It is night. The darkness takes over the sky, stars hiding behind the blanket of night. Not a single twinkling wonder is out tonight. Only the lonely moon sees over this quiet darkness, shimmering unwillingly to light the way for the nocturnal beings of the city to carry on with their sleepless lives.
Amidst the sleeplessness one soul wanders along an unnamed street, its existence insignificant and irrelevant to the city. The street is littered with rubbish. The neglected path is that one soul’s route of choice for his lightless way home.
In his hand, he has a piece of yellow paper, neatly folded into a simple parallelogram. Quite why it has to be a parallelogram, he has no idea himself. It just is. He has stopped questioning why. It’s one of those things he knows that the reason it is what it is, is just because it simply is. It is just simply a parallelogram. That is its reason for existing.
He knows this path he has chosen is no ordinary path. There is a reason why it is neglected, why it is unnamed. Every night he takes this route, and every night he is reminded why it is not ordinary. So far as he knows, no one else goes through here, and he is not surprised. Things lurk in the shadows. Horrible things. Memories and nightmares of the past lurk like serpents preying on helpless little mice, ready to consume whole any that go astray. Tonight will be no different, and he will be ready for anything that tries to lead him away from his way home.
Now it starts.
******
“You lazy piece of shit! You’ll never amount to anything, you fucking piece of fuck!”
His cheek still hurts from the slap the Dad had just given him. The Mom sits on the dining table, counting eggs. Her smile is scathing, even degrading. For each count of three, she throws one egg towards him. So far none has managed to hit him. He does not budge from his chair. The Dad is giving the Speech, and he knows that any kind of movement will be considered disrespectful. He knows better than to disrespect the Speech. The Dad made sure he knows that very well with the countless bruises the Dad has given him in the past for interrupting the Speech.
“Why can’t you be like your dear old Dad? You know what your dear old Dad has achieved? A lot. That’s something you will never know for yourself. You and your useless junkie friends.”
******
Distorted memories haunt him. Though he knows the path has severely distorted his memories, the feeling is still the same. The unimaginable feeling of loneliness. The painful rejection. The physical humiliation. Though the details are inaccurate, the truth is the overall feeling is what matters. He knows this feeling, one of years gone by, pains forgotten, miserable loneliness in spiteful dejection.
Yet those memories were days of yesteryear. He just has to focus on the parallelogram in his hand, and he'll get through this. It's simple, it's plain. It's nothing more than a parallelogram. Yet it isn't just simply a parallelogram.
It's not long till he gets home. He'll get through this. He has to.
[End Of Part One]
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