Parrhesia
When it got bad, he hid inside the moon.
When it got bad, he hid inside the moon.
Inside the darkness of the core, he decided that the only way people would believe him is if he never lied. If they knew he always told the truth. So he vowed to always tell the truth, and with that, he left the moon.
Soon after that, they took his brother away.
Life was better for many years. Telling the truth was easy. When people loved him for it he was happy and when people hurt him for it he accepted it. But one day, hiding on the roof of his school, he realized: If it was easy to tell the truth, it was easy to lie. Everybody would believe him.
This terrified him. He decided to stop talking, just in case. If he ever lied, he’d be like his brother.
Even this gave him relief for a few more years. But then, in his dreams he started to do things he never could have imagined while awake. His hands and his arms and his teeth. And it frightened him. He was glad he couldn't talk anymore, or else he would have told somebody, and they would have known he wasn't any different from his brother. He tried to hide in the moon again, but he was too big now.
He had his last therapy session on a day of spring floods, when the water doesn't know where to go and is too angry to find out. His parents called and told him to walk back to his school after therapy, that they'd get him when the waters abated. His therapist said she'd be happy to walk him over.
On the walk over they couldn't talk like normal. She couldn't watch him shake his head, or read his slips of paper, or watch his nails bite into his side. They could just walk around the giant puddles as best they could and catch their breath under verandas.
They sat on a bench together, their toes poking out where the clouds could catch them. She mentioned that if he wanted to, he could try journalling. She startled when he shook and cried.
"I don't think that would be a good idea," he croaked. "I don't think that would be a good idea at all."
I wrote this story last year and wasn’t quite happy with how it turned out — too much implication, not enough grounding, not quite conveying the feeling I wanted. And even with this version I’m still not happy with it! But I think it’s an improvement. One of my reminders in my notes is just “detailed and lush description”, which helps me to let stories breathe and get sensory, at least a little. I think I’ll revisit this one in another 18 months, and by then I’ll have figured out what I want it to actually do!
This ends my month of “updated stories”. I might do my romances next, or I might find another way to keep avoiding them!