1 The Closet

I was so tired from the yelling. Everyday was the same thing for the last week. During every meal, stand there and listen to people yell at you about how you're making the reputation of the school fall. It was a glorified student council grouphome for God's sake.

I was here because I was an "addict," a misguided, horny 15 year old kid. And being attracted to all people with beautiful bodies, well shit, who could blame me, right? Fucking everyone apparently. Disowned, degraded, unneeded, unwanted. When 120 teenagers line up to yell at you for three hours a day, when the week is done, you kinda want to just kill yourself.

But I couldnt, because I was fat and weak and a fucking coward; I didn't want to go to hell. I still tried to find a way, but the group home doesn't give you any opportunities to sneak a knife. I did find a sharp rock though, so I was going to slice my wrist in bed that night.

It was particularly rough that day: my "dad" had tried to disown me, so after two additional hours of being yelled at over the phone, I was in tears. I was just too fucking tired to think. The counselor had put me on suicide watch anyway. Thankfully, the night guard that night was cool as fuck. He talked with me for about two hours. He was more of a dad to me than my own adoptive prick was, and I had known him less than a year. He looked like Ron Perlman, but talked like John Goodman, with a less scratchy voice, and was probably one of the calmest people I had ever met. I wish I could remember his name, but I can't. He promised to let me watch the Extended version of Return of the King on his laptop with him. If I was gonna die it was going to be tomorrow night, when the fucking lazy dude was working. That what i thought at the time.

Did I mention that my own dad, the guy who convinced his wife to adopt my sister and me when I was 8, disowned me? He didn't fill out the paperwork yet, but he did tell my probation officer and my case worker that he wanted to pick up the paperwork first thing monday morning, because he "didn't raise no fucking gay ass bitch."

I had always been a little chubby, but this place didn't require anything physical of the kids here and I got fat. I came in to the place, 135lbs (61kg), 5'0, (or 153cm) so I was overweight but some of that was muscle. Within seven months, I was 200lbs,(90kg) and hadn't grown taller at all. I was fat and I had man boobs. I had also discovered that I was bisexual after finding my roommate sexually attractive, and I was a switch, leaning toward being a submissive. If there was anything this "school" actually did for me in this supposed "Normative culture" it was to help me get in touch with my own sexuality.

Well when I saw my attractive roommate stroking his impressive self...one thing led to another, and here I was, caught red handed, denied even basic calling (because they didnt want to talk to me), couldnt be more than an arm's length away from an adult, and was told not to expect any care packages, not like they had sent any...shit, that previous Christmas, for my "presents," they had my P.O. bring my old clothes up, no card. "Don't call." the note said, no signature, just neatly placed on top and stapled into my favorite shirt, The clothes werent even folded.

I'm not telling you this to gain sympathy, I'm just explaining why I felt like suicide was the answer. This also wasnt the first time suicide crossed my mind. My parents were very firm believers that if you beat someone enough, they would be better,perform perfectly, do all the chores faster, etc., a belief I refuse to instill in my own kids, but I digress.

On top of the home situation, where looking back now, I see that I was basically a slave; school was always rough, being the new kid all the time(foster care), having no friends, being emotionally immature, thinking I was smart. I don't know maybe I just needed some consistency in my life.

Well one night, before the grouphome, after having washed the glass pan with comet and a plastic brush, my dad had taken the wire brush, dabbed it in the comet, and scrubbed my face with it. "This is what you are doing to that pan!" he screamed as the skin on my face peeled away, never quite healing back to normal. "Why don't you do us all a favor and just stop breathing?" he said as he walked away. That was the first time I thought to kill myself. His words were probably sharper but the machete was nicely sharp, still, I wanted to cut my throat deep enough, I didnt feel anything, if he had a gun i could get to, it would have been easier. The steel blade was cold, but I thought about hell, and how I would go there forever(bunch of fucking bullshit, I was going there anyway) and I put the damn thing back.

So two years later there I was, clutching my rock, wondering how my life came to this, wondering if I was just such a piece of shit that nobody cared about me, convincing myself that one of the nicest people in the world just didn't want to deal with the paperwork or the clean up of me killing myself. The clock read 10:08, my favorite time, because on digital clocks, that's the most sections you can get lit up. "Fitting. A least I get to go out on my own time." I thought sarcastically. I dug the tip of the rock into my skin, on the right wrist. It was sharp and stung. but it was better than being yelled at again. For anything. The tip bit into the skin, and as I pulled it down my arm, making sure in the pale light, that I was hitting as many veins as possible, the sharp edge cracked and flew away from my body, but catching in the plastic bag I was holding around my wrist. I got the bad because I didn't want the blood to drip too much and alert someone before i was dead.

God, I couldn't even commit suicide right... What the fuck?

I got up to put my rock away, climbing from the top bunk and stepping to the open faced shelving cabinet they gave us. I set the now fairly dull stone down and the plastic bag with it in the lighted section of my half of the dresser.

Turning and taking two steps back to my bed, I realized there should have been no light because when the cabinet door opened, because it blocked the hallway light and always made it too dark to see anything clearly at night. I twisted quickly to see where the light was coming from and...of course. Ribbit's(that's a nickname) mom had given him a stupid camping flashlight for his birthday. How the hell was that thing still on?

I crept to the pull apart doors, wondering why the hell he put it in my closet. Probably to get me in trouble, the little shit. As I approached the thin wooden shutters, I realized that the light was way too bright. It couldn't have been the stupid flashlight, the light was coming from EVERYWHERE. My closet seemed entirely made of light at this point, and I felt a cool breeze coming from inside. The hell? I yanked the doors apart, only to be blinded.

The breeze and the warmth hit me like the inside of a dryer after you open it. It wasnt like an oven, but it was hotter than the room I was in, and that breeze felt amazing. I opened my eyes to see a meadow, filled with waist high,slow waving grasses, like you see in animation all the time.

The sky was a beautiful orange, the day after a big storm, filled with wispy clouds that just glowed in the morning sun, Bob Ross would be proud if I could ever recreate that sunrise.

Sunrise?? At ten p.m.? My brain quickly snapped back. The fuck is going on? How is there a meadow in my closet? Did I actually die? Does that mean I still go to heaven? What's that gold shit over there on the wall?

Maybe I didn't want to answer the heavy questions, and my mind latched on the one thing I could possibly answer. My broke ass would definitely not be able to afford anything nice for myself, so gold colored anything stuck out like a sore thumb from all the tan and brown that I owned.

It ran the entire height of my closet, bumpy with weird shapes and creatures and even some humanoid shapes covering it entirely. The gold was raised for every creature, symbol, human, and other, but beneath, it appeared to be a round arch. The arch was the barrier between this side: boring, lame, hatred filled close-minded small town Wyoming; and that side: beautiful open field, like a summer's morning. grass beckoning to me.

I was more concerned with the drawings though. I gazed at each figure, trying to understand, and as the figures came from the bottom, up to the top and down the other side in a line, turning and continuing back the other direction, they slowly began to align on the inside of the arch, then to the other side of it. Toward the meadow. I suppose I had known I was stepping through and didn't care, but it still came as a shock when I glanced through the arch at where my room was, to find it was no longer there. I turned around to look behind me at the meadow, searching for my room, and when I looked back toward the arch, it was also gone.