Prologue.
Perception is everything.  One must survive their struggles before they can appreciate their blessings.  The conscious revolves around the beauty of change, the metamorphosis that fuels euphoria.  Depression does not strike when struggles persist.  It so bitterly attacks when there is nothing to feel at all.
The absence of sentiment clawed away at Leo internally.  His senses had been unavailing for too long.  The vibrant colors that painted his sight were dulled by the day.  The foods that sent his tongue into a frenzy of delight did nothing more but meagerly compliment dreadful school lunches and monotonous family dinners.  He longed for a smell that struck his nerves, whether it be a soothing aroma or a pungent odor, but his nose did nothing but conform to his other inefficient sense receivers.
Yet his poor reception of sound was the most strenuous steps to ascend.  Nostalgia was once a feeling that Leo never grew old of, and it was always a musical piece that brought him back to the glorious days of his innocence.  He pondered about how hearing ‘Going to California’ by Led Zeppelin inundated his memories of the seemingly bland, yet wisdom-provoking conversations with his father as they rushed down the endless highway in his 1992 Ford F-150, blasting the harmonious tune until their ears started ringing.  If that song reached his practically futile ears now, his mind would merely throw around meaningless thoughts that only pushed him deeper into the labyrinth that is the confusion of his existence.
Leo’s bedroom could easily be mistaken for the residence of a patient from the local mental asylum.  The walls couldn’t have been painted a cleaner white, stained with marks and holes that accumulated over the years of him and his older brother playing like savages.  Over the last few weeks, he completely stripped the posters that once covered the blandness.  I wouldn’t want mom to have any remnants of me, he reminded himself.  He always believed that the environment that one lives in flawlessly reflects their internal feelings.  His conflicting emptiness was well connected with the lack of self-expression that his room displayed.
His mirror-image reflected the dullness of his glare, the lack of care for his external appearance established by his stained Champion sweatshirt and torn-up pair of khakis that still hung low on his narrow waist, despite the belt that accompanied it.  As he gently lifted the mirror from his bedroom door, he tried to pull out the last bit of energy stored deep within his tangled emotions.  The mirror didn’t look to be so heavy, but Leo supposed that the brutal mixture of guanfacine and adoxa was finally starting to take effect.
‘This is the last time I’m ever going to see myself…’ He recited those words so many times since he planned his departure from the physical realm, and he truly believed that the final saying would be the catalyst for his long-lost emotions to resurface.  Nothing changed.  The time had come.
The harsh, spine-chilling sound that the shattering emitted would have mangled the ears of the average individual.  Leo remained unreactive.  Almost immediately after he smashed the mirror, the miniscule yet hasty pattering of footsteps, undoubtedly his mother’s, gradually crescendoed like the beats of a sorrow-influenced symphony. ‘Leonard?  Sweety, are you alright?’ Her voice was traced with signs of concern, and for a second Leo reconsidered his actions.  The deeds are done, he reminded himself bluntly.  I can’t go back now.
He didn’t respond.  Silence persisted for another eerie moment before she called out for him again, her voice even more emotional than the previous shout.  He couldn’t sense the pain of his legs numbing, but he knew the deactivation of his limbs was imminent.  Leo lay fetal in his bed, stripped of all its sheets and comforters that now palled the glass remnants of his final self. 
Leo’s eyes were transfixed on the raggedy bookshelf, his tedious sight attempting to focus on one spot.  His eyes bounced around with the rhythm of his diminishing heartbeat, catching the last bits of everything he ever knew before he was sent to a new realm, a higher realm in his hopes. 
It wasn’t until the blotches of maroon and cerulean light stained his vision that he realized why no feelings of nostalgia inundated his aching heart. ‘Oh yeah,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘I did this to myself.  Nobody but...me…’ His mouth was sealed shut.  Scattered words permeated the defense of the white walls, obviously coming from his mom, but nothing was coherent.
His peripherals were nothing but blurs at this point, impossible to comprehend.  His eyes darted over to the bookshelf, his final attempt to siphon the sentiments of this monotonous world that sucked the vitality out of his feeble soul.  A shocking surge of excitement pulsed through the veins that the pills were simultaneously shutting down, the final push that just barely prolonged his demise.  A record lay in front of the bookshelf, palled with a slim coat of dust.  The eyes of an ancient man glared back at him with a look of neither disgust nor pride.  Simply authenticity.  The untitled fourth album of Led Zeppelin, a legendary arrangement of some of music’s finest. 
Leo could only remember Going to California, how great it made him feel back then.  Maybe if I heard it now, I’d appreciate it a bit more like back then.  Or would it make me regret never pushing my limits?  I kind of wish…
Eyes closed.  Tastebuds destroyed.  Touch demolished.  Nose stuffed.  Eighty percent of his composition had been destroyed.  Yet the second he passed on, the downfall of those senses brought the resurrection of his hearing.  Not an alternative realm, but a coeval art hidden behind the illusions of his perception.