Fyodor, when he was still a peckish boy of 8
Autor: Assis | Publicado: 2011-12-25T05:44:00-08:00

Through the ochre lens of long lost hope, Fyodor's puny condemned heart beat fickle into the midnight dreary. No amount of electric luminescence could restore imagination into the drab-hap of a child. The blithe, dull, honey-colored beams from the green plastic vines hanging all over town might as well have shined tiny bulbs of lettuce for all he noticed. The sound of sleigh bells could not excite Fyodor this december. The singing of carolers would not enchant Fyodor this december. The crisp, warm, dizzying scent of hot apple pie fresh out of a steamy oven could not, would not and simply had no power whatsoever to imbibe Fyodor this december. He strolled unconsolable amongst the merrymakers, unaware of the hour, uncaring. Santa would not be coming this night. Santa Claus, he now knew, simply was not. "Fiction", he muttered, shoving his hands into the two front pockets of his jeans. As he spoke, the word condensed into a small cloud in front of his mouth, lingering as if to ironically remind him of it's truth. In no mood for a party, Fyodor had stepped outside of his temperature-controlled american home to find himself in the dark, lonely back-ends of suburban Arizona. Over the now-lessened sounds of his eggnog worshipping family, the silence of the suburbs owned the night and wrapped itself around the boy in a great muted hush as he closed the door behind him and stepped out onto the pavement. In the distance, the sound of a truck down the highway reminded him of yesterdays and of how bleak this street was most of the time. Every morning he would walk out of this exact door into the pale morning, as disinterested in the daily occurrences  of West Hayward Ave. as they were in him, repeating steps he must have taken a hundred thousand times to a purpose that just now he could not imagine. As he looked out into the stillness of the overly decorated houses that normally were well hidden in darkness at this hour, all beaming electrical as if covered in dying fireflys, he realized there could not be a more boring place on Earth. "It is all sustained by lies" he thought disapprovingly, and then spoke the word out loud as if to prove his point. Lies. There was no Santa Claus and all the adults were drunk, pretending to the young ones that there was, laughing heartily between themselves at the wide-eyed innocence of the uncorrupted. They, whose lies were governed by sex, jobs, newspaper headlines and bus schedules thought it a joke to watch kid's imaginations sparkle and pop under their manipulation. "We are all doomed to have our hearts broken." was the phrase that now settled into the forefront of small Fyodor's restless mind at that moment. Although the street was dead quiet and still as a photograph, the thoughts in his tiny little head grew louder in a frantic search for organization. Now absorbed in his thoughts and vaguely aware of himself, Fyodor dropped plumply to the ground and sat comfortably in the cold cement. A tiny figure in a vast expanse of land. We are all doomed to have our hearts broken, he continued, because everyone sooner or later renounces the idea that maybe there are amazing, magical things out there, somewhere, and accept the vastly more popular idea that what you see is what you get is all there is. And what is is bus schedules, newspaper headlines, jobs, sex, eggnog... these are all things that everyone can agree on and do not break anyone's heart because they never cease to exist in a concrete way. The tree house that he and his dad had built this summer meant nothing, suddenly. One can not live in tree houses because they have no safety, they have no electricity, no basement, no refrigerator... not even an address to receive the bills. The tree house meant nothing and neither did his toys, neither did his books. That was why his dad didn't have any of those things, because they were not things of the adult world that all the adults had agreed upon. They were not essential to anyone's survival. What was essential was the money. Fyodor felt numbness roll over him like a cold shower as he realized for the first time in his life that money, the paper which the adults had all agreed could be worth anything, and which he had sheepishly begun to use as he turned eight and was entrusted to buy his own lunch at school some days, ruled the world. It was the reason his dad wore a suit with a tie and drove a car, it was the reason some people had houses while others lived on the street asking for money, it was the reason artists like Elvis recorded cds, it was even the reason that he bought pizza at school on tuesdays and some friends just brought an apple from home. Money was the one thing all adults had agreed upon to substitute Santa Claus and tree houses and the belief that super-heroes were real and lived somewhere, but not here. Fyodor sat in silence and imagined the lifespan of the human person. First, as a child, believing that Santa Claus was real, then being told that he was't, then slowly not believing in anything magical anymore as he became a teenager, then, after being a teenager, starting to think about getting a job so he could get money, then being an adult that works all the time to win money, then having a child and telling that child that Santa Claus exists because he's too young to know about money yet. "What happens between being an adult and working for money and death?" thought the young, freezing little eight-year-old. But he already knew the answer to that because he, Kelly, mom and dad used to visit Grandpa on the weekends at the old people's home across town before he went to Heaven. "Nothing." he said aloud, as if he was describing the universe to the empty street. Dad will grow old and stop working and go to a home like Grandpa and die. And if I stop believing in Santa Claus, and in magical powers, I will die that way too. An old man who made money until he couldn't any more, then just spent the rest of his life watching TV because he didn't believe in anything until the day he died.

Fyodor stood up.
His eyes were wide open staring out into the abyss of identical houses all the way down his block and to the next block.
He had just pictured his whole life in a vivid flash of imagination. He definitely did not want things to be this way. He turned around and peered through the front windows of his house into his own, dimly-lit living room. There, under swarming amounts of christmas lights and plastic decorations, wearing sweaters and jeans and christmas hats and all holding glasses half-filled with one type of liquid or another (that he couldn't drink, probably), stood all the adults of his family. They laughed and pointed at each other joyfully, they spoke of things that he probably wouldn't understand and patted each other on the back. They drank from their glasses while listening to each other speak. All of a sudden, Fyodor was overtaken by a great sense of calm and self-awareness as he stood silently holding his pale left arm with his right hand. They were the clueless ones now. As they stood there, admiring themselves for their own wittiness and intelligence, quipping and babbling and merrymaking, they were under the illusion that he, Fyodor Moore, was somewhere about, involved in some kind of childish vagary with his sister or, alas, had gone to bed, the victim of enthusiasm's unwielding grind. They thought themselves keepers of secrets too sobering for their burgeoning minds, all the whilst unaware that they were being watched from afar by their pre-pubescent son, who in turn, was beginning to consider himself  as a protector of the fantasies that made the world beautiful, that made life worth living. Fyodor felt pity for his parents who, no doubt, lastimated over the terrible bleakness of their mortal fate secretly. He vowed to himself that their lives were the first he would save from the cold reality of monetary existence. If he could get them to believe in the magical once more, maybe their impending doom could be averted. Maybe their lives could be more than just a long hard walk to the inevitable, scientific, solitary death. Fyodor re-entered the house. Back in the warmth of the motherland, Nat King Cole's velvety croon rolled smoothly from the gramophone into the drowsy atmosphere. The eight-year-old boy passed stealthily through the living room and up the staircase. In a few creeping moments he lay sinking into his bed, immersed in his thoughts.
Fyodor was a peckish boy of 8, creating a plan to change the world.