Marie-Louise McGuinness
To Where The Boy Belongs
The boy feels insects crawl up his back from the threads of his shirt and restless maggots squirming beneath the rigidness of his too-tight collar. He’s been sitting still for so long it feels like an unprovoked attack. The boy wants to jump from behind the fence of his school desk to defend himself and claw the clothes from his body for relief, but the teacher has already told him off for fidgeting, calling him out to the giggles of his classmates, making his cheeks burn and eyes water.
The boy hides his discomfort by pulling the muscles of his hip bones tight and pushing the muscle brace up through his spine and into his shoulders, a barricade in support of his helpless skin. His breathing slows, becomes shallow and soft and his head becomes lighter. The boy wonders if he will someday levitate. He thinks he’d like that as long as he could float out of here.
The boy trains his eyes on the corner of the whiteboard, there is an angular line of dark grey dust that’s been there for the past few weeks and the boy thinks there must be a reason for that. He feels the dust is somehow sentient, and if he looks at it long enough he can see it breathe. He squints in feigned concentration though his brain is too busy for learning. There are circle lights bright above his head and their shine filters painfully through his eyelashes, making little black dots he wants to scrape out with his chewed-short nail. The lights remind him of the toy spaceship he was given once as a present. He thinks it may have been a birthday. He always felt there were aliens in it, small and invisible but with a life force that spoke deep within his bones. He would reply to them without using his voice, his earnest words bouncing out from within his skull and into the little front porthole to the spaceship’s captain.
The spaceship is gone now, shattered to shards in one breath of an angry moment, and the boy thinks the aliens may have followed him here. They had to go somewhere and the boy is sure they wouldn't have abandoned him completely. He believes that they could be lurking in the gaps of the damp-stained and yellowing styrofoam roof tiles, waiting to speak to him or take him somewhere else. He whispers messages to them inside his head, things like — I'm here now and I'm ready to go. He wishes that they’d listen.
The clock ticks a staccato rhythm unsettling like gunshots. His ears hurt and he wants to press his palms against them to relieve the pressure, but that is not allowed in the classroom either. The teacher shouts at him when he does it, as if the action is an affront to his voice and authority, even though it is not.
The boy knows the teacher is the boss. He remembers the loud reprimands of his first week here. The strutting and chest-puffing, the reverberation of his desk from the strike of a heavy hand. Today the boy’s hands remain clenched around his zebra striped pencil, even if there is an ache burning deep in his palm.
Children laugh at something the teacher says and the boy smiles too, he would like someone to repeat the joke but knows they won't. He won't ask. He knows it probably wasn't that funny anyway. The boy remembers a joke that really was funny, about Spiderman and Batman in a fight to the death. He says the joke aloud and twenty heads swivel towards him in horror. The teacher asks him to repeat it, but the boy can tell by the clench of his teacher’s jaw that he probably shouldn't. He buries his head down into his sweater-puffed chest in defeat. The teacher shakes his head and moves on.
The boy doesn’t like walking home. Many of the children walk home the same direction. He is bodily conscious of the black leather feet marching around him and automatically adopts the same pace as the pubescent army but it feels unnatural. He is not small but he feels swamped in the parade. His feet feel unsteady, he looks down at them until they separate from his body, moving autonomously with remote controlled steps. He senses missiles dropping around his head, bottles and balled-up paper, sometimes they hit him and it hurts. Once he bled.
The boy screams at his mother when she asks what he’d like for tea. He slams the door of his room and collapses to lie down on the soft purchase of the carpeted floor. He tries to control his breaths but they are shooting everywhere, ragged and gulping like bursting fish bubbles. His mother's feet shuffle just outside, they cast shadows onto the carpet that he traces with his finger. He hopes she can feel his apology.
The boy climbs up from the floor and peels his school uniform from his body. He can feel the insects jump off him like fleas, and the air is a cooling balm on the pores of his skin. He pulls on the soft fleece onesie that feels like a cloud, the cuffs sit just beneath his elbows and the bottom of his calves are exposed goosebumped and milk-pale. His mother threatens to throw it out and his father sighs when he sees him in it. The boy won't allow it to be taken, not until they find another one exactly the same.
The boy eats the pancakes his mother made for him. He is glad she understands he only wants to eat pancakes today. He only wants to eat pancakes every day. His father offers a slight nod though his eyes look empty. The boy would rather have that than what he sees in his mother's. His mother’s eyes are dull now, where once they sparkled with unshed tears. He thinks he once saw them happy but that could have been a dream. He draws them sometimes, the alive eyes, using shading techniques he learned from YouTube. It is an act of remembering. He could never show her the pictures.
At bedtime the boy reminds himself tomorrow is Friday. Friday is a good day because it promises the respite of time and peace and breathing. When he climbs into his bed on a Friday the boy knows what it is like to be happy. On Saturday he stays in his room and the house is blanketed quiet. His parents work on a Saturday, they start the cars at around 8.30am and until 5pm o’clock the boy can breathe out. And on Sunday his parents are tired and grateful for a day of rest so the boy is quiet and still, he lies in the dark and imagines himself in the world in which he belongs. He wonders how he’ll get there.
Marie-Louise McGuinness has work published in numerous literary magazines including The Forge, Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Banshee and Ghost Parachute. She was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted in the Bath Short Story Award and her story "When She Falls" (Milk Candy Review) was chosen for Best Microfiction 2025. She enjoys writing from a sensory perspective.
