Enter Peter

Once upon a time there was a boy and he was in love and he was in hell.
The fireflies float and hang in the thick summer heat and the air sinks like lead. It is June and her window stays open. A boy appears. He whirls above, illuminated by the blue light of the moon that pierces her room. The stranger floats down below
to the girl's window. A shadow like velvet cloth dances on the far wall of her room. She watches it, perplexed, then discovers the stranger at her window.
"Oh," She lowers her gaze. "Its you . . . Peter."
"Hey," He floats closer and leans on the frame of her window. A sullen silence follows. There are stones in Wendy's eyes.
"I came to see you," Peter blurts.
The stones turn into boulders, but Wendy does not flinch.
"The Lost Boys miss having a girl around. They thought you were going to stay," Peter continues.
Wendy opens her mouth, but Peter interrupts. "Why'd you leave?"
There are an infinite number of reasons. She rolls the dice. The boulders turn into mountains and she spits, "I can't play your games anymore, Peter."
Peter recoils. "Games?"
"Listen to me. I'm turning sixteen in ninety minutes."
This meant nothing to Peter. A concept he doesn't understand.
"OK, so wha—"
"So," she continued. "I'm getting older now. I have responsibilities."
"Okay," Peter's voice increases by several octaves, "But you don't have to."
"No, no," She pauses. "I want to."
A concept he doesn't understand.
Peter's blood begins to boil. "You don't understand!" He begins to tell her terrible things. He tells her the saddest things. Things about nihilism, things about existential dread, things about perpetual ennui. He tells her things she already knows.

"Peter, you're too young. You don't belong in this world. You cannot adapt to this reality. You don't know a single thing about dread. Youth is your God and I'm sorry, but I am done praying to gods I don't believe in anymore."
Peter stared at her, his world collapsing and fragmenting by the nanoseconds. Inside him is a sadness of lions chewing and biting at his flesh.
"I dream about you sometimes, Peter, and every time you end up coming to my room with bloodied hands, begging for me to come back . . . just like tonight. I think in a way we were meant to be each other's foils. You are a dove and I am a crow. But I don't
believe we were ever meant to be lovers. For me, love is spontaneous combustion, and for you, love is a Fibonacci sequence."
"Okay, Wendy," he said bitterly. There was a universe of red hot suns burning in his eyes. He looked at the grandfather lock in the cornered her room. Midnight. "Happy Sixteenth birthday. I hope you have fun."
With that, Peter vanished and returned to his home. He returned to an eternity of fighting Hook and his pirates over and over. He returned to a life of infinite regression. A life stuck on play with no indication of when the program ends. A life in which
Wendy will cease to exist and will never exist again. But for the time being, Peter had this grief, this sadness of lions and tigers to keep him company.
Exit Peter.
Wendy and Peter bow and the audience applauds.
As one couple leaves the venue, the wife says, "Well, that was rather depressing, wasn't it?"
"The play was always meant to be a tragedy in the end, dear," says the man as they make their way through the car park.
"Hm," the wife looks up at the North Star somewhere in the distance. " Somehow I know that all too well."


hi again
please if you like this let me know bc I thrive on validation

i might work on an actual story for pj instead of all these oneshots

idk when i'll come back