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"Gabriel, stop it." Sit still, don’t ask stupid questions, just behave. Whether with his father in the shop, or at Sunday mass with his mother, it all began the same way. He was six years old, curious and restless: knobbly legs that wouldn’t stop kicking, a brain so full of noise he wondered if everyone around him could hear it too. They had to if his parents kept telling him to be quiet.
"Gabriel, stop it." From six to sixteen not much had changed except his father had gone. It left his mother as the lone chastiser, so she doubled the arsenal in compensation. Stop staring, say something once in a while, won’t you? Such an odd child. He was taller then, too tall, and had finally learned to sit still. It was the brain that bothered him relentlessly, growing even louder over the years. A symphony of ticking clocks, never ending, they followed him to his dreams, and in that world he’d catch a glimpse of the truth, all of them staring down, looming over him.
"Gabriel, stop it." Don’t touch, we can’t, this is wrong. He’d escaped from his mother’s apartment into a personalized prison. As a young man, independent, the pattern refused to break. Elle was beautiful, out of his league, yet he could still taste her last kiss on his lips. Her nimble fingers brushed against his chest, and his skin tingled beneath a pressed shirt. She watched her as she made an excuse, rose from the couch and walked towards the door with eyes down cast. She looked guilty, and it bothered him to no end that he didn’t understand why.
The world kept telling him to stop, and he seemed content to listen.