Tunnel Vision

Chapter 5: Liz

The morning light that filtered through the curtains was the same. It stuttered as it hit the window, stopping and squeezing itself through cracks on the blinds to lay, warm and bright, on a sleeping face. The sun was just starting to show itself over the skeletons of trees, and like always, the boy's eyes would flutter open. He slipped into consciousness, a realm he would soon regret entering.

A new sound greeted him. Breathing, from another bed in the room, and rustling of the sheets. The muffled clinking of something. This wasn't his room, nor was it Ethan's. Ethan snored. Ethan didn't have a second bed. And Ethan, for lack of a better word, was getting cruder by the day and would've found some way to wake Sebastian by now. The boy sat up, glancing to his side, and he saw a halo of frizzy black hair surrounding a face quite similar to Ethan's. The same vitiligo, the same tired look. Only, she was much younger. Eight, maybe. She looked sickly, almost, like Sebastian felt most days. Like her body was made of lead, and she couldn't force herself to get up if she tried. Every time she moved, something clinked, and it didn't occur in that moment, out of politeness and respect, for Sebastian to look under the comforter covering the little girl to see what was making all the noise.

He placed his feet on the badly carpeted floor, standing and beginning to walk- more like stumble, really- to the bathroom. His eyes were still closed, and only opened as he felt carpet turn to tile, his entire body tired. He squinted through the fluorescent light into his own reflection.

Nothing had happened since the night before, to his knowledge. He was bruised, yes, but that was to be expected- the swelling on his eye had gone down, leaving sickly greens and yellows behind in replacement of a blue and purple cheekbone speckled with scarlet where blood had seeped up to meet the surface of his skin. He reached skeletal hands up to the marbling of discoloring on his face, swiping a thumb briefly across his watering left eye, before he started to mumble softly as if to remind himself of who he was.

"My name is Sebastian Moretti."

He watched his lips move, feeling almost detached.

"My name is Sebastian Moretti."

Ethan had kissed him yesterday. He remembered not wanting it.

"My name is Sebastian Moretti."

He'd tried to impose himself upon Sebastian, hot and heavy and greedy, until the boy had pushed him off and yelled, and Ethan had told him to stop being dramatic and to just go to sleep in the next room with his niece if he wasn't gonna put out. Or something like that.

"My name-"

He got lost in the movement of his own lips, eyes wide as if he didn't recognize himself. Maybe he should have wanted it.

He thought about the boys in his class. How they talked about girls in gym class. He'd always separated himself from them, because he liked boys, and no boy was supposed to like boys, especially ones like these. But he found himself thinking about men in the same way that the men around him talked about women, and it disgusted him. He found himself having dreams about pouring himself over another man, just like Ethan had done, the heat of the moment taking over everything else.

Men were supposed to want it. Maybe he just wasn't one yet.

"Hey! Are you okay in there?"

Ethan's voice crashed through his thoughts with an oddly cheerful tone, and he practically jumped a foot in the air.

"Yeah! Yeah. I'm fine."

"Come out, then. What's taking you so long?"

"I look hideous, that's what's taking me so long."