The Boy Who Disappeared in His Room

By Pier Maria Colombo

Trapped in the messy state of the room he's now become acquainted with, Sam, like in a dream, finds himself in an altogether different world, one unlike the world he knows. Doubting between what is real, and what isn't, this world looks to be unwelcoming as something is on the prowl, seeking to do the worst to him. Daily, as he finds what beauties there are in this fantastic world, he goes through the uncanny feeling of danger like a map, trying to find his way back, only for it to lead him to the inevitable: his nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223139706

Book preview

1.

Crumpled bed sheet, tray on the bed, a plate here, another there, shoes out of the shoe rack, not together in pairs, but spotted at different corners, torn pieces of paper specked the floor, the dirty cloth basket was dented in like it was stepped on and was on its side on the floor, clothes were heaped on the bed, on the chair, and on the floor, every corner told a different story of mess upon mess, and the table had books with squeezed and torn paper on it, what one would have considered a mess was order to Samuel. It’s how he liked his room to be. He just needed things easy. And this was easy. Not the tiresome stress of having to arrange the room when it would all scatter again. Besides, this way, he was familiar with the mess, and he knew where everything was.

Samuel was the only child of Mr. And Mrs. Snow who lived in number fifty-five of the condo on West End Street, and he was fifteen years old. His best friends, Valerie Lane, and Dexter Parks, were the only pair whose presence he longed for the most whenever he needed.

The three are coming towards you, Samuel said with an exhilarated voice into the mouthpiece of the headset he wore over his head as he gamed on his laptop. Watch out, Valerie.

Sam! Dexter called. Rescue her.

Hang in there. I’m on my way.

With a few more taps exacted on the pad by his thumbs, with the bangs, and booms, Valerie soon voiced her thanks through his headset.

You’re welcome, Sam said. I told you I was good at this. Now, to find the boss, and finish him off.

Not with this much army before us, Dexter said.

Sam chuckled. It was the only time he laughed, for maybe it had something to do with the fact that he didn’t feel like himself, and he hated feeling like himself. What he liked to feel was that feeling one got being lost in another world, and whenever he wasn’t gaming, he just felt like he was in someone else’s skin.

Here, time didn’t matter. Nothing did. Not the humiliation that waited for him out there on Saint Street whenever his parents sent him on errands, or the horrible dog that liked to chase children, or the laughter from his peers, save for his joy, and much of that he derived from this game. And of course, being alone, drawing, which was one of the best things he enjoyed doing.

Samuel liked his world small. Because, that way, he, as the artist, could control his world, and here, there was peace in the artistry. Most of his drawings on sheets of paper lay around the room. Some of the faces in his drawings were recollections from his dream, not that he had seen any of them before, but there was one whose image he had so very much wanted.

He still had a picture of himself and his grandfather on their last camping and fishing trip through the woods slanted against his school books which he barely opened, save for on the weekends, and his grandfather’s face was the last face he liked to look at before he fell asleep.

It brought him some kind of comfort. It made him feel like he was still present, and he wasn’t in the ground, but on a very adventurous trip like the ones in the stories he liked to tell him before bed, or before a camp bonfire. How he missed his stories. They never put him to bed whenever his grandfather told them to him. They only gave him cause to think of something he had never thought of, and when his grandfather left the room, he would write them down on a piece of paper so he wouldn’t forget. Mostly so he would share them with his friends, and so they would talk about it.

Valerie and Dexter were the best part of school, and Samuel couldn’t say he had enough of them. They were like him, also bullied like him by the same people, only their rooms were never like his as their parents and siblings had the time to make sure they saw to the arrangement of their rooms...more like they marshaled them to it, which Sam thought made a lot of sense.

No one marshaled him to anything. No one had his time. And he could say he didn’t have anyone’s time either. He loved his comfort, and so far his regular meals came when due, then everything was fine.

Save for going to school together with his friends, he liked talking about the latest games with them, or shopping with them for a video game in a supermarket, or a new sketchpad with pencils.

Sometimes, when his friends were busy, Samuel liked to stare at the mess in his room like it was some kind of desert land, and the piles of clothes were plains, cliffs, or mountains. He liked to picture that he was looking from the clouds, and every hill and every mountain had a name.

Samuel believed what the outside world only held was trouble, and more trouble for he had seen it several times on the face of his dad and knew it affected him too whenever he sat in the living room to watch the evening news with his dad. Something about the news always seemed to vex his dad, and if his dad had his time, he would ask how his lessons were going at school, and never ask how his day was at school. So he stopped going to the living room, but instead enjoyed his comfort since trouble was what he was trying to avoid.

As for his mom, she worked two shifts, and he barely saw much of her since she usually came home late, and left very early, save for on the weekends when everyone seemed to be around for strange reasons, and the holidays weren’t any different.

He did his homework by himself, and his grades were good so far he listened attentively in class. And sometimes, on a conference call, he and his friends would do their assignments.

But day in, day out, there was nowhere else Samuel would be, save to be in his room. Time to him was vast here, and he had just more than enough of it to spend on himself, and his happiness.

He had a sketching of the condo they lived in, and he also had a drawing of the street below, with the notable streetlights, shops, and houses. He was a good artist, and had been told that too many times that he was beginning to consider a life with it.

Perhaps, it would be grand, or it may not. After all, he had a drawing of everyone in his family, and all they had said was thank you and nothing more. One, mostly didn’t get praises from his family. But if it came from them, then it was something to be cherished. However, he never failed to show Valerie and Dexter his recent artworks.

One time, Sam took a drawing of one of his favorite artists to school, and while it was passed around to be admired, it finally got lost with no one admitting what had happened to the sheet. It was Valerie who found it in the waste bin in shreds. It had made Sam teary, but he pushed back his eyes. He had spent a considerable amount of time on that drawing, but someone had either done that because they didn’t appreciate it, or because, like Valerie suggested, they were jealous.

Sam wondered why someone would be jealous of him, and when he did think about it, it did make sense.

Starting from that day, his drawings became part of the mess in the room, with wrinkled papers of uncompleted artworks on the floor.

Sam would sometimes move to maybe sweep the room, but he would end up exhausted and end up leaving it like that. It seemed sometimes, he couldn’t find his own hand in his room.

So he left it like that, living his day-to-day life in a room he had no idea would come back to haunt him.

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