A/N: This was the first English assignment of the semester. We were told to write a story containing twenty-six sentences, beginning with each letter of the alphabet, in order. We were also told to use one sentence fragment and make another sentence one hundred words long. This is what I wrote. I was in an emo mood, I guess…?

Not based on a real person. Perhaps kind of inspired by an already-existing fictional character of mine, but not (as in, maybe I just thought so because he looks like my mental image of Elliott…but a lot of people look like Elliott). I don’t know. It seemed very close to me when I was writing it, and I can’t figure out why.

Walls, by Rachel Reardon

Abstract paintings line the brightly colored walls of the place he calls home. But he doesn’t care at all about art, he just likes to earn style points. Cancers called apathy and superficiality take over the parts of his heart that he exposes to the world. During weekend nights his life plays out like a movie. Everything is Technicolor and all the people invited are beautiful (despite the collagen). Fake smiles become a contagious disease as they all try to flatter him by laughing at his stupid jokes. “Girls are the devil himself,” he says afterward, with the first real smile of the night.

His life is much different when the guests have gone. Immortality disappears with his smile. Jaded kids, his old friends, give him false affection along with something much more potent. Kindness is something he can live with. Love? Maybe he’d like to have no memories of such a thing. Nobody likes to admit to being taken advantage of. Openness with his feelings and most secret of weaknesses is where his carefully concealed sense of vulnerability came from, this eagerness to be truly understood is what he now considers his worst mistake, and maybe it was for some time but the other extreme that he now lives can’t be much better for him: a life based on lies, with no desire to experience the world as it is and fear of all things that may make him face reality and cause him the pain that is necessary for growth…and for love (now referred to as a “foreign concept”).

Perhaps one would think he’s a completely cold person, devoid of emotion, but there is so much that most people don’t see. Questions are left unanswered only because I don’t want to extinguish that little bit of hope still shining in his eyes. Real life comes back to him every once in a while. Some stranger’s attempts to tug at his heartstrings may one day succeed in breaking his walls down. The assumed end of him will be a beginning. Underneath the hardened shell of mistrust, his heart will still beat, warmer than before. Vengeance against the world itself will gradually be dropped from his loosening fists.

Wanting an understanding of what life is, he will change. Xenophobia will no longer keep him from his happiness—and the inevitable pain. Yesterday and today have different titles for a reason.

Zero paintings will be left on the walls, because he’s always hated looking at them anyway.