bugs.

moths.

Between the hours of 8.40, and 3.20 I observed an entirely different universe to mine, only a wall away, and through a gap in the wall. They were alive, naïve and energetic like brand new batteries. I saw them flirt and laugh and joke and swear like their entire nature revolved around play, and sometimes they'd be sad and whine. In my white walled desk, where objects were purposely neatened, and textbooks hung off shelves like jagged dolls, I sat and peeped through the hole, trying to understand whether this was for show or if they were real.

There were three of them directly in front of where I sat. They had stolen a locker and named it their own to store bags and jumbles. Two out of the three had explosions of papers and little yellow booklets that stuck out between the locker door's hinges. The girl was a wannabe actress, with yellow hair and a loud voice. Everything she did or said was for the sole reason of being noticed. She walked strangely, and clung on to her self-added accent in an attempt of standing out. The boys liked her though. There would always be a new standing next to where she stood, waiting for a proclamation of passion but she never seemed to give in. Through my peep hole, I could tell she was always seeking better.

The second was a boy with broad shoulders who always seemed to be drastically injured. He had eyes bluer than the ceiling paint, and walked with his feet slightly spread apart. Frankly, he shared the characteristics of a clown. He liked the girl with yellow hair though. You could tell by the way his cheeks turned red when she brushed past him, or how his shoulders sunk when she laughed. This boy didn't like her for the character that hid behind her rolled R's but because she was pretty and light as a dove. I notice this because if I was to shrink back into my disproportionate body of a teenager, I would've been the same. But not for such a shallow person as she was.

There was the third. He was broad with buck teeth and curly hair. He kicked a ball around like a beehive makes bees. He sung like a parrot and kissed like a duck. I know this because one late afternoon, as I crawled back into my office, I saw him with a mousy girl, eating her lips and enjoying it. I hurried off and forgot about everything that day- I even messed up my white walls. This third boy said mean things to a lot of people, venting like a cooler and brawling like a hungry rat. He liked the other two though, and admired their character and level of thought.

After 6 months of observations, my back aching and my fingers sore, I began to feel the weight of time like logs made of bricks. Tired of my average job with average students, I would go home to a saggy wife with underwear tight enough to hold her excess skin together. Everything was desexualized. Everything was slow and miserable. Hair fell out like a youngling's teeth and day by day, I wanted to grab and scratch at the youth that had evaporated quicker than it had arrived. I began to realize cold realities on life; that youth was the only thing we could never clutch on to, and what we yearned for the most. I began to look at school girls, imagining myself 30 odd years younger with a flower between my teeth, and their hand below my crotch. And the fantasies worsened. I wanted all of it. I wanted skin smoother than marble and hair darker than coal. I wanted my teeth to stop shrinking, and gleam with new. As I slept next to my snoring wife, I escaped to my younger self, seducing the yellow haired girl and kicking a ball with the curly haired boy. I serenaded one or four, with my strong and able hands, I carried them into a foreign bed and explored.

Slowly, obsessively, I began to venture through the lives of the three further than the corridor. I'd leave my office and follow them to class. They never noticed my constant stares and stalking. They laughed and praised me when I was spoken of, and commended my works. All situated in different parts of the playground, I had altered my schedule so I would see them all at least once a week. On Mondays the clownesque one attended the picnic tables, and so I'd sit and watch, 6 to 10 meters apart. He spoke little but took himself very seriously.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I observed the girl socializing with a group that swore a lot and bitched about absent people. She laughed a lot, the girl. She swayed her head, and often tried to leave, with nowhere to go. I watched how her petals darkened and shrunk while the eight odd people held a slick pair of scissors to her wings. She would never leave though, she had no place to go. Her fingers were thin and inviting, and she'd push her hair behind her ears a lot. It was both naïve and lady like. I'd observe her twice as more as the others because she was exciting.

On Thursdays I would head off early to the plains of grass. He'd be there, playing ball with other young fit specimens. They'd prance through the long grass like horses and it only made me yearn for my lost capability of doing so.

After months of coincidental crossing in the school corridors, I only yearned to see the only glimpse of light in my failed life more and more. Their smells and habits clung to me like dirt under finger nails, and the more I wanted to cleanse myself of it, the more it kept coming back. I craved more of their lives, to open more windows and to see them despair or alone. I brought my childish obsession out of the school's extended grounds and began to catch up with them at the local supermarket, or down an empty street. This was normal, a funny coincidence, nothing strange or unnatural.

I pictured them in their homes, with angst induced parents, and wailing siblings. I imagined them awake at two in the morning, smoking cigarettes on the roof or writing letters to the girl with yellow hair. I began to keep a notebook with descriptions of their surroundings and their lives. I kept shed hair or little balls of cotton that had escaped from their clothing. I drew them, I wrote poems about them and through the midst of my addiction, I began to feel younger and stronger. My fingers ceased to shake and the snoring of my wife was muffled by passion. My limbs began to function like oiled machinery, and the logs turned to doves.

She found it though. My wife, seeking her pair of spectacles stumbled on the notebook where my heart and soul was poured. She lost it, she screamed and cried and screamed some more. She called me demented, nasty, creepy, a pervert. She asked that I never saw them again. I assured her I wouldn't, that they would be moving up a floor next year. I told her that I couldn't afford to quit my job now and that financially, we relied on it. She ceased screaming and crumpled to the floor, defeated. At least she found her spectacles.

The summer holidays hung like sulfur through the streets and in houses. I didn't see the three again. My wife left to visit a spa. She came back two weeks later with skin, less saggy but more like crumpled paper. She wouldn't look at me. My son got engaged and left the house instantly. We never spoke, and barely made contact in the house. I spent my summer daydreaming about them and their situations at the present time. I didn't hunt them down, I didn't stalk them in broad daylight, but when my back began to ache and my teeth felt frail, I'd imagine the curly haired boy kicking a football. As time crawled stone by stepping stone, I got back into my work writing plays and mentally directing them.

My life became a slumber lacking rhythm. I was alone in a universe that took no attempts of understanding me. I saw little girls holding their mother's hands skipping down the streets and I felt nothing. I worked day and night because I was empty and and as my body began to fail, it occurred to me that the universe only cared about itself.

When the leaves began to sway off the trees and turn multiple shades of yellow, I headed into my dusty office, swaying two or five moths away from the little yellow booklets. I observed the new faces enter the corridor, choosing a locker or three. I got politely pushed because I was in the way of the great move, and eventually, I headed back into my office.

And with a sore hand on my weary hips, I noticed that the wall had been fixed.