The Story of Alexander, Part 1.

This story couldn’t have been predicted.

Progression has created such a large gap between the generations; almost everything is unfathomable, to a grandfather charged with raising his only daughter’s child. There had been circumstances, behind the birth – a single young woman who’d borne a child out of wedlock, who had remained tight-lipped about the father, and who’d had no other choice after the falling-out with her parents but to make her own way.

The boy, Alexander, was bright. He had a sharp mind, and if he hadn’t, the amount of floundering he would have done would have undoubtedly been considerable; his grandparents, having experienced the hardships of raising a child ‘too permissively’, put him in school a year early. His development was on-par with the older children in his grade…but only just.

Every spark of talent, as reported by his teachers, was pursued and pressed upon. He could be anything, when he grew up. He had an ear for music; piano lessons began. He had a sharp eye and great coordination; they had him try basketball. He had a broad imagination; they enrolled him in an art program.

Alexander was busy, being pressed in several directions…but it seemed that everything they tried, he lost passion for. There were days when he would have to be kept inside with a bowl at his bedside, his grandmother soothingly rubbing his back while he vomited, and he could not explain why the idea of being among so many people with so many expectations made his stomach churn.

Both of his grandparents tried to soothe him. Remind him, more so, that these were talents he would carry throughout his entire life. ‘Think of the future,’ they would tell him. He would be ever so glad to have developed these fine talents, when he was older.

School wasn’t proving to be much of an intellectual challenge for him, and he was placed in smaller, specialized classes. There wasn’t much of a chance for socialization, which only fuelled their ideas that his extracurricular activities were of the utmost important. Time was needed for school, homework, additional lessons.

So often, they asked about his friends. Alexander could only shrug, a little bit helplessly, and explain that he didn’t care for the people he met there.

Friends were important, they told him. Particularly his classmates, clever little boys and girls who would no doubt be going places; they were future connections, they told him, and those were nearly as important as his talents on their own.

Alexander would nod, promise to make an effort, and go about his days in the exact same way as always.

Keeping his head down.

Putting the least amount of effort forward, as little as he could get away with.

Feeling quiet, growing disdain for others – opinionated, loud, messy people who touched and spoke too much, that made him flinch and retreat into himself, that made him want to put up a barrier between himself and them.

Without knowing why, he kept these things secret, and buried the fear that his future would be marred by the fact that he didn’t function the same way as everyone else seemed to.

Foregone Conclusions.

Part of the thrill, in reading, comes from suspense.

When you’re aware of the conclusion ahead of time…reading almost seems like a pointless endeavor.

The reader knows the story does not end happily.

Yet, we read it anyway.

It’s a trait ingrained into humanity. This incessant need to know is what drives an individual, despite their better judgment. The question is: what does having that knowledge accomplish?

Knowledge is a stain. Once you’re aware of something, it becomes almost impossible to scrub out.

Knowing leads to understanding. Understanding, to identification. Rationalization.

It leads to excuses, that we make to justify and dismiss behaviors. This is why humanity will always be weaker than them. Humanity’s greatest strength is fatal.

The Story of Linnie, Epilogue.

The girl she stumbled across was smaller than her. Only a teenager, with a camera in hand, and a look of unease all over her face. She told Linnie she’d been driving with a friend, and they’d pulled over once they realized they’d driven down the same street four times. They’d been traveling in a straight line. They got separated from each other.

She’d been lost for hours. She asked Linnie for her help.

Linnie blacked out, from the resulting anxiety attack.

When she awoke, she was lying with her cheek pressed to the pavement, a sense of calm, and her hands covered in blood.

She woke up next to a mural, finger-painted entirely in red. And that is how Linnie’s story began.

The Story of Linnie, Part 2.

She was a smart enough girl and a decent enough student, when she wasn’t avoiding her work. Linnie was easily driven to anxiety; it was so much easier to delve into the escapism her tiny bedroom could provide, rather than face exams and grades and…the future.

Linnie didn’t speak to people, even through the safer medium of text. People were difficult, for her. She just couldn’t wrap her head around most of the things they did. All of the things they did, really.

She couldn’t even figure herself out.

Her father was her teacher, mostly, and seemed to avoid particular subjects. She received none of the education one would receive in a public school Health class; Sex Ed was skipped over entirely. No particular subject, of the ones he was trying to teach her, really captivated her interest. Math, Science, English.

There was something she was missing, but the more she tried to put her finger on what it was, the more lost she felt. Eventually, she just stopped trying to figure it out.

Linnie was listless, preferring the most mindless of games and stories to anything that might force her to face reality. She was expected to apply for college; how? She didn’t even know what she wanted to do with her life.

Besides, the thought of going outside turned her stomach.

