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Christopher Teese
Copyright 2017 Christopher Teese
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Emergence
14 year old Will Shepherd stood in the bathroom, shirtless, in his blue flannel pajamas, looking intently at himself in the bathroom mirror, hands firmly clasped on either side of the bathroom sink.
He didn't move. Just stared at himself.
The bathroom was dark. The only source of light was the small nightlight on the middle of the wall to the right of the sink. He would be able to see well enough even if it weren’t there, though. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
He stared at himself in the mirror. At the fake twin image of himself. But what he saw reflected there was not a reflection of the same Will Shepherd that the rest of the world saw and knew.
He only saw an abomination. A doppelganger.
He looked ugly. He hated himself.
That's not to say that he actually thought he was physically bad looking. What he saw as ugly was not his outside physical appearance. No, he was seeing past the facade. He was seeing past the image he had been trying so hard to build and maintain in front of others and himself.
But today had been a bad day. A really bad day. Moreso than ever before, as he looked into the mirror, he could see the truth staring back at him, stronger than before, and the truth was so utterly repulsive to him.
Oh, God.
He felt as if he were at an epiphany. Like he was finally on the verge of admitting it to himself.
Admitting it to yourself was the first step. Then once you did that, you could choose to divulge your newly confessed truth to the world and live with the consequences, or you could choose to hide it forever and live in silent pain for the rest of your life.
Of course, you could also deny the truth to yourself and try living out your life based off the lie that you have already crafted and preferred to tell yourself, but wasn't that what he had already been doing? He felt pretty miserable.
No. No.
Yes, he was on the verge of confessing it to himself. But he didn't want to. Couldn't.
He closed his eyes and started thinking of Julie. Of Addison. Betty. Matilda. All the prettiest girls in school. He tried to imagine himself with them, in various scenes in which he was in heated make-out sessions with each one of them and… more.
Nothing. I feel nothing. Why do I feel nothing?
In his fantasy, he was going at it with Matilda. Thinking about her pretty, long, curly brown hair, her smooth lips, and her tight gorgeous body.
His tongue was in her mouth, and their hands were in each other’s hair. Their bodies were pressed close as they passionately grinded up against each other.
Yes... this is it... this is the way things should be...
Fantasy Will pulled away from the make out session briefly to look into Fantasy Matilda's eyes, but was horrified to see that Fantasy Matilda was no longer Matilda anymore but had become Fantasy Jake.
NO!!!
No no no no no no!!!!!!
Will slammed his fist hard into the side of the sink. His hand was going to smart later, but he didn't care. Breathing heavily, he held his head in his hands and shook it violently as he slowly sank down onto the floor.
He tried to kick the fantasy out of his head. But now that it was already there, it was unstoppable. He wanted to be rid of it, but there was something else, something much deeper, that pushed him hard to continue the fantasy.
He was trying to push it out of his mind. But he was losing the battle.
Jake had resumed the passionate make out session and was kissing him hard now. In the fantasy, they were in the middle of the school hallway, alone. Even though Will knew this was the last place he would ever want to fathom something like this taking place, he found that he didn't really have much control over where the fantasy was taking place either.
Jake was furiously attacking his mouth. Will found himself melting in Jake's arms in a way he never could have with Matilda. He was putty in Jake's embrace. He reached up to grab Jake's hair and started returning the kissing with a fiery passion.
Jake made a sudden movement and slammed Will up against the lockers. Fantasy Will didn't protest, but instead welcomed the roughness and sweet, sweet brief rush of pain that pulsed throughout his body. He wanted Jake to be rougher...
Then the scene abruptly shifted to Will's bedroom. Jake was shoving Will down on his bed, then was on top of him, kissing his neck, moving his hand up Will's shir...
NO!!!!!!!!!!!
Will was lying in the fetal position on the floor. He was crying now.
Why? Why did this keep happening to him?
Dare he admit it? Dare he admit that he was actually...
Will tried to throw the mental image out of his head. Tried to imagine Matilda replacing Jake once more. But Matilda reappearing in his fantasy and him imagining kissing her like he had been Jake made Will feel like throwing up.
Will reached up and grasped the sink, slowly pulling himself up.
He looked at himself in the mirror and was even more horrified now at the image he saw.
"No!" he whispered angrily to himself, tears still coming to his eyes. "You can't be like this! You just can't! This isn't the way you're supposed to be!"
When he had first hit puberty, everything had seemed alright. He had gone on a few dates. Even received his first kiss (from a girl). But for some reason, things had never gone any farther than that. He couldn't really explain why. They just didn't.
It was himself. He knew it was himself. It was like there was some kind of mental block in his mind that he couldn't explain.
But it had begun to dawn on him as time went on. It wasn't girls that got him all hot and bothered. It was other guys. This had profoundly disturbed him. He had tried to push it out of his head right then and there. He was determined that he wasn't going to be gay. He was going to be straight. A ladies man. Like his older brother, Tom. It was his choice.
Except it kind of wasn't. Will never fantasized about girls. He couldn't. He tried. But his fantasies always found themselves going back to the boys at school.
Jake was openly gay, Will knew. And single.
Jake was always nice to Will. Of course, Jake was always nice to everybody. But he always seemed extra nice to Will in particular. Will wasn't sure if he was just imagining it or if it was just wishful thinking.
Will usually went out of his way to avoid Jake. He didn't want to, but he had determined he wasn't going to give into his unnatural desires. He had been determined he was going to beat this at all costs.
But he never could.
He had seen Jake this afternoon. They were on opposite sides of the hallway. Jake had seen Will across the hallway and had smiled brightly, waving at him.
Will usually returned such gestures. But he couldn't today. His thoughts about Jake had been at their all-time strongest this morning. He had been so upset over it he couldn't think about anything else.
Seeing Jake this particular day, and that warm, kind way he had smiled at him had nearly caused him to crack.
Will didn't smile or wave back. He immediately did an about face and started walking really fast in the opposite direction.
His brain had been a blur at that point. He walked past a janitorial closet. Deciding it was the most preferable place he wanted to be in his current state of mind, he looked around to see if anyone else was looking in his direction and then discreetly slipped in.
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br /> He had started sobbing.
He had cried for two reasons. One, because he could not control or repress his pent up feelings. And two, because he knew Jake had seen his reaction, and he was now thinking of how Jake probably felt.
Could it have been, that Jake had a crush on Will like he had been secretly hop... thinking? And now he had gone and blown that. Jake's feelings were probably hurt. Will would probably run into him tomorrow, see him with some other guy, and his heart would...
Will had passed by Jake towards the end of the school day. Will had been so lost in thought he hadn't realized Jake was even in the crowded student hallway. He saw Jake, but Jake didn't even look at him. This made Will feel like crying again.
Tom had told him he looked upset on the way home. Will had denied it, but Tom didn't seem to buy it.
Tom...
The thought of his brother brought another surge of rage through Will.
Will had been hurting really bad that evening. But he and Tom were playing Street Fighter on their Playstation 3 in the living room. The rush of competition and spending time with his brother had been helping to take his mind off his problems. Then he and Tom had started getting a little too competitive and things ended up turning into a wrestling match in which they started shooting off typical good natured insults at each other, until Tom suddenly let loose with one that was unforgivable: "Bring it on, faggot!"
The words had felt as if they had struck Will hard at the center of his soul. He almost lost