By Jay Ackley
The figures weren’t quite capable of conceptualizing the concept of time until, well, the beginning of time. Awareness was overwhelming at first, especially with the knowledge that they couldn’t be sure how long ago they’d started this endless loop of thinking, staring, and thinking. Their non-world was fuzzy and fickle and only left the figures with a muted, two-dimensional desire for more.
Their universe used to be flat, consistent, unbroken. When had that changed?
Nothing ever changed anymore.
They stared at the muted pale blue walls. They might have been gray, once. An empty bed, smooth white and starched. A rocking chair on a blue shag carpet, an unlit candle. A cradle.
They had a vague notion of time slipping through fingers, lost, and falling to the floor like locks of hair, though they’re still unsure what time even is. They can only feel their skin peeling, the meadow they stand in losing its complexion, as leaves outside sometimes-open windows fade from green to orange to red before falling, consumed by a powdery alien chill. A twice-framed outside world, curtains shifting through an undefinable space.
And then there are those rare moments where the door cracks open and there’s a tiny variation to the strange coldness of that odd extent that their arm hairs barely brush against. When there’s an odd noise that somehow means something. A sound, something as new as time, that carries emotion. Unfamiliar words, and yet the figures can understand them. That distant, distinct chime of bells reverberating against their flat plane.
It is in these moments that they feel truly trapped. They want to burst from their second dimension and cry out to the world. Whatever sentience they’d gained, it wasn’t enough anymore. They needed to feel the warm sun through gossamer curtains on oily skin.
They didn’t know what they were, and yet they still wanted more.
And suddenly, something new. A different sense, warmth wafting from a lit candle. A swollen stomach, a plethora of fluffy sheep. A knitted baby-blue blanket.
And with it, a baby.
The figures didn’t know what to make of it at first. It was loud. Its face was an overripe wrinkled grape on some days and on others a foaming fountain of wails. They willed their nonexistent hands to cover their metaphorical ears. It smelled, too. It was grimy and it slept far too often. It never seemed to rest fully through the night, but when day came it seemed to be deathly allergic to the sun. Maybe the figures were better off not having a voice or hands when there was a ticking time bomb that went off the second a loose floorboard creaked or its tall one left to clean the spittle and puke off of a once-white dress shirt.
Without warning, the child had become a part of their pitiful existence. And however much the figures wished for the blank blue quiet of an empty room again, they were stuck. Sentience became not only wonderful but also exhausting. Time moves quicker as you get older, so they say, and though the figures didn’t age, the child did. After what felt like a day, it was toddling across the room, tumbling down to the carpet and laughing. The tall one spent most of its time in the room now, too, and suddenly the comforter was wrinkled and the pillow sagged.
The child was a lively thing, to say the least, and(though the figures hated to admit it) they envied it. They envied its sharpie-stained fingers and floor covered in broken crayons and ripped paper. They envied how easily it cradles its small animals, sucks on a stuffed lamb’s ear, and how it can suck its thumb. They envied its freedom, how it could do what it wanted when it wanted.
It wore a skirt, suddenly. The tall one had reached its limit. It laughed and took it away. “Nathan, silly, those aren’t for you! Those are for Mommy!”
The child pouted and tugged on it. “But I wanna look pretty! Wanna look like you!”
The tall one hesitated before speaking. It seemed unsure. “No, honey, skirts are for girls to look pretty, not boys. How about I get you a handsome bow tie instead?”
Tears welled in the child’s eyes. The figures winced internally, bracing for a piercing screech. The tall one seemingly relented, sighing and giving it the skirt. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” It muttered.
The child smiled from ear to ear and pulled it on. The skirt was almost comically long. It tried to twirl but tripped, falling with a giggle. “M’ pretty!” It repeated, as if the word was the most important thing in the world. “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty pretty pretty!”
The thump from the fall shook the frame of the figures’ world. They looked away for a second, fighting off nausea and their spinning perception of the outside room. When they looked back, the child was asleep in the bed next to the tall one, clinging tightly to the frills of the skirt.
