laughter coming from his old home. It sounds oddly like his brother’s laughs when they were children. A smile comes across his face, and he recognizes this feeling. There's no doubt in his mind this time. He continues walking down the street, away from his childhood home.