When he was young he used to go to the park. People always commented, whispered—he looked so out-of-place in that funny grey uniform, his dark hair kept meticulously clean and his face moon-pale. He looked bizarre among the ruddy-faced children, whose clothes were butterfly-coloured and whose hair was joyously mussed. The little boy would watch them in his star-distant fashion, not seeming to know or care what they thought of him. At first they teased him, but he simply blinked at their taunts.

Strange things always happened to his tormentors hours after he had left the park.

Eventually, the other children began to respect him. They let him go where he would, stepping aside in silent fear if he approached the playscape. But mostly he just went for the swings. Somewhat fearful of him, the children annexed a swing just for him—second from the left, across from the see-saw. Any child using that swing would jump off immediately at sight of his shadowed face, and would cringe at his quiet "thank you".

He could never explain why he liked the swings so much. He would stay there for hours on end, pumping his spindly legs as though his life depended on it. Sometimes he would dare himself to lean back and look straight up into that endless sky, allowing that wild rush of adrenaline to wash over him until he could barely breathe. Other times he’d shut his eyes as he swung, pretending—hoping—there was no ground below him.

He challenged himself constantly, sailing through the air in blackened silence and constantly willing himself to swing higher and higher. Sometimes heights scared him. His fear tortured him, and yet he reveled in it. Every ounce of fear he felt would eat away at his soul with a gnawing sort of hunger, clenching an icy fist around his throat and daring him to scream. The eternal sky above threatened to swallow him, while the oft-ignored earth prevented such offences from the space below. And part of him longed for it to happen.

With the swing-sets, he hoped, he could condition himself to step up to fear—learn not to be frightened of earth and sky when more pressing troubles were at hand. All his life, his fears had been his jailers. The way the boy saw it, all that frightened him was able to overcome him. And he longed to make the jailers his slaves.

The boy had never been able to face his biggest fears. Hunger. Beatings. Anger. Pain. Life itself. But he longed desperately to escape them. In order to attain this, he must defeat his greatest fear.

Death.

He would sit on the swings and contemplate death, his small white hands clenched tightly into fists. The ultimate end, really. If he could only overcome his terror of it, all of life’s woes might vanish. He sometimes stayed there till dusk, swinging higher and higher. Willing himself to let go, to jump. A simple slip, the wind in his face for an instant, a few moments’ pain, and every nightmare would end forever. The orphanage, the other children, his own freakish thoughts—all would melt away.

If only he could let go.

From his mobile perch, the little boy watched the world fly by—children laughed and screamed, played with their parents and with each other. He knew he ought to feel some sort of jealousy, but all he could muster was a faint, distant curiosity. How easy life was for them! Would they care if he died? Would anyone?

Was the age of six too young to die?

He kept picturing it, plummeting into the grass and ending it all right there. It would be so easy, and no one would mind—he was an unwanted orphan, and the orphanage caretakers couldn’t care less. Did he really have anything to live for? Why was he never able to let go?

Perhaps it was because the only time he was truly happy was when he was flying. Pretending to fly above the clouds and into the yawning sky, learning the twists and turns of the wind. He felt free, free of all life’s troubles—if only he could jump off that swing and not fall, but fly. It was a sensation of elated liberty, sitting there, not having to think about anything but the simple beauty of Death.

Life always does bear a certain measure of irony.

He never did jump from that swing—fear had driven him to considering it, but the experience itself had pulled him back.

But at six years old, he was already free falling, even when he had both hands around the chains.

Author's Note:

This is an odd little thing I wrote awhile ago--it's very vignette-y character study, and my writing's improved a lot since I wrote this thing, so it's not my best work. However, I felt like uploading something, and I found this hidden somewhere on my hard drive. ^_^ I hope you can guess who the character is. If you can't, it's because I'm a really really lousy writer. But if you do guess who the character is, I'm a lousy writer anyway. Hee hee.