Freedom.

Defined as being the condition of being free and unrestrained. It's something I haven't experienced in an age. The school is silent. A surprising factor in such a stereotypical place. But then again, 4:09pm explains it all. I'm behind...not so much left, but choosing to be behind. I call it: freedom.

My feet take slow steps down the stairs. With every footfall my hand tightens its grip across the railing flanking my sides. Eyes drifting to the wall on my left, I marvel at the art printed there. It's the outcome of imagination. Stumbling at the bottom of the stairs, I regain my balance, taking heavy and painful breaths. Then again, I can't hear my breaths. Nor the chirps of birds or the gossip of teens. What I lack in hearing, I gain in insight and imagination. Through my amazed eyes, my mind paints the stadium of all colours. I first learned of the colour spectrum at the age of five. Now, I can finally grasp its true potential. Tramping to the cluster of seats, I shuffle into an empty row, seating myself dead centre. A sigh escapes my lips, my eyes squint shut.

I'm in an alternative world, entered through my imagination.

It seems so real to me as the more tangible one of relationships and work, cars and taxes In this world, I'm its historian, its geographer, its sociologist, its storyteller. I preserve it in my mind, ready for use on another day. In my world, all doors to all the rooms, the lands, are open. In these circumstances, if you come upon a closed door, however miserable you may be, however distracted, natural human curiosity will impel you to open it. And you'll find yourself lost in my world's many rides.

The abrupt touch of a hand shocked me, catapulting me back into reality. My eyes blink several times before processing the identity of the man before me, to my brain. He wore a jacket, made of navy silk, wrinkled and littered with creases. His pants were short, the jacket clinched into his waist with a navy, patent belt. His hands moved to trace lines in the air, mouth opening and closing. I gesture him to sit.

The two of us once were asked what we'd like to do, when we grew up. If I had the chance to richochet into the past and answer, I know what I'd say:

"I want to imagine..."

My name is John Michaels. At forty four years of age, I'm as fit as ever, despite my current status in a bed for the recent majority of my life. Snowy white eyebrows and grey eyes have me as wise and experienced through many a thing. And for all that, no-one knows that I exist. This sees me as nothing of a haunting phantom nor ghost, nor a mutated being, granted the 'gift' of invisibility by what freak accident had affected me. I am simply an old man, stripped of any family or friends and devoid of the acknowledgement that I so rightfully deserve. Jealous and greedy as I might be, I have un-rightfully been abandoned in the top most floor or this godforsaken hospital, tucked in the corner of a room for a reason that my mind is lacking knowledge of at the moment. Left to wither and succumb to age or sickness as a tired and old man whose fitness level is left waning and futile.

And so now I await the end of my time, I lay, patient until I 'kick the bucket' as many so fondly say.

If only my stubborn old self allowed me so. My age and face of wisdom and experience in this irritable thing called life, demands that I receive attention. To ignore or be ignored is something I find myself not content with. The old and restless are often seen as meek aged things who should, and are, be stepped on, treated for the obsolete garbage we are. A rather unfair assumption and command to the young and arrogant if I do say. For equality is a factor that the old world use to despise, and it is no fair play that the new world might not revel and delight in it. Broken bone, heart or mind does not render any particular person one for a prejudicial act to be based on. Blasphemy I call it.

Alas, my profound thoughts and thinking come to me as nothing of a pivotal argument in this modern age social epidemic. I'm afraid my seeing of many winters has caused that. If I were something of a proud and head-strong man whose words echoed of an efficacious description, I could be out there preaching of my beliefs. Yet I am not.

So I shall spend the last of my days in a creaking bed with sheets long overdue of its need to be cleansed. And so still I remain, to all extents and purposes: an invisible man.

In a city of gold stone and weathered canals, where the sun manages to venture down, escaping through the holes that it so luckily finds. Where the rays of the fire in the heavens touch the heads of the many buildings, blinding all who look upon it, illuminating the city in the black thicket of night. In this heated desert of beauty and yet ugliness, a colossus watches. A titan giant of stone, strong and solid, surviving the fierce gale of the cold night, headstrong through the barrage pf rain and hail, maintaining itself in the deadly heat. It is a sentinel of the morn and night, watching the sky and foul, eying the suspicious and mysterious, protecting the good and just. It sees all, a restless watcher. A judge of what is good and evil, if there are such things. A cautious god, a silent guardian, a majestic deity.

Un.

The sun is cruel. The flame, alight in the sky, beats down on me, spying in my grief, peeking through the many gaps and cracks in the sandstone buildings that flank my sides. It mocks me, laughing from above, knowing full well that I cannot reach it, silence it. Up there in the snowy white clouds the sun is safe. And I despise it for having that knowledge, I am jealous of it, of its purpose in the sky that is ablaze in a fire of light that radiates from the sun so. What my purpose is, I refuse to acknowledge. For it has brought upon me a sack of despair and sorrow, molding me into a beast of burden, racked and tormented. My eyes drift downwards to the water on which my boat floats lazily upon. I wish now that I could drown in the sapphire waters, to plunge my head in and finally embrace the sweet release that is death. But I know I cannot. For I already drown in regret and shame. Because I found a man's memory - and never gave it back.