The man faces the teenager. The teenager has so far ignored him. The words on the page the still-growing child is writing on are once more recognizable as the man’s own, and yet, so foreign. So distant.

The man is lost in memory.

Yelling. His yelling. His mother’s yelling. The principal’s yelling.

His mother gathering up all of his books, his cherished novels. His mother forcing him to rip up the manuscript he had slaved over for months and throw it in the trash.

He could have said no. That’s the worst part. He could have fought for his right to write whatever kind of stories he wanted to.

The teenager is gone. The man is alone in a dark space, void of borders. He sees images of the future. So many decisions made for him. In the darkness he can hear a sound. A guttural noise, a note played on a tuba and sustained for what seems like hours, with minuscule variations in pressure to create a wavelike effect in his ears.

Something is in the darkness with him.