Once: Part 1.

Once, there was a boy named Brian.

He was tall and a bit gawky and antisocial. He loved Josephine more than anything. She was made of lovely mahogany and spruce and she was always in tune without anyone having to actually tune her and her strings never ever snapped. She sang to him every night. She sang songs that his mother, father and sister would never sing, if they ever did. She sang him to sleep and without her, he deemed himself lost.

If she could speak, Brian imagined that she'd whisper sweet lullabies into his ear like, "Brian, you're spiffy," or "Brian, we think you're terrific," or "We love you, Brian." But she didn't, or rather, couldn't speak and he wasn't spiffy or terrific and nobody loved him but Josephine.

Once, there was a girl named Ophelia.

She was pretty and eccentric and weird. We called her Percy. Nobody quite remembers why, but we did. Her papa was the firefighter chief and her mama was a lesbian in the army. Her mama wasn't around so Percy didn't really have much of a mama and she kind of grew up loving video games and climbing trees, but soon, she couldn't climb trees anymore because her chest and hair got in the way, and soon, she stopped playing video games because a life through a lense was more interesting then a life through a controller. 

Her best friend costed her a year's worth of allowance, lawn mowing, snow shoveling, dog walking and babysitting, but in the end, that black hunk of metal was where it belonged: off the store shelves and in her arms. 

Brian loved her. 

Brian's house was big and white and sat on the top of a hill. His bedroom had a magnificent view of the entire town, but he didn't make much use of it seeing as he spent the majority of his time in the park or playing Josephine. The park in question was three blocks away on Tudy Blvd. 

There was a bench. It was made of rotting, green wood. On one end of the wood was Brian, accompanied by Josephine and on the other end, sat pretty little Percy, camera in hand and birds in sight.

"Hey."

What a great voice. Brian glanced over again, only to be blinded by her brilliant green eyes.

"Hey."

"I'm Percy."

"Brian."

"I like birds."

"Okay."

"Okay." 

And then they smiled and talked some more, and then Percy went to take some pictures of the swing set and Brian went home. He fell in love that day.

Beyond the untarnished polished mahogany doors, was a bitch of a woman. Her husband was a workaholic and she was a whore who had a bad habit of tripping onto the gardener's penis. There was a college student who has yet to leave for actual college. Her name was Bridget, sister and tormentor of Brian Greenwald.

Home was not a paradise for Brian. It would not be a paradise for anyone who was right in the mind. Don't be fooled by its seemingly utopian appearance. Under its well dressed guise, it is an eerily white, suffocating, blatantly fake purgatory of confinement.

"Do you want anything to eat, dear?" 

Mom's voice was annoying. So, so annoying. Fake, too. 

"Is that what you call Senor Luis? Dear?"

She blinked.

"You know. In bed."

Blink, again.

"Don't worry, I won't tell." 

Brian turned to the stairs, not a second before being interrupted by his mother's evidently angry attitude.

"Come back here and apologize."

"Sorry, Mom."

"Let's try this again. Do you want anything to eat, dear?"

"Don't bother. You can't cook anyway." 

Brian turned to the stairs once more, this time without being left to reject his mother's offers of tv dinners. Paying no heed to the 8 year old "No Trespassing" sign on his door, he passed and fell, collapsed on his king sized bed - a bed too big for a guy too scrawny. 

She was pretty. No, beautiful. Yes, indeed. Brian couldn't forget her deep emerald eyes, so deep they were almost hollow. The way her lips turned up at the most gentle curve, almost omnisciently so. How her hair looked, sunstreaked and tousled by the wind. How her wise and wellspoken words rolled off her tongue so easily, while his words got lodged somewhere in the midst of his larynx. She was different and Brian loved her.

His thoughts were stopped by an obnoxious knocking on his door.

"What?!" he shouted, suddenly exasperated.

"Did you take my hair brush?!" his sister shouted back from behind the mahogany.

"Why in the world would I take your lice-infested hairbrush?!"

"What?!"

"WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I TAKE YOUR HAIRBRUSH?"

"WHAT?!"

"WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I-"

"Oh for heaven's sake, I'm coming in!"

Bridget sauntered into Brian's room. She didn't do that on purpose, but after years of doing nothing but hooking up with boys, the swaying of her hips became natural. Her hair was permed straight and bleached blonde, her teeth were perfect after two sets of painstaking braces and she wore a body hugging cocktail dress and ten inch heels. Not really, but they could have been.