After a great deal of debating and pleading, her parents managed to figure out online college courses for her, as well. They gave her a year to think about her major, before enrolling her. Linnie failed every class.

She fought with her mother, that night. Her father, more passive and quick to avoid, kept out of it.

Her mother screamed at her, claiming she’d wasted their money. They’d given her time, she yelled. They’d taught her everything they could. The government-issued tests, she’d passed with flying colors; how was it she hadn’t even scraped the barest of passing grades?

Linnie couldn’t argue back. Not coherently. She just cried, and repeated again and again, ‘I don’t know’.

The next morning, Linnie woke up to find that both of her parents were gone.

Days passed.

At first, she thought they’d left just to get away from her. She understood. She was trying to get away, too. Lose herself in mind-numbing pastimes that never left her with a feeling of accomplishment.

After three weeks, she was starting to worry. After six, she was in a panic.

She’d rationed food to the best of her ability, but there was nothing left, now. Not a word from her parents, or the outside world; not that she’d checked the latter. She was too terrified to step out of the house. Linnie made excuse after excuse, as to why she shouldn’t.

Three more empty-bellied days went by, and she couldn’t put it off any longer.

Linnie stepped outside for the first time in over ten years, and found no one.

The outside world was less frightening, without people…but there was never a time she felt honestly at ease. She’d lost her way from the moment she rounded the first street corner. Her house was gone. The street signs were blank. Nothing made sense, and every time she spent too long thinking on it, the wild beating of her heart and rasping, panicky gasps deafened her.

It played tricks on her mind. Her pulse would race and pound against her eardrums, and the vibration of it left the strangest impression of mocking laughter. As though the city, itself, was taunting her.

But she adapted. She was never calm, but there was no one around to hurt her. Linnie managed. Until the day she found out she wasn’t alone.

The Story of Linnie, Part 1.

This story is unclear; a lack of clarity was the problem all along.

Linnie was eight years old, the first time she stepped onto a crowded bus, and was taken down a different route than intended. Her father couldn’t drive and her mother had to work late, that night; she’d been given the option of staying at school until she could be picked up, or being given a handful of change to take the bus, instead. Childishly impatient, she’d opted for the latter. She didn’t care much for the idea of sitting around at school with nothing to do.

She didn’t have many friends to play with, to while away the time. She was too shy, for that.

So, Linnie’s mother printed off the bus route she needed to take, gave her some change and the spare key to the house, and fretfully told her to call the moment she got home.

Linnie got onto the wrong bus, by accident.

Crushed against a metal pole, she clung to it and sniffled with her head down for an hour of the trip. There never seemed to be any less people. For every occupant that waded through the sea of bodies, two more would get on at the front and press everyone even further back.

Eventually, it was too much. The pungent reek of body odor, the jumble of noise, the all-consuming terror of not knowing where she was. Linnie got off the bus, disoriented and having trouble breathing…only to find that exiting was much, much worse.

She’d gotten off at a bus station. Wide, open space with nothing but signs and numbers that meant little to her. It didn’t occur to her to get on the same bus, going the opposite way. She didn’t see the right number for the bus that she was originally meant to get on.

All of the change had been spent on that first bus fare, and there wasn’t a payphone in sight.

Linnie walked, until she found the most cramped corner available – a dark, dank little space in the underground area, leading to a subway train – and cried.

The police found her like that six hours later. Her parents had called them at four o’clock, when she still hadn’t heard from her daughter. They drove Linnie home.

After that, Linnie couldn’t leave the house without dissolving into a panic attack. Rather than pressure her, her parents decided to take her out of school and teach her at home, instead.

Linnie didn’t leave the house for years.

'The End.'

Knowing the beginning doesn’t change the ending. The author can only hope that the reader doesn’t skip to the end. By doing so, you’re missing everything you were meant to feel, by that point.

‘The end’ is sharp, cold, indifferent. It isn’t fitting.

The characters deserve better.

They all deserve better.

I fucking deserve better.

But the reader? The reader, who jumps ahead to the end? Sharp, cold, indifferent? Cruel?

Who’s to say what they deserve?

The Story of Russell, Epilogue.

There was another man at the support group meeting. He was the one who organized it, apparently. He wanted to make sure Russell felt welcome.

He invited him back to his apartment for a drink, and told him he looked like he could use one. Russell was quick to agree, on that point.

There was something magnetic and charismatic, about him. As terrified as he was of using him, too, Russell asked if he was also HIV positive, not wanting to assume. The man smiled ruefully and said he was diseased, but he didn’t let that get in way of the sexual aspects of his life.

Russ wasn’t certain who seduced who.

All he was really certain of was how he felt afterwards. The shame had consumed him. The disease had, too.

It just wasn’t the same disease running through his blood. His disease was his blood.

And that is how Russell’s story began.