As long as I can remember, I've always had Ian by my side. We did everything together. We played, we laughed, we told each other secrets, and we even went to the bathroom together (Ian's a scaredy-cat). I remember waking up to his pudgy little 7 year old face and plunging into our kingdom of cars and dinosaurs, like it was yesterday. God, it was the best. Twenty four-seven constant play with Ian. We went to school together and had the same teacher. I didn't have any friends except Ian because they would never talk to me. He got upset when the other kids called him weird for playing with me. The teacher was nice but she would always tell Ian to stop talking to me and to play with the other boys. Ian refused and always said I was his best friend. At Ian's house, we would eat spaghetti and meatballs aallll the time. Ian would always tell his mommy to give me a plate because she always forgot to. She would give me a nice smile and of course, I would smile back. She talked to me slowly, "okay, eat your spaghetti now or the boogeyman will get you." I was never hungry though, and I knew the boogeyman wasn't real so I would let Ian eat it because I was his best friend and I wanted him to be happy and full. Ian started to play with me less and less. He would talk to me less, look at me less, be with me less. One day, on his thirteenth birthday, something got Ian upset down at the party and he stormed upstairs to his room where I was in the corner by myself. He burst in, tears threatening to release themselves from his eyes, and kicked the first thing in sight, his guitar. The guitar flew across the room, barely missing my head, and smashed into the wall. I got up and screamed as he slid his mattress off of his bed and threw an action figure at the mirror, cracking it into a million shards. "What's wrong?! Whats wrong?!" I screamed repeatedly as he demolished his room. His father burst into the room, a storm of anger and confusion. "Who the hell do you think you are breaking this stuff as if you paid for it?!" his dad yelled furiously, his voice seeming to ripple through the world. Ian turned around, eyes wide with fear, his fury disappearing as soon as it had appeared. His father lunged at him, pinning Ian to the ground. Ian tried to squirm away but his father was too big. What follows is one of the most devastating scenes that I've ever come to watch with my own eyes. Ian's father raised his fist into the air and slammed it down on his Ian's head. Ian went limp. I ran to his father, clawing and screaming, but nothing worked. Over and over, his father hit him. The other men from the party ran upstairs and wrenched him back. Ian was taken to the hospital and everything was covered up. The police didn't ask many questions and eventually let the case go. Ian stopped talking to me all together. He stopped looking at me, stopped thinking about me. His love for me, that had once been bigger than himself, was now nothing. Complete and utter nothingness. I felt betrayed but still I lurked in the dark corners of Ian's life. His father started drinking and the beatings got more frequent. Ian started to talk less. He had lost the twinkle in his eyes when he smiled and he rarely made any sense anymore. He rambled on and on about anything and everything, talking himself into a blithering rage where he started to trash his room and his father proceeded to beat him senseless. I cried. I cried for Ian. I cried for his father. I cried for myself and, oh god, the memories. The police came one day. A fleet of men raging up the stairs to Ian's room. Ian screamed and lashed out as they put this shirt on him that made his arms wrap around each other and handcuffed at the back. I clung to Ian for my life as they pulled him downstairs and into a van. We rode for hours, just Ian and I, in the back of that van. They then took us to a building where people screamed bloody murder and souls wailed from oblivion. I sit here now, in a small cubicle with a steel cold toilet. A delusional, screaming, handcuffed to a bed Ian in front of me. I yearn for him to talk to me but all he does is pull on his restraints, laugh, and yell incoherently at the world. I stand in the dark corners of his room now. In the darkness of his once thriving imagination. A dying Ian, who I will never be able to talk to again. I was once a beautiful young boy. Now, I'm just a figment of a child's imagination, clinging to my creator with all my imaginary might. I am Billy.
