The fifth scar appeared on his left arm, just three weeks after he was admitted into that crazy home. He was a child of a calm and mellow demeanor, seldom subject to a child’s rage that would often result in temper tantrums for whims gone unsatisfied. His toys, incredibly, were not Legos or Hot Wheels, but books, notepads, pencils, and that one triangle his younger sister gave him for Christmas the year prior to her death. His parents, then, were madly in love. He, Geraldo, had everything a ten year-old should ever have: a home, food, and family—a tight-knitted family, above all. But all that soon deteriorated into a state of dismay. And, inevitably, events in his life synchronized to croons of ominous harmonies, until he ended up in that wretched mental institute with aching scars that oozed agonizing pain and loss.

Each death drew his heart, his being, into an unremitting darkness. Geraldo could feel the pain of loss stab his little heart. He wondered— pondered even, how such pain could find its way into his heart when it was embraced by darkness, by labyrinths of shadows, his inner demons. He was merely ten years of age, incredibly, sadly… sadly. He felt alone. He was alone; desolate, like stray trash dragged by fierce winds on a sullen, silent night.

The room was a translucent white. To Geraldo, who, by atrocious circumstances succumbed to his inner darkness, this brilliance was the persistence of mockery, like a tantalizing light radiating, pulsating, at the distant end of an eerie tunnel and one knowing, as if by natural law, how futile it is to pursue its lustering glory. And he merely sat there, absorbing it all, oblivious—certainly—to the fact that he would soon collapse under the density of such irrefutable mockery and woe. He uttered not a single word. Not ever. Not since his dearest sibling deceased. Death had, thus, made a dominion of his being.

A knock or two thudded the door of his chamber. He shot it a quick glance, and almost instantaneously saw a rather dark silhouette compressed against the rectangular glass of the door. It was Dr. Peterson—surely. White in complexion, a man of stretch, silky-blonde hair, and a mesmerizing sex appeal, Dr. Peterson was, according to many in his profession, a psychiatric Adonis. “How’s my little boy today,” said the Dr. as he approached Geraldo. “So, how is he?” However, Dr. Peterson knew the ineffectual nature of such questions; he knew the only sound Geraldo would ever produce was the scraping noise of pencil on paper. Stillness, silence filled the air—gaucherie. The Dr. waited patiently. Nothing. And so he traced his steps out the door and vanished for a while.