The street stretched unbendingly into the darkness, the frozen asphalt tapering away under the flickering light of white streetlamps. A thickening crust of snow gave the night an aura of tension, as if somewhere beneath the impeccable drifts of ice was a coiled string ready to snap. The breeze was gentle yet bitingly cold; the stars were out, but most were hidden behind ash-gray clouds.
As the moon watched from the heavens, a shadow detached itself from the inner wall of a white-paneled, nondescript house near the center of the avenue. From outside, the shadow only appeared as a rough outline, until a second-story window opened to reveal a pale, thin boy of about eighteen, naked from the waist up and seemingly unaffected by the cold. A prickly diadem of brambles hung precariously over his wavy brown hair.
He stared out the window, his eyes sweeping the frosty ground below. Nothing moved. He was alone.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am alone.
The clock hanging on the wall behind him ticked forward, utterly unaware of what was passing right before its eyes. It didn't see the frail, broken boy before it. It didn't comprehend the struggle, the agony flashing behind those deep brown eyes. It was a machine, incapable of emotion or reason or thought. It had a goal in mind, and it would reach that goal, and to hell with anyone that dared to stand in its way, for if you were to reach out and grab hold of that ticking hand, it would just keep going and going until it snapped clean in two, leaving only a useless stump to keep turning in endless circles, blindly stumbling towards the same pointless goal.
That was the problem, wasn't it? No one ever asked the hand whether it wanted to tell the time. And yet, the hand couldn't speak for itself to say so either, for it lacked the means to do so. And so it was trapped, hopelessly trapped, between the expectations of higher powers and its own despicable stupidity.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am trapped.
What was passivity supposed to obtain him? Respect? Acceptance? Love?
Too late now. Too late for all of it. He was an actor; he always had been. When his father had pulled him out of the schoolyard when he was nine, saying that baseball was not a pursuit conducive to a career in medicine, he pretended agreement while his former friends laughed and played outside. When he was first sent to Welton when he was twelve, he did not complain, even though his heart ached for all the things he was leaving behind, like his old school and his old hobbies and the blue-eyed girl with the curly blond hair that gave him a strangle bubbly feeling in his chest whenever she looked at him. When his father had made him disassociate himself with the school newspaper earlier that year, when he was seventeen, he fulfilled his position of model son and buried his own desires far beneath those of his father.
And even now, now that he had finally found his true passion, now that his father was once and for all taking complete control over him, he still said nothing. In silence, he did not resist. Just a simple, stupid child, here to be seen and never heard. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players…and now and forevermore, he would always play the part of the fool.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am a coward.
The crown sank softly into the bed of colorless crystals still accumulating on the windowsill. In the distance, a bell tolled twelve times, signifying the advent of midnight and the start of a new day. The coming of dawn. A new day. Sleep on it. Don't worry. Everything will be all right in the morning.
Excrement.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am hopeless.
Whose was to blame for this? Was anyone to blame? His father, good intentions and all? His mother, sitting idly by while the umbrage of wasted dreams cast its reach farther and farther over her only son, her only descendant?
No. Just him. Just him, and his arrogance, and his cowardice, and his goddamned teenage invincibility. I could do anything, be anything…and what's this I hear of consequences? What's this I hear of taking a stand, of fighting back when the manacles tighten, of thinking ahead and anticipating the iron bars before you run smack into them? No, that's not for me. I'm invincible, remember? I make my own rules. Carpe diem. Seize the day.
And tell me, what's the point of seizing the day if you can't keep it in your grasp when it matters most?
The boy descended the staircase slowly, deliberately, striding with the darkness and feeling it empty into him as he stepped into the moonlight. His shadow crept down the wall behind him, a splotch of tar on a white stretch of bone, and simply watched. Like a spectator in a packed stadium, shouting advice to those who would never hear nor take it. Like a ghost of wonders past, whispering of all the things he would never see. All bloated with words, but nothing would come of them. Spoken by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Useless. Useless, pretentious, abhorrent. Weak.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am weak.
The study drew the boy in like an iron filing to a magnet, a force uncontainable by man pulling the ghostly figure into the plush wooden chair positioned behind the immense mahogany desk.
First drawer from the top on the right side. A small lump of cloth, from which the Devil's scythe would spring and descend, to plunge into his soul and whisk him away to…what? Someplace better? Someplace safe? Someplace when he could be himself, be honest, be loved?
Of course not. Nothing would be solved by this. This would only make things worse.
But since when has that ever stopped him?
With trembling hands, the boy unfurled the swaddling clothes of the glimmering, snub-nosed pistol. He gripped the stock in his fingers briefly, but then stopped, and laid it back down again. Amazing that such a beautiful mechanism could contain such power, such ferocity. Barely the size of a paperback, and yet this little weapon could strike fear into the heart of a man ten times bigger than him. Death was a tricky business, wasn't it? It shows you what's inside you, what makes you up, how utterly small and insignificant you are when you look up from your pedestal of blind bravado and see the mountains of fate and conformity crashing down around you. And most of all, it shows you what you truly feel, what you truly are.
And at that precise moment, all the boy sitting behind the desk felt was fear.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am afraid.
No. No fear. There wasn't time for fear. Soon the ash would part and the sun ascend to its heavenly throne, and then where would he be? Sitting behind a desk, staring at the one last bread crumb leading out of the inescapable forest?
In one quick motion, the gun was in his hand, beads of sweat already springing up where the cold metal touched his palm. Was there any bravery in this, really? Bravery would be to refuse to give in. Bravery would be to stop hoping his father would open his eyes and see the truth, and to rip the lids apart and make him see.
But I'm not brave. I'm just an actor. I'm just a machine. I'm just another lost soul locked away in the highest room of the tallest tower, so dependent on awaiting rescue that when the opportunity arises to escape on his own arises, he can only sit idly by and squint at the alien light of liberation, wishing that it would go away so he could go back to being the victim again. Once a coward, always a coward.
My name is Neil Perry, and I am a prisoner.
The sensation of the gun's barrel against his temple brought a strange sense of closure, almost peace. There was the light at the end of the tunnel, and whether it was shining release or screeching freight train, he was sprinting like hell for it anyway. No reason to turn back now.
His finger tightened around the trigger, then pulled. And in the final instant, right before the flash of white light and deafening noise whisked away memories and passions and unrealized dreams in the blink of an eye, he was sorry. Sorry to Mr. Keating, for the pain he knew this would bring him. Sorry to Todd and Charlie and Knox and Meeks and Pitts and even Cameron, for never letting them help him through. Sorry to his father and mother, for never respecting them enough to tell them the truth. But more than that, he was sorry for the world he was leaving behind.
I could've been something. I was good. I was really good. And the world would never know, for the trigger was pulled flat and the hammer had dropped and the spark had been lit and the bullet had been fired. And there was no turning back.
And as the gunshot rang out to be immediately entombed under the new-fallen snow, one final time, the darkness swept in. One final time, the silence became complete. One final time, the curtain fell.
And, one final time, the cell door opened.
My name was Neil Perry, and all I wanted was to be free.