oneshots 🧷 joshler

red raindrops

hey so this is sprouting off of bird wings! it isn't joshler but where else to I put it yknow lmao anyway here we go

He was thirteen when he got his first pair of boots. His parents had smiled for the last time that day, the candles on his cake dripping into the white icing, staining it with red. As soon as he slipped on the leather boots, just to test them out, he could feel an emotion slice through the room, something sharp and uncalled for, something deep. The cake knife clattered to the floor, nicking his finger. The blood, hot and stinging, dripped onto the floor, the nice white tiles of the kitchen, his mother's favorite floor in the entire house. That was his first stain on the boots, his blood.

He was never the favorite, in his parents' eyes. There wasn't even anyone else to favor, until four days after his thirteenth birthday. He was always the last one picked, always a disgrace, always wrong.

His boots clunked on the floor on his fourteenth birthday, his cake long forgotten as he left for the day. He heard his sister in the room, his horrid sister who was an angel, apparently, being cooed over by his mother. His father, sitting in the kitchen, ignored him completely, not even a hello uttered, nothing to break the cold silence between them, nothing slicing the ice barrier frozen through the house.

The next year, a month before his fifteenth birthday, his sister moved into his room, his precious, private hideaway being wrecked with the clutter of clothes and toys and screaming fits of rage. He acted like he loved her, he really tried, but he couldn't bring himself to actually feel anything but twisted thoughts of her, how she would be if you could zipper her lips shut, muffle her for eternity.

His fifteenth birthday was forgotten by himself, fifteen not being important anymore.

He woke up and got a pair of boots by his bed, a slightly larger pair then before, ones fit for him now. His old ones were ripped to shreds, almost, from the amount of use put into them. That was the only thing reminding him that he was marching in the line towards death, with no stop.

That was the year he heard it first. A noise, echoing across the barrier, shocking him. He didn't remember that happening before. His sister had looked at him, wide eyes filled with confusion, but he had waved it off and told her to continue playing. She nodded and did so, like any gullible two year old.

He had become too curious for his own good, so he had decided to leave his room, their room, and to go, follow the sound, see exactly what was happening to startle them. He had walked into the kitchen and immediately regretted it, wanting to go back, back to the safety with his sister that he didn't love, to close the door and lock it, but it was the first time in years that he wasn't invisible, that he was out in the open to his parents.

His heart was in his stomach, his mind in the clouds, his eyes turning a darker shade of color than usual. He didn't want to talk, didn't want to say anything to disrupt their stares. The barrier was broken, a stain appearing on the soles of his boots, the puddle surrounding his right foot. His mother wasn't even able to worry about her nice, white tiles of the kitchen. She was too busy hung up in her own world.

Needless to say, he came back into his room with new wings fluttering on his back. His sister didn't even notice his footprint on the wood floor, just smiled up at him and went back to playing.

And, for once, he crouched down and helped her color a picture, one with ducks and mice and grass. He didn't pick up the red crayon and draw what he had seen on the back. He would save that for his own sketchbooks, the image burned into the back of his eyelids and in the front of his brain. He would give the sketchbooks to her, a remembrance of his memories and experiences for her to look through and marvel at.