The morning after the man with the rough voice, Mildred woke to the sound of his aunt's key in the front door.
He checked his phone and noted the time [6.27 AM]. She never came back before noon. He lay still, listening, as her footsteps shuffled through the downstairs. The kitchen faucet ran, a cabinet opened and closed. Then the stairs creaked under her weight.
She didn't knock. She never knocked. The door swung open, and she stood there, leaning against the frame, still wearing last night's clothes. Her makeup was smeared, her hair a mess. She looked older than her forty-three years.
"You awake?"
He sat up and said nothing.
She looked at him with the same flat disinterest she had worn for years. "I need you to go to the store. We're out of—" she stopped, squinting at him.
"When's the last time you had a shower?"
He didn't answer. He remained quiet. The answer was three days, but she didn't care about the answer.
"Never mind. Just go to the store. Get cigarettes and a six-pack." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty, held it out like she was feeding an animal she didn't particularly like.
He took the money without looking at her.
"And don't take all day. I got someone coming over at noon." She left.
The door stayed open. He could hear her moving around in her room, the sound of hangers scraping against the closet rod as she looked for something to wear.
Mildred sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the twenty dollars bill in his hand.
This was his life, this room, this money. These men who came and went, leaving behind nothing but the smell of their cologne and the weight of his aunt's indifference.
He was seventeen years old. He had no father, no friends, no one who would notice if he walked out the door and never came back.
He thought about that sometimes. Just walking until the streets became unfamiliar and the faces became new and he could become someone else.
Someone who didn't flinch at loud noises. Someone who didn't know what the lock on a bedroom sounded like when it clicked shut.
But the world outside wasn't waiting for him with open arms. The world outside was more of the same. More people looking at him like he was nothing, or worse, like he was something they could use.
He was a nobody. And nobody was the safest thing to be when the world wanted to eat you alive.
He got dressed. The same jeans he had been wearing for three days. The same hoodie, the one with the small tear in the sleeve from the time he caught it on a nail. His shoes were too small. He had grown out of them months ago, but he had learned to curl his toes to make them fit.
He was halfway down the stairs when he heard his aunt's voice from her room.
"—just a kid. He's no problem, really. He stays in his room mostly." a pause then a man's voice intercepted, too low to make out the words.
"I'm telling you, he's not gonna be a problem. He knows better."
Another pause, then his aunt laughed, and it was the same laugh she used last night, high and bright and completely empty.
Mildred walked out the front door without closing it behind him.
***
The convenience store was three blocks away, tucked between a laundromat and a pawn shop. Mildred had been coming here since he was old enough to reach the counter.
The owner, Mr Desmond, an Amazonian man with a quiet face and a habit of humming under his breath, watched him with the same careful attention he always showed.
"You need something to eat?" Mr Desmond asked as Mildred set the cigarettes and beer on the counter. "I have some bread in the back. It's a day old, but it's fine."
"I'm okay."
"You're not okay. You're too thin."
Mildred shrugged. He learned not to take offers like this personally. Mr Desmond was kind, but kindness was a transaction like anything else. You took something, you owed something, and Mildred had nothing left to owe.
He paid with the crumped twenty, took his change, and left without looking back.
On the walk home, he passed his high school. It was still early, but kids were already gathering in the parking lot, laughing, shoving each other, existing in the easy way that people exist when they've never had to learn the geography of a ceiling stain. He recognized some of them. They had been in his classes before he stopped going.
He stopped going six months ago. The truant officer had come by twice. Margaret had smoothed it over, promised she would get him back in school, signed some forms, and closed the door. Neither of them had mentioned it since then.
He didn't miss it. School had been a different kind of prison. The same cold hallways, the same eyes that slid over him like he wasn't there. Sometimes even worse.
Sometimes the boys who had things, whose parents picked them up after class, would notice him and find something to laugh at. His clothes, his shoes, his bag, his aunt, even the way he carried himself like a dog that had been kicked one too many times.
