The air is cold, the sky is black, I can hardly see in front of me. As I walk through the night I think of the reasons why I’m where I am. I frequently get nosebleeds. You never truly understand the inconvenience of nosebleeds until you start getting them every other day. When I’m at school my bleeding nose ushers me to the nurse's office until it ceases, shaving time off of actual school. At home, whenever it starts, I have to stop whatever I’m doing and tend to my sourceless injury. What’s most bothersome though, is how it strikes while I sleep. 

While in my slumber the release of blood wakes me up instantly. I’ll then take care of it, but I can’t go to sleep afterward, so I go on walks through my neighborhood. I don’t like walking during the day however, the outdoors lack a special quality in those hours. I have nothing but hate for the circumstances that gave me my condition whether it be genetics or some incident

 I am cursed to never remember. My knowledge of the turns and paths of my neighborhood lend me the ability to safely traverse the roads near my home. I decide to take a trip to the entrance to the local woods.

 As I find the gap in the woods that allow people to enter and exit the forest, I hesitate for a moment. I stare up at the sky and see a complete silver disk hanging as if glued there. Encouraged by the sudden appearance of a light source, I walk into the forests maw and onto the leaves covering the path inwards. The trail in the woods is not hard to follow even in the dark, walk into a tree and you’re probably off the path. Following the entrails of the forest, I find the main point of the woods, a small, barren cliff looking over a lake. 

In the ink-black water, I see the rippling reflection of a familiar far away circle. I look up wanting to see the real thing. I see the moon surrounded by the tops of trees reaching like hands, grasping for something they cannot reach. As I look up I feel an oh-so-familiar sensation behind my nose. Truly there is no escape from my miserable curse. Still looking up I retrace my steps still upset over the disruption of my observation. 

Midway through the task of leaving the woods, I hear a rustle, and I suddenly remembered why I seldom enter the land of the wilderness on my nightly walk. This place is not meant for me, instead, it is for the creatures that belong in the dark, that know the forest far more than me, that know that I don’t belong here. My nosebleed forbids me from looking at the source of the noise, I have no choice but to maintain my stride. I hear the rustle again, it’s louder, closer. I am out of options I turn around and try to find what is making these sounds. 

As I turn my head down the blood from my nose quickly falls down my top lip and splatters on the ground, forming a small, red puddle at my feet. The rustling comes from behind again and I quickly turn, but what I see behind me is to fast for my sight. I see a grey mass with tangled hair surrounding its body. It lunges forward at me, It bites into my leg, and I see it run away. Is run the right word? The bite starts tingling, like it had fallen asleep, that tingling turned into needles and those needles into knives. I fall backwards into the leaves and the little light I have access to starts to fade, the last thing I see is the full moon hanging over me.

I see something again, a scene of a bright day, a kid is sitting on a bench. The kid holds paper towels to his nose, staining the paper red. He’s watching a group of other kids play basketball. The group of kids, in contrast to the kid on the bench, seem to be enjoying themselves. I look at everything else around me, the ground looks like someone took a picture of grass and laid it down. The grass is also gray, as are most of the other scenery. The buildings also seem to lack any depth, leaving only their facade. The bright day turns into night, the flat, grey sun is replaced by a gray moon. However, the moon unlike the grass, buildings, and sun, has a depth to it. I turn to the kids playing basketball, only to see no one. The bench kid is off of his bench, having discarded his paper towel, he walks to where the group of kids were playing. Once there, the kid bends down and picks up the ball they were playing with. The kid walks up to me, hands me the ball, and leaves. I try to get a better look at the ball, but, when I look at it, it is replaced by the moon above me.

I see a bright light that forces me to cover my eyes. I sit up ignoring the roaring headache that comes over me as I do, I open my eyes to see where I am. The middle of the forest, the bright light that woke me happens to have been the sun glaring at me as if I was the one who interrupted his sleep instead of the other way around. As I remembered the events of the night I also drag out the memory of how I came to tell my family of my nightly walks or lack thereof. I need to get back now, who knows how worried they are? I stand up quickly, perhaps too quickly as I fall and must make myself stand again. 

