Once he’d retreated to the quiet of his room, a lonely situation drifting along in the mellow shadows of dusk, he took a small baby-blue box off his bookshelf. He usually kept it between the bigger volumes and hand-me-down textbooks on his bottom shelf, so it was out of sight, and off of anyone’s mind except his. Now that it was out in the open, he held it close to his chest, locked the door, and slid into his neatly made bed. Then, watching the door, he opened the box, and let its secrets unfurl around him.

A faded black and white photograph showed his parents with him when he was much younger, his father, a bearded goliath, and his mother, a monstrous muse of chaos and energy. The baby was a tiny creature wrapped in striped pajamas, and you could see he was his parents’ because there wasn’t a hint of shyness in his eyes. Even as a baby, their child was infected by their endless capacities to smile and take every struggle in stride. He was going to be strong, like them. He was going to be bold and brash and made of muscles. Maybe he would have become a wrestler too.

He put that photo aside, and checked to make sure the door was locked. There was no danger in it opening, really, but his aunt would want to look at the photos. She would smile wide, but her eyes would be narrow and shielded. He wondered how much of that had become him. How much of his identity was robbed by circumstance?

Most of the other photographs were in color.

Sunsets, blasphemed by the camera’s flash and malfunctions of color. Evidence of adventures in foreign countries, with famous wrestlers and hauntingly familiar businessmen, all belonging to an era the boy would never touch again.

The smiles were the best, because they didn’t need color to appear real. Even with red eyes and red lipstick taking over the scene, he could tell they meant it. That they were smiling as wide as the moment called for, because their life was good. And even if it wasn’t, they would wake up the next day and still be living and breathing every second that they could.

He could see evidence of future hardships. A birthday party that would have to be cleaned up, an apartment building missing in the present world, a city that would soon go to war. But things were pleasant in those snapshots of life, suspended from a world ruined by catastrophe, cruelty, and conflict.

He didn’t really know what they were like when those moments came. When they died, did they fight? Run? Hide?

What would he do when the time came?

He checked the door again.