Pitter pat, pitter pitter pitter pat…
He listens to the sound of the rain, cheeks pressed against the cold glass.
Pitter pitter pitter plop…
And there it goes, the ongoing sound of pitter and patter and the silence that echoes through the porcelain walls.
Pitter pat, pitter scrunch…
And his ears perk up at the sound of a distinct step.


He lifts his head and pushes himself up by the windowsill, eying the front yard through the uncondensed mark he’s left on the crystalline-decorated glass. He sees a slender figure; arms spread out and face drenching itself in the freedom of liberty from the balls and chains he’s tied down to now. And his face boils, his frozen, pale face boils to the shade of a rosebud, because he envies, envies how someone can be so happy and liberate while his whole life is being controlled with strings.


He taps the window with one finger, eyes begging, moping, pleading for the unnamed beauty to come to him with a pair of scissors and let him drop to the ground and finally walk for himself. He taps, and the other turns. He stares into deep, round, bottomless eyes and he swears he could fall into the endless pit of those chocolate orbs and he’ll never see the light of day again.


The other stops and smiles, and then he waves. He waves a subtle sway and he suddenly looks so broken. A second ago he looked like the first sprout of spring and now he looks like the last autumn leaf yet to fall.


And suddenly the rain stops in mid-air, the mausoleum-like room he’s entombed in holds an even heavier atmosphere, and the glass that separates the two of them begins to rattle against his palms. He sees himself in those moonlit mercury droplets of eyes as a puppet, a marionette entrapped in a glass case, only to be watched, never to be touched nor be able to, to feel the acres of distance between him and whatever awaits him on the other side of the see-through yet sadly not walk-through pellucid wall.


He wishes so badly that he could muster up any strength he can gather from years of being left to wilt, to suddenly have the voice to shatter the window with a high-pitched screech. He wishes so badly yet all he can do is sit and stare and stare and breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe and blink and one day just stop and die. He wishes so badly that he thinks maybe, just maybe, that idiosyncratic boy out there could some how read his mind and help him. Luckily, he’s never turned away.


They stay in a gaze-lock and he stumbles over a bit, making the fox-eyed boy giggle and he’s so amused by him, so amused by someone else’s laughter. It just might be the first slightest hint of happiness he’s seen over the past twelve years.


“What are you doing in the rain?”
He writes neatly on the foggy glass.


And Bambi always tramples over in curiosity.


The boy blows hot breath against the glass and follows,
“It’s nice.”


It takes him a while to figure out what the other has written since he has to read it backwards, but he catches on and simply nods.


“I never see you outside. Why?”


He looks down at his limp legs from all the years of barely using them.
“Limited mobility. Kinda sick.”


“There’s no such thing as limits.”


His heart skips three beats, the beeping of the machines suddenly strike his skull like a brick.


The boy’s lips are only centimeters away from the glass.


“There’s only one certainty in life.”


He nods, signaling the latter to continue.


“We live once,”
The boy closes his eyes gently and takes a breath.


He feels the other’s eyes burn through his pallid eyelids and bore into his skin like throwing daggers.





“And then we die.”





His eyes widen.





His toes twitch.

And the glass shatters before them.