Because we certainly don’t consider ourselves blessed in any common acceptable meaning of the word. Everytime I log on it’s a midnight matinee of ‘Woe is me!’ and ‘Heartbreak pity and the Bittertones’, and I’ll admit. I’m a lonely, angry, bitter fuck of a girl who hates current society and wishes that we’d make some headway in getting a decent population of ‘good’ people here. I truley do.
But none of this is serious, we fail to realize. Sure, it might be our one time around [might be, might I be wrong?] but in the end nobody makes it out alive, so live it up while you can. Live, live, live until you can’t live no more and stuff a sock in it, hot-head. We’re all going to the same place eventually - to the center of a universe. Some of us quicker than others.
So I’m talking, and talking and talking and I’m playing and playing and playing, and we reach the star finally (the holiest of holies, that fucking star) and the fucking screen winds down to black and for five minutes I sit there, staring at the television with a kind of mystified look on my face before restarting it. talking, tlaking, talking, yelling at the rabbit, and I reach that damn star a second time, and it winds down to black - I only wait two minutes before trying to clean teh disk and play a third time. By now I’m irritated so I call my beloved customer service of nintendo [they are amazing] and I am greeted with the mario theme song, and it makes me giggle.
So being on hold’s not too bad, this guy gets on - I think his name is George, and he asks me questions, puts me on hold, tells me how to reset, puts me on hold agian,a nd then stays on the line for fifteen minutes as I play up to the black screen again, and we’re talking.
And talking.
And talking.
And I’m really happy, like freakishly happy. I feel honored, like this is the quarterback of the football team or something telling me about how he’s not fond of spiders [if I could remember what those things were from ghost in the shell, I’d have made a smart comment, but I didn’t need to] and he loves final fantasy, and somewhere in there I’m also insanely depressed about this happy feeling because this is the first time I’ve felt it in ages - not only have I had no conversations that really make me goofy-happy, but I am aware of it and getting my goofy-happy fix off of some poor geeky boy who’s sitting there, probably gonna get yelled at for chillin’ out and talking to me while I run after Goombas and fling the world’s most iconic plumber through space.
And this pisses me off.
So I think about Gamestop, and remember that I started getting that same inkling of a feeling, but it felt more like I was back at Lincoln with my ‘group’ lounging pre-school in the library and I’m talking to the guy at the counter about a DSi I intend on buying myself for christmas and we start talking about the darksiders and god of war and it’s just so fucking cool to be talking to someone who’s not trying to outwit me and watching his buddy kind of squirm when I address him. It makes me giggle now.
But now I’m really unhappy, because most of the gamers in KC that I’ve met are… Idiots, insensitive, jackasses… Can I stop? So I’m wondering now - why the fuck are there no cool gamer boys? Why is it I only feel like I’ve had a successful conversation when I’m on the line with customer support?
You know why? Because you all suck.
Like black holes.
Good night.
And the strength in my bones is so much more than I’ve shown, it’s becomes something I desire to hone so maybe, one day, I’ll pick up that phone, and tell you how I really feel about your love on loan - I’ll pick it up and hear the ceaseless drone of that fucking dial tone.
“Dance with me!” She shouted across the canyon and he barely caught it. He squinted against the sun, eyes narrowed and hand pressed to his brow blocking out the sun. “Dance with me, come on!” She shouted again, and his eyes widened in confusion, brows knit high up on his forehead. He could barely make out her outstretched arm, her body pressed long and flat against the burning hot rock. How many days had he laid there in almost the exact same pose, watching intently as she milled about on her side of the canyon? Now only to hear her voice, his blood rushed through his veins, thundering in his ears.
“What?” He shouted back, incredulous as she repeated herself, demanding he dance with her. She made an effort to get her point across by holding her hands out before her in the position that a lady would hold them on her partner during the waltz, gracefully twirling about so close to the edge that he could swear his heart stopped several times, expecting her to stop, arms to pinwheel desperately before she’d drop down, down, down into the belly of the canyon, body falling useless at the edge of the muddy red river in a crumpled heap… But she didn’t. As if by magic she flirted with the danger of death like some fairytale queen of illusion. He understood perfectly, but he couldn’t get enough of watching her swells and steps. She cast a charming grin over her shoulder with one last swirl before shouting it again. “Dance with me!”
Yet again she extended one arm, hand outstretched over the rim of the canyon, grasping, reaching, begging to be clasped, and he reached out as well. “Dance with you? I can’t even hold you!” But he was laughing, because of how absurd it sounded - he laughed in his head as well because of how absurd it sounded in there as well, the idea that he loved this girl that only now he’d heard speak. He stood as well, reaching out to her. “Come on, just a little further!” She shouted, now hanging one foot over the edge, as if to plant it solidly before her… He did the same, and so she led him into a death march over the edge and they fell head over heels into the red sandy bottom of the canyon, with nothing but their bodily damage and plumes of red, red, muddy blood dust drifting across the river and dance did they ever.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling, like the feeling you get when the dumb blonde bitch goes looking for her beau at Crystal Lake in the middle of the night wearing only her panties and his shirt that’s been stuck strangely to her body by spray adhesive. Yeah, that kind of feeling.
Or was the brunette?
It evades me like good conversation.
Truth # 1
I love my mommy and daddy and kitty and fishie and brother.
They are the best family in the world.
