Wordsmith
Pete had trouble calculating the cost to his parents for the structure they'd created. Over the years, it had become more and more elaborate as his “disease” progressed, to a point where he was sequestered almost alone in the home, despite the fact that his mother and father lived less than five feet beyond his walls.
The attic became his; a far larger bedroom than any sixteen year old would possibility need, filled to the brim with the latest gadgets, toys, and all the food he could want. He had to do nothing more than pick up the small phone on the wall, and either his mother or the security man outside would answer, and get him whatever he wanted.
Unless, of course, his request involved them opening the door or bringing a friend by to play. In those cases, he was simply hung up on.
Pete was honest enough about his situation to understand that most of those he had called friends before his parents knew he was sick had moved away or believed that he was dead. While his mother and father hadn't actively spread the rumor that he'd passed away, they had a way of looking sad and forlorn when anyone asked that stemmed the tide of questions, and left the asker almost certain that the “nice young man” they'd known was gone.
His parents had been kind enough to include cameras in his attic prison so that he could see what was going on in the main area of the house, and warn them or the guard if someone was trying to break in or if he saw something dangerous happening. Of course, the cameras also allowed his parents to see what was going on the in his attic along with all other parts of the house, which meant he couldn't claim an emergency as a way out of his cage when none existed.
It had been a false cry of fire that got him out the first time, and though he'd been very careful when he left, his parents had been furious that he'd tricked them. They didn't yell, of course, just ushered him back up the attic stairs, then closed and bolted the door behind him. It was out of concern for his sickness, they told him.
His parents were not bad people, just blind to his true nature and unsure of what to make of him. He was unsure himself, but knew that he didn't deserve to be locked away like a common criminal. It was the doctors that had convinced them, that had told them he would be better off with no way to “express”, as they called it, and that everyone would be the safer for it.
It wasn't that what he had was contagious; far from it. Rather it, was that no one had ever seen what he had, no one could put a finger on why he was different. Grade-school had made it obvious enough that he was different than the other children. Bright enough, he had taken to reading like a fish to water, but writing seemed to elude him no matter how hard the teacher pushed. Picking up a pencil made him cry, and the thought of a pen in his hands made him ill. Learning specialists were consulted and scratched their heads, telling his parents that he might be developmentally delayed, but that they didn't really know for sure.
Finally, at the age of eight and in front of a full classroom of children and one encouraging teacher, he had written the word “tiger” on the board. A sound at the back of the class had distracted him from writing the name of another animal, and turning put him face to face with a charging, snarling orange-and-white form. Stumbling backward into the chalkboard had erased the offending word, and the tiger disappeared. The looks on the faces of the other children and the teacher told him that what he had seen had been no dream, but he and the rest of the class were quickly told that nothing had happened, and he found himself in the principal's office. He wasn't blamed, exactly – since there was nothing to blame him for, as the tiger had been a “complete fallacy”, according to the large and bearded leader of the school – but he was told to stop writing immediately.
He didn't, of course.
He was careful never to write anything too dangerous or too outlandish down, but monkeys did show up in his home, and tables of pies and cakes would appear often at school. Within six months, his parents had been told to keep him at home and take his pens and pencils away.
A sharp knife and a painted wall worked well enough for a writing surface, and he kept on summoning whatever he thought of, until his father finally locked him away. Even that wasn't working until his parents hired a design firm and got creative.
He'd gone to sleep one night after a particularly large dinner, one he was now sure had been drugged. When he awoke, his room in the attic had been converted into something from an asylum. Smooth, indestructible plastic coated all of the walls, plastic that could not be scratched to make a mark, and would not hold spit or blood long enough for him to fashion a word before they dripped away. The hardwood flooring had been replaced with a soft grating, not unpleasant to stand on, but such that even a regular bodily function could not help him draw words on the ground.
Pete sighed as he finished his dinner, shoving half of the peas left on his plate into his mouth and placing them on the outside edge of his bottom teeth. In a few minutes, he'd use the bathroom and they vegetables could join the stockpile he was making there. Writing implements weren't necessary, he'd discovered, just the physical act of making a word, and one constructed would do as well as one scribed.
He was getting out.
- D
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