What I'd Do For You

In a dim-lit room sat a girl on a chair. The room smelled musty, dusty and old. It was truly unpleasant, but the girl had other things to worry about.

For an instance, she was tied to a chair and her frail, perfectly smooth lips were covered by a thick layer of duct tape. Her breathing was forced, though she knew not why, since her nose was not covered at all. She couldn't even think of other obvious reasons, such as the rope which held her in place, for she was in such great panic.

Why would anyone want to kidnap her? Yes, her parents did have some money, but she wasn't any ambassador's daughter or an heir to millions of dollars and a multibillionaire franchise...

An old, creaky door at the side of the room opened up and a figure emerged from the shadows. The figure's face was obscured by a hooded sweater.

The girl's eyes widened as the figure pulled back the hood to reveal a familiar face.

They had once been friends, but fate and love had separated them; the girl had once dated the same guy her capturer was dating. But still, why would she want to kidnap the girl?

Slowly and with an air of annoyance, the capturer walked closer to the girl and stared down at her. There were deep purple bags under the capturer's eyes, and her brows were lightly furrowed with anger and resentment.

"Well," began the capturer. "You never thought you'd find yourself in this situation, did you, Danielle? Your life was too perfect for something like this to happen, eh?"

Tears began to fall down Danielle's face and soft moans struggled to get past the layer of duct tape over her mouth.

The capturer made a mocking pout. "Aw, the princess is sad? Well, too bad. Life isn't always the fairy tail you filthy rich people live in."

She raised a hand and ardently landed a brutal slap on Danielle's face. A smile full of satisfaction and sadism lit up the capturer's face as she heard Danielle's muffled scream.

Danielle began to thrash around in the chair, tears flowing like two wild rivers from eyes that spat anger.

The capturer laughed at Danielle's suffering, at her inability to do anything to save herself. Still giggling, she raised her other hand and slapped Danielle again.

Almost immediately, the capturer's mood changed from blissful to furious. She barked out a stream of insults in a voice that became hoarse as the pain soaked through her mask of rage.

"How could you even call yourself human?! You know how much you made him suffer? I'm still picking up the broken pieces!" Tears began to run down her dirty face as she screamed wildly into Danielle's face. "You have no idea what love is, you whore. You never loved him like I do, you were never good enough for him. What was he, your slave or your lover? And even after you were the one who left him, you didn't want him to date anyone else. You are the most selfish person I know. And you're so plastic, too!! How could he ever had dated someone like you?"

She had to stop and take in big breaths to calm herself down; she had almost dried off Danielle's face for screaming into it so hard. The capturer turned around and walked toward the wall. She put her head against it and closed her eyes. Slowly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a needle. From her other pocket, she retrieved a small bottle of red nail polish, one that she had found in Danielle's purse.

"Now," the capturer said, walking back towards Danielle with one item on each hand, "it's time to get ready for the great finale." She smiled and held up both items for Danielle to see.

Upon seeing these two things, Danielle started to tremble as if she had an internal earthquake. She had a pretty good guess of what the capturer intended to do with them.

"You look sad," the capturer said smiling and opening the small bottle of nail polish. "Why don't we add a smile to that lovely face of yours? It's perfect anyway, isn't it?" She took the small brush and painted a smile on the duct tape that covered Danielle's face. She then tossed the brush aside and stepped back to take a look.

"There! Much better. Now moving on to business..."

The capturer paused before opening the needle. "You know," she said, "I'm not doing this for money or because I am sadist...Well, maybe I am a bit of a sadist, but the point is I'm doing this to show you that being a bitch never pays off. And I don't regret that you might be prettier than me, or girlier than me or richer or better in any other way. What I really regret is that I didn't meet him before you did. Do you have any idea of how much pain we would've all avoided had I been in his life instead of you? I'll just say I think it would've been more than what you are about to feel."

With a smile and one last look into Danielle's frightened face, the capturer removed the safety cap from the needle and withdrew some red nail polish. She got rid of the air bubbles as she had so often seen doctors do, and sat on Danielle's lap.

Danielle had begun thrashing and screaming again, but in one swift movement the capturer held her head still and inserted the needle into Danielle's neck.

"I always thought there was something synthetic about you," she said very matter-of-factly, while pushing the red liquid into Danielle's veins.

The capturer felt Danielle whimper and shake as the liquid hardened inside her, slowing down and eventually stopping her blood flow. She stood up and watched Danielle's limbs go limp and her eyes roll into the back of her head. Feeling some pity for the dead girl, she ripped off the duct tape and let Danielle exhale her last breath.


Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amehcaek/2352449300/

Cancer

Everything gives you cancer. At least nowadays it does. I wonder if everything gave as much cancer a good 50 years back? Or is it just because of all the medical advances of the modern world?

What if we didn't know about cancer, would smoking still be bad? Would our lungs rot away?

This is similar to that question about the tree falling in the forest. If no one hears the tree when it falls, does it still make a sound?

