[=10]
An alternate take on the basis of a previous story, re-written for an English essay.
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When the dreams break, his eyes open, seeing strips of pale, cold sunlight cut through the air from the East. It's strange, seeing the sunrise when he wakes up. His old window saw only the Western lights; the glory of sunset and the ashen dark that follows it. He prefers the sunset, for the most part. In the night, there is solace. When it finally rains and the droplets create tiny shimmering pictures against the velvet dark, he can let himself think. He can dream up all sorts of things to push real life away. Child-like. Sometimes the whole world speaks to him, and he doesn't understand, but there are many things he doesn't understand these days and he wants to go back to that beautiful lack of responsibility, the years where he wasn't expected to care about anything. Is this what growing up feels like? If it is, he doesn't like it at all. Not one bit.
He unintentionally focuses on the pounding feeling that nestles in the middle of his skull, beating the waking brain, trying to force it to surrender to the illusionary comfort of sleep once more. But he's given in three times throughout the night and early morning, and he is not prepared to do it again, so he rises, sighing in dismay at the cold that has clogged his nose and head, for it refuses to go. It is either the third or fourth day of the bug's torture - he can't remember, but he just wants it to go away and let him get better. Maybe it's the new house. Maybe it carries little pockets of bad air like Mother used to talk about, and he breathed it in and got sick.
When he slips past the metal rungs of the ladders that lead up to the attic, unnoticed, his eyes fall upon another bedroom door. Not his own, no, but his mother's. Immediately, he is reminded of a time where his father would sleep in there, too - but back then, the door was a deep, furnished brown.
