The Boy With The Thorn In His Side [by Pete Wentz]

We’re here to take your hearts

Every other heart that was too heavy for the legs that carried it

Recurring nightmares in far out places falling of dark things

Forcing the eyes to escape from the dark world within

Dreaming less and less with the time passing

Investigating and forcing to remember putting scenes to the correct

parts

Making myself afraid of sleeping

Begging of not sleeping

Every hapy dream in the head

Then suddenly disappears…

The Boy

When I was younger I had a reoccurring nightmare about a far off place full of
dark things. I remembered forcing my eyes open to escape it. As the years
passed, the images began to fade and I had the dream less and less. It’s like part
of your imagination being overactive and never sleeping. As I’ve grown older I’ve
found myself thinking of it more fondly, trying to remember how these scenes
played in my mind and inventing new ones.

Using some of the best underground artists I have ever met (whose work
continually takes my breath away), I hope to explain myself. Here they take the
form of criminal sketch artists, and have made what amounts to drawings of
suspects. This is how they looked to the best of my memory. I am just a
cartographer. At best this is a map that will get you back to this world, and at
worst this is me spilling the best secret I ever had.

This dream used to make me afraid to sleep. I remember begging my Mom for
half hour increments to put off the inevitable, the unavoidable. I used to think of
every happy thought in my head before I went to sleep in a desperate effort to
escape it. And then one day it just went away.

This is me at my most honest. My most naked. I think somewhere in everyone is

The Boy. No one wants to be what they are. This is cliche and trite, but it is
mine. Don’t sleep.

This story is a complete waste of the eyesight you will lost reading it. When you
are done you’ll ask yourself what the point was. There isn’t one. Every life has a
lull in it that gets so bad and seems so long that you can’t remember when or
why it started. It skips around and probably isn’t worth it but to me it reads like
the bible. This is the story of a lull.....read it like a crime scene report or an
autopsy, because that’s all it ever was.

This is not the kind of boy who deserves a story. He is not the kind of boy that
deserves to be remembered. He is not the kind of boy who has a name. Or at
least not one that he can remember. Neither did his mother or father... they
barely remembered he was alive. He is the kind of kid that just gets by. He is the
kind of kid who you forget about as soon as you meet him. He is the B-side to
your hit single. He is the crust on the bread, the ash on the cigarette. He is every
face you have ever forgotten (he is us). The kids at his school would have hated
him if they had even noticed his existence. When you’re always alone it feels
strange when you are together with anyone. He gets up every morning with the
same stupid smile on his stupid face. He looks in the mirror at his chipped teeth
and scars. The mouse brown hair that looks like it needs a haircut (but not in a
good way). His wrists a bad day away from being slit. His left leg just shorter
than his right, giving him a look of being permanently disheveled. And smiles.

That’s how stupid this boy is. He is the straight to video sequel to your summer
hit movie. He is the verse to that song on the radio you have to hum cause you
can’t remember the words. You couldn’t break this kid’s heart, he is so far
beyond that. This is the kind of kid who blew out the candles on hope all alone
for too many birthdays to remember. And no one has ever fallen in love with
anyone with a smile that’s dripping with “please die”. So why is he smiling?
Because he can hear the droning guitars and words streaming under the
bathroom door. They wrote his moods.

The boy wished he could live in the “humdrum towns” and “coastal villages”. He
sang “I wish I weren’t me” over and over again just flat of the key of love until
he forgot the words and could only hum along. Everyday was the same. The same
stupid smile on the same stupid boy. Until the days blurred into a haze and the
boy dropped into a depression. Not a cool dark room and cigarette depression
like the songs he loved, but one that felt like he was being smothered by a safe,
suburban, monotonous blanket. Everything felt like a headache to the boy. Every
face, every stupid stuttered sentence all wrapped up into the biggest headache
ever. So the boy took an aspirin. And another and another and then went to
sleep, lullabyed by hopes he would never wake up (see also: “tell my mom, I’m
sorry- I just can’t be bothered anymore”). When he woke up the headache was
gone and in it’s place was a stomachache that felt like bird beaks and teeth, and
a new headache in the form of his mother’s worry. She said he was okay he just
got confused. She said he was okay but he just needed to talk to someone. So the
stupid, stuttering, ugly boy was sent to a doctor.