Walking out of the forest I quickly understand the effect that seeing someone with torn jeans and dried blood covering around half of their face limping out of the forest has on the casual observer. A child in a nearby driveway took a glance at me then promptly ran into his house. I didn’t want that to be a recurring thing on my way home so I tried to wipe away the dried blood of my face, deeming my efforts to clean myself a success, I then continued my stride home. My trip back seemed suspiciously longer than my initial night walk, and the few neighbors that were out did cast me glances that mixed pity and annoyance, perhaps I didn’t clean myself that well.

Finally, I see the familiar worn brick walls, patchy front lawn, and  the crater filled driveway that looked incredibly like the surface of the moon, that gives away the location of my home. I climb cracked concrete steps and turn the knob. Wary of the earful I would get from my parents, I turn the knob and open the door. The main room is empty and the house is silent. Turning my head I see that it’s 9:30 AM, I guess everyone’s still asleep. In the bathroom, I see that despite my best efforts, the blood on my face had not been removed. Using warm water I perform a more successful removal of the blood. I inspect my jean leg, at my shin are tears and a hole the size of my palm. I could maybe pass it off as a new fashion trend.

I crawl into my bed careful not to wake the house up. I manage this task with moderate success. I close my eyes but my descent into sleep isn’t fruitful. Resentful about my lack of sleep I glare at my ceiling, as obviously, that is the root of all my problems. As I glare I realize a further truth, there were no cars in the driveway, everyone was awake and had already left. I check my phone and see that no one had called or texted me to ask where I was. I finish my staring contest with the ceiling and turn my eyes to the wall. After what feels like hours, I leap out of my bed and quest into the main room and search for something to watch. There's nothing on, but that doesn’t stop me from finding a channel and leaving it there while I leave the room. The rest of the day is a flash, a flash almost entirely consisting of me doing nothing, but a flash nonetheless. The family comes home, everyone keeps to themselves, we eat dinner, and we go back to ourselves. At night when everyone is asleep, I stay up to watch nothing on tv. After a cursory glance reveals that it’s four in the morning, and I concluded that I shouldn't be awake this late, I return to my room. The second I get under my blanket I fall asleep. 

I awake not too long after. I express my general anger quietly and tiptoed to the bathroom. Carefully inspecting my nose, I find no trace of bleeding anywhere. I walk into the main room, and decide against going on another walk, it’s light out and I can see the dreariness of the neighborhood in full swing. I re-enter my bed and close my eyes, but I don’t go to sleep. I stay up, my eyelids facing the ceiling, with my thoughts. Deeming them an unfit conversationalist, I go yet again to the main room, this time with the resolve to actually stay in this room. I pick a DVD at random, see what is, then choose a different one that looks better.

The day plays out like the last, and then the next one like today, and so on and so forth. Soon it's one month later and nothing has really changed, Then again I wake up in the middle of the night. After my normal routine and finding no blood, and seeing that the streets were still dark, I go on another walk. I still navigate the roads with expertise, listening to the sound of my shoes hitting the road. I take a different path this time, I don’t feel like going to the woods. I walk to the nearby lake. The lake reflects the void of the night sky, as well as the bright moon above. Looking up, my eyes meet the satellite head-on. My eyes blur, my stomach churns, my ears ring, and my knees weaken. I fall to the ground and my brain feels like TV static. 

I find myself standing in the middle of a white plain, multiple holes cover the ground. The sky is jet black with tiny white dots spanning the canvas above. Looking up I spot a blue-green sphere, the longer I look at it the smaller it gets. There’s nothing much to do here so I sit down and look up at the stars and try not to reflect. I haven't had a nosebleed in a month, but nothing else has changed, I’m still distant from my family. I look back at the sphere, only to find a flat circle in its place, it only stays for a second before shrinking away. Why is it still flat? If it isn’t nosebleeds what is it? Why is it like this? My thoughts turn to the night in the forest, what was it? How had I simply ignored that event for so long? The answer was simple, it had changed nothing. It left an insignificant impact on me. 

