Waking up abruptly, Carter sat up on his bed, his immediate thought to look around.
His heart was strangely calmer than what he thought it would be.
After a few seconds, his forehead throbbed, making the young boy grunt his teeth.
It was bruised from two heavy slams on a table; at this point, the feeling was asked for.
While looking around, he decided to relieve a bit of the pain by carressing it with his right hand.
But, with the tips of his finger almost there, he grimaced and instead carried it with his left hand, finally recalling what he had done to the other.
He apologized to it, like the hand was a living being, not knowing what to do more than that.
The big bump on his forehead was like a mountain; he let out a troubled breath.
If the self-harm continued, he was afraid he would have killed himself before getting discovered.
Incredible...
Lowering the hand and recalling the last thing he saw yesterday evening, his thoughts churned, his ironic statement catching on to him.
Was I discovered?
If he were, in the best-case scenario, he would get diagnosed as masochistic or get treated for self-harm.
But in the worst one…
Getting up from the bed, the floor creaked from his hurried steps.
His hand, trembling from pain, reached out to the drawer of the table, its weight heavy with anticipation.
Gripping the handle, he breathed and opened it with a swift swoop.
Init was the same paper as the one Carter had drawn on last night, plastered with the same unaltered drawing and his own dried blood.
Looking at it, it resembled a relic rather than a doodle Carter unintentionally designed.
Joking he would stain it with his dirty gloves, his right hand took the paper and examined it.
His other hand reached for the bloodied pencil he stabbed his throbbing hand with.
And with his eyes on the paper, he played with the bloodied pencil and sat down.
The chair was half falling from his inclination but was stabilized by his clown-like balance.
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Making sure he was comfortable, he studied the paper for any trace of physical contact.
After a few more seconds, his gaze moved around his chamber, searching for something he had to verify.
Looking around, his eyes landed on the wall above his bed.
There, a clock pointed ten to six in the morning.
His eyes narrowed.
I slept again… And although it was a good night’s sleep, Carter knew it wasn’t natural.
His memories returned back to the night before again, trying to piece together what happened to his senses at the last second.
The spinning pencil danced faster.
A person in this house had the ability to put him to sleep with simple words, and it wasn’t the two he had already encountered.
His body or mind surprisingly didn’t seem to react to that information.
Curious, he reminisced about his whole crazed ordeal last night.
Memories of what happened to him rushed through his head, and again, only his injured hand and bruised forehead reacted to the rehearsal of the train of thought that pushed him to the edge of madness.
Faster was the dancing pencil as he was now more and more doubting the state of his own mind the last evening.
Was his disturbance due to the succession of events, or was it something else entirely?
He let out a trembling breath.
This time he finally shivered, his reaction far less excessive.
After warming his cold skin with some sit-up exercise, his eyes narrowed, yesterday’s events repeating in his mind.
A question popped in his mind, making him thoughtful.
How do I even prepare for something like that?
Remembering what he did in the fit of action, his right hand pulsed with pain.
He decided to search for a way to prevent that ‘madness’ from getting to him again, as self-harm was his last resort if he didn’t have anything planned.
Putting those unresolved questions in his memory, he wanted to get things done.
Smiling, he finally had something to do, research, so his focus went back to the sheet of paper.
Even after everything that such a little thing had done to him, Carter was still a bit excited.
His left hand gripping the pencil and the chair sitting back to normal, he recalled what he wanted to do with the information he had copied down.
Right, I wanted to connect every word with things they have a relation with.
Now, now, what if I string you with…
Huh?
In the middle of it, Carter had a realization.
Thinking about connection and lines, he had a theory.
In most uses of threads and lines, there is always the depiction of a relation; rather, it is direct or indirect.
Sometimes in a literal way, like with electric wires connecting two dependent things or puppeteers functioning their puppets with threads.
And sometimes in a more abstract way, like with the connections between people or objects always shown with lines.
The young boy’s left hand stroked his chin, thinking a bit further.
So then, if the fleeting is a collection of threads clumping into each other, and everything in this picture is tied to concepts or abstract concepts.
Then, doesn’t that mean the feeling is a concept of its own?
Tying his two theories together, his conclusion was that the fleeting was meant to symbolize a rather odd interpretation of the concept of connections.
Writing with the pencil, Carter wrote below the lump of threads the word "concept," and then he paused.
He tapped the pencil on the table multiple times.
Was he right?
He shook his head.
Unfortunately, Carter wasn’t some kind of all-understanding philosopher to directly pry into the meaning of such symbolism with only his guts to tell him.
Though his lips couldn’t help but curl up.
It was the same everytime.
When a spark lit in his head, something inside him screamed louder and louder.
Now that he was here, he couldn’t stop there; he needed to go further; he needed to continue his line of thought.
And was it necessary? No, but to Carter, an incomplete puzzle left a bitter taste in his mouth.
So he recalled every single line about the fleeting.
And then it struck him.