'John Simons' - Part 1

John Simons was not an ordinary little boy; both of his names were first names, for example. It was not only his unfortunate name that made little Johnny so special; he had his unfortunate accident to thank for that, too.

After one year and seventeen hours spent comatose in intensive care, John Simons finally stood up. Some people said that it was just his time to wake, but such miracles don't happen every day. Johnny knew why he had stood up and had the glint of purpose in his eyes to prove it.

He was a quiet boy. He had to be, he'd been asleep for very slightly over a year. His thoughts, plans and schemes couldn't be stopped by a bout of drowsiness, though. He was up and about and knew what he had to do.

"The billboards are different" he said to himself.
"Different from what?" said the taxi driver.
"nothing"

If the billboards were too much for him, his front door almost had him in tears. He'd painted the door green with his Mum when he was a child, so that it was different from every other black door in an act of rebellion against the neighbourhood watch. He'd always been curious of the neighbourhood watch.

When he was eleven the neighbourhood watch had a vote to decide whether or not he could keep his telescope aimed out of his window or not. Some of his nosey neighbours had complained that they'd been watching and saw him looking out of his window at nights. As a passive pre-teen, he hadn't contested the decision that he could no longer look at the sky. Ironically he'd only been looking at the sky, so that he could forget about the curtain twitching backdrop to his life. He could feel their eyes on him now and could hear the buzzing of the phone lines, that meant they would all know he was home within the next five minutes.

As he walked through the squeaky gate up to the now black front door and put his hand on the door knob, he couldn't possibly have imagined how much of his life inside was gone.