The Husk
Picture a little boy sitting at a cheap wooden dining table, his tiny legs swinging of the edge of the seat. He sits there with a plate of vegetables in front of his faces, arms folded and has a look of utter determination. As his mother walked in, she scolded him saying "You will not be eating anything else until you finish those vegetables first!"
The boy shrugged and continued to stare at the plate.
15 years later we see the boy, older now and working a dead end job making fast food for ungrateful customers. He stands outside in the back parking lot and lights his last cigarette. Taking in a cloud of smoke, he sighs deeply and exhales into the cold, drizzly night. The boy had only been to college for a few months before already failing out and moving back home. Too much partying apparently. So now he works, saving money to go to college in the future for a degree he doesn't even know he wants. Why even bother? He thinks this to himself over and over, day after day. What's the point in going back for something he'll only end up hating even more than what he does now. As he looks up at the dark sky, made deeper by the heavy clouds, he exhales again with an air of desperation. If there was something out there that could make him happy... At this point he'd take something that's even remotely interesting, but nothing remains.
Apathy clouds his judgment, making every decision seem futile and unimportant. But in the end, what was he to do? No one really matters and he has no purpose. There used to be passion behind all he did, good and bad. But now he was nothing but a lackluster husk of his former self. Surely I'm too young to be dealing with something like this. Yet there he was, wasting away.