fragile | jelix

chapter 1

i had always wondered about him. every day when i got home from school i would stand outside my front door for just a moment so i could look for him, see if he was perhaps standing by the window. but he never was. he had always intrigued me, ever since i was an 8 year old kid and him and his family moved in the house across the street.

a few years later i am 16 and still curious about him. i had only seen him once and that was when he first moved into his new home. after that moment i never caught a glimpse of him. he was famous in my school, despite nobody actually knowing who he was. everybody had several theories about why he never went outside. some people thought it was because he was some sort of deranged psychopath who had no choice but to be locked up in that house. others thought that he was some experiment gone wrong, and he was too ugly to step out into the real world. some people even thought he actually died in the home.

i didn't believe any of the theories. i always thought that there was a good, valid, explainable reason for that kid always being at home. i had no clue how i would ever find out though. the boy didn't go to school or anything. when i say he never went outside, i really mean it.

i was walking home from my best friend mark's house. it was about 8 o'clock at night. it was dark and i was beginning to get very paranoid so i was eager to get home. it took about 5 minutes to get there. when my house came into view i started to panic less and i slowed down my pace, walking slower and taking in my surroundings.

as i got closer and closer to my own home, i looked at the one opposite. his house. i always looked, i couldn't help it. by that point it was a habit. i looked upwards at the second story of the house. and that's when i saw it.

in one of the windows i could see a person who appeared to be male. i couldn't make out any facial expressions, or even something simple like their hair colour. as soon as i looked at them they left and never tea appeared in the window. it was probably him. it was probably the kid. my one chance to see his face after so many years and it was gone. i sighed and walked towards my house, turning the door handle to realise it was locked.

i walked in and shut the door behind me, not before checking to see if anybody was standing in the window again. absolutely nobody was there. i walked up the stairs and yawned, feeling exhausted. my dad was in the living room watching tv, but he didn't notice that i was home. he never noticed me.

i entered my bedroom and quietly shut the door behind me. i threw my bag in the corner of the room and threw myself onto my bed, letting out another couple of yawns. i checked a couple of more times for somebody in the window, but again, i saw nobody. i was starting to think that it could have possibly been my imagination, or something was there that i mistook for a person. but there was a chance, quite a big chance that it was him, the boy, the boy that i was dying to see just once.