II

The Doctor

The boy had never been more scared in his life. But he explained his headaches,
the songs and his dreams, and sat there with that stupid chipped grin on his face.
He was ecstatic to have someone listen to him even if his mother had to pay
them to do it. The doctor listened to the boy talk about how the vinyl feels and
how the places looked inside his head. And then he gave the boy a bottle of pills
and told him to put away his records and take one when he felt sick in his own
skin or like he was breathing on the bottom of the ocean (see also: breathless).
These were the headaches and the depression, but they were just thoughts that
could be wished away with a simple pill. These were the reasons the stupid,
stuttering, ugly, forgettable boy wasn’t popular. Why he couldn't fit in. Why he
was so morbid. But the boy was too stupid to know this and so he took his grin
and the pills and walked home. First he threw out all of his records, trashed his
heart and then he went to sleep. The first night wasn’t bad at all. He had a
dream that he was trapped inside a burning glass box. His lungs seared as the
glass melted. There were just enough holes poked in the glass for him to gasp
through for someone to come and save him. To bring on the mourning. But there
wasn’t anyone there and even if there was he was pretty sure they wouldn’t
come for a mess like him. He woke up as alive as he ever felt. The second night
was a little bit harder. He felt homesick for places he had never been. He missed
hearts he had never loved.

The third night was unbearable. He crawled along the floor towards the crack of
light in the bathroom door. He opened it and found the pills the therapist had
given him. The bottle read “Clandestine Industries” on the side. The boy should
have found this quite strange but instead he was blissfully unaware (being the
stupid little wretch that he was). He took one out. It was huge and black. He
closed his eyes, put the pill in his mouth and took a sip of water. But the pill
went halfway down the boy’s throat and stopped. This stupid and ugly, stuttering
and forgettable mess of a boy was choking. And just as he was sure it would no
go down, it did. The boy’s eyes felt like they had weights on them. He collapsed
on the tile and fell asleep. As his eyes shut the boy couldn’t help but notice how
big and yellow the moon looked. When The Boy woke up it was morning, or so he
thought. There was a gray light everywhere. His house felt older. The Boy pulled
himself to his feet. He felt different, lighter. The Boy shouted and no one
answered. No one told him to be quiet or that he was late for school. He went
downstairs and opened the door. The sky was overcast. There were no birds or
green trees. The Boy ran inside. He believed that this must be a dream. He ran
to the bathroom mirror and looked in it.

The Boy had become more stunted and ugly (if that was possible) and to make
matters stranger he now had a stem of thorns running through his side. He pulled
on them and felt a drop of blood fall onto the tile. He laughed to himself at how
much he felt like “The Boy with the Thorn in his Side”, just like the song.
Everything felt like the inside of a song. His lungs breathed in for the first time.
The Boy ran downstairs and outside again. He felt alive for the first time. He felt
like the last bullet in a gun meant for revenge, sealed with a kiss. He felt
understood. He felt memorable. There were no birds singing; only bats and owls
flew through the air hooting and swooping at The Boy. Even the rocks seemed
interested in him. The Boy loved all his new attention. He walked around the
gray twilight and explored this new world until he felt it begin to grow dark. The
sun fell into oranges and reds that looked like the end of the world, burning into
something past what words could ever describe. The Boy felt like a weight had
come off of his shoulders, or that he had imagined that there was any weight
there in the first place. He fell in love with sunsets at 4 in the afternoon.

As The Boy walked into he house he felt himself becoming heavier with every
step. He also noticed the sun was peaking around the overhanging clouds, as
though he hadn’t noticed it all day. He began to feel stupid and forgettable
again. He looked down at the stem as it began to wither. The Boy began to
panic. He ran back to the bathroom retracing his steps. He was losing his world,
trying desperately to hold on. He looked down at the floor and saw dark black
tablets lying in an open bottle on the floor. That must be it, The Boy thought.
The pills. He picked one up and swallowed it whole. This time it went down
easily without water. And as it did the clouds blocked out the light once again
and the sun began to set much faster. He could once again hear the bats tapping
on the window. The songs were his again. This world was his again.......no heart
was safe. Thank god The Doctor had given him these pills. And this world. Little
did he know that back in the real world (where he was just a nervous,
stuttering , ugly forgettable boy) the doctor was on the phone explaining to his
mother how he had given the boy sugar tablet placebos and told him to try to
make some new friends. He felt like he now had a place and a name. And The
Boy with the Thorn in His Side was in love with his new world. The Boy spent
minutes that became like months in his new world. Every time he fell asleep he
would dream himself back into the boring, hateful world he cam from. He saw
his mother and father talking to the doctor who gave him the pills. Everyone
thought The Boy had simply run away......when they even noticed he was gone.
He saw people spending more time thinking about him now that he was gone
than they had ever spent when he was alive. These dreams always ended with
the doctor reaching his hand in so cold, and grabbing him as if to hold him in the
world. Each time it was becoming harder as if to hold him in that world. Each
time it was becoming harder to wake from. So every time his eyelids grew heavy
or the thorns began to die he would swallow a pill. Ironically, his nightmares in
this world were of the world he came from