It all blurred together after that. Somehow, it grew more, bigger and bigger until it was nearly a third of the height of its Guardian. It wore shorts now, although it kept the skirt and the Guardian didn’t have the heart to take it back. It doodled on its wall with markers and cried at the scolding it got. It sulkily wiped up its mess, although a few marks remained, pink and purple against the baby blue. It outgrew the crib and took the taller’s place in the bed, and suddenly the Guardian was the one absent and the child was the one leaving to cry to it.
In those rare, new moments of silence, the figures realized how lonely it was without the child.
When it was in its room, it created with the grace and mystery(but maybe with more enthusiasm) of a god. It used a watercolor palette until the head of the brush broke off. It stole some kind of face paint and pinks its cheeks, darkens its eyelashes and lips. It sewed and read and sketched, though no longer on the walls. It leaped and twirled in the same plaid skirt, giggling as it shook the figures’ entire existence. The figures found they didn’t mind anymore.
And all too soon, it was preparing for something. The tall one brought it a sort of bag, blue and patterned with dinosaurs. It stuffed it with papers and books and broken crayons. It wanted to wear the skirt. The Guardian shook its head. It sullenly complied.
It seemed to disappear every day now, for hours on end. It woke up earlier, too, although it seemed to be the Guardian’s doing. And despite how excited it used to seem about whatever it left for each day, it soon tired of the taller’s call of “Nathan! Time for school!” after it slept through its alarm for the third time that morning. It stopped painting and scrawled sketches on its new desk instead. And it played with the stuffed lamb less and less. It forwent the crayons and took the batteries out of the hopeless alarm clock. It folded its baby blanket carefully and frowned, disappearing from the room for a minute and returning with a cardboard box, slightly dented and marked with tape reading Amazon.
In went the blanket. In went the crayons, lamb, and alarm clock. Under the bed went the box, collecting dust of past years forgotten but still too familiar to let go. The figures felt something new, something that at first glance felt akin to frustration but upon closer inspection was just melancholy.
It felt eerily, to the figures’ dismay, like regret. Were those days really over? Had it really grown so much in what felt like such a short period of time?
And that time, it seemed, was only speeding up. Soon, it seemed to spend all its time doing what the tall one called “homework” and what it called between its grumbles useless. Despite this, it grew in confidence. It forwent jeans for shorts and wore bright colors. Into the box went the dinosaur bag, replaced with a pattern of simple squares. It grew its hair out, and one day came home with blue streaking through the once-brown strands. It wore necklaces and, when no one was looking, pulled on the skirt it still had and looked in its mirror. It applied stolen mascara, blush, lipstick. It smiled at itself, eyes shining with an emotion the figures only wished they could experience.
And one day, even that wasn’t enough. It folded the skirt and hid it in its backpack, still fearing what the Guardian would say if it was discovered. It shoved the makeup in its bag along with its crumpled, half-finished homework from last night.
And it came home early and slammed the door. With a shock, the figures realized this was the first time that they’ve seen tears on the child’s face in what must have been years. They were different. More fatal. Quiet and terrifying.
There was a knock at the door. “Nathan?”
It shuddered at the name, trembling like a leaf clinging to the only branch it’s ever known for dear life, as winter winds rip and tear at its crackling, dead body. “Leave me ALONE!” It screamed, voice raw.
The Guardian didn’t answer. The child looked at the door as if hoping it wasn’t actually alone. Hoping that the one that had guided it for its entire life would have an answer for why its head spun and felt like it was floating.
A sob racked its throat.
It looked down and ripped the skirt from its body. It looked at it for one long, shaky moment. The figures flinched.
He tears it at the seams with a cry, ripping it into shreds, looking frantically for scissors to finish the job. He can’t find any, so he settles for tearing harder, pulling apart the poor threads of the worn skirt. He shoves it into the box, wet with tears, along with the colored pencils, the markers, the sketchbook, the makeup, the dolls, the watercolors and piano music and diaries and pink socks and sewing kit and the fairy books and the doll’s clothes and the stuffed cat and the princess crown because he is a man and those are girl toys and he’s in middle school now and it doesn’t matter how much it hurts and he can’t breathe he can’t breathe because it isn’t real anyway and it’s time to GROW UP AND STOP ACTING LIKE A PUSSY.
