The Lost Boy

He’s very young.

Peter noted as he offered his hand out to the boy. Not the youngest one among the children that he had gathered but young enough that he probably would be one of those that could not remember the faces of their father and mother.

Peter would get to keep him for five years at most. After that, he would have no choice but to discard him. He found it frustrating. For some reason, they always get too old too fast.

The boy—called Michael, from what he had heard—turned to look at the area where his mother was. She was animatedly talking to another woman. A mother of an equally misbehaving child, perhaps.

Somewhere from a distance, a dog barked—barely audible with the cries and laughter of children running around the park.

Michael looked hesitant as he turned to look back at Peter; his wide eyes framing his face and painting them with curiosity. He wants to go. Peter can see it with the way his hands are restless beside his legs. Yet, he’s scared.

Peter continued to smile, confident enough that the child would soon relent. There’s no child that Peter could not goad to go with him. Children always followed him whenever he asked them to.

Always. Without fail. Peter is proud to say that it’s one of his many strengths.

When Michael reached out a hand and grasped his own, Peter couldn’t help but broaden his smile.

Another one. He could keep another one.

He had small and dainty hands, just like Peter’s brother.

It was a wonder how the boys—and sometimes even the girls—resemble his brother, in one way or another. Be it their hands, their feet, their hair, their eyes, their slight frame, and even with the way they moved. They were coated in that air of innocence and child-like wonder that no adult could ever replicate. They were what Peter would call the epitome of childhood.

I. Denial and Isolation

His brother was like that once too. No, Peter thought, he still is. Young and innocent, buried in a place that has long been forgotten. He once never understood why he had to be buried—once reached up unto the helm of his mother’s dress to ask her why he had to be kept six feet beneath the ground.

She had only said, “It’s okay. He was young and innocent. He’ll continue to be young and innocent.”

II. Anger

Back then, Peter never understood what that meant. Frustration found him and wrapped its claws around him. Having lived with a brother for years, only for him to stop showing up on their weekly games always brought Peter to tears. He would always go to his room and scream. Why does he keep seeing his brother in his dreams?

III. Bargaining

Peter’s mother has repeatedly said that he need not to fret. “Your brother would be okay”, she had said. “He’d be happier with the thing that took him away.”

Peter, lost and more than a little confused, thought up ways to keep his brother okay.

But now that he has lived for hundreds of years, he finally understood. He was wiser now. He recognized that in order to bottle the innocence of youth, he has to continue his brother’s legacy.

The chastity and purity, the lack of malice in their eyes, the virginity and the cleanliness of their hands—Peter has to preserve all of it. He needs to keep it with him. He will continue to keep them with him until the clock starts ticking for him.

In doing this, he would never have to stop playing the game of always asking,

What could have been.

IV. Depression

V. Acceptance

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And perhaps that’s what made his story tragic, a boy too young to understand the ways in which reality has kicked. And maybe that’s why he’d perpetually be stuck on this twisted repeat, for his process of grief would forever remain incomplete.

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Written by Angel Villajos

Visual by Jaztine Paloma

Layout by Trisha Mirallo