I was so debilitated breath was stuck in my throat. Frozen in a cell there, on the top of a hill. Couldn't go backward, can't go forward, just stuck. Not cowardly enough for death nor brave enough for life. And it was like this until I managed to kill a large enough piece of myself so that I could walk the rest of the way through the park and to my car.
Sitting there in the driver's seat, waiting for my hand to put the key in the ignition I was afraid. Terrified because I didn't know and couldn't feel and all things eluded me.
I was caught. Naked and alone behind my long-sleeved T and pants that were just half a size too big. A babe to this childishly misplaced fear.
The engine hummed and I drove home.

At school the next day I pretended not to be absent. It's easy because when people see you sitting in your desk and walking through the halls and eating at the wobbly lunch table two yards from the windows they assume you're attending your classes. It's a really foolish assumption and quite often winds up in the embarrassment of one person or another when they'd truly not been listening to material they would otherwise find engaging.
I did a pretty good job of pretending not to be absent at that, as I found out in two weeks when two aced tests were returned as proof. And most people were satisfied with this course of action, as they themselves were devout followers of our secret little cult. However there were a few people I suppose that disapproved in this lifestyle and took pride in becoming the vocal minority in the quiet and unanimous dictatorship.

At lunch while I was self-containedly musing over nothing a cold something hit me in the back of the head. Shocked out of my pleasant blankness I turned in the direction I supposed it originated with a look of drunken questioning.
An outrageously dressed boy, squatting on the bench among his apparent friends smiled cheerfully and waved with his last three fingers, a grape loosely pinched between the first two. The unknown sincerity caused a slight uncomfortable blush below my eyes.
I blinked and he had spun down to a regular sit and was moving like the rest of them, tossing his hands out at appropriate moments and leaning back in uproarious laughter with the lot of them.

My room was most definitely not well lit but deniably dark as well. There was music even when the radio was off and it was never at a volume that would cause one to shake a finger in disapproval. Not too many colors but enough mahogany and blue to disprove a joyless atmosphere. Simply, it was static. My stasis field of non-provocativeness.
Inspiration would idly toss me a murmur or two before heading back off for another round of golf or napping while in that room. I could start masterpieces that would remain perpetually in development. Start the first drips of paint on a canvas, scribble out a stanza, chip the first bits of wood off the block.
And in that room one day the idea of suicide decided to have a go and I sat on the bed with an exacto-knife resting in my hands. There was no plan or rhyme or reason to it. The closed blade just rested with an unspoken snicker and my eyes slept on the image of the wall just below the light switch.