III

Exploring

The rest of The Boy’s time was spent exploring. He began with the house, which
was a twisted version of the one he lived in with his parents. Darker. Grayer.
Everything within the house and world was in strange proportion. Bigger and
more twisted than he had ever seen. Wolves lived in the walls. They seemed
almost robotic as their dark gray fur jagged out, and breath that seemed to be
like fire. Their teeth spun in rows like sharks. They lunged at The Boy and tried
to snatch him as he snickered down the stairs. On the first few nights The Boy
slept in his room next to a coffin that took the place of his bed. The things
outside laughed loudly just so The Boy couldn’t sleep. But as he became more
and more comfortable he opened the coffin and began lying in it till he grew
tired enough to sleep. It was the only piece of furniture in the entire house. One
night he was awoken by the laughing outside of his window. He peered out his
window into the darkness. He saw lights bursting not far away. They were
brilliant. Fireworks strobing in the darkness. Every time one burst and popped it
would illuminate two sets of eyes. It sent shivers down The Boy’s spine, not of
fear but anticipation.

The Boy had been bursting to share this world with someone and he was finally
getting his chance. “He-ll-o” he stuttered. His voice was hoarse from not being
used. It felt rusty. Suddenly the darkness consumed everything. The fireworks
stopped. Desperate, The Boy ran down the stairs waking the wolves in the wall
on the way. He ran 40 or 50 feet until he hit the shadows of two people. He
could barely make them out. One of them lit a match glowing and revealing two
pale faces. The stars crossed and The Boy wished he could have hung himself on
them. He stuttered again, tripping on his tongue. This caused the girls to giggle
more. “What’s your name?”, The Boy asked. The girl with the darker hair replied
“Rattail” and lifted her arm jiggling a dead rat she had tied on her wrist like
some morbid form of jewelry: the rodent gold standard, the retching and
unraveling of style (have you ever seen someone and known that they owned you
before they even spoke). It would almost be seductive if it wasn’t so dreadful.
The girl was pale with jet black hair. Strange. But The Boy was in love. The girl
continued, “This is my sister Flattop”, gesturing to the tall girl hovering wit her
patched dress inches from the ground. She held and axe in one hand. Nothing
seemed strange to the boy anymore in this world. The girl’s linked hands. Baths
swooped overhead like doves. The Boy asked her if she wanted to know his
name. The goddamn kid had cobwebs on the zippers of his pants. She laughed
again, glancing down at the thorn now dripping blood, as if he couldn’t be more
obvious. Instead she asked him if he wanted to light dandelions with them. He
paused. Another fit of laughter. “You’ve never lit dandelions?” she asked, then
picked a huge white flower off the ground and lit it. It burst above into one of
the brilliant strobes he had seen earlier. They began picking them in bunches and
throwing them lit into the night sky. The white ones disappearing in flashes of
light and the yellow ones popping loudly and drifting into hazes of smoke in the
moonlight.

This went on until the sun began to rise and the new friends parted ways. The
Boy went back to sleep happily in his coffin. He dreamt that the pills ran out and
he found himself back in his former world in the doctor’s office. The doctor’s
breath heating up the entire room. The boy was trapped. He was hated and
stupid and ugly and forgettable again. He pried his eyes open and wished himself
out of the dream. He awoke in the coffin again in a cold sweat. The black and
red velvet felt so safe. The Boy met with his new friends again and again as the
days stretched into routine. The thorns bled when he spent time with Flattop and
Rattail and withered when the gray clouds spread to show the sun. The pills in
the bottle grew fewer and fewer as The Boy had the dream of the doctor les and
less. He had all but forgotten about the “real world”, until one day the boy held
the bottle that read “Clandestine Industries” and saw that there were only a few
pills left. So the boy began to ration them. This made the dreams stretch out for
longer and the daylight creep in more and more. The Boy realized he was losing
his world. He was sure of it this time.

IV

The plan

He began to devise a plan to save himself. Realizing the connection between his
dreams and his new world, he made himself fall asleep and dreamt himself into
the doctor's office. He had Flattop and Rattail wait outside of the coffin and
watch to pull him out. Inside the doctor’s office, the boy frantically pulled out
drawers in search of the pills. He found a closet full of files of boys and girls, and
a lock. Smashing it open, he found bottles of big black pills with the same
“Clandestine Industries” label on them. He grabbed as many as would fit in his
pockets and ran out the door.

