Turtle Shaped Corals

With a start, the boy opened his eyes.

He was sweating profusely. His heart was beating so loudly, it was painful, he couldn’t breathe. It took him a slight moment, when finally he felt like his chest might burst, to open his mouth and take deep breathes. The pain slowly ebbs as he panted, the whiteness in front of him seem to dance around, colors of black and green dotted over the pure ivory light that he was seeing.

He felt his fingers twitch and his hands moved towards his chest, clutching it as if trying to pull his heart out of his chest.

He could finally breathe but there was a lingering pain beside the pain of not being able to breathe. The boy didn’t like it.

What happened? Why was he so afraid? What was that pain that he was feeling? Will it end? Will it stop?

The pain didn’t. The dancing color in his sight disappeared and was replaced by the blurring of his everything.

Why? Why was he in pain?

The boy took one last deep breath and let go of his chest.

Why was everything a blur?

The boy heard something. It was a calming sound, a rhythmic sound of something he didn’t know the word for. It was a clear sound that eased that remaining pain in his chest. It was a sound that cleared everything the boy was worried about. It was a sound that made the boy forget.

And now, the boy felt blank.

The boy closed his eyes and listened to the sound closely. Paying attention to every slight change in its tone, its rhythm, to an additional sound. He liked that sound. It made him calm. It made that pain disappear.

But as sudden as it appeared, the boy was forced to open his eyes as the sound disappeared and was immediately replaced by a sound that was surrounding him – an irregular, discordant noise.

He turned his head to see people’s feet – standing slightly away him, running, walking – he looked up and saw their upper halves – torso, arms, head – they all looked the same to the boy, they were annoying.

He turned his line of sight back to what’s in front of him, that ivory light. The calming sound that made his pain gone didn’t reappear, the discordant noise of people continued and he felt disappointed – a feeling he didn’t know the name of yet at that moment but it felt as close to the pain he felt earlier but less.

Would he be able to hear that sound again?

Hoping he would, the boy closed his eyes. The ivory light melted into a chasm of ebony. And he waited – he waited for that calm sound to return. But it didn’t.

Instead, the noise of the people grew louder and louder in the boy’s ears.

He crunched his closed eyes and a horrendous image appeared in the dark chasm which made him open his eyes in a hurry. There was a loud terrified scream that made the boy cover his ears with both his hands. The scream was followed by a wailing cry.

What was happening? The boy didn’t want to know, at least, for now, he wanted to stay where he was.

Even with his hands covering his ears, the noise didn’t die down, his hands could only muffle the sounds that he could hear and couldn’t cancel everything at all. He could still hear everything that surrounds him, including the annoying noise of the people. Yet, despite the scream and that cry, everything else was the same – it was disharmonious, non-rhythmic, chaotic, non-motivating, noise.

The boy pressed his ears harder. The muffled sound seemed closely familiar to something. Closely. Because it wasn’t enough, there was something more.

The boy closed his eyes one more time.

It was getting close.

The muffled sound as if something was blocking his ears, the slight darkness of something deep and – there was something else.

The boy took a deep breath, enough for his body to arch and for his shoulder blades to feel the coldness of that where he was lying at. It was a huge deep breath but he didn’t let it go, instead of exhaling the air that his lungs took in, he pressed his lips together, his cheeks puffing out as he held his breath.

This – this was what he was looking for.

The darkness, the soundless and –

“What are you doing? You look silly, you know.”

That voice which sounded close made the boy open his eyes.

A face was in front of him, hovering really close, enough for him to smell his minty breath.

“Why are you lying there? Isn’t it cold?”

The face spoke, its two brown windows peering at the boy’s own.

“You look uncomfortable. Do you know that you can actually stand like most of us are doing, right?”

Brown wasn’t the color that the boy liked. This was a fact that the boy understood as he stared at the face’s eyes. Though, it was more lighter than brown.

“And what’s this?”

A finger poked the boy’s puffed cheeks. The contact of another person’s skin, or rather, the face’s skin, surprised him. It was cold. Colder than where he was lying at. Because of this, the air accumulated inside his mouth was blown, his shoulders relaxed and his back was back at that cold something.

“What were you doing?”

The brown eyes continued to stare and the boy couldn’t help but stare back.

Brown wasn’t the colour that the boy liked but this face’s brown, he wanted to scoop it out of that face and keep it with him.

“Can you even speak?”

There was still the noise around that the boy wanted to escape. He wanted to feel that feeling of darkness and void again.

The boy took that huge deep breath once more, his cheeks puff but the finger that was still on his face pushed it flat, making the boy keep the all those air on the other side of his mouth and it was annoying – the imbalance was annoying.

The boy blew those air out.

Stop bothering me.