The Shadows Will Break Your Heart.

Andi’s world was all neon colors and oblong shapes, where the tall buildings leered and hissed the brightest violet you’ve ever seen and the clouds were mint green swirls of pudding, just rolling by. His fish bowl eyes whispered all the secrets of the world and when those words echoed through your head, the tin-foil cut-out stars didn’t seem so far away. While everyone else was content with being mediocre, Andi dreamt of being amazing.

And we all knew Andi was just that-amazing. We saw him dance through the halls in lime green chucks and sing songs he had made up in his head, and we knew there was no one else in the world like this. No one with the same slippery thoughts, no one with the same tales to tell.

Andi knew a million stories. They just popped up in his head, when we were eating lunch or in the car, and he would have to tell them before they swam away. When he told them, his fish bowl eyes filled with stardust and he grasped for the right words with lithe hands, forming them into hollow shapes.

“On nights when the moon is red as firetrucks,” He would say, and every one of us present would stare in awe. “All the animals come out. And they march down the street in human masks and human suits, singing strange human songs. They act exactly like humans do, all pompous and on their hind legs. No one sees them though, except the very small children who creep out of their rooms at night to stare at all the funny animals dressed like humans. They don’t need anyone to convince them it’s real. Sometimes the animals bring them along, feeding them animal food and petting the tops of their heads. Sometimes the children don’t go back to bed at all, but leave with the animals. They fit in better there.”

Andi would smile, placing his head on his knobby knees. “Imagine that! Actual humans!”

He would sigh and close his eyes, remembering something from long ago, when he was Andi the child. “I saw it once. A lion from the zoo hoisted me up on his shoulders and I saw animals how they saw the world. All distorted, in the wrong colors. And when he put me down, and I went back to where all the humans were, I still saw it like that. Humans think that animals can only see in black and white, but that’s not true. It’s the other way around. I see rainbows and they see monochromatic blobs.”

And we knew it was true.

“I wish you could see like I do.” He would say.

And we wished it too.

We all thought Andi would change the world telling stories. We really did.

But he didn’t have time to. Who could?

It was only a handful of years before he got sick. Really sick. Not the sort of sick you get over.

Everything was different then.

When he first got sick, there was no more stardust or songs, and his fish bowl eyes always looked like they were about to spill over. He never told us he was sick, but we knew.

He got so thin his arms looked like discarded sticks, and his face became all shadows. Every story he started never had a real ending. He would just stare off into space, thinking about something we could never grasp.

A few of us that couldn’t handle it left. They were swallowed by the city, where people like Andi didn’t exist and death was something to be expected. But most of us stayed.

Any treatment seemed to make things worst, so he stopped going. He stopped doing a lot of things, things that would help, things that wouldn’t matter.

He spent most of his time with us, and we’d try to tell him our own stories or sing our own songs, but they all seemed so pale compared to his. And his eyes always seemed to get watery by the end, when we stumbled our way to an illogical conclusion.

“It’s okay Andi,” We would say. But it wasn’t, not really.

It’s hard to make people see rainbows again when they want things to be grey.

And then one day, when we thought, yes, this really is the end, he started telling stories again. Real ones, like he used to, about motherly ghosts and insane doctors, about space spiders and fizzing, dying suns.

And he sang his songs and danced when he walked, and we knew he was still dying, but it wasn’t as complete any more. It was just his body, we thought, his spirit, the ghost bits of him, were fine again.

We wrote down everything he said now, kept a binder full of stories and lyrics. It made Andi smile even more, knowing he meant that much to us, that he might still be something amazing.

Eventually he couldn’t dance or sing any more, and didn’t have the energy for stories. So we sang for him in the hospital, holding his hand and waiting for him to sleep.

One cold November morning he never woke up.

It was painfully expected, but we cried for days anyway. A lot of people did. Even the nurses at the hospital, who marched by indifferent in their starch white seemed a little sadder.

We re-read Andi’s binder and told his favorite story.

“There was a little boy who lived on my street once, who had a monster living under his bed,” We didn’t try to sound like Andi. “A real monster. That was striped black and taffy blue with claws and protruding teeth as big as your head. And he would sneak out from his home under the bed, and just stare at the boy at night. I guess he was lonely-monsters get lonely, you know, when they’re by themselves all the time. One day the boy woke up. And the monster screamed, because he didn’t know better, but the boy, he did. He just told the monster, it was okay, he wasn’t going to hurt him. And the monster immediately wanted to be friends with the boy. So they made ships out of blocks and played the boys’ parents old Beatles’ records and made scary faces at each other.

“And then they got hungry, and the boy made peanut butter sandwiches. But the monster, he didn’t know it, but he was allergic to peanut butter. And his throat started swelling and he might have died, but the boy saved him. Don’t ask me how, I never found out myself, but he did. So they were best friends forever. Really forever. And when the boy got older, and was no longer a boy, the monster was still there. No one else believed in the monster, but the boy knew he was there. And he always protected him.”

After the funeral we tried to see things in lemons and violets, but we can’t. Being with Andi was the closest we ever got.

We still miss Andi. Nothing could ever replace him. But some nights, when the silence is too thick, we can hear him singing his strange songs and making up echoes in our heads.

A/N: This story is a lot smaller than it was when I handed it in for the scholarship o.o ahhh...right...well...two things. First, this was written for a scholarship for school...I hope I get it! Secondly, this was sort of inspired by the Nomi Song, a documentary about the amazing opera/new wave singer Klaus Nomi. He was one of the first celebrities to die of AIDs (When it was known as a "gay cancer"), and the story of his life seems so sad. He had such a remarkable voice and he died alone...I think that was the first documentary that had made me cry. Oh, and the title is based off a lyric from the amazing Bat for Lashes song "Horrorshow". If you're intrigued even a little, I would suggest checking out the movie and the song XD