Childish script brought a nostalgic smile to her lips two or three days after her initial discovery of the journal and declaration of her never ending wealth of woe in the count down to the time when her bodily functions would cease and she would be laid to rot or burn. She’d vowed not to blame the book and to attempt to control her emotions as much as possible, however she could not stop herself from smiling, and eventually crying as she glanced over her shoulder to the wall hung with many many a picture of her smiling relatives, former self, and pets, as well as those of Matthew’s family and their small white wedding. She caught herself entranced by an image of her proudly holding her kitty under the armpits in a tight hug to her chest. Her two front teeth were missing, her tongue pushing into the gap in a wet, happy grin of a child.
Moe had indeed been the best kitty at that time. She remembered adamantly denying classmates attempts to say that cats were the most disgusting species of pet on earth and even punching Sarah Brown in the mouth when she’d come to visit after school for juice and public television, and intentionally kicked the poor tortoise shell in the ribs when he’d come to walk his darling little human home. A smug grin of pride crept onto her face despite having gotten one hell of a yelling at before she could explain she’d knocked that filthy little bitch’s front teeth out and sent her hollering home.
Though she had no pictures of her beloved betta swimming continually about his plastic globe she remembered very well the tortures the poor fish went through in his five years of life. Naturally curious and slightly cruel (as children commonly are), she’d removed him from his watery home more than once and attempted to bathe him (he smelled like fish!) in a shallow dish of unaged, untreated tap water. What she couldn’t remember was if she’d named him or not - so that nameless handsome fish swam ceaselessly around in her mind, occasionally chasing fingertips dragged along the sides of the tank or gasping helplessly in a pudgy, child-like palm.
-wip-
At first she refused to admit her mortality, ignoring the doctor’s repeat calls that demanded she see an oncologist for her own good. Rather, she’d taken to packing up, searching around the house for all the little odds and ends that one could ever want to take with them on a trip, and set about bagging and boxing, labling and taping with purpose. She’d gotten about to those few boxes that had never been unpacked in the closet under a drift of fallen clothes and shoes, where she would be trapped for a good hour or so. Cutting the tape and pulling each book out individually gave great insight into her literary life a year ago when she’d moved in with her beloved Mattie shortly before their wedding. Philip K. Dick dominated the volumes, a few Popular Science magazines grouped and organized by month, the pages dogeared with the subscription cards falling out from between the pages. Sketchbooks and old classics sat there in silence, very few having been read at all. Those that had lamented their battered leather and canvas covers and broken spines, green and orange paper tags stapled to the last page with black grease crayon scrawled and smeared with the given price - evidence they’d been salvaged from a thriftstore.
What caught her attention the longest, however, was a green journal bound in slick paper glued onto cardboard. Pale green pages were torn and scribbled with child-like writing that gradually progressed into small, almost neat adolesence to doctor-like script during the later highschool years. The themes written varied from day to day, paragraph to paragraph, sometimes even word to word. Fifteen pages in there was a short brainstorming session which declared boldly and neatly across the lines that life had twenty three, and only twenty three truths to it. Flipping through she found that the book contained twenty-two numbered truths, each with a paragraph describing them written beneath that.
She began to remember, and to cry, when she’d realize just how short her life had been… What had it been, five years ago she wrote the twenty second truth in her Sophomore English class? Full of self pity she reminded herself of past flings (short and long between), regretting ever having let them go.
This time her mood stabilized rather quickly. Suspicious she eyed the telephone with its obnoxious beep declaring she’d intentionally missed those calls and she almost touched the shiny plastic object - almost, before she was drawn back into a woeful despair.
“Oh god,” To any that would listen, “Why am I here?”
That night had dragged on long and lonely, the Marx household had broken down by the next morning into angry yelling and aggressive words. Matthew Marx made no attempt to demand his engagement or wedding rings back, though he made it very clear that he wouldn’t be sleeping in their bed tonight, and if he had his way, ever again. Dejected, abandoned, and infuriated Josephine commanded him out with his meager trashbag of clothes and belongings, grabbing her head in her hands and pacing stiffly like some caged, taunted beast.
She’d made her mind up moments later, lunging at the door, opening it, as if to shout after her retreating coward of a husband, only to take a deep breath and slam the door shut just as hard as she could, face screwed up in an anquished wail as she slumped against the closed door, down to the ground in defeat. Well into the afternoon she sat there, having pulled her legs up to her chest after a long while wordlessly cursing the world and whatever creator had spun her existance to be so short and in the end unfulfilling. She would sleep there against the door, as if hoping that ‘in sickness and in health’ might ring through his mind and change it.
Needless to say he didn’t turn back - Matthew set about moving into his parent’s basement, chilly moving along in life as if she’d been an over reactive girlfriend tossing his clothes onto the streets of their chilly little town. For reasons he couldn’t explain he was furious with her for playing unwilling host to the tumor. Though he knew that it wasn’t her fault she was weak, disgustingly so, and so very vilified in his tired little mind.
Josephine’s nails sunk into his wrist, her breath drawn in short, gasping takes and each rapid blink a dramatic snapshot of the world. Muscles stiffened into living rigor, hands caught like arthritic claws gnarled and twisted. A panicked moan poisoned the air as stiff limbs and joints jerked and seized. A froth of blood spilling over her chin, that brave tongue tip a casualty of the night’s hysterics, a scar to wear as evidence to the emergency room after moaning had subsided into soft sobs and leaden limbs had fallen limp.
After many long hours being short ordered to near top the list of priorities of the hospital staff that night and shuttled through imaging machines that peered into the depths and shallows of her mortal coil, they’d come to a very grave conclusion, one that turned Matthew with his bandaged wrist and stoic and blank. She’d imprinted the half moon prints of her nails into his wrist and the knowledge of her impending death.
“Six months, a year at best.”
—
NaNoWriMo! I think. >:
So, one… sixteeth of a page down, 99 15/16 to go.
