Free Like Moonlight

I'm Free

Tommy glared at the slats of moonlight sliding through the bars. Who could they slip so easily in and out when he couldn't? When he had no chance? When he'd been trapped since forever, alone?

The walls of the 'asylum' had never seemed less welcoming. Tommy may have been dumb, and as the staff said a retard, that didn't mean he wanted to be trapped here forever.

All he wanted was to go. Back outside, into the world. He was 14, surely spending... more then half of his life here? Had it been that long? It had to have been enough. They had to let him out soon.

Anxiously Tommy waited, having convinced himself they'd let him go soon. Every time someone entered the small room he shared with 10 grown men, he'd sit up and hope they came to see him.

For a month nothing happened.

One day, almost a week after his 15th birthday, someone did come to see him. They looked him up and down, asked him questions Tommy didn't know the answers to. It took three hours. Once the three hours were up he was taken by a nurse, a mean one, down to a door. When was the last time he had gone outside? Did that door lead outside?

Tommy stood in confusion as other people were dragged by nurses next to him. He had no idea what was going on now. All the people made him nervous, he'd been isolated for years. The 10 people in his room didn't care for him, they all muttered to themselves or stared at their hands.

Tommy nervously tapped a rythem on his arm. What did they expect of him? Would any of these people try to speak to him? Tommy hadn't had a real conversation since he was small.

It was four hours of people being gathered before something happened. Blinding sunlight filled the hallway where what must have been 100 people stood. Tommy knew that this was hardly a fraction of the asylum's population.

The light blinded him. He blinked hard, trying to adjust his eyes. Slowly a world he'd dreamed of was spread before him. Cobble streets, open blue sky, tall buildings, no walls, no iorn bars.

It was almost how he'd dreamed it would be.

Before the nurses could close the doors, because Tommy knew the doors would close soon, he darted outside. Into the bright sunlight and all new world.

All the people both excited him and made him nervous. They dressed so much differently then he was used to! All the fine clothes, so much finer then his... Whatever it was called. It wasn't like these people's clothes.

Without thinking twice Tommy stepped off the elevated part of the road. It couldn't be that dangerous, everyone else had just been doing it.

He meandered around the streets in wonder. The air was so clean! The new textures were so refreshing, the street under his bare feet and places ready to be explored.

He bounced across the city, not noticing the looks he got.

Slowly he started taking notice of boys on street corners. They all shouted, holding identical things in their hands. Things Tommy didn't know the name of. The fifth boy he encountered he decided to ask. As nervous as he was about talking, maybe he could make his first ever friend. That was something he knew. Some of the hand-starers talked with each other, called each other friend. And Tommy wanted one.

He tapped the boy on his bare shoulder. "He-hello. I'm Tommy, can we be friends?" He asked nervously. He heard how his voice shook, that wasn't how this boy talked. He sounded confident, shouting something.

The boy turned around. He was just taller then Tommy. And Tommy couldn't place his expression. Not knowing made him nervous. He didn't look him in the eye, Tommy didn't look people in the eyes.