"Why is it that I'm still eating this crap? Its already friday. Salad shouldn't be the only thing on the damn menu. I should stop looking out the window too while I'm at it. The suns just taunting me, making me wish I wasn't grounded. What did I even do? I'm not a damn vegan and I sure as hell ain't some monster that needs to be locked away. Nevermind that. I don't care. I've played the waiting game and it's time I make my escape. Kelp juice just ain't gonna cut it anymore."
There it is: August, the sixteen year old boy, complaining to his older cousin, Melody, about his current circumstance. With slick black hair and a yellow sunflower pin parting his hair to the right, he wears a matching yellow dress and a pair of slippers. His personality embodies the acidity of a ripe lemon quite accurately as well. The only thing not so bright would be his mood. He's like a walking bomb ready to go off most of the time.
August happened to play the part of his mother's dress up doll on occasion and today was just one of those days. This wasn't unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory for him. Often when his grades were not so good, his mother would put her old clothes on him and with a little bit of make-up, it was impossible to take what he said seriously. With a cute mask, August was the opposite of intimidating. He didn't mind when it first started and he still does not care.
His most enviable traits would have to be either his smooth skin or his indifference to the opinions of others. His arrogance and lack of sympathy for others left him as a trouble maker with no conventional friendships. Luckily for him, despite his attitude, he still had special people to take care of him over the years. One being his free-spirited cousin Melody and the other being his personal helper, Pointy. Both of them had a soft spot for August as well. Each for differing reasons.
Melody was roughly the only unobligated company around his age that would visit him, but she had not run into him on one of these (punishment) days before, yet it didn't surprise her. August sat up in his bed by the window with a miniature plate in his hand and a cutesy tea cup with a flower pattern on its face. Another plate lay flat on his bed but empty with minor residual pieces of plant life left on it. Melody was eighteen and sitting in a fancy wooden chair facing directly toward his bed. She held a cup herself and they both sipped peppermint tea from time to time.
She had curly black hair and she was quite tall as well. She wasn't the most curvaceous but she more than made up for it with how cute she was. Fawned over by people who didn't know her, she'd often be considered soft spoken and more polite than even adults twice her age. To the untrained eye, it seemed as if nothing could make her lose her calm. There was never a reason to argue with her because she's been "right" since the moment she was able to form words: A genius of sorts, inhabiting a modest human body. Today, she wore a frilly white dress with a blue orchid pattern embroidered in, not only her dress, but her handkerchief too.
"I can understand why you're upset, August. 'Kelp juice for dessert?' Your parents probably want you dead." Melody said, adding three more sugar cubes to his tea cup out of pity.
"I know, right?" he responds.
"I'm wracking my brain but, I still can't figure out what the reason as to why you can't go outside is. Auntie never refused to take me outside even when I was in trouble. Do you have any idea what might've happened for them to have decided to lock you in? When did this all start?"
"Can you hand me my diary right over there?", he says pointing to the desk right behind her. It sat right of his collection of ballerina figurines.
"You mean journal, right?" She asks.
"Oh, yeah. My journal."
Melody hands him the book and he flips through it up to the exact date he was prohibited from going outside and began to explain the events of that day.
"It was sunny. Much like today, the birds were singing love songs and doing whatever the heck birds do. Feeling a bit thirsty on my walk around the garden, I decide to stop and start a picnic enjoying the sun's warm embrace. Then the rigid sound of a thunder's clap shook me to my core."
"Thunder?"
"Not a sign of clouds in sight and no indicator whatsoever for where it came from, if I remember correctly. The only things I took notice of were a few rose bushes to my right up against the wall of the manor, a peach orchard to my left, and behind me was just the stone path back to the other side of the building. Unable to determine where the sound came from, I sat down on a blanket I prepared and began to empty the contents of my basket onto the blanket. The cool breeze had me looking at trees as their leaves waved back and forth in the wind. I look down at my hand and the egg sandwich within it to see a garden snake as long as a water hose positioned in my lap through my peripheral vision. It seemed to stare at me with an expectant look. It wouldn't be so far fetched to say that it spoke to me. Not through words, but telepathically so, it transmitted signals to my brain saying, 'Give me your sandwich or I'll end your puny, pathetic, existence.' I got up slowly, dropping the snake off of my lap. I brushed the crumbs off my cheek using my handkerchief, and walked away quite calmly and quickly, leaving my belongings behind and going back to my room."
"Bullshit but keep going."
August flinched with annoyance realizing that his efforts to fabricate details had been rendered pointless.
"The following night, I had a dream about that serpent strangling me on an airplane, so as any parent would like to here from their child, I went to confide in my parents about what happened. They began to laugh hysterically. Whenever I would go out with Mother and Father, sweat would pile up on my face and the anxiety would seem to freeze my body. Side effects included shortness of breath, panicked searching, and a lot of words going over my head. It was like, voices were being drowned out in my state of hyperfixation."
...