Framed

“What happened? Where am I?”

He stood erect. Although feeling alive, he could only move his eyeballs. What he saw was a magnified view of a living room: everything looked colossal.

He observed movement. The owner of the limping walk looked so familiar.  An old man’s gigantic face moved toward him. It was unmistakably someone he met in his recent past.

Past? Where did time go? His recollection hovered in a limbo, a collection of scenes he accepted as his own. But why was he immobile?

Huge pale lips uttered something yet he could not understand a word of it. If he could have continued his lip reading lessons before, he could have deciphered the muted message.

If only. Two words of despair that apparently had more meaning to him at the moment. His error in judgment because of his life-long beliefs resulted to his imprisonment in a twilight zone.

The main door opened. A teenager came forward into the living room; curiosity was etched on his face, naivete with his tiptoeing, another victim falling into the trap.

Like deja vu, the old man repeated his practiced routine. This time around, he saw the finger pointed to him and the others in the gallery. He felt a surreal hunch; the youngster would join them later.

However, after a few minutes passed, an eternity to him, he noticed the old man brought food in the table. The youngster was comfortably seated, seemingly not as a scared prisoner but as a welcomed visitor who decided to stay for good.

His mind raced. Escape was the only reason he was not yet willing to accept his fate. There’s got to be a way to reverse the process.

The old man wrote something in a piece of paper. Whatever the message was, he hoped it was to give him another chance at living normally. Better be a mobile prisoner than a stationary printed statue.

Shown to him, the bold letters looked like the Hollywood sign seen up close. Yet, when the six letter word registered its meaning in his consciousness, all he could do was confirm his fears: the old man pointed to the youngster.

O R P H A N

It was final. He could only yell in frustration.

“Let me get out of here!”

Note: The series starts with Follow the Lead, followed by Enigma, Stay, Imagine and Closed Space.)

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