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Sydney could handle it at first. He could withstand the nights spent alone, the touch-and-go that his life had turned into. He could survive the nine months spent alone, residing in the same summer camp nurses’ office year-round. He could bear waking up and staring at the same four sterile walls, the familiarity of it all. It was normal. It was comfortable, even. The silence surrounding him felt like a phantom hug, every click of his crutches on the floor a breath in his ear.
During the summertime, things were better. Everything seemed less lonely. The silence was filled, and so were the empty white cots. He had kids to tend to, announcements to make. He had Jedidiah, or at least his presence. He didn’t say much anymore, at least not to Sydney. It wasn’t out of malice, but rather conflicting responsibilities. His project was waiting for him in his office, and it took gentle priority over Sydney. He was used to it. He still visited Jedidiah in his office on occasion, but it was mostly shared silence, occasionally broken by the tick, tick, tick of his many clocks he seemed to be more enthralled in than him. Sydney had asked about them once before after gazing at them and realizing that they were all tracking different time zones and measurements. He was met with a loving “don’t worry about it”.
After the announcements for the day had finished and the campers had retired for the night, Sydney huddled in the same corner he always does and took out his tape recorder. He began to speak into it, reporting on his day’s events and any emotions he had surrounding them. It was his little nightly ritual to speak into his recorder, even going so far as to say that it is inhabited by a ghost just to keep himself company. He would bring the worms he kept on his desk some food – fruit, to be specific. Jedidiah no longer visited him on his own volition. He wouldn’t say this to his recorder – the spirits didn’t need to hear about his troubles – but he would think about it constantly.
The summer festivities concluded all too soon, leaving Sydney to watch as parents picked up their kids from camp. They would wave goodbye to him, and he would wave back bittersweetly. They would all return in a few months, he would tell himself unconvincingly. All you have to do is survive another off-season, you’ve done this many times in the past, what’s one more? He returned back to the nurse’s office.
In there, Jedidiah was packing. He offered to help, but he said he didn’t need any, and don’t put any more stress on yourself, Sydney, you just helped with an entire summer! Sydney laughs half-heartedly and leaves the room. Jedidiah eventually emerges from his room with a sigh, as if he were excited for new life but sad to let his old one go. He walks over to Sydney and hugs him for the first time in three months, well, more like twelve months as a result of him leaving every year camp was over.
Sydney wasn’t completely alone in the colder seasons. He had a man that visited him in his dreams, he had his worms, his ghost-inhabited tape recorder, and he had the camp director that swung by every now and again. He told himself that he should be fine, and for months, he was. He would wake up, stretch his aching joints and back, tend to his pet worms, do some sort of crafting project in the creativity cabin, talk to his recorder, and then do it all again the next day. He did miss the kids and Jedidiah, sure, but it was manageable.
He was mildly concerned about the small plants that would grow from his hands occasionally, but it didn’t feel like a big concern to him. He did try to talk to the director about it, but she brushed him off like it was nothing. He simply returned back to his room and plucked the small weeds away from his fingertips. The same thing happened later, but rather than plants it turned into small spikes growing from his sides. He had learned that the director would not care about this, so he decided to just go to sleep.
Sydney visited the man in his dreams that night. He brought him into a warm embrace and assured him that it would be okay. Sydney noted how much this man looked like Jedidiah. He relaxed into the arms of the man and tried to weep but found he couldn’t muster any tears. Instead of crying, he opted for a grimace on his face and a sinking, empty feeling in his stomach. The dream shifted to one of him skittering about the floor, searching for food to fill the void forming within him, desperately trying to hold onto his sanity under the fluorescent lights that bathe him on the linoleum floor. He felt his limbs start to freeze up, and he curled into himself breathlessly.
Once more, the dream changed. This time, it was one of Jedidiah. The dream started with Sydney and him as little kids on the playground, much before Sydney had even realized he was a boy. He was always a scruffy, tomboyish kid, but the time still wasn’t pleasant for Sydney to think back on. It reminded him of a time where he wasn’t himself, but received more hugs and touches and affection in general. It was... comfortable. Jedidiah and Sydney sat on the branch of a tree they had climbed together, and they overlooked the other kids playing. While Sydney was enthralled by the bugs that reside in the foliage surrounding them, Jedidiah tapped him on the shoulder hesitantly.
Sydney whipped his head around, spooked by the sudden touch. He sees Jedidiah, red-faced, holding a small, droopy dandelion. Sydney grinned ear-to-ear and took the flower from him, examining it in his hands. During his examination, the stem of the dandelion began to grow longer and wrap around his arm. The corolla stayed in his palm, while the winding stem began to constrict his blood flow. He began to panic, trying to shake the flower off his limb and look to Jedidiah for help, but to his horror, he was no longer there.
The dandelion began to shift the yellow hues of its petals to orange, then to carmine, and finally to a deep red. Its petals started to grow longer and curl upwards and turn into a rose. Thorns began to grow from the stem of the flower and stick into his arms. The stem started to wrap around his other arm and his abdomen, squeezing him tighter and tighter until he finally passed out from the lack of oxygen. He woke up.
Sydney sat straight up in his bed, shrieking in pain. It was pain in his back, as always, but it was acute this time. He reached back to rub the site of the pain but was stabbed by a spike protruding from his abdomen. He began to hyperventilate, not knowing who to ask because nobody would listen to him when he pleaded. Sydney grabbed his forearm crutches and moved over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door, and watched helplessly as his stomach began to form into sections, segmenting where thorns had previously sprouted from him. He found that he could no longer stand on his own two legs.
He fell to the floor with a resounding thud, breaking the mirror in the process. He hazily gazes at his reflection in the broken glass before he loses consciousness. The deafening shatter of the mirror had alerted the director to come check on the damage to see how much it would cost to repair. She unlatched the door with some trouble, putting her full weight on the door to push it open. In the process, she had dragged Sydney, or what was left of him, across the floor. She winced at the goop on the floor, examining the centipede she had smeared under the door. The director picks up the pieces of glass with her bare hands and tosses them onto Sydney’s desk with a sticky note of the expenses placed lovingly on top.