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THE SPOTLIGHT

*WARNING, THIS STORY CONTAINS MATURE THEMES*

*IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BETWEEN FOOTSTEPS,  DO NOT READ THIS*

Or do, I suppose there's only so much one can control and be above.

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I'll be a god someday. I will. I'll control them all like they feel they can control me, because this world is only one built on rank. And because it is, all I have to do is climb it. Once I'm the one at the top, I'll be the one looking down on them.

"Henry."

I awoke to the sound of my mother's voice. Like usual, the only thing that met me was the smoky haze of the air and the feeling of suffocation tainting my lungs. My mother wasn't there. She hadn't been for a long while.

And yet it was like she was watching me, and at times I can almost feel her nonexistent eyes and the whispers she utters against the back of my neck. I heard knocks in the alleys that I tried to ignore, and the flashes of shadows just out of my vision that caused my mind to doubt.

The worst is her footsteps. I hear them the loudest, and it sounds like broken heels on the stone cobble I lay on. Why is she walking still?

Why could I hear her steps?

And what was between them? What is the reason for them? Why wouldn't they stop?

"What a pesky woman," I would say to myself, clenching my teeth in irritation. She was dead, so why wouldn't she just move on? She left me in my suffering, so it was only fair for her to stay gone.

The me I was at 13 was a despicable lowly young man that was truly at the very bottom of society. With no where to go, I took refuge in the shadows and never once touched the light. Back then, it was better that way. The dirty pathetic hands of my youth should never touch the light, and they never did.

But the shadows were consuming, and I felt my own weakness with every passing moment. I had to bow to the things I needed, and force down what I wanted.

Even though I stayed where I belonged, I certainly didn't hold back in looking.

What a beautiful and magical world of lights I saw. They advertised it everywhere, and people came from all over the world just to bask in those lights.

Entertainment they called it.

That's what caused the laughs, the smiles, and the torture.

I was covered in grime and coughed with the fatigue of inhaling dust. My clothes were ripped and my eyelids heavy from staying open, but they surly did as they watched the metal bars become raised into the sky.

They were constructing rides of unimaginable sizes that were so tall they touched the clouds. At night they glowed, and the distant laughter of people from above touched my ears as I shook in the dark.

Food stands went up, and people excitedly handed over spare dimes and nickels as if they had plenty to spare just to stuff their faces with sugar and fat like gluttonous pigs.

But perhaps the most intriguing of all back then were those tents. Tents casting shadows and forceing audiences into them, only allowing one light to shine. That light is called a spotlight, and one night I watched from outside the tent to stare at the man basking in it.

He called himself a ringmaster. Only he stood in the light, and he had the power to control and give what he pleased to the suckers in the crowds. Everyone stared at him in awe, and suddenly I understood that this man was the most powerful in that room.