Patrick was a young boy of the age of 23. Most people would call him a young man but he was anything but, his face was still childlike with large gold eyes that still glimmered with awe at a sunset. He had yet to be so beaten by the world that his naivety turned to bitterness but this does not mean that the world had been unusually grateful to him, in fact the world seemed to be unfair and cruel to him and nothing it could do seemed to damper his spirits or whisked the smile from his lips for more than a few weeks.
Patrick was a shy boy with brown wavy ear length hair. One of the few things he hated was public speaking and large gatherings, unless of course it involved some liquid courage. He seemed to be frightened of the world that tried so hard to break him. He was scared of the dark, loud sudden noises, being alone, crowds, large dogs (and he wasn’t practically fond of the smaller ones either), guns, doctors, the ocean, and speeding are a few of his fears but the one thing he fears above all is failure. So you can imagine how devastated he was when he received notice 3 years ago that he wasn’t meeting his college expectations and, to put it nicely, had been asked to leave.
This was the warning sign that the world had turned on him. A year after receiving his letter his father and mother were killed in a drunk driving accident, short 8 months after the incident that had shaken him and his older sister’s foundation his sister went missing. The authorities had told him they weren’t expecting to find her alive. He was still waiting on closure. Perhaps you think it’s shameful that this young boy has been able to smile soon after the tragic events had taken place.
The first time Patrick smiled after his parents died was at their funeral as he wiped tears from his eyes and enjoyed swapping stories from his parents’ oldest friends. After his sister disappeared his first smile was in the city park, the trees were yellow and the sun shone through them giving the park a hue of gold. He would normally walk pass the playground and to a bench near a crossroad where it sat in usual solitude where he would eat a flattened sandwich and flip through a book. Today he paused for a minute to watch two children arguing, the taller brunette girl seemed to be lecturing the blond boy who pouted and glared stubbornly at her. He was reminded of the time his sister had fought with him and most of the time he came out the most injured. 3 black eyes, 4 bloody noses, a split lip, and three fingernail marks in his left cheek. It was needless to say Patrick never worried about his sister handling anything physical but now that he thought about it maybe he should have.
Just a little preview of an idea I've got brewing in my brain.
Title is a quote by Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960
Picture: Split ends by xStacyxAnnx found here: ( http://xstacyxannx.deviantart.com/ )
It's the closest thing I could find that really matched my image of Patrick even if he is a bit younger. I'll bs and say it's his maturity level not that he's immature but his ability to handle difficulty situations and stress is about the same as a child's.
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