This was no place for a young boy. This was no place for someone like him at all really - didn't he belong somewhere greater? Wasn't he deserving of something better than this? Thoughts like these trampled his consciousness as he breathed in the deep smoky air surrounding him.
The coffee here was bitter, far too bitter for his sensitive and youthful palette; but he let it slip past his lips and scorch his throat and chased it with a soothing puff of smoke. The smoke crawled into his lungs and slowly blackened them, though he paid that no mind as he made smoke rings pop from his mouth much to the amusement of the figures around him. Here - here he was cool, he was the coolest kid they'd met and they allowed him sips of watered down whiskey and sniffs of strange things that he did not want to know the names of.
His visions were fogged up with dancing figurines and his ears were blocked as dead laughter buffeted his eardrums crudely. They were all as empty and broken up inside as he was, and that allowed solidarity to rest within his chest, though it did not fit right. Allowing another breath of thick smog to coarse through his lungs and veins, his mind drifted. Suddenly his world was not dimly lit, filled with the stench of alcohol. It was bright, the air sweet and warm.
He was wrapped in warmth for a moment, surrounded by youthful and impossible visions of his mother in a flowing sundress, a few tiny wilted daisies braided lovingly into her hair. His innocent eyes watched as his father watched him prance around excitedly. Sparkling bright silver optics watched this sunny paradise with wonder, but soon enough these visions drifted as the world was stained with melancholic shades of grey. He watched as change seemed to mold everyone in this paradise into something else entirely - cold beings. Change even stole away a few right before his very eyes.
No, this was not what he dreamed for! Why was he surrounded by such choking thoughts of melancholy when all he wished for was bliss? It wasn't fair! None of this was fair!
This time, he inhaled sharply; angrily. This sent him into a fit of coughs, his lungs trying to clear out the vicious substance tat was invading his body. Feeling bile rise from his core to his throat, he allowed the scorching substance to exit his body as he leaned forward, color draining from his withering features as he wretched on the concrete beneath his feet. Instantly, he could feel people moving around him - scurrying to get away from him, as if ignoring it would help. Someone, he dare not look to see who, was kind enough to gently place an empty bucket by his feet, which was quickly snatched by shaky hands as he cleared his stomach of the last of the burning substance. Stray droplets began making their way down his porcelain skin, and he felt fiery heat rise up to his cheeks and ears. Without a word, he stood and, bucket in tow, made his way out the back door for some air.
When the cool evening air hit him, something deep within his core urged him to go home. Go home, sit down with his mum and just cry for a long time - tell her of the awful things he'd been doing. He could not.
Another thought hit him like a brick, perhaps he could simply get up and leave this place behind entirely. Start anew somewhere entirely different. But he could not.
Perhaps he would sneak home, hide in his room and pick at old scars, allow salty tears to drip into his pillowcase and stain it. But, he could not.
It seemed as if he could not do anything. And while his eyes scanned the beautiful swirls of azure and deep purple above him, he felt like a single satellite in a sea of twinkling stars. A sight for sore eyes in an empty sky, but nothing when surrounded by others. He was a fake - he was a look alike, nothing more. He was a foreigner in an alien world. And nothing more.