Finding beauty in the dark.

Eric had run away. He was now hiding in one of his favourite spots: under the stairs, of Corridor 4, Subsection b.

This underground maze of shelters and bunkers was a concrete labyrinth of bomb-resistant corridors, access points, storage units and residential quarters that Eric, aged 7, called his home. He couldn’t remember life before the shelter.

“You were only a baby when life went to hell,” his mom would say when she’s giving him another lecture of things he couldn’t comprehend and therefore shouldn’t do.

Like yesterday: “Don’t play with rusty nails!” she shouted suddenly, completely startling him which ironically nearly made him to stab the nail right into his hand. “It’s not like pre-shelter days we don’t have the shots to treat tetanus!”

“What’s tetanus?”

“Something that can kill you-you wouldn’t understand. You were only a baby when life went to hell!”

So many things he didn’t understand. He had been “sheltered” quite literally from all of it. His mom rarely spoke of those times and if she did, it was to reprimand or on her sad days of just lying in bed when she would, in a trance-like state, reminisce with glazed-eyes and wild hair, about drinking in nightclubs with her friends, family lunches at the pub, going to the beach and making sandcastles.

“What’s a sandcastle?”

“Oh Eric. You wouldn’t understand- you were just a baby when life when to hell.”

But now it was time to go back outside; into the world.

His mom woke him up early yesterday morning, her cheeks flushed with a pink glow, her blonde hair combed and pretty, her blue eyes sparkling with something he hadn’t seen before- sparkling with life.

“We can go out tomorrow!” She exclaimed. “We can go out into the sunshine…the virus has gone. It’s all clear!”

Eric shrugged. “Ok”.

“Honey do you know what this means? You can play outside, in a park or at the beach!”

“I like playing in corridor 4.” He replied blandly and watched the light in his mom’s eyes fade away.

He had seen that reaction before- happy to anger in a flash - and he wished he could have changed his response. She stomped over to a drawer in their small bunkered room, pulled it out of its rickety wooden frame and reached behind it. She had hidden some photographs back there; ones he had never seen before.

“Look.” She said sitting beside him on his bed. “These were too painful for me to look at before. But look how beautiful these places were.”

There were only four faded photographs but they did look beautiful. Blue sea, white sands, kites flying in the sky, children playing in the sand.

“Those are sandcastles.” She pointed out as Eric studied them. His mom was in one picture, with what must have been her family. They were all smiling with huge, goofy smiles, his mom was suspended in a freeze frame whilst jumping in the air, her blonde hair forming a flowing golden halo around her, her face reflecting the sunshine and radiating pure joy.

“You’ve never been outside,” His mom was explaining as Eric remained fixated on the photos. “but it’s bright, the air is fresh and it’s just….beautiful.”

He noticed the tears gathering in her blue eyes and he felt guilty; he just didn’t understand.

“But mom,” he said laying his hand on hers. “The dark can be beautiful too.”

And it was true; he loved his home. He liked the subterranean warmth, the intricate jungle of hiding places he and his friends had discovered. He liked how people all knew who he was and knew he was good at climbing and getting into small spaces. He liked how he could wander around in safety and knew exactly where to go when older ones were constantly getting lost. Whilst his mom mourned her memories of an outside world in the light; he was still creating his memories of a sheltered world in the dark and he wasn’t ready to leave them behind.

So now he was hiding, hoping his mom wouldn’t think to look here.

“Just one more day”, he thought to himself whilst doodling with crayon on a concrete wall. “Just one more day in this underground home and then maybe I’ll be ready to step out and build sandcastles in a bright new world.”