Damon tried to sleep

Damon tried to sleep. It wasn’t the first night that he had laid in bed staring at the ceiling watching the inky blackness seep across the ceiling, enveloping his room and everything in it. Now he almost welcomed it, as the darkness swept across him he was able to slip further and further into his imagination, not quite sleeping, but instead living a waking dream. He saw everything as he wanted it and was able to control everything that went on. He often thought that he would prefer to live in his dream world than in the one where he belonged.

He moved to a more comfortable position and shooting pain brought him back to the sharp reality he tried to escape. He put his hands to his ribs trying to find the source of the pain, he knew where it was of course but he wanted to see if the bruising had gotten any worse. He sighed, applying pressure to his skin and grimacing slightly as he found that the pain hadn’t really subsided, neither had the area of the bruise itself.

He threw off his bed cover and got out of bed, as had become his habit over the recent months. He didn’t turn on the light, he knew from habit where everything was. He sat by the radiator and plugged in his CD player. He put the headphones in and rested his head back against the cold metal of the radiator. He reached forward and tugged at the end of the bed cover, pulling it over to him. He wrapped it around him like a cocoon. He let his mind wander again as his head rocked backwards and forwards slightly in time to the beat of the music in his ears, his mouth moved, silently saying the words.

He imagined himself on the stage of the school in front of his entire year and performing the rap song he was listening to, with the voice of the CD. He saw the faces of the people he liked, as well as those he didn’t, looking up at him in awe and respect. Idly he scratched his nose. He opened his eyes, snapping himself out of the dream he was trying to create. He wiped his eyes on the cover and sniffed quietly. ‘I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t like me, if they would just leave me alone.’ He thought to himself. He wouldn’t care if they liked him or not, he had gone way beyond the normal manner of teenage thinking, worrying about popularity, now he just accepted that he wouldn’t attain it. If fact now he wished that he could just be over looked, not being seen or acknowledged by anyone. It would be better than how things were now.

He reached over to the small cabinet he sat next to and flipped the switch on the small light. Damon laughed to himself as a circle of light appeared on his carpet, bringing his writing pad out of the darkness. He wanted to make the angel noise you heard in cheesy films and TV shows, but didn’t want to make any noise in case he disturbed his parents in the next room. There were so many pages torn out of the pad that it looked quite pathetic. It seemed like he wrote two or three pages a night, some poems, and some songs, always to the music in his ears rather than to his own music, his lack of musical talent wasn’t a secret. There were a few things that he had written still sitting in the pad, but lately he had begun to hide what he had written in case someone came in and read them and thought he was suicidal or something stupid like that. He was just sad and lonely. Damon reasoned that writing it all down was better than keeping those kinds of feelings inside and letting them grow, and it was infinitely better than talking to someone about it. He didn’t like the idea of having to explain to someone how he felt about certain things and telling them all the things that had happened to him, he didn’t want to think about it again, let alone relive it.

It wasn’t even as if anything too bad had happened to him, or so he told himself. At least he had somewhere safe to be. He heard quite regularly on the news about people being abused by family members, in comparison his problems were tiny. Unfortunately this reasoning was only his own. There was no one he could really trust. He had spent another evening in his room listening to music and playing games. He wished sleep upon himself for no other reason than cabin fever, he was in his room too much and was bored of the same surroundings, yet there didn’t seem like there was much of an option, he suddenly felt like a prisoner.

The bullying had started again when he moved schools. He had enjoyed the last two years of primary school, he had friends, he had had fun. The older kids who had given him a hard time had left, and for a time he had forgotten about them. When he moved to the secondary school he had rejoined them and the bullying had started again, only this time there were more people willing to join in, to the point where those guys had got bored of him there were more there to take over. In truth he couldn’t even remember the names of the guys who had first started it; they had even stuck up for him a few times. But though he had forgiven those few, his situation hadn’t gotten any better. After five years he was still being beaten down, both physically and mentally.

Maybe the karate classes had helped, he thought, breathing deeply to keep back tears, ashamed of himself for crying. He moved quicker now, though he thought that this was probably more a result of being attacked regularly than the few classes he had taken, he was now able to block a lot of the punches and avoid the other attacks that came at him. But in the end the fact that he defended himself made him seem like more of a challenge and brought more attention upon him.

School wasn’t all bad. There were a few people there but there wasn’t anyone he was close enough to to really call a ‘friend.’

He fell asleep still sitting up, his head resting on his chest and music in his ears.

The next day started as usual for Damon. He arrived in the classroom half an hour before the start of school. He wasn’t the first, there were already conversations and strange games going on. He dropped his bag at his usual seat at the back of the classroom and went to join in. He enjoyed himself, it was probably these time that got him through the day. The random things that would be thought of every morning hadn’t really gotten more mature as time had gone on. It had been the same since they had started the school. Mostly the guys would find fun out of nothing and the girls would pretend that they weren’t impressed with what they saw, though they all were dying to join in, but they wanted to seem mature to the others. This morning it was ‘classroom curling.’ They took it in turns to ‘bowl’ a bag along the floor towards a target that they had drawn on the tiles with a dry-marker. There were two of the other guys with board rubbers polishing the floor in front of the bag to get it closer to the target. The fun was never in who got closest as it should have been, but instead most of the laughter came from the absurdity of what they were doing, the mock up of the sport they had seen on TV was just funny to them, and they all shared in the joke. Damon enjoyed feeling like part of the team, he laughed along with the others and, as he did most mornings, wished that the bell wouldn’t ring.

One of the girls brushed past him to join a different conversation. Theirs eyes met for a second as she did so. Damon had liked her for a while, he thought he hid it well, but was never sure, he always got the feeling that she could see right through him. The prom was coming up and he wanted to ask her, but she was with a guy from another class who, despite how well they got on, intimidated him. It seemed like he would be the only one without a date.

“Damon” shouted a happy voice as Dan walked into the room. Damon’s insides shivered slightly. “How you doing man? Come with me I’ve got something to show you.” Dan threw an arm around Damon’s shoulders and led him out of the classroom. They were largely ignored as they left, nobody thinking too much about it. Damon looked around for someone to ask for help but didn’t see anyone. The girl looked around at him again as he reached the door but he found himself unable to talk to her. Not wanting to sound stupid in front of her though he knew that he inevitably did whenever they spoke.

Damon re-entered the room as the bell went, he was the last on in. He avoided the girl’s eyes as he past her again. She sat at the front of the class, so he had to pass her every time he came into the class. It was the best part of coming into school, but at times like this it was also the worst. There were times when seeing her could give him all the strength in the word, but whenever he had been beaten by the group of guys that had just taken him out of the classroom, seeing her just made him feel ashamed, like he wasn’t good enough to be seen by her. It was a melancholy that she seemed to take for sullenness rather than sadness. For all he felt transparent around her, she never saw anything wrong with him.

He sat at the back of the class and watched the back of her head, it was strange but it brought a sort of peace over him. He rested his hand on his brow and hissed out a breath as a scolding to himself. At least they hadn’t hit his face this morning.