Entrapment

Entranced by the flickering images, a boy gazes at the TV. The bedroom, enshrouded in darkness, silhouettes the boy’s pale face like a new moon at dusk. Vehicles from past movies line the floor: boats, tanks, cars, and planes. The boy collects toys from movies. They help him recreate the action in the movies over and over again. The miniature toys look like small shadows against the already dark living room.
His eyes remain fixed on the TV, never moving. He wonders how the movie he is watching will end. His eyebrows twitch with anticipation, and his eyes narrow as the action on the TV unfolds. He folds his thin arms into a misshapen pretzel across his chest. He wishes he were the main character.

Within a few minutes, the movie is over, and the boy replaces the movie with another. The boy crosses his arms and his eyebrows start twitching again.

A loud groan resonates in the dark living room as his brother opens a door and spirits in. The light from the room beyond shapes the darkness around it as if it were clay. The boy watching TV squints and covers his eyes until his brother closes the door.

“You should stop watching TV so much,” the brother says quietly, eyeing the room and noticing how dead it looks. The boy watching TV barely turns his head and waves his brother away.

“I do not need to listen to you, I have what I need here.” The brother frowns at the boy and notices that he looks paler than usual.

“You need to get out more,” the brother says. “You are starting to look like those vampires you watch on TV.” The boy watching TV laughs, finding that statement somehow amusing. His brother must be right, he thought, he probably was getting paler. The boy turns to his brother. He notices that his brother is much more tan than he, and he seems to be giving off a radiant glow as if he were one of the stars outside. Suddenly this makes him extremely mad.

“What do you know? Shut up!” the boy yells at his brother. His brother flinches and goes silent. He seems almost like one of the main characters in the movie the boy was watching. It angers him that his brother looks like the main character and he does not. The boy turns his pale face back to the TV irritably, where his eyes again take him back into his dream world where he can become whatever he wants to be. Fantasy floods his vision and endless possibilities crowd his thoughts. He becomes tanned in his mind, and he feels better again.

His brother turns and looks out the two large windows on the boy’s wall. The light from the TV behind him creates a shadow that stretches towards the windows, as if the boy’s spirit was trying to escape its insipid glow. Outside of these windows snow covers everything, piled like scoops of mashed potatoes. The brother finds the snow outside the boy’s window strange when none is outside his own bedroom window.

“At least come play in the snow with me,” the brother says quietly, turning his soft blue eyes towards his brother. “The snow is doing no good without someone to use it.” The boy watching TV scoffs and ignores his brother’s whining. The snow can wait, he thinks to himself. His brother can wait, as well. The TV is much more…

“You cannot keep yourself in here forever,” his brother interrupts his thinking. The boy angrily slams his fists into the carpet and glares at his brother behind him. He can live just as well without playing with his brother in the snow. He is more knowledgeable than his brother about these things; the snow will be there another day. He turns away from his brother with a jerk and stoops forward like a hunchback, trying to concentrate on the TV.

Silence saturates the room despite the monotonous droning of the TV pressing in upon the brother. The brother’s eyes begin to mist, and within the mist reflects a vision of the boy and him playing in the snow outside. His head moves to look at the boy watching TV, and he sees a disfigured corpse where the boy had once been.

Wordlessly, his brother slides towards the closed door. He steps on a toy boat by mistake, and its breaking sounds sharp to both of the boys’ ears. The boy watching TV turns his head slowly and sees the broken toy, amazed. His brother slumps his shoulders and opens the door. Light stabs into the darkness once again, enveloping the broken toy boat. Then his brother steps out, and the door closes, cutting off the light.

The boy turns the TV sound down and crawls over to the broken toy. Somehow the broken toy looks familiar. Puzzled, the boy glances outside and abruptly notices that the snow is gone. The boy’s eyes are strained from watching so much TV, and he thinks that he is imagining it. He stands up and looks again but sees the same thing. The snow is gone. He begins to wonder if there was even snow outside in the first place.

Fingering the toy boat, he sits down again, perplexed. He takes a remote from out of his pocket and turns the TV off. Absently the boy fits the shattered pieces of the boat together again as if it were never broken. I wish I were the captain of a boat, he thinks despairingly. That way I would not be as alone as I am now.

The moon outside becomes enshrouded in clouds, and the room becomes darker. The boy throws the toy across the room and stares out the window. There is nothing but darkness.