His feet brush against scissors and he grasps for them, reaching into the box to grab the skirt. He stops and instead hesitates.
He grips his hair.
The figures flinch as snip goes the hair it had spent months growing out, had begged the tall one for months to let it dye, had braided and plaited and made its own. It fell to the carpeted floor in jagged clumps, with the same weight of the sobs that it couldn’t staunch and the time the figures wished could rewind. Everything had been so much more simple.
It buried its face in its pillow and sobbed.
The figures looked away.
Life went on, although for the no-longer-child it seems to be frozen. It shoves the box far under its bed, waiting for it to collect dust. It doesn’t look in the mirror anymore. It wears baggy jeans and shirts and dyes its short hair black.
Sometimes at night, the figures hear it crying. On the worst days, it gets up, grabs a flashlight, goes to the mirror. “Be a man.” it repeats. “Be a man. You are a man. Act like one.”
The figures don’t know what to do. Why did it stop doing the things that made it happy? What made it so scared of what others thought of it? What lay beyond the window with ever-falling leaves and sunlight that was so terrifying and unfair to make it suffer?
It wasn’t fair.
It only got worse, too. More homework, less sleep, and it never seemed to know why it was crying. It spent more and more time laying in bed on its phone. It hadn’t picked up a pencil to sketch in months. The colored pencils were collecting dust. The tall one’s knocks grew few and far between.
Sometimes they heard shouting below. “Do your homework, Nathan.”. “Why are you so quiet, Nathan?”. “Have you finished your essay, Nathan?”. “Stop watching TV and finish that science project, Nathan.”. “You failed three classes this quarter, Nathan!”.
Everything seemed to be crashing down. The figures don’t know who Nathan is. They don’t understand gender-based stereotypes, peer pressure, depression, gender dysphoria, or undiagnosed neurodivergency. All they know is a once-child who seems absolutely miserable with the life it’s leading. All they can feel is a sense of unfairness and sorrow.
How long can it go on like this?
Not very long, the figures think when it gets out of bed; flicks on its flashlight. Pauses, lights the candle. The wax has melted into a thin pool.
It stares at itself in the mirror.
“I can’t do this anymore.” it whispers, to the crickets, the sleeping birds, the stuffed sheep, the painted figures on the wall.
She pulls out the box and threads a needle.
Her mom finds her sleeping on the ground, dried tear tracts staining her cheeks. The skirt is in her hands, half-sewed. By her feet is a half-finished sketch of a person with long blue hair, a plaid dress, mascara and blush. It’s titled self-portrait.
Mom calls the school, tells them her child is sick and informs them that he won’t be at school today. She leaves pancakes and a folded floral dress on her bedside table.
The figures watch her wake up. Her hands are shaking as she reads the sticky note on the pink-yellow garment.
She closes her door, almost locks it. Hesitates; leaves it unlocked.
With trembling fingers, she unzips the back of the dress. Slowly, she pulls it over her shoulders.
She spins, twirls, watches how the fabric flows around her bare legs. She dries her eyes. She waves to herself, and there’s a smile on her face.
Her hair has grown out again.
Rose turns around and stares the figures directly in the eyes. She hesitates before reaching up and grabbing the dusty frame. She’d never quite understood what it meant or why they were there but that didn’t matter because they’d always been there.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for letting me grow.”
She props them and their painted-meadow world on her desk. The lifeless faces smile back at her, the real her.
The figures smiled and the frame broke. They should have been jealous; after all, she was free. She always had been, no matter how much it hurt. All they could feel, however, crystal-clear for the first time in their timeless life, was happiness.
As trapped as a painting was, the artist could live whatever life she painted. The world might scream and shout and accuse, but how could that change her? Through everything, she had found the strength and courage to hold the brush.
For now and for always, that would be enough.