The boy with the looking glass eyes

Once upon a time.
There was a boy with golden hair.
And looking glass eyes.

No one could love him until he was dead. And the people who did, weren't allowed to love him. They were hated far and wide.
They, the ones who adored him, hated the people that could have saved him, the people who should have loved him when he was alive.

No one could forget him, the boy with the looking glass eyes.
He'd burned, seared into some of them. A magnifying glass to an ant. His light was too hard and too bright.
He haunted some, they'd seen their reflection in his looking glass eyes. They didn't like that. They hated him loudest.
Others still, were so afraid. Even after he was dead. It was as if Death's icy fingers had touched them through him when he was still alive. So cold. They had left a mark.
Only a few held sympathy for the boy they'd known. It disappeared just as they had from his life when he'd needed them the most.

He was always looking inside. This boy. He was looking for his own heart. It wasn't in his chest, you see? It had broken a long time ago. And the pieces had gotten lost somewhere.
He would go into the deep woods and question the animals there, had they seen it? All, say for the dogs. For he knew that they would never steal a poor boy's heart.
But it was Other people that had eaten the shards. Gobbled them right up. Without even noticing.
And so, he was desperately, desperately looking inside of them for the pieces of his heart. To feel again. He was the tragedy of the little tinman. But there was no Dorothy there to rescue him from himself.

He was the        l o n e l i e s t  b o y        in all the world.

And he drank a magic potion, to make him safe to be around. To try to save them all. Him included. But it wouldn't last, you see? The effects of the spell made him clumsy. A baby deer. But they'd wear off and he was afraid again.
Because something was there inside his chest now. It had moved in to fill the gap and grown in the darkness. Nestled in the safety of his ribcage and feeding off his tears like mother's milk. Now it was growing strong. Stronger than he.

And god help him, the boy was afraid.



Its black tendrils crept, pushing. Deeper and deeper, a demonic cancer. They would about his organs, carved their name into his bones. Cutting cruelly, like barbed wire into his very soul. They crawled inside his veins, slithering snakes composed of tar. Whispered dreadful things inside the darkness of his skull. The voices, were as the dry sound of insects' wings and dead leaves. They gathered and swarmed. Until eventually, they were deafening. He could no longer hear other people. Even his own self. For the voices were there always now. Unrelenting. They blotted out the sun and projected unspeakable horrors, reflected into infinity by those looking glass eyes.

And the potion didn't work anymore.
And he was lost to himself, to the world.
That beautiful boy was wasted. Consumed. Toppled headfirst into the waiting dark, a rabbit hole to hell. And swallowed by the yawning maw of oblivion.
He hadn't grown up.
The boy had vanished.

Lost.

And by the time they would find him? It would be too late.
Far, far too late.

Once upon a time.
There was a boy.
With golden hair.
And looking glass eyes.