It was the renouncement of a christian name; replacement of the heir, an inoperable stigma portrayed the sole beneficiary. Similar to most prologues, the trek began aboard a basic automobile. Consignment lullabied by miles of motor hum; an adolescent’s doze had awoken within the achromatized walls of involuntary confinement. Whereabouts played truant, for the absence of bread crumbs laid hindrance on any thoughts of escape. Insurgency towards the advocate ran amuck, detesting an evaluation term set by authority for the apparent lack thereof. In correction to a misguided teenaged maelstrom, wings of the innocence could only spread unclipped; and effortlessly blame trouble for being far too cheap and easy.

“Refute the cure for boredom,” claimed the rabid monkey, as he mischievously dangled atop ceiling pipes from above. Customarily, conduct as such adjudged a one-way ticket to the rubber room; which unlike popular belief of being padded, was simply not. Void of any plush comfort, the space was carpeted head-to-toe with a thick woven fabric; inadequate in absorption, as the pungent stench of human excrement was always prevalent.

Across cubic solitude, was the bedlamite’s porthole; wrought iron forged in intricate structure, as panes of an oriel-styled window stood tall. Beyond this, only prismatic light could exist. Invigorating slices of razor sunshine obscured all vision and optics, misconstruing those sought-after meadows of sovereignty; they would always remain undistinguished. A high tolerance for captivity was in development; it ran parallel with palpable moments of peace. And in due time, czars of innovation sat admirably. Once the mechanism bolted from behind with metallic click, the surrealistic world became ours for the taking.

I was a restless youth, to put it mildly, and hanging from the pipeline seemed like an amusing exercise in rebellious atrocity; at least up until the day my old roommate tried it. Escorted by an unyielding bed sheet knot, the vertical free-fall between a duet of dressers had snapped the buoyancy of two once very proud parents. In spite of evidence that governing a man’s prerogative has restrictions, I would imagine pink-slips for the administration became rather abundant. In return, the blind eye was immediately turned and all habitants were rewarded with a grace period of total anarchy. In regard to an individual and his personal liability, this was no cry-for-help; it was none other than a brilliantly executed exit strategy.

Present day, misplacement describes best the vertigo of waking in strange places. A manageable nausea up till the artless moment of realization that this unfamiliar berth is your new home. With rheum wiped twice, wormholes gently come to focus; it appears I have bartered the antique burial ground for an empyrean cosmic string. Physique at relative rest, cognition jounces through antagonizing coils of deja vu; traveling to a time when belts and shoelaces were as lost as I was.