• I slipped between the pine trees, avoiding the delinquints ready to take out their drunken range on some unsuspecting flunkee. With their metal bats and over pumped muscles from cheap steroids, they did seem mildly frightening, they've hit me plenty of times. Great thing mother could brush my hair each and everytime, taking away the pain in the here and now, just as she did in the past.
    I crawled, hidden by rose bushes that are never watered, but rained on often. The poked and prodded me, jeering me to go back. But I kept crawling forward, quickly and quietly. No pain could reach me, I felt numb inside and out. Only the love of my deceased mother kept me from being a hollowed form of what was considered a standard 'human', one with feelings, consideration, and ability to lie to one's self. I never understoof the concept of lying to the one and only person that would understand; yourself. If you felt angry, wouldn't you know the cause? If you knew the cause, wouldn't you know which way to work for the advantage and ability to conquer? In the end, I doubt such is true. Many of myselves have died when they were beginning to bloom, to shine and turn into the person that saved other people, whether it be emotionally, physically, or mentally. But none of them reached that point, perhaps I won't either.
    I reached the end of the rose bushes, past the delinquints, and to the back of the forgotten school. I got up and didn't care to dust the dirt of my knees, so I just went forward. I trudged through the thick mud that had been left by the long rain that happened several days ago. I mussed my hair, and looked up at the building. Most windows were shattered, the doors carelessly boarded up.
    The building itself was a faded navy, with scratches on the textured walls. Cracks lined the parts nearest to the roof, the ground sloping towards the giant 'Hole'.
    The giant 'Hole' where my mother died, crying for hours for her family, all alone. At least, she was alone when the authorities thought so. I knew the shadows had something to do with this, they were the ones who triggered my visions, grim artwork of past and future, and my approaching end that will never end.
    I sighed, and squeezed through the small slit between the wooden boards, scraping my arm lightly. When I had pulled my leg through, I was then in the Gym. The gym was a bit of a torture chamber, the early version of the modern one in the new building's Gym. I was styled with the school colors, Blue and Yellow. Bleachers were in halves, flooring was in shreds, the plumbing pipes dangling from the ceiling, making it seem like the world had come to an end. In a sense it did. Mine did.
    Mother died in the giant 'Hole', tied to a cross made from the school's plumbing pipes. At the time she was dying, I was having my first vision, it was taken as a seizure. The only ambulance in the closest hospital came to take me away, leaving no chance for my mother's survival. It had been my fault no one came to help her.
    The irony of it was, my vision was about her. She was picking up conversation with the beckoning shadows, seeing nothing irregular in their formless selves. She truly was a kind soul, not holding prejudice against anything, even those that were killers. They held her hand, and brought her to an unknown destination cut out from my point of veiw. Only her and the shadows will ever know what happened. I marched up two stories of stairs, avoiding jagged glass and wires that may still have a shock to give me. I sighed when I finally reached my haven, the art room. The room was small, but had three easels with three different sizes, dried paint on their joints. In a corner of the room, there were several incomplete canvases damaged neither by the Earthquake, many rains, and time. They each brought me to peace with myself, they meant everything about life, death, and it's many trials.
    On one was the smiling face of a baby boy with blond hair and blue eyes, his eyes looked smiling but his mouth not yet painted.
    Next, a painting of a girl with her face against the wind, her eyes open, but behind her was the grim reaper, ready to take her life as soon as she turned around. But she looked so cluelessly happy, her face washed with sunlight so that her warm brown eyes shined.
    Last, a painting of a little girl hugging a bear that had lost it's head. She was in the middle of a dark time, but she looked so glad as to be hugging the bear once again, no matter what it may have lost. This picture was my favorite, though I loved them all with their meanings.
    They meant hope in a world without. They showed that I could become a person who also had eyes shining kindly, and a smile that showed pure happiness. They showed that if I tried hard enough, I could spread my wings, and fly far above the shadows, right next to the sun that created them, and destroyed them.
    My head started pounding, I shuttered. Another migrane, another vision. I leaned against a wall, fell to my knees, and curled in to a small ball. I whispered to myself, "By the sun, by the sun there is light and hope. To create and destroy the shadows the sun has done. The sun shines over me, protecting me." The migrane subsided, but the vision played itself inside my mind anyway.
    My father rising in his car humming happily to 'Jazz Band Jubilee' a song for band. Just as the Ds Fine hooked on the Fine making the song repeat, the breaking fluid began to drip, and drip, and drip. Someone had cut it.