“Do you wanna tell me what’s going on?” He let the silence that engulfed the air answer the question.
“That’s okay.” He nodded towards the voice that floated simply in the space around. The voice left the room, and left Lee alone in the room. Lee inhaled the musty air of the area, while his eyes stitched onto the only window, the skylight. The one that couldn’t open, no matter how many times he tried. Lee recalled the first time he had to call this room his. He was new to the lifestyle at the time, new to the changes that he had to undergo. He looked at the moon, his thumbs fumbling with each other as his now watery stare begged for the moon to come and help. Water fell from Lee’s left eye, pacing down his aged skin, making a home for itself in the corner of his mouth. His tongue instantly swept out, tasting the salty tear. The moon looked so inviting to Lee at that moment that even his glossy gaze couldn’t make him change his mind. It was his mother that told him to look at the moon. A plump tear spilled from his left eye again, it was also his mother that told him to go to his room. This room.
‘Look at the moon when you feel lonely, because chances are that someone, somewhere is looking right at the moon too.’
Lee could almost hear his mother’s gentle voice, he could vividly envision the honey and pull that oozed from it. He’d looked at the moon every night since he found out the truth. Clenching his jaw, he wiped at his eyes with the back of his wrists and as the creak of the bed made its way to Lee’s ears, the voice of the therapist assigned to him spoke again.
“Why are you crying?” he ushered softly. Lee couldn't answer. He rubbed his palms together as he blinked a couple times to stop himself from shedding anymore tears.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Lee felt pathetic. “Do you want to?” He repeated.
“Has anyone come?” The therapist paused, “You know they haven’t Lee..” “Then why are you here?” Lee challenged. “To help you. Like we all are..” Lee nodded at that statement, but it struck his heart strings.
The chaotic quiet took over the atmosphere within the four white walls that surrounded him.
“Are you okay now?”
No response.
“Then I’ll talk to you tomo-” “Why doesn’t the skylight open?” Lee interrupted. “I feel suffocated, like I can’t even breathe properly.”
“Well, have you tried?” The therapist questioned. “Clearly, if I’m asking why it can’t.” Lee mockingly scoffed, his tone leached with disbelief.
“Maybe you need someone to help you..” And with that his voice left the room once more, abandoning Lee in a space where only his thoughts kept him company.
Lee fell back into the lumpy mattress beneath him and his shoulders sunk further into the uncomfortable surface. His eyelids made their way down and stayed shut. He forced the bouncing thoughts in his mind to pause so he could find some quiet for a couple hours.
Even though his slumber had overtaken his conscious mind and body, his dreams spoke of a time when he seeked the moon from the openness of the outside world. In his dreams, he was young. Although Lee was still young now, the excruciating months that went by had found place on his face. You could pinpoint the stress and concerns that Lee was introduced to and now familiar with.
And then his dreams became darker. They depicted a male, caged while the outside world tormented him by carrying on, while the moon so full was so close but too far for the boy and when he tried to cast his eyes towards the moon to see it and all its glory, he couldn’t. He kicked and screamed and wailed for the moon to see him, for the moon to listen. Yet, it never did and the male rotted away, with no one by his side.
Lee jolted up, sweat drenching the back of his neck and forehead. The sticky smell resonating in the cloudy air hit Lee’s nostrils like a slap to the face. He was gulping down breaths as he tried to calm himself. His eyes darted up to the skylight. His joints then relaxed a bit having seen the glowing orb. He then turned to the clock sitting comfortably on a rickety chair across the room.
Almost 2 hours. He had slept for almost 2 hours. He was unsure of whether to be pleased because he had beat his previous record or to be saddened by the reality of it.
He rose to his feet slowly, weighted by his broken dreams and the flimsy life he acquired for himself. As he trudged towards the sink, his therapist spoke, stopping Lee’s footsteps from moving any further.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Lee’s eyebrows furrowed with confusion and anger. He grunted to clear his throat from the croakiness that sleep brought upon his voice.
“I could ask you the same thing.” Lee seethed. “You aren’t paid extra for talking to me more. Why are you here?” Lee shot dryly.
“To help yo-”
“Don’t give me that nonsense!” Lee spat. “You seem to have a lot of time to help me, seeing as you ask me how I’m doing every hour of every day!!”
“It’s because I’m worried about you.” He reasoned with Lee.
“No, it’s because I’m your only company. You're lonely and long for company that listens, it’s why out of all the questions you ask you never ask me why I look at the moon because you look at the moon too!” Lee rambled, the words dripping from his mouth, like a cup overflowing with water.
It felt like he was overflowing. The thoughts that buzzed in him constantly were spilling out of his cup.
“I’m not lonely! What are y-” As usual, Lee cut his words short, “People become offended when they’re confronted with the truth..”
“Who told you to look at the moon?” Lee asked. “Mother did..” The therapist answered, drained and defeated.
Lee dragged his feet towards the sink and splashed water on his sleepy face. “Mine too.” Putting his hands on the sides of the sink, he tightened his grip to hold himself up. Lee tried avoiding the greasy mirror, but his eyes looked up and he caught sight of himself and as if in a trance, he froze.
His hair was an appalling mess of knots and shine. His skin was blotchy and blemished. His eyes came with black bags. His lips, a chapped pair moved on their own as he spoke his next words.
“What’s wrong?” He whispered. “What isn’t?” Lee yelled at the boy speaking to him through the mirror.
Lee’s skinny fingers grasped the edge of the mirror and he screamed. He was tired. He was tired of asking the questions nobody ever asked him.
He was ashamed and disgusted with himself for asking for help and for then relishing in the help everybody around him promised.
He squeezed his hands against the mirror even harder. He let out a painful sob, “Why doesn’t anybody listen?” He begged himself to answer. “Why doesn’t the moon listen?” He pleaded, tears rushing down his ugly face.
Removing his cut up and bloodied palms from the mirror, he paces towards the rickety chair and the clock that always reminded Lee of his slow, tortuous life. Swatting the clock away, he skitters to right under the skylight with the chair and places his wobbly feet upon the wobbly timber.
Raising his hands up towards the window, almost like a plea for surrender, his tall height enables his arms to reach the skylight.
And then he kicks and he screams and he wails as he pounds his desperate fists against the glass, begging the moon to see him and begging it to listen to his wish for company.
He hears the crack of the wood supporting him before he can realise what’s going on. The chair broke under the pressure of Lee, like he broke under the torment of the world going by without him.
Lee felt a shattering clunk on the side of his temple before he lay sprawled like a dead man on the shivering floor. The metallic taste of blood in his mouth being the last thing he could grasp before he knocked out cold.
And his dreams overflowed with the times when he was a therapist fulfilling his dreams to help others, but they’re interrupted by the moments when he realised how broken he was and how when he confided with his mother, she promised to help him, everybody did.
It’s why Lee’s heart ached. No, it was never because he was broken but because that’s all everybody around him saw. The broken, broken, broken parts of Lee had become Lee in their eyes.
They ruthlessly decided that his plea for salvation was unattainable. The ones that loved him couldn’t help him, but his room that his mother sent him too, this room, this room in this asylum could. It could help him.
Because how could a therapist help others, when he could barely help himself?
So, this was how he found himself discarded on the floor, broken, bloodied and bruised begging the moon for help that nobody could give him,
not even himself.