By now the breathing was hot on his neck, but The Boy couldn’t see anything but
a shadow as he burst out the office doors. He had one more stop: back to the
house he had grown up in with the parents who now missed the boy more than
they had ever loved him before. There The Boy pulled the withered thorn from
his side and in the blood he scrawled “I love you. I am never coming back.” With
that he shouted for Flattop and Rattail to pull him out. As he did the shadow’s
arms reached for him and he felt caught for a moment. It was the coldest second
of The Boy’s life. It felt like it lasted forever, as if his heart had stopped. The
Boy breathed in deep as he collapsed on the floor on top of the girls. He hid the
pills. He found explaining anything to them, especially of another world, would
only induce them into fits of laughter. He felt a chill. It was as if someone had
followed him through. But The Boy buried the feeling and allowed himself to be
content with the satisfaction of having all the pills he would need for a long
time.

That night the wolves in the walls didn’t howl at all. As they lit dandelions, The
boy saw a figure far off on the skull hill. It appeared to be staring at them, or
rather him, as it paced like a caged animal. The next day The Boy went with
Flattop and Rattail to see where the figure was standing. The day was overcast
as usual. They climbed the hill made of skulls to the cooked tree at the top.
There they found a boy, who was too pretty for his own good, dangling. The rope
around his neck was tattered. The noose was pulled tight. The Boy with the
Thorn in His Side gasped at the sight. Flies buzzed like angels around the hanging
boy’s head. The pretty boy looked up and winked. The hanging boy looked
familiar. He looked to The Boy like a toy he had one owned and forgotten about.
As the girls pulled down the hanging boy, he explained that he had spent his days
in a dark closet for as long as he could remember, then had one day woken up
here. “Of course” The Boy remembered. This toy had been a Buddy Doll, “a little
boy’s best friend”. At least that’s how the marketing went. This buddy doll was
far more worn. He was dirty and tired looking. He explained how all the years of
being dragged around half-alive made him want to be dead (we are all the
corpses bored with our own funerals, the boys you left behind). He was forgotten
about (The Boy knew how it felt). My Dead Buddy. They began walking down the
hill and through the dandelion pasture. The Boy laughed about the fact that back
home these flowers were weeds but here they were Flattop and Rattail’s
fireworks. Buddy lagged behind them, noose and all, running to catch up every
few feet. He described a man in a white suit he had seen beneath him on the hill
that night, studying the house. The Boy stopped dead in his tracks. The blood ran
from his face like the air escaping in his dream. He grabbed Rattail’s hand. He
was scared. It pushed other feelings through him like a car crash. He dropped an
“I love you” (thank god the wind caught it before it was heard).

That night buddy and The Boy hid in the tree on skull hill while the girls lay in
wait in the dandelion pasture. The claw-like fingers of the tree wrapped around
them as sleep came near. Eventually they smelled hot, acrid breath and felt it
heating the air around them. It made The Boy feel the same sick feeling of bird
beaks and claws in his stomach as before. They peered down through the
darkness. They heard growling behind row upon row of shark teeth snapping at
the air. Leashed to a large figure in white were the wolves, which had been
released from the walls of the boy’s house. The figure was huge. Apparently
coming through to this world caused a transformation of sorts. Your insides
became your outsides. Everyone was ugly. The Doctor was huge and
disproportioned. His teeth were large and his white suit was a dirty off-white
now. His empty eyes looked towards The Boy’s house as he sniffed at the air.
Coming from the openings in the legs of his pants and his sleeves were even
dirtier looking tentacles that appeared to be holding the leash to the wolves. The
tentacles spun in all directions and they seemed to be searching for something; a
thought or a heart beat. In the distant black air fireworks burst in brilliant
colors. The doctor strode forth with the wolves, gnashing their teeth. Separating
them from each other was a strain on the eyes. It became hard to tell which was
a more brutal animal. The Boy cried out for Rattail as he slid from the tree.
Buddy fell through the branches moments later. They ran down the hill slipping
on bones, The Boy grabbing a few as he ran. As they reached the pasture they
saw The Doctor’s huge body walking towards the house. Behind him, his
tentacles dragged Flattop and Rattail by their throats. The Boy caught up with
them just inside the huge door and Buddy threw his noose around the necks of
the wolves. With a great force he sent them slamming into the wall. The wolves
seemed to fall to pieces and slide back together, teeth spinning and snapping at
the room. Yet they were trapped back in the wall.

