“We could probably do that for you, but we won’t.” – That was the only thing he could say when he woke up in the hospital. Nobody even knew when he entered the hospital. He had no name, no family, and no history. He just appeared in a room, and started drawing on the walls. He had no wounds, no brain damage, not even dirtiness. He was almost too perfect. His orange hair was always shining and perfectly combed. His clear, freckled skin was always a perfect tone of white. He had a muscular body even though he never ate or exercised, and he didn’t seem to age. He was a rather handsome boy. But his drawings could have made the least squeamish person sick. Each vignette was full of tribulations: death, crying, famine, grief, suffering, malady, misery, and despair. No one in the hospital could stand being in there for more than a few minutes. They only entered to do requisite tasks. When someone entered the room, he turned his head and just stared at them, as if there was something in his deep blue eyes that could look right through their souls, and he just said the same thing.

“We could probably do that for you, but we won’t.” Everyone delegated any job that had to do with him. They decided they had to take him to an asylum, because apparently they were prepared for this type of situation, but they weren’t. The first night he spent there, an inclement weather invaded the city. Black clouds and lighting storms continued for days, and they kept getting worse. After a week, there was so much lightning that it seemed as the sky was combustible, and it was just burning. There was no difference between day and night, just a flaming sky. They feared him in the asylum as well. There was an aperture in the door of his room, and anyone that looked through it was left with an indelible image in their mind. He was always staring at the opening, so eye contact was unavoidable. And sketched on the walls, the same horrifying drawings were exposed. Just one person ever dared to enter. She never imagined what would happen to her. As soon as she entered, and looked around, avoiding the boy´s gaze, she felt as if she was in the cache of all the evil that ever existed. Her respiratory tract closed. At this point there was no way to rectify her error. She passed out in front of the boy, as he stared at her. A flash of light fulminated around the asylum and the lights turned off. The lightning stopped, there was only darkness left. Then he just looked back to the opening, as if there was no one else there. His eyes had a strange gleam that could somehow be seen in that eerie darkness. It was the only thing anyone could see. The gleam in his eyes seemed to follow everyone´s sight. Everyone that was there claimed to feel that they were being watched, and to see that gleam everywhere they looked. Then, coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, a whisper was heard.

“We could probably do that for you, but we won’t.” The lights turned on, the girl was breathing again, and the moon started to shine through the clouds. He was gone as mysteriously and suddenly as he had appeared. But the drawings remained. They were a memoir of suffering and pain. The asylums director declared that it was paramount that they were erased. They disappeared from the walls, but never left the minds of anyone that saw them. There was no way of forgetting.

Copyright 2015 by Nicolas Pulido. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.