Moon Boy

Prolog - Within white Walls

-This house.

This abhorrent house.

I sit here at this kitchen table, tracing the wood grain with my finger. Oh to see the life that once ran through these knotty veins so like the paper on which I write. Dead. Gone. Confined to a table. I don't remember getting here or having ever left. Come to think of it I don't even know who or what I am. Hence I feel as stripped as the bark from this tree. Oak, I think. "I think, therefore I am." I can't remember how I remember. My memories have been wiped clean as the walls surrounding me. What year is it? Who brought me here? Is there anyone else?

I'm alone. –

I was alone... I rediscovered this writing not too long ago. What with the tattered state of my memory it seems it has become my only and favourite piece of literature. I had and still have no recollection of time. I can remember that time had once been a large part of a life I can't remember how. Strange how the brain chooses to forget everything outside this house but what seems to get through are the emotions. I feel the connection I have to things but don't know why it exists. Hence, my ability to write such befuddled notes with such eloquence. An eloquence I'm confused as to how I have. I think the only real thing I know about myself is that I'm male.

The house I sit in isn't a normal house, that much has been certain from the beginning. When I woke up here the smell of fresh paint stung my nose and everything was an unsettling clinical shade of white. The furniture, the walls, and the fixtures. Upon searching I found a fridge and a cupboard filled with the same vacuum packed packages filled with a grey paste I assumed was food. Everything here is grey. Over an indiscriminate amount of time, I developed a loathing for the blandness of my newfound life and decided to up and leave. I had no personal effects to take with me so I decided to walk straight out of the front door. This turned out to be the first bad decision in my new life. I woke back up on the floor of the living room, shivering and cold. Evidently, something or someone doesn't want me to leave this house. I stood up from the cold wooden floor and looked around the bland room, I felt like I should have been scared but I wasn't. Instead, I found myself, as if more time had passed, sitting in the kitchen next to the glass, sliding doors to the back garden. It's tranquillity and the faint sound of birdsong almost drowned out the overlying sense of complete boredom. I was pacified. Sitting in this house staring at a scene of things I can't experience first hand. I can't climb the trees, have the sun warm my face, feel the wind on my face or walk barefoot in the grass. However watching the scenes has become so addicting that one day I had forgotten I hadn't eaten for hours. Or at least what I assumed was hours. I opened myself a package of grey food material and sat back next to the window to watch the moon hang in the sky. I cried. I woke up on the kitchen table and a feeling of anxiety paved its way over my boredom. The boredom was still there but I was uneasy. Shaking over the fact that my life is flashing by and I may never be able to get out.

I watched the sun fall behind the horizon so I knew I hadn't missed a day. I waited for the moon. I opened a packet of food and dumped its contents onto the kitchen table. Looking up at the sky, peppered with bright shining stars, I arched my hand and carved a circle into the smeared pile of food on the table. Trying to capture the moon's imperfect intrications, craters like eyes that stared back through my soul and lit up my mind. I stepped back and soon found that the table had taken on a beauty of its own. The copy was nowhere near the original but I found myself staring at something that was mine. I looked into a still frame of something that came from my very soul. In a way I found myself. My memories were still missing, my mind fragmented, but at least I had something to my name. A name...

I used my pinky finger to carve the word "moon" in the lower right corner of the table. Moon sounds about right. And for the first time, I smiled. I nodded. And then I ate the rest of my food, letting the moon linger, lonely. As my gaze was no longer with it. The object of my affection had shifted and now my art filled me with a warm glow that helped me drift into a still and silent sleep.

I awoke on the kitchen floor where I must have fallen asleep. Pressed my face against the cold tile floor and looked around the bright white room. I got up quickly to my feet to gaze at my creation. I stood there. Looking. For my canvas had been wiped clean. Tears filled my eyes as a sharp throbbing spectral pain shot through my heart. I dropped to my knees, pressing my forehead against the edge of the table. I lay back down momentarily, for what I thought was the blink of an eye. But then I looked back outside. The moon had risen, the sky was dark. I crawled slowly, sobbing as I did, to press my tear-covered face up against the glass sliding door.

Some while ago I went exploring. As far as I could within the bounds of my house. My house... the house. I found three bedrooms laid out differently but containing mostly the same drab decor. White, all of it. The bathrooms were white too. The downstairs bathroom had a large mirror, there I stood, in front of it. I looked at my face. I was pretty. In my own opinion, I suppose. Perhaps everyone thinks that of themselves. I looked down at the white gown I was wearing. Back to my face. I felt around to my back and untied the gown. I let it fall in front of me. I stared at myself. Reached out to the mirror. I realised the opportunity had arisen to draw something other than the moon, so I rushed into the kitchen to grab a food packet and a cutting board from the kitchen. I ran back to the bathroom and with extreme concentration and a butter knife I layered food on top of itself until the monochrome image manifested of a slender effeminate, yet toned teenager. The same result as the moon. Outsiders may have seen a blatant act of narcissism. But I loved not the sight of my own body, but the act of creating art. Every time I drew it was as if, just as if, another part of me was returning. I sank to the floor and sat with my piece in my arms and hugged it lightly as to not smudge it. I hugged tightly and looked up.

That's when I noticed the cameras. I carried my cutting board art by its convenient handle and stood with rage. I pointed at the camera, I was in the hall now. I cried and pointed and swore. "Why am I here?" "Why am I here?" "Why am I here?" I continued to yell this. Every word degraded in interest and effort gradually sinking me back to the floor into the foetal position. I clutched my painting, I wept silently and I fell into a stirred, sorry, saddened sleep.