may cause the following side effects :: soren

[Peter Ayden Barry]

ROOM 406 | SATURDAY | OCTOBER 10TH | AROUND 5 PM

The rain was beating down harshly over St. Helena's. Peter was used to the Washington weather by now. He didn't mind the rain so much. Everything was green and lush. The rain only amplified it. He sat on his bed with his notebooks and textbooks scattered about. Although it was a Saturday he didn't have much else to do. Sometimes he would walk into town and go to the woods or the park, but the rain was far too heavy for that today. Outside in the halls he heard shuffling of people getting ready to head out for the night. To be honest, he didn't understand the freedom the school bestowed on its students. They were labeled "troubled" and some even had mental illnesses and yet they were able to do what they please. It was a pretty shitty way to run things. Sometimes he wondered if he could get away with never coming back. Sure they might look for him, but whether they could find him was another story.

Right now he was focused on his creative writing assignment. His teacher wanted them to write a short story inspired by their own life experiences. They didn't have to write themselves in, but it had to have a theme familiar with their lives. This was quite problematic. Even though he wasn't really telling someone what his life was like, he still had no desire to write any sort of "theme" that related to him. When he wrote he created scenarios that were the exact opposite of what he endured. He considered writing a horror story that portrayed Hank, his stepfather, as the monster he really was. Still, that was also personal. Plus he didn't really want to think about home. So he remained stuck.

Looking over at the other saw of the room he saw his roommate's empty bed. He felt bad about it, but he was sort of glad he wasn't there. Whenever they were in the room together there was a strange tension. Peter never made any effort to make conversation. He wasn't used to sharing a room let alone with a complete stranger. He didn't even have a clue what the boy was there for and he had little desire to know.

With a sigh he put down his notebook and grabbed his sketch pad instead. His pencils were next to him on the bed side table. He would have a much easier time finding motivation to draw than anything else.

[Søren Alexander Nielsen]

Søren's day had been uneventful. He'd eaten a bland breakfast, skipped a bland lunch in favour of standing in the rain, and now he was drenched to the bone. Rain was one thing that never ceased to make him feel a little less shitty. It was cold, sometimes painfully so, but the feel of it on his skin was refreshing. It made him feel human in ways that he sometimes forgot he could feel. The bite of the chill wind through his clothes was at once bracing and almost sensual.

The way the beads of damp ran down his neck, sending shivers down his spine--- that was the only reason he was still alive now. He liked closing his eyes and facing the sky, so that the water droplets fell directly on his face. He pretended that it was melting his face away, like super charged acid rain or something, and turning his bones to dust so that it could be reclaimed by the worms of the earth. Rain depressed him and thrilled him at the same time. It was a strange combination, if he thought too hard about it, but in its own way it made sense to him. Rain was release. Total, primal, godly catharsis. When he was young, he used to believe that thunder was the voice of god. Lightening was evidence of his power and grace.

It had rained all the time in Stockholm. He used to look out of this giant bay window they'd had built onto their neo-victorian styled house, and just watch the epic battles that raged on in the sky. The house had actually been built by a friend of Søren's father's. Søren couldn't remember the man's name, but he knew that his mother had always told him that if he broke anything the man who built the house would be very cross with him. Maybe she'd made it all up. For all Søren knew the man had been dead for years, and that was just his mother's way of getting him to keep his marker scribbles and dirty hands off of the walls. Sometimes, when it had been raining for many days at a time, Søren's father would bring home some old archive films and project them on the walls. That old house had a great speaker system that ran all through the house. Søren would snuggle up beside his little sister, who had been just a baby at the time, and they'd hide from the storm in the world of some distant past.

He loved black and white films, because they always spoke with such funny accents. He used to imitate Humphrey Bogart to his sister's amusement. His impressions were quite good, really, and maybe that's what made them funny. Because Søren, at least the person he was then, was about the polar opposite of ultra-cool Humphrey Bogart. Søren had been a bit of a clown, really. It was all theatrics with him. Rain was a beautiful thing back then. Rain took him back there now. He could live in those sweet moments when the rest of the world was drowned out by the sound of rain. The smell of it brought him back home. As time went by, it got harder and harder to capture those old feelings. That's why he'd started standing out in the rain, directly. Inside everything seemed muted now, the memories were beginning to elude him. To be pressed down into the earth, drenched completely by the rain, it was such a physical experience that it was impossible not to be taken by it.

He didn't care that people were staring at him, that he looked even crazier than the rest of the crazies with his eyes to the sky and his arms outstretched, like he was flying, or maybe being crucified. Would he be struck by lightening? He could appreciate that. Maybe then, if he was melted down to the teeth and bones, they'd let him go. Death was a possibility he entertained whenever he did this, and it gave him something to hope for.

It was getting dark now, though. He knew that if he stayed out any longer he'd probably get pneumonia, and then they'd send him to the hospital and he might not be allowed to stand in the rain any more. He couldn't be deprived of that last simple pleasure. The door slammed behind him when he entered the room. He began stripping off his soaking jacket and shirt before he realized that there was someone else in the room. He had to quit doing that, just walking in and forgetting that he had a room mate. "Sorry." He mumbled, because it probably violated some social custom to strip in the presence of acquaintances. He pulled the shirt back down, hiding the ugly scars that covered his flesh. "I didn't see you there." He tiptoed over to his bed and grabbed a change of clothes before walking into the bathroom and closing the door behind him. He wasn't going to think about how awkward and exposed he'd felt just then, because if he did it would make him sick. So, once he was dressed he walked into the room like nothing had happened, and fell back on his bed. It would have been wise to towel down his head. His hair was still dripping wet and soaking into his pillow, but he didn't feel like getting up and grabbing one. Being free was tiring.

He shut his eyes and listened to the scratching of his room mate's pencil. It was a sound he'd grown accustomed to, and it filled him with something like peace most of the time. Today it filled him with something else. The strange energy that the rain had given him was turning his curiosity into an itch. He'd not really paid much attention to his room mate, and it seemed a little ridiculous now. They slept within feet of each other, and all that Søren knew was the boy's name. He was feeling brave after pitting himself against the elements, so he figured he might as well use the courage while it lasted. He sat up after a moment, and faced Peter's bed. It was probably the wrong thing to do. Most people didn't like to be watched while they worked, but Søren wasn't trying to endear himself to anyone. The other boy probably hated him anyway, after being stuck with him for this long.

"What are you drawing?" Søren said.