Chatterbox: Inkwell

I'm still technically on hiatus but I'm having a free weekend so I thought I'd drop by. I haven't posted writing on here in a long time, so here's a quick character study that I whipped up in like half an hour for a timed writing challenge. It's not edited so sorry if it's nonsensical or repetitive. I kind of like the concept and am considering expanding on it. I would adore some feedback. Love you all. <3

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A boy sits on a chair in a room full of shelves. He counts his fingers, carefully, pulling at the joints and testing their realness. He is alive and he knows this logically— feels the beating of his heart and the restless fluttering of his lungs against the weight of his palms—  but he doesn't feel very alive. He doesn't feel alive at all. People are supposed to understand things, to know the things inside their hearts. He's always thought that was a funny expression, considering the heart's sole function is pumping blood, not processing emotion, but either way he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand what a smile means or when something is sarcasm or isn't or flirting or the reasons behind his feeling.

He likes reasons, he likes answers, he likes knowing. He is scared of not knowing. He does not know himself and he thinks he may be scared of himself. He is not quite a child and not quite a man, but something hovering nervously between, in this stumbling limbo between responsibility and freedom. He can recite hundreds of digits of pi but he can never seem to say the right thing when it's called for.k

He's tired of not knowing, of not understanding, of sitting on the outside of a conversation and fighting to understand, to comprehend, this big and seemingly hilarious secret that everyone is privy to except for him. Always stuck inside this large glass box, he doesn't know where he is or who he is or what anyone is saying. They all sound as if they are underwater. He's trying. He's trying very hard but doesn't know if he's succeeding.

Real things are easier— they make sense. He likes numbers and science and counting things and putting them in order. He likes silence and math and the certainty of facts and logic. Emotions aren't as easy and that scares him.

He thinks of the boy with the freckles and the round glasses, who feels a lot and loves his feelings, and wants to understand that. He wants to understand why his chest feels funny a lot of the time and why he sometimes gets scared that his stomach is going to fall out. He wishes he could understand poetry and love and what it feels like to kiss someone. He wishes he wasn't so scared.

He is supposed to have the answers and most of the time he does. He enumerates the twinges in his hands (sixteen, seventeen) as they grip fistfuls of carpet and names each one of the bones in his feet. Maybe there's something wrong with him. People are supposed to understand themselves and others, to know who they are and he...  doesn't. He knows he is a person but sometimes he doesn't feel like a proper one— more like a robot, a failed approximation of a human that seems functional only if one doesn't look too closely.

The fact is that he does feel things, he just doesn't want to or know what to do with them. He understands: sad, happy, scared, excited, but people don't feel in small boxes. He doesn't really Get how someone can be happy to be scared or bittersweet or cry when they see their kids get married or angry at something they love very much. It's a puzzle with pieces missing and try as he might he can't fit them all in.

The freckled boy tried to explain it to him once when he was smaller, as they lay in his backyard on grass that made him sneeze. It was a pretty day, green and warm, like a lopsided handmade mug filled to the brim with breezy whispers.

The boy said, "Look. It's all chemicals in your brain. There's science behind it, you like science don't you?"

And he answered, "Maybe (but it doesn't feel like science, it doesn't feel like reason)."

"You just have to keep trying. You'll get it eventually."

And he keeps trying and he doesn't feel like he gets it quite yet. He's waiting for this Eventually, where things will make sense, where smiles won't send him falling and snarky mutterings can't be misinterpreted. Maybe it's getting better and maybe it isn't.

He went through a robotics phase in middle school and read books about the uncanny valley and how people are most freaked out by robots that are very similar to humans but not quite there yet. Perhaps, he thinks, that is why he doesn't have many friends. He looks like a person but doesn't act like one or feel like one. So close. So close.

Sometimes when he looks in the mirror he thinks he might be able to understand himself. He thinks about his brain as a motherboard, with small buttons and switches that turn on and off different pieces. Happy sad excited scared angry. Sometimes two at once, sometimes three. He thinks about his fingers as wires, jolts of fear or excitement as bursts of electricity. He makes sense to himself, but other people don't. Their motherboards are more complicated. He can't be angry with them for that when he's the defective one.

Someone knocks on his door and he does not respond. They say his name and he still stays quiet. They are looking for a person that is not there. There is no person there, just a robot.

The knob jiggles, once twice. They say his name again, and ask, "Are you mad at me?" He sits very small and wonders if maybe if he doesn't move he'll freeze and turn into stone and not have to talk. It is probably the boy with the freckles and the round glasses, because he comes over after school sometimes to wait for his mother to come home from work and he is here today. He thinks maybe he should get up and open up the door, say "sorry" or "no" or "yes" or the truth, which is "I don't know".

Before he can, the doorbell chimes and the voice says, "I have to go," and there are footsteps and shuffling. Inside his room, he hears noises, faint and far away, as if from the other end of a long a tunnel. He closes his eyes and can see the what is happening, vivid and technicolor on the movie screen of his brain, without having to even be there (it's better that way).

His father will go open the door and she will be standing on the porch with three bags— a small leather one gripped in her left hand and two hanging under eyelids draped heavily with mascara.

She will smile, tired, and say, "Thank you for doing this," and his father will say, "Don't worry about it, Parker is a good kid we are happy to have him."

They will look at each other and he will say sorry with his eyes and she will ignore him. The freckled boy will come down the hall, his backpack slung over one shoulder, the front pocket unzipped. His mom will kiss his head and he will push her away.

She will say, "We'd love to have you and Lukas over for dinner soon, once things get better."

His dad will say, "Sounds lovely. Have a good evening."

"Bye," the freckled boy will say, and then the door will close, and just as he thinks that he hears it slam. The house is silent.

A robot sits on a chair in a room full of shelves. He counts his fingers and tries not to drown.