Photo by José Ignacio García Zajaczkowski on Unsplash
The boy woke up in a sudden strap-shaped room and it didn't make any sense. But then, nothing did. There were camels on the walls, and he couldn't really tell how exactly he knew what they were because the boy had never seen camels. But I suppose that didn't matter either.
He sat up in the bed they put out for him and wondered. He would've liked to explore this room made of camels, this new life given to him. But most of all, he would've liked to go back the life he would've had that he'd never really have now. But that's the thing with 'never', you see...it means never.
The boy rolled off the bed and strapped on his boots. Small, dust-brown leather and he remembered the smell of books. Old books his mother used to read to him when he was small. Oh so small. Voices spoken out loud even when there was no one to hear. And stories of butterflies and monsters that would give chase forever given the chance. But that was the thing, his mother would always tell him. Butterflies have to find their way, otherwise they'd end up being chased forever and that was really no fun.
The monsters, of course, were no monsters. Somehow, he knew that even as a small boy. But different creatures, whose existence was simply incompatible with that of the butterflies, so they were doomed to chase them and terrify them. Poor monsters, the boy had always thought. Only he hadn't known he thought that. He only knew now, standing unsure in the camel-lit room.
There's no monsters here.
Outside the room, voices. A mother calling out for baby. A father singing rockabye songs. And people. Humming. Noises. And the boy knew he should stay put. With his camels and his whitewashed walls because the calls were not for him. The songs not for him. He couldn't go out because there would be different parents on that side, grown-ups not his own that he wouldn't know. He sat back on the bed and looked up at the camels and the camels looked back at him. They'd seen many of his kind wait, though not here. This room had been built especially for him. It had not been in existence before and it would no longer be here once the boy went. But so far, he just waited.
He sang himself a song that rhymed with a story that his mother had once read. And it was all to say 'I'm here'. Hoping his mother would hear and call back to him, that someone would come find him.
Long hair down a crooked back. Footsteps. Somebody's coming. And the boy knows it's her, that his mother has come to fetch him, with her stories full or words.
But when the door opens, she's not there and in her stead a tall dark man. Eyes hollow, cheeks quite sunken in. They look at each other for a half-hearted moment and then the man reaches out a bony hand.
'Come now, child, there is much more to see.'
'Mommy,' the boy whispers. Not afraid, yet not quite brave. There are no monsters here and this man doesn't seem unkind, and yet there's something cold in the room. Like a shadow of a bad dream.
'No,' the man shakes his head, 'not that.'
And the boy nods. He slipped away one morning. It is what it is now. Hand in hand, man and child, they walk out together. They leave behind Death's castle of forgotten children and they fly away again.
There's so much more to see.