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Todd had enormous shoes to fill.
They were left before him by his older brother, much too large to fit into at the moment, and, he thought, much too large to ever fit into. With every step the ground beneath his feet sunk deeper, and the shoes grew even larger, until he was standing in a hole from which he could not escape. He clawed and threw himself at its earthen walls and came back with only dirt under his nails.
The hole was his home, and sometimes he thought he could grow used to it; he had never known any different.
Life in the hole was not life - it was merely existence, running around and around in its frigid depths without even a soul or a skeleton with which to talk for a while. His emotions this were never admitted, never felt. And around and around he ran in flitting terror as headless voices shrieked, “Who are you? What are you, next to him? Next to them? An ant! You’re an ant!”
Todd awoke long before his alarm to the gray of the unholy hours of the morning. His limbs, though free, seemed to be tied to his bed, and a heavy weight rested upon his chest so that he could not breath, overwhelmingly restricting despite its invisibility. In his half-awake frenzy he screamed into the night, “I’m not an ant! I’m Todd! I’m Todd! I’m-
“Todd!” Two hands shook him free of his imaginary bindings and pulled him to the top of the hole. He sucked in a strangled breath, free of the weight, until he realized where he was and who he’d woken up and what he’d done, and everything came back down,
“Jesus Christ, Todd, what the hell happened? Are you alright?”
Neil was looking straight into his face, brows furrowed and hair a ruin from sleep. He’d woken Neil with his stupid screaming.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“No one who’s fine screams bloody murder like that, Todd.”
“I said I’m fine,” he said, and he inwardly winced at how clipped it came out. Then, drawing back in on himself, “You can take your hands off me now.”
Neil removed his hands from Todd’s shoulders with a nervous chuckle. He hadn’t noticed he’d left them there after he shook Todd awake, too concerned with whatever the hell his friend’s subconscious decided to torture him with as he slept.
Todd had always been a recluse. A big skittish, jumpy, but kept it all close to himself. He spoke rarely except for when spoken to, and sparse when he did. He did little other than what he was told, and nothing that would ever put a spotlight on him. In essence, give Todd a crayon and a coloring page and tell him to color outside the lines, and he’ll freeze on the spot, perhaps drop the crayon out of the sheer terror the notion instills in him. And if you ask him why he did, he’ll tell you “nothing”.
It scared the living Jesus out of Neil. If Todd felt half as trapped as he did, the poor guy was going to implode sooner or later.
“Todd look,” and Todd barely raised his head to look at Neil, who was still kneeling beside his bed, “I’m not going to make you talk, but you’re going to have to sooner or later or you’re going to combust,” and then he added, with a hint of reflection in his voice, “It would do you some good.”
“Oh it would ‘do me some good.’ Everyone likes to tell me what’ll do me some good, and I’m never able to do good enough at it to get some good out of it!”
Neil drew back, caught off guard, and Todd turned away to wipe his eyes on his sleeve. The latter’s form shook now in the morning gray shadow, and when he turned back, looking Neil straight on, his eyes shone with half-formed tears against the darkness. When Neil nodded, understanding him, throwing a ladder down the hole, everything in Todd unraveled and he ranted on,
“I had a dream. There- there were voices, and they kept saying these things to me, and I ran and I ran but I only ended up where I started and I couldn’t get away. And they just kept yelling these nasty things as the ground kept falling out from under my feet and before I knew it I was stuck all the way down there and-
Two arms wrapped around him and pulled him out of the hole to safety, away from the crumbling ground below, and back onto his bed in his dorm room. Neil, frankly, wasn’t certain what he was doing or if it would work, but it felt right, and so he held onto his friend, and his friend’s tense and trembling form relaxed a bit in his embrace. A few tears fell onto his shoulder and soaked into the fabric as Todd let out the last of his outburst. Neil joked from over his shoulder,
“Don’t cry, you’re going to hurt your singing voice.” They both managed a laugh at that - it would be a million years before Todd could event entertain the thought of serenading a crowd of people, if he’d ever want to. Maybe a million minus one years now.
Neil held onto Todd until his breaths evened and his trembling ceased, and with a final sniffle from Todd they both pulled away.
“Come here, let me show you something,” Neil led Todd to the window with a half smile that had “I’ve got an idea” etched all over it. He pointed up at the sky, “How many galaxies do you think are out there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I said, ‘how many do you think are out there?”
“I dunno, millions, I guess.”
“Billions, maybe even more, Meeks told me, with billions and billions of stars and planets in them. And we’re just one tiny planet in one tiny galaxy, with billions of people on it.”
Todd sighed, “Is this supposed to make me feel better? I just feel small.”
“Ah,” Neil pointed at Todd with a grin, and explained with all the theatrical grandeur of an actor, “You my friend are oh-so very small. Yet out of all the people in this world, in this gigantic universe, I, and Charlie and Meeks and Knox and Pitts, decided to befriend you. Isn’t that something?”
A small smile chiseled its way onto Todd’s face, and looked out the window at the stars one last time before turning back to Neil.
“Why me?”
“You’re a pretty great guy, Todd. You’ve just got no idea.”
All the billions upon billions of stars in the sky, each twinkling with their own particular sparkle, shone all the more brighter from the outside of the hole. Todd had climbed it, step by step, with the aid of a ladder - and if he ever should stumble back down, the ladder would bring at last a companion to light the way.