He had learned to be invisible there, too. It was the only skill he had ever mastered.
***
The apartment was quiet when he got back. His aunt's door was still closed. Through it, he could hear the low murmur of voices, the occasional creak of the bed, and the rhythm of people pretending the rest of the world didn't exist.
He went to his room, and closed the door. Sat on the edge of the mattress with his back to the wall.
The ceiling was still leaking, his only company.
He watched the water trace its familiar path down the wall, and thought about the twenty three dollars and forty seven cents he had hidden in the cardboard box. He thought about the bus station he walked past a hundred times.
He thought about getting on a bus and going somewhere, anywhere, and starting over as someone who had never been hungry, never been afraid, never learned to count the seconds until a bedroom door clicked shut.
But that was a fantasy and he knew that. The bus cost money he didn't have. The somewhere cost money he didn't have. Everything cost something, and he had nothing. Just a room with a leaking ceiling and an aunt who looked at him like a problem she was waiting to solve.
He closed his eyes.
He thought about his mother. He didn't do that often because it hurt in a way that never got smaller, never scabbed over, never became anything but a raw, open wound that he'd learned to ignore.
He thought about her hands, soft, warm, the way she would hold his face when she was telling him something important. He thought about her voice, low and steady, the way she would sing sometimes when she thought he was asleep.
He wondered if she would recognise him now. If she would look at this boy wih the hollow cheeks and the too big shoes and see the son she held in her arms once.
Probably not.
Probably she'd see what everyone else saw. Nothing but a nobody. A boy who had been forgotten before he'd ever been known.
Suddenly, the air in the room changed. Mildred opened his eyes and the ceiling was no longer leaking.
The water stain was still there, the map of a country that didn't exist but the light coming through the single window had shifted. It was brighter now, but not the bright of morning. It was the bright of something opening, something unfolding.
The crack in the ceiling began to widen.
He didn't move, he simply watched as the plaster split along lines he'd never noticed before, lines that had always somehow been there. Light poured through the gap, not sunlight, but something else.
Before he knew what was happening, a screen materialized in the air before him.
It was transparent at first, barely visible, like heat rising off asphalt. Then it solidified. Letters appeared, one by one, written in a font that was somehow both old and brand new:
[HAVE YOU BEEN WANTING TO BECOME POPULAR WITH NO POSSIBLE WAY TO? TO BECOME STRONG ENOUGH TO FIGHT YOUR WAY TO THE TOP?]
Mildred stared blankly at the message.
He thought about the kids at school, the ones who laughed at him. He thought about the men who came to his aunt's room, the way they looked through him like he was furniture. He thought about Mr. Desmond's kindness, offered like charity to a stray cat. He thought about being invisible, about being nothing. About the hollow space inside him that had been there so long he has forgotten it wasn't supposed to be empty.
The screen pulsed and new words appeared beneath the first:
[WELL, HERE'S YOUR CHANCE TO MAKE THAT A REALITY!]
There was a beat, then new texts materialised:
[ACCEPT INVITATION TO NEW WORLD?]
[Y / N_ ]
Mildred sat confused with his back to the wall, his too small shoes on the stained mattress, his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, and he looked at the word "Y" blinking in the air before him.
He thought about the bus station, about the twenty-three dollars and forty-seven cents. He thought about walking until the streets became unfamiliar and the faces became new.
This was the same thing, wasn't it? A door. A way out of this place. Something that asked if he wanted to become someone else.
He thought about his aunt's voice: Nobody else wanted you, absolutely nobody.
He thought about his mother's hands, soft and warm.
He thought about the ceiling leaking. About the men in the hallway. About the lock that didn't exist on his door. About the years he'd spent learning to be small, to be quiet, to be nothing so that nothing could hurt him.
Then his hands moved freely, and touched the "Y" option without a second thought.
The screen shattered.
The last thing he saw before the light took him was his reflection in the cracked screen of his phone, a boy with tired eyes and a small, crooked smile that he hadn't worn since he was eight years old.
Then there was nothing but light.