Young Writers Society

A boy mutely gazed into a pair of white eyes.

Briefly, he glanced at a black rope, extending up until he couldn’t see it anymore, which formed a ring around the pale man’s neck. The man’s face had gray cracks in it, and his white hair was tangled together with the rope. His colorless eyes were emotionless, akin to two lifeless pebbles.

After another long while of staring, the boy finally opened his mouth. “What are you doing?”

Nothing happened between him and the man. The man’s expression remained perfectly still, his eyes dull. Again, the boy spoke. A hint of emotion was beginning to creep into his voice. “What are you doing?”

The man’s hair seemed to whisper and sway. Something slipped into his eyes, which hadn’t been in them before. It seemed to slither around, breathing life. “It’s choking me,” he replied like a sigh.

The boy blinked slowly. His eyes drifted up and down, observing the pale man more closely. At last, again, his gaze came to a soft pause on the black rope.

Even as the boy watched, the man’s neck nearly gave way to the noose and, for a second, was crushed into itself. A long sound, akin to a low scream; perhaps a light sob, resonated from the pale man.

“It is your creation,” the boy replied, his voice like a cool breeze. “I told you to not do it. I told you that you would end up forlorn.”

The pale man produced a watery whisper of air. “I am not forlorn. Old friend. You came for me.” he murmured, nearly as a question.

Half to himself, the boy smiled. His form flickered in-between a small boy and a tall man, with black hair that was just as long as the pale man’s. “Now you regret creating the world.”

A silence; thin, yet cold like the black rope, settled in-between them. For the first time, the pale man blinked. The boy erased the smile from his face and blinked with the man.

“I don’t think so,” finally, the man muttered. “I don’t… I don’t think so.”

“The world has failed you,” replying, the boy reached up, his touch lingering at the man’s crumbling neck. “We are the only two who remain. Yet you created a world. Remember how the others ended up. They crumbled in the winds, and their worlds went with them.”

“What do I do? It’s choking me,” the man repeated, as if he hadn’t heard the boy.

A bittersweet smile went across the boy’s face. “Abandon your world,” he stated flatly, withdrawing his hand back to his side. “It is killing you.”

“I can’t,” a drop of clear water fell from the man’s eye, yet slipped into one of the cracks on his face. “It’s my world. I created it.”

“Are you going to do it, then?” the boy inquired with a barely noticeable tinge of emptiness dawning in his voice. “Leave me by myself? Force me to create a world?”

No response came from the pale man. His eyes had frozen into two stones again.

Slowly, the boy reached up and brushed his fingertips over the black noose. When he did so, his hands slowly began to fade.

“I wish I was here,” the boy murmured to himself. His shoulders and torso melted into nothingness, eating away at his long hair. His eyes widened slightly before sinking into a darker shade of sorrow. “I don’t want to be alone.”

His eyes faded last.