He had always known pain. Pain was of camaraderie, an ally, to allow him the convenience of living. To live was to hope and to hope...well, he had never known what went beyond the subsistence of hope. What was beyond its sliver-thin gates, too frail, too bent and twisted to fit the shape of their own desires?
Like him...hope was like him. Too afraid to act on its own endeavors and make itself known to the world. On the surface, hope was weak and unstable on its own trembling legs...but beneath that amibguity there was such possibility to behold.
With nothing left to believe in but the indulgence of reverie, he liked to consider that, perhaps, he was akin to hope in some outlandish sort of way.
And he was.
He had seen the face of his outer shell, discovered the proof of himself amongst the confusion of reality and the netherworld of neglect.
Once, when he had dared to reach into the depths of reflective surface that, at first glance, seemed so shallow beneath his fingertips. Deception wove in and out of each mirror image, and he wondered if something else, something misshapen, out of sight and out of mind and belonging to no one until that very moment, when it had drifted from within the grottos of imagination to greet him.
Hello, it had said, that is you, he felt it gesture indifferently to his gaunt chest, where, beneath, a cadence thrummed perpetually on, but this, these bones...this is me. We are one in the same, and you can never escape me as long as you live.
Heart never mattered, always swept aside and regarded as the origin of ruin. And yet it was his sanctuary knowing, behind the disfigured corpse in which it was encased, his heart was the pinnacle, the last shard of him that had been crafted carefully.
Courage and love and hope and forgiveness were like chattering ghosts in that slow-thudding thing, poured into the blood and dispersed throughout the soul - and they all spoke in such volumes that sometimes it was much too hard to hear his mind over their ceaseless clamor.
Regardless of heart and the mindfulness of soul, his physicality was a sight he would have rather laid to rest than ever leave to careless recollection. He was a creature born of pity, a figure shaped by the muse of misfortune herself and yet...recieved none.
The gnarled, unsightly ankles and shadows painted in long, oblique angles, little fragments of sickness and weariness that attached their roots to battered foundations. Hands that shook and were rendered impractical for any use other than to nurture the pretense of what seemed to be human. And only in recognizing his pathetic appearance could he understand why his mother had abandoned him to such purgatory. He hated the reflection, the abhorrent depiction of his wretched reality - the manifestation of a crippled boy, out of sight and out of mind, and belonging to no one.
Only the pallor was welcomed, a contrast that stood, a stark angel, against the insipid gloom that seemed innate for Dotheboys Hall. If he had been dark, if his skin had been reformed by the tyrannical sun - then where would he have been? Lost to darkness, lost to the anonymity forever? He could hardly bear to realize such a throttling concept, and at first it seemed the very essence of horror.
But beneath the brute force of the cane and the bite of their cruel words, witnessing the dwindling of his own uncertain hope, he mused, wistfully, that anonymity had disproved itself as the epitome of unspeakable horror after all. And he wished ardently that he could, like the mists that settled over the hills of the gray dusk, simply drift away with the world as it shed its last shades of light.
Author's Notes: A writing exercise that I have utilized to delve into characterization. I chose Smike, one of my all time favorite literary figures, and this is what came of a three part writing drill. I might post the others. If not, then I hope you enjoyed this. Again, as always, thank you for taking the time to read my work.