He was comfort, a wizard of the flesh and mind.
I was a teenager when he first came to me. He was entertainment, and I was bored of the chemical confines of my stirring and recurring insanity.
Down in that damp space beneath their house where I was forced to spend my summers, he found what no one else could; myself.
He greeted me with few words, but a gentleman he was all the same. He was a man who understood the purity of promise and the putrid secret truth of this watery planet. Down there in that place where I was forced to spend my summers, he said to me, in his uneven tone;
“I’m Hansel, I’m your saviour, but you might not want to speak to me; I’m a weird fish.”
I crawled on my scraped hands and scraped knees toward his alluring, uneven tone.
“And my life is a freezing ocean. Please, my saviour, free me from my isolation.”
He smiled at this; my reply seemed to please him.
With his defrauding, alluring and un-even smile, he seemed to convey, “I can free you from this, Sam. You just have to do what I say.”
He asked me all about their and they, but nothing about there. Oh, he already knew about there.
I told him about my parents; how this was their house, I was their son, and how I wasn’t “A ‘normal’ boy.” I wasn’t what they had wanted. Hansel asked me who had said that I wasn’t normal.
“They” I hissed at the dinner table.
He hmm’d in a way that exasperates exasperation, “They say a lot of useless things, don’t they Sam?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Who are you talking to, boy?” My mother and father always despaired.
I turned to Hansel, and stared into his glassy blue eyes. “Why, Hansel, here of course.”
They looked straight through him, as if he were made of cellulose.
“You’re too old for imaginary friends,” my father stated gruffly, unperturbed.
“What would everyone think if they saw this . . .” my mother sighed in shame. “This is why we can’t ever let you outside.”
I frowned deeply. But then I understood. Hansel comforts me with his cool hand.
“My people are visible to only few, Sam. You are going to enter the world and make this fallen empire great again. Together we shall define the human spirit! Stay by me, and we will make them understand.”
I wrote a poem for my first day of Home-school about my secret friend. It was about all the things he told me to do to make the world great again. The teacher saw it carved into my kitchen table. He stayed behind longer to talk about it . . . I think he liked what I had wrote.
“This is an interesting poem, Sam.” He speaks through his nose, at a snail’s pace.
Hansel watches me; he has stayed by my side. He is my trustworthy shadow, a deviant of promise. “Who’s Hansel? He seems interesting.”
Hansel flashes me a look with his cold blue eyes, and I know. “I'd prefer we didn’t talk about him.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise he was real.”
Hansel smiles and I know he wanted that. His insatiable, defrauding, and alluring smile.
“No, he isn’t.”
“I don’t quite understand Sam.”
He tells me what to say.
“show him,” he says.
“He’s just as real as me or you. Trust me , it’s all going to make sense.”
And as I speak I adopt his cool, calculated and un-even tone. I show him how normal I am, and now he will never return to their home.
He is the puppet-master. I am the show.
They don’t understand when I try to show what I’ll do for them. But they have been against me my whole life. They say sixteen is too old for an imaginary friend.
We sit on the swings observing the rituals of what society considers normal children.
We lick the blood from our scraped knees and hands, our sweaty black hair. We prod the new bruise on our face.
“They will never understand. Their minds have been sullied by horse headed media men, the system on which they and their parents are built,” I say to him.
“Perhaps, there is something we can do . . .” He replies. “This planet is an ocean; we have bigger fish to fry.”
No one would help me. I would reach out to the crowded world, and return with empty hands. I was only a freak to them.
“What else are you going to do, Sam?” He whispers in his uneven tone. “You won’t make any friends on your own . . . you’re too weak!”
Our hands shake, hold the lighter in place. “You are the puppet master, I am the show.”
My voice is not mine; it belongs to the echoes of the dark damp room. The place where my parents locked me during the summers.
“Your doubt is treacherous, Sam. I am your saviour; I can make you better than them. I can give you friends, companions, people with whom you can shed your love, who are smarter and more than they could ever be.” His voice is raised, his anger makes me cringe. “Just do as I command!”
I ran as my creation took light, a dragon with indomitable jaws, consuming their government and everything inside.
Its fingers stretched north, further than I had wanted.It burned and devoured everything it touched.
Hansel laughed beside me, as we watched.
I fell to my knees and began to cry, tears to heal the scarred and ravaged earth. He looked down on me, his eyes no longer blue but red as the screaming bloodied sky.
“There is beauty in destruction my friend. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I have never lied.”
Someone had seen us running from the source of the blast. The pig-headed police men had found our fingerprints.
We stood trial and we told them no lies.
We sit now in a room at the place for healing minds. I’m waiting for the doctor. It’s my first time.
He pauses in the doorway, staring at Hansel, Hansel staring at him. His face stretches into an insurmountable grin.
“Sam, I think you can go to your room now.” The doctor tells me in his cool, alluring uneven tone. “You are our leader; you will lead us into the new age.”
I am led to my room, treated as the king of men. Hansel waves goodbye to me and tells me when he’ll see me again. I sit down and mull over all things that I’ve done, trying to make sense of the past the present and what the future holds in its bony riddle inspiring fingers.
Suddenly, I find I am beside myself, a laughing man, my sides splitting.
“’I will lead them into a new age?’” The tears run down my face, salty on my grinning lips. “Hansel is real! Everyone else is insane!”
