Painted In Grey (a short story by Melody Inkwell)

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The day that is my last two years flood my mind. Charles yelling, mom cheating, dad crying, friends lying, ignoring, and me... being me. Being totally unaffected. Nothing got under my skin, and nothing ever will. Nothing shook the sturdy platform I had built myself. But as I think this, I notice my eyelids are heavier than usual. And that my hands are more unsteady. Invisible scars searing in pain. And that the clock inside my head had stopped ticking. The only other time it had ceased to tick was back when I was naïve, foolish, and took everything at face-value—when I was eleven. Mom had missed my huge birthday party, the one we planned together, the one I decorated the house for, as she passed out on the couch. I didn’t see her until the day after—torn wrapping paper still here and there, the table a mess with leftover birthday cake and toys and gift bags—all wavy blonde hair curled, dangly earrings, wearing a short, fitted skirt and a tight shirt that showed cleavage. The ticking in my ears stopped when I took in her profile, disappointment and the feeling of betrayal running through my veins. I hadn’t said anything about it. And neither did she. I always thought everyone had a clock inside their head. Like some tick slower, some louder, and some don’t tick at all. I only met one person whose clock didn’t tick. It was a boy, about fourteen years old, I remember he wore a black hoodie, and his cheeks were pale. He was sitting on a curb by the road, playing on his phone. He glanced up as I passed him, our eyes meeting for a split second before I glanced away. The intensity of his gaze startled me, as if he had been silently screaming out to me, begging me to realize how broken he was. It took all day for it to dawn on me why this small interaction gnawed at my nerves and struck me so bizarre, staying in the back on my mind for the next few days. The desperate boy by the road was clockless. He was silent. His head was quiet, and his face portrayed nothing. But his eyes, oh how his eyes wanted to tell. They wanted to tell and yell and sing, they wanted to be able to express. They sparkled with intensity and pain. A soul with no clock is a road without stop lights. You’ll forever be restless, forever wander, forever be forever. Nothing stops. But then I glanced away from the broken boy. I had stopped looking, because if I hadn’t, I’d never be able to stop staring. My heart would forever be aching for the boy, whose name I didn’t even know.

All I know is he was a boy painted in grey, a dull shading, meant to add to the canvas but not be noticed. Maybe that's why my clock stopped running. The painter realized I was meant to be grey, too. #Clocks #Paintedingrey #brokenboy #depression #ihatemyself