A short tale of an unusual 20 year old.

The pure white deck chair was too hot, but the sand would be hotter, so he stayed there and convinced himself he could be strong enough to survive - this was supposed to be pleasurable. From within his eyelids seemed in livid conflagration and for his body; its withered pallid frame hung limp across the wooden slats like an Ivorian goat cadaver.

He had recently learned to read, but the glare from the pages gave him migraines so he was happy just splayed upon the waterfront. The body was basted with thick sun cream like a whole chicken,a sloppy supper flaccid upon the middle tray and resigned to its fate. Fan assisted by a team of nubile nymphs, his giblets crackled with the prospect of being charred.

Next door, another invalid resided, he was making jokes, Michael opened his eyes and watched the fat man's mouth glubbing;

"What do you call a tart who lies on beaches too long?.....Barbie!"

The locomotive laugh followed, a stuck record with a squealing vocalist. Horrid.
It couldn't try Michael however. Previously Michael had lived in such isolation that even laughter was a rare commodity. He had managed to swing his lolling head back up towards the sunlight, and closing up once more he returned to following the thin wires of blood draining from one side of the lid to the other. When he had the energy he would shut his eyes really tight, and a purple mist would descend, drifting objects would appear as if he had willed them, and he realised what it might be like to be blind. Was the sun still there? What was the sun - for he couldn't remember it? Were the people he had met all real? and other philosophical notions with which we can all empathise. For him this feeling was approxiamately 144 times stronger than our understanding of it, due to historical events in Michael's life.

He opened his eyes slowly, and with the sun seeping in, he realised that the world was, as usual, a predictable place. It was logical - the sun would be there. Conceivably however, there was a small chance of an extraordinary factor intervening. Any given second a monumental catastrophe could occur - Meteorites, Yellowstone, An as yet unknown stellar event reducing us to particles - but aside from this things were predictable. His own feelings towards his fellow humans thus led him to like a balance - to retain that state of expectancy of the inevitable. Strange in one who had spent 15 Years trapped in the same room by his deranged parents. What he thought had been the taste of food had actually been his paternal faeces. Odd to think he craved these meals, firstly to prevent the pain of hunger, but most he looked forward to washing the taste away. The long thin tap was one of his few companions - an anthropomorphised ally. He had arrived at the conclusion, over the years that other humans might be like Mr Tap - rather quiet and noble. He often heard shouting and other noises from his custodians, but had only seen their eyes and their hammy assholes through the door slit.

Thinking of these experiences - as he would do every day - he could not now believe his opportunity, his unbelieveable change of circumstances. In the five years since his release from a macabre precinct of perfect insanity, he had reinvented himself. He was proud to have survived, and every morning was a pleasure to taste. Yesterday's delight was the crisp jolt of Buck's Fizz. For someone still so frail, it was quite a knockout. The trust, and most importantly its benefactor had seen to it that he, amongst 49 other social or physical outcasts, had had the privilege of the island for an entire month. To be frank, since his release, the contrasts evident in his life could not have been more total - charity such as this was constant. He could have written his life story on a billboard, stood in Leicester Square and spent the proceeds on beluga caviar for the cost of no effort. This felt like cheating.

Regardless, the sun was something he had gradually begun to tolerate. At first, weeks had passed under UV stimulation therapy, his wrent body suffering the glare until he was eventually ready to go outside. He had been forewarned as regards the star's furious power - but nothing could have prepared him for that which we take for granted. Its energy and vivacity set him alight within, the ultimate in pathetic fallacy - the rejuventated human, finally getting his chance to shine. As he thought how far he had come since that day, the sun emerging to a new dawn, in his memoirs he would divide his life in two - one the night and one the day, and he soon hoped to be able to speak.