The Doctor spun and pinned The Boy up against the wall with another tentacle.
Buddy tried to run but was caught in his own noose against the wall and found
himself hanging, half dead again. The Doctor's focus was on The Boy again. The
Boy couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt like they were exploding. It’s funny the
thoughts that run through your head when you feel your life slipping. Had The
Doctor made this world? Had this been an experiment or a dream? The Boy
choked. He woke up on the floor upstairs. The Doctor was leaning over him with
a huge needle. He had locked the girls in the coffin with chains attached to a
massive heart shaped lock. The scene looked like a wedding party gone bad. The
bride was beautiful (too bad she’d never make it to the honeymoon) turning blue
with the bridesmaid locked in a pine box. The groom with the coldest feet ever,
left at the alter.

The Doctor held the thorns between clamps, sticking them with the needle and
injecting a dark fluid. The Boy felt sick. He no longer felt safe in his own skin.
The thorns began to wither. The Boy felt himself slipping back to his old self. He
saw the clouds disappearing outside. The sun ripped through the room lighting
every inch of dust and dirt, imprisoning them all within the moment. The bats
began to fate into blue sky. He felt inside his pockets for the bones he had
picked up on the way down the hill. He sharpened his flaws and disappointments
into daggers. The room slowed. Every single grain on the floor came into focus in
The Boy’s eye - like a bullet through a flock of birds.
 V

Getting Revenge

He smashed The Doctor in the face with a bone, stunning him. He grabbed the
keys from around The Doctor’s neck and unlocked the chains from the coffin. The
girls were blue inside and the rush of air brought life to their eyes.

The girls jumped out and helped to hold The Doctor down as they used a hammer
to drive the bones into his feet, holding him in place. Dark black blood spouted
out from his feet. The Doctor expressed no emotion or reaction to the pain,
though he tried to lift his feet which were trapped in place. Maybe if he could
have read The Boy’s eyes he would have seen “say a prayer for everything you’ve
ever loved cause you will never see it again”. The Boy no longer cared for
himself or his heart but only to save this place, to save this new world. He ran to
the bathroom and got a bottle of pills and needle and thread. The Doctor was
now thrashing like a rabid animal as he saw The Boy with the pills. His teeth
seemed to enlarge and sharpen to knives as The Boy drew close, like an animal
caught in a trap, lashing out at everything in a last act of desperation.

But you couldn’t touch this kid right now, bullets would have dodged him. He
shoved the pills down The Doctor's throat before Rattail stitched his mouth shut
so he couldn’t spit them out. The Doctor’s tentacles because to wither and fall
off, each one still searching, grabbing for The Boy. He thrashed about. And then
as the clouds drifted back together, and the room returned to its usual gray, he
disappeared.

The Boy went downstairs and saw Buddy hanging there, finally resting. Dead or
alive, he looked peaceful, so The Boy left him there like a toy on the shelf. He
looked down at the withering thorns and realized he had used all of the pills to
get rid of The Doctor. The Boy felt tired. He hugged Flattop and Rattail. Good
night was goodbye. Rattail said “I guess we are all there ever was”. Somehow it
made sense. Or maybe not. He hugged her tight, mixing their tears to be bottled
and fermented, so they could be drunk on each other when this was all over.
Hope never wanted them, but they too it anyway.

The Boy then lay in the coffin and fell asleep. He dreamt himself awake. He
woke up as alive as he ever was. He was in his bed in a cold sweat.

He reached down for the thorns, but couldn’t feel a thing. Only huge scars stuck
out where the thorns once were. Every song that ever mad eth boy feel in love
ran though his head at once. The doctor never returned to his office and his
parents began to look for a new physician. The boy prayed for car crashes and
heart attacks to take him back. Somehow they dreams and nightmares were like
life on the run, and there was nothing chasing him anymore.

VI

The Endings Is All That Matter

As he grew older the nightmares were harder and harder to come by. He became
forgetful of how to get back and forth, finding the heart shaped lock on more
and more of the places he was trying to get to. Stuck where flies weren't angels,
where dandelions were just weeds. Here is The Boy with the Thorn in His Side,
dying in your world. A man made monster with every human emotion, overdosed
on worthlessness in a world that could never wrap it’s head around him (so don’t
even try).

When it’s all over just remember every single word you ever said was always just
a bullet to his head. Bury him underground between friends and love - the only
things that are gonna make it to the end with him. Look for his body buried
beneath where the yellow weeds are growing and know he’s still living in his
nightmares.

This story never really had a point. It’s just a lull - a skip in the record. We are
addresses in ghost towns. We are old wishes that never came true. We are hand
grenades (and every word you say pulls the pin). We are all gods, we are all
monsters. It never really begins or ends because Somewhere, there is a kid that
looks and feels just think thi(u)s. To you this kid is probably just a headache, but
to me he is gold.

“Behind the hatred there lies a murderous desire for love”

There’s not a siren that can keep me from your window.
There’s not a pill that can keep you from my mind...