Opposites Attract

Hiding In The Shadows

Money is power, that's what they say and that's what they all believe. Those that have it think they rule the world, believe that they have all the power, that they have the right to make all the decisions and to get their own way in every situation. Something isn’t going your way? Throw money at it. Someone has something you want? Buy something bigger and better to prove that you are the superior person. Money and wealth, they equate to worth. If you are poor you are deemed worthless, expendable, not to be given the time of day.

But he knows different. He knows that money is an illusion, you can lose it quicker than you can earn it and that there are some things that even money cannot save you from.

 

Knowledge, knowledge is the true power. Knowledge is the cornerstone of everything in life. Without knowledge there is no purpose. Money cannot buy you intelligence, money is not a substitute for ambition, money can make you weak, lazy and easily led.

 

For him knowledge is everything. He desires to have every piece of information at his fingertips and he is not afraid to ruthlessly exploit that knowledge for his own gain.

 

In every bad situation he’s ever been in, his knowledge, his intelligence, had been the thing to get him out of it. The only person he could ever truly rely on was himself.

 

His nimble fingers flew over the virtual keyboards, eyes darting from holoscreen to holoscreen, reams of numbers scrolling past at a phenomenal rate. Pictures rolled with them, interspersing the lines of code and random snippets of information that only made sense to him.

This was his power hub, this was his castle in the clouds, set apart from society, observing, cataloguing, engineering but never a part of. He was a spectre, a ghost, someone that people whispered about but never saw, so much so that people often questioned if he existed at all.

 

He’d lived a good chunk of his life being invisible but now it was on his own terms.

 

***

He pressed himself tighter into the corner, in a gap between the bookcase and the wall, the darkness surrounding him, swallowing him, wrapping around him in a protective embrace. He felt safe here, safe away from the taunts and the cruel words that were forever being fired at him, away from the feet that stuck out to ‘accidentally’ trip him over, the fists that seemed intent on connecting with various parts of his body on an almost daily basis.

He was quiet, too quiet and they didn’t like that, they saw it as a weakness which he supposed it was. He'd been used to the jibes and cruel comments that came his way at school and the judgemental whispers that followed them down the street, but none of that had mattered because she had been there with him and she made everything better. Until that day when she wasn’t there anymore and he was left alone.

 

He was a weakling, an easy target, one to be battered and bruised by words and actions, left to pick up the pieces. It had been easier to start hiding away during their free periods than it had been to fight them off. Making himself smaller, more invisible. Hiding in the shadows had become his new normal. He missed the comforting embrace of her arms, he missed her soft voice and gentle smile, her promises that everything would be okay because they had each other. But nothing had been okay and it never would be again. Because she was gone.