Fractured

7

Rest was a battle, his waking consciousness fighting the ever-approaching fog of sleep. Nathaniel was a reader, he had read many books, and he'd recently been very absorbed in horror authors, foremost: Stephen King. Readers tend to remember certain 'small' details from the books they read, a particular note Nathaniel remembered regarding sleep said, 'The average person takes 7 minutes to fall asleep and around 10 or 20 to wake up.' Nathaniel had been trying to sleep for hours now. He could not think of what was bothering him, what was keeping him up, what was keeping the door to sleep locked.

He didn't sleep. He exercised his mind. He tried counting sheep, but he always seemed to miss just one. Those who suffer from 'partial amnesia' tend to remember bits and pieces, they tend to exhaust themselves trying to remember what they have forgotten, what they have misplaced. Nathaniel could not sleep because his mind was groping in the darkness, searching for some forgotten treasure. If he had tried to remember any other time he would not have found what he was looking for, because, in silence there is peace.

The quiet speaks the truth.

His slowly closing eyes burst open.

The quiet speaks the truth.

There was something there, something that was only there in the quiet, it was just out of reach. He pushed his mind, 'Remember. God dammit.' He thought.

His hands balled into fists, his shoulders pressed together, his teeth grinded against each other. He flicked the covers off and propped himself up on his pillows. When his head lowered to his fists that was when it hit him. He wondered if this was how it felt to be hit by a truck. His mind exploded with incredible pain, he screamed out. Fortunately his mother did not hear him, he fists opened, both hands darted to his forehead. He felt a graze and a lump under his fingertips. He knew where they came from. He surprised himself by saying, 'That bastard.'

There were no men in Nathaniel's life, so it was good that his mother had not heard him say what he had said. She would have accused him of dealing with the 'wrong' sort, criminals, kiddie fiddlers and the like. Nathaniel's mother might see Nathaniel's judgement as bad, hence the lack of men in his life. But, in truth, Nathaniel did not trust anyone save his mother. And so she need not worry for him, he was truly a young man now; he would be fine out there in the big wide world.

The resident had been called many things, to his face, behind his back and from a long way away. But, with all intriguing men, it is not seen as smart to insult him. It could been seen as a death warrant in some cases. In his youth, the resident was a strong young man, he was popular, he joined the army, formed a family and protected them as best he could. But even in his days as a student in the school ground, he was bullied, tormented even.

He bottled everything up, found himself depressed, even suicidal. But he got passed all that, he fought with his demons, he stood up to bullies and one day he became a bully. When someone who was bullied in their earlier life becomes the one thing that they as a young person hated, it is horrible; to go form the victim to the accused, the bullied to the bully, the tortured to the tormentor. But the sad truth is that this happens, people become the one thing they always wanted to rid the world of. So when the resident was labelled a 'bastard' by Nathaniel, it was, in some essence, the truth.

Nathaniel and the resident were more alike than either of them realised. Not only did they share the same traits and a similar past, they shared something more, something much more intimate. There was a bond between them that neither had yet to guess, neither had any reason to suspect they shared anything more than the relationship one has with someone intriguing, someone that one does not actually know but finds interesting.

Nathaniel was intrigued by the resident because he lived in a house that only Nathaniel and he could see. His mother hadn't seen it... She'd found him in an empty lot. The resident found Nathaniel interesting for more than one reason. He found him interesting because, unlike those before him, he could see the stout residence in which the resident lived. But that was not the only reason, the resident found he knew the boy, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he had seen his face before. He was not sure where, but the boy seemed to stir something inside of him, to raise something, recalling a memory from long ago. It was a memory of a happy family, living near a roundabout.

The resident's name was Graham Walker...