The moon shone bright orange-red across the rooftops of the suburban neighborhood.

All seemed at peace.  Inside homes, everyone was peacefully sleeping.

Inside his perfectly painted home sleep was but a dream.

A little boy curled up in a closet gathered the hanging clothes around his bone-thin body. He tried to hide from nightmares.  He tried to pretend he was not there.

In a spaceship, he soared. The stars were his for the taking.  Captain Kirk was at his side. He came to rescue him from the monster lurking just outside his bedroom walls.  The little boy smiled at the vast universe but suddenly a crack appeared in the horizon bringing a dark shadowed light.   The shadow crept across his stoic face.  He felt his insides die. His eyes could no longer conceal his fate.

The creek of a door, hands pulling him forth, he slumped at what he knew would be his chore. Disrobed and thrown upon the white sheets of his own long-suffering throne.  His tiny butt cheeks pulled apart. A sharp jabbing searing pain as the screwdriver pointy end made its claim on his soul. The pain so intense he soon disappeared like vapor from a boiling pot of water as mean eager hands began to make him not matter.

Awake.  It is over.  Sun shines upon the blood stained sheets. He looks at it with disbelief. Pulling himself from the grisly scene, he reluctantly gets up and dresses.  He gently walks to the bathroom, part of the chore. As he sits upon his porcelain throne, trickles of blood turn the toilet water red-pink. He flushes the toilet in a blink, watching the swirling water take away his incomprehensibility. When done, he is numb.  No memory of the night, no memory of himself.  Erased forever cast out to the sea to swim among bacteria and debris.

He steps out the bathroom, “Was their blood in your stool,” his mother asks a common question.  Not today he thinks.