After a while, I awoke, not too far from where I had fallen. I drag myself to my house. The driveway is empty again, to my lack of surprise. I unceremoniously enter the empty house and fall atop my bed. My room is empty and boring, but I keep myself there. I think about how I had traded one curse for another, and I think about how there was never really a curse to begin with. More time passes, and school starts for the year. I don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me. Normally I would accept this and go on, but now the silence was stubborn, acknowledging it gave it the power to stay and taunt. 

In my first hour, I sat in a secluded seat in the room. Everyone sat with their friends in large groups. All the groups talked amongst themselves. Some people did sit next to me, but it was because of the lack of other seats, rather than the want to sit with me. The hour passed like pitch and anything the teacher said quickly fell out of my head. I held the upcoming classes with dread for the unsightly repetition of the events that took place in my first hour.

In all of my classes, the same thing happened again and again. Before I even entered my sixth class I knew exactly how it would play out. Two simple steps, step one is to sit down, and step two is to wait until the hour ends. I knew that the only that my prediction would be broken is if someone would start up a conversation with me. Alas, no one did, and my fortune-telling was successful.

As I got on the bus, I saw I was the first one on. I walked all the way to the back of the bus and sat on the left seat. As more people came on the bus, the noise level increased greatly. I attempt to get comfortable in an act of futility and end up deciding to just close my eyes and wait for my stop. “Hey, you there,” Someone near me spoke as I kept my eyes shut, “Are you asleep or something?” Ah, so he was talking to me. My eyes open to the seat across the bus, atop the seat, is a student who was in my first hour, he’s wearing a blue T-shirt and jeans, odd as we’re hot off the heels of summer. “Do you need anything?” I replied alongside a yawn.

“No, just feel like talking. Hey, what’s up with your pants?” The student continued. I look down, sure enough, I was also wearing jeans, I was a bit too quick on my judgement I suppose. Oh, not just jeans, but a group of holes and tears at the leg revealed the significance of my apparel. I gave the student my pre-prepared answer, “It’s a fashion thing.”

“That’s cool,” He replied.

“Not really.” 

“What do you mean by that?” What did I mean by that? It had just come out. 

“Well nobody actually noticed it.” Which was true, all of the students had given nary a glance at my pant leg.

“That sucks.” 

“Yeah, I guess it does.” I had only talked with him for a minute and I already felt worse than any point earlier in the day, but we kept talking.

“What d’you like to do?”
“I guess I like music?”

“Making it, or listening?”

“Listening. Mostly rock.” The conversation went like this until I had to get off at my stop. 

“I have to go, see you later,” I said as I got up.

“Alright, see ya tomorrow, man,” He shouted as I got off the bus. I jump out of the bus door and start the walk home. Weird, I feel worse now. I find the empty cratered path that leads to my house and enter through the door. I sit on the couch and quickly find something that looks good. I think of tomorrow and the cycle it will bring: silence, solitude, isolation. I also think about the kid on the bus, I’ll see him in my first hour, and on the bus. That makes feel better about tomorrow.

Like most other nights, I fall asleep. I’m at a familiar place, between a bench and a basketball court. The court is empty but the bench kid is back, he doesn’t have a tissue to his nose and seems somewhat relaxed. He looks to his left and smiles, I see another kid coming around with a basketball. The two kids walk to the court and start playing. The grass has depth and colour. The buildings have their walls. The moon still hangs above me but that doesn’t matter. When I wake up in the early morning, the usual sense of dread doesn’t come over me, rather a new feeling arises as I head out for the bus. Rather, I feel hope.