By: Jay Ackley
The figures don’t know how long they’ve been there, or when they had started this endless loop of thinking, staring, and thinking in the fuzzy, fickle non-world that only left them with a sense of wanting more.
Their world used to be flat, consistent, unbroken. When had that changed?
Nothing ever changed anymore.
They stared at the muted pale green 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 only have a vague sense of awareness, of time slipping through cracked fingers, though they have no concept of what time is. They can only feel their colors fading, their skin peeling, the meadow they stand in losing its complexion, as leaves outside sometimes-open windows fade from green to orange to red to dead, covered in a white powdery chill that they are unfamiliar with.
And then there are those rare moments where the door cracks open. When 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 voice that carries emotion. Words that are alien to them, 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, like they want to burst from their canvas 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 gossamy curtains on their oil-peeling skin.
They didn’t know what they were, and yet they still wanted more.
And suddenly, there was more. There was something new. A different sense, a 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, dirty. It slept far too often. It chewed on a spit-soaked stuffed lamb’s ear. It never seemed to rest fully through the night, but when day came it seemed to be deathly allergic to sun. Maybe the figures were better off not having a voice, or a hand, 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-purple shirt.
Without warning, the child had become a part of their pitiful existence. And however much the figures wished for the blank green quiet of an empty room again, they were stuck.
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, occasionally tumbling down to the carpet but regaining its balance easily, 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 is a lively thing, to say the least, and though the figures hate to admit it they envy it. They envy its fingers stained with sharpie and floor covered in broken crayons and ripped paper. They envy how easily it cradles its small stuffed animals, how it can suck its thumb without straining to move. They envy its freedom, how it can do what it wants, when it wants.
It wears skirts, suddenly. The tall one seems to have reached its limit. It laughs and takes them away. “Nathan, silly, those aren’t for you! Those are for Mommy!”
The child pouts and tugs on it. “But I wanna look pretty! Wanna look like you!”
The tall one hesitates. “No, honey, skirts are for girls to look pretty, not boys. How about I get you a handsome bow tie instead?”
The child tears up. The figures wince internally, bracing for a piercing screech. The tall one, seemingly relenting, sighs and gives it the skirt. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” It mutters.
It smiles from ear to ear and pulls it on. The skirt is almost comically long. It tries to twirl but trips, falling with a half-cry, half-giggle. “M’ pretty!” It repeats. “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty pretty pretty!”
The thump from the fall shook the very frame of the figures’ world. They look away for a second, fighting off nausea and their spinning perception of the outside room. When they look back, the child’s asleep, 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 wears shorts now, although it kept the skirt and the Guardian hasn’t had the heart to take it back. It doodles on its wall with a sharpie, and cries at the scolding it gets. It sulkily wipes up its mess, although a few marks remain. It outgrows the crib and takes the taller’s place in the bed, and suddenly the Guardian is the one absent and the child is the one leaving to cry to it.
And in those rare, new moments of silence, the figures realize how lonely it is without the child.
When it is in its room, it draws with markers. It steals some kind of face paint and pinks its cheeks, darkens its eyelashes and lips. It sews and reads and sketches, though no longer on the walls. It leaps around and twirls in the same plaid skirt, giggling as it shakes the figures’ entire existence. The figures don’t mind anymore.
And all too soon, it’s preparing for something. The tall one brings it a sort of bag, blue and patterned with dinosaurs. It stuffs papers and books and broken crayons in the bag. It wants to wear the skirt. The Guardian shakes its head. It sullenly complies.
It seems to disappear every day now, for hours on end. It wakes up earlier, too, although it seems to be the Guardian’s doing. And despite how excited it used to seem about whatever it left for each day, it soon tires of the taller’s call of “Nathan! Time for school!” after it sleeps through its alarm for the third time that morning. It draws less and scrawls on its new desk instead. And it plays with the stuffed lamb less and less. It foregoes the crayons and takes the batteries out of the hopeless alarm clock. It folds its baby blanket carefully and frowns, disappearing from the room for a minute and returning with a cardboard box, slightly dented and marked with tape reading Amazon.
In goes the blanket. In go the crayons, lamb, and alarm clock. Under the bed goes the box, collecting dust of past years forgotten but still too close to let go. The figures feel something new, something that at first glance felt akin to frustration but upon closer inspection was just regretful. Remorseful.
Melancholy.
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 seems to spend all its time doing what the tall one called “homework” and what it called between its grumbles “Stupid. When will I ever need this stuff?”
Despite this, it’s growing in confidence. It forgoes jeans for shorts, and wears bright colors. Into the box goes the gym shorts it wore so much. It grows its hair out, and one day comes home with blue streaking through the once-brown strands. It wears necklaces and, when no one is looking, pulls on the skirt it still has and looks in its mirror. It applies mascara, blush, lipstick. It smiles at itself.
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 stolen makeup in its bag along with the crumpled, half-finished homework from last night.
And it comes home early, slamming the door. With a shock, the figures realize this is the first time that they’ve seen tears on the child’s face in what must have been years.
There’s a knock at the door. “Nathan?”
It shudders 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 screams, voice raw.
The Guardian doesn’t answer. The child looks up, as if hoping it wasn’t actually alone.
A sob racks its throat.
It looks down and rips the skirt from its body. It looks at it for one long, shaky moment. The figures flinch.
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 he’s in middle school now 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.
It buries its face in its pillow and sobs.
The figures looked away.
Life goes 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 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.” he 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?
It only gets worse, too. More homework, less sleep, and sometimes it doesn’t seem to know why it’s crying. It spends more and more time laying in bed on its phone. It hasn’t picked up a pencil to sketch in months. The colored pencils are collecting dust. The tall one’s knocks grow few and far between.
Sometimes they hear 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 seems to be crashing down. The figures don’t know who Nathan is. They don’t understand gender-based stereotypes, peer pressure, depression, body dysphoria, or undiagnosed ADHD. 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.
A label on the bottom reads: “Rose(she/her)”. A tiny scrawl is beside it, five lines. Blue, pink, white, pink, blue.
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, applies mascara, blush, lipstick. 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 worn canvas.
“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.
Even if they were trapped in a box, she didn’t have to be.