Why do we ask questions, anyway? Why do we stop and think about what will happen? About how a roller coaster ride or a couple shots of tequila could send us into the grave? Everything could end this so-called life of ours. Life ends, anyway. And still, we choose not to smoke pot in college or not to stay up late so often just so we can live a few years more.

But something great could happen to me in those years when I outlived all of my friends. Not that it matters that I'll be alone and a bag of crap and old bones, does it? I did get those extra years I fought for when I said no to unprotected sex.

So maybe when I'm about to die I'll get really wasted, I'll do all the drugs I can find, I'll crash into all the parties in town, I'll have sex with all the chicks I can afford. Maybe then all that goddamned abstinence will be put to good use.


Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/bluegrrl/403189099/

Roadtrip

Everything went by quickly, the forest was just a blur on the other side of the window.

Her earphones blasted music she wasn't really listening to. She just needed something to block out the rest of the world and leave her alone with the existential part of her mind.

The forest was an hour ago. She had already listened to 35 songs, but who was counting when you had life to think about?

There were a million thoughts rushing through her head; she wondered about the origin of all of the restaurant and diner names she saw, she thought about the colors of walls of houses and buildings, about humans, about life, the universe, anything and everything. She just thought.

She didn't like to drive because she had to focus, something that was near impossible when she was in a car.

Back home, at school or pretty much anywhere she went there were voices, people, advertisings, distractions. The whole world was a distraction she was trapped in. Half the time, she didn't mind, but came a time when she just wanted to pop out of her body and run deep into a forest, where the ground, covered with leaves and trapped humidity, would sink gently beneath the weight of her body. She wanted to hear the voice in her head against the quiet of the unperturbed natural sanctuaries where bulldozers and cement had not yet opaqued the landscape.

She didn't belong in the suburbs, with all those clone houses with their trimmed grass and SUVs, where the only way to tell everything apart is the colors. Everything was too controlled, too perfect, too engineered; it was unnatural and it made her sick.

Roadtrips were her scapegoats. She didn't talk, she didn't listen and she didn't have to feel her stomach acid crawling back up her throat, she didn't bite her nails nor did she want to hurt herself; she momentarily forgot about the lack of courage that kept her from running away from that bleak, commercial and hypocritical life she had.



Photo:
http://flickr.com/photos/lostmodern/128469766/

Choices

A large portion of our insignificant lives is dedicated to getting into a good college.

It starts with all those toys and baby books parents buy. They buy stuff that will help the baby learn and grow smart and whatnot. They even make the poor kids watch those crap shows about colors and letters and numbers that have those creepy mutant animals/whatever they are as hosts. And those shows just get weirder every day.

Then you go to preschool where to learn to mingle with other children and I guess that's the point in life where you're formally introduced to human interactions, communication, society, all that good stuff that you kind of hate later, if you happen to turn into a rebellious little social outcast teenager.

And then comes school. That's something we all hate but have to go through to kind of get a sense of what the hell kind of world we're living in. Oh no, wait, that's college; school is just the incubator. Anyway. You learn not only academic stuff but also the basics of society and how humanity works: the bullies (whose role is later taken on by bosses and the occasional abusive partner), the cliques, the things you put a hell of a lot of effort into just so life can squish you like an insignificant little bug (yes, I'm talking about tests and examinations...hooray!). We go through so much shit in school, all the while thinking, "man, I can't wait for this to be over!".

Oh really? But what comes after school? Another 4 (or even more! holy crap!) goddamn years of work, and this time ON YOUR OWN. No mom or dad to help you finish the science fair project or to wake you up in the mornings so you're not late to school. In less than a year you make this huge jump in independency (well, not everyone, but a good deal of people. And anyway, what I'm getting at is that we leave like 12 or more years of schooling - all that fucking tedious work - just to go into more? We are such goddamn masochists. Or whoever invented this was).

And then, you know, that's when you get ready to go into the REAL shark-infested pool. You know, not regular sharks, but the radioactive kind with two heads and metal claws for fins. Yeaaaah. Oh and the really fun part about the real world is that you spend your life working just so when you die they put you in a nice, expensive coffin with velvet inside and 24 karat gold details on the outside (including the handles!).

And what I've been thinking is all of this comes down to choices. Mainly your college choice, because that kind of sort of defines what you'll be doing until you kick the god-fucking-damn bucket and get your stupid fancy coffin. It's all about making the right decisions in life; paper or plastic, salad or fries, Princeton or this college in the middle of the woods no one's ever heard of...

I think it's the fact that there are so many options what makes it so frightening. It's so hard to know if you're making the best choice, especially when there are about 4 different voices in your head and none of them agree on anything. What if I fuck up and I choose the wrong major? What if I choose what college I'm going to based on where my friends are going? What if I don't get that scholarship I need and I end up going to a community college or just not going anywhere at all?

It scares me shitless that I keep changing my mind about stuff, that I can't really tell what college I'll end up in. Sometimes I worry so much about the future that it troubles the present I'm living in, and I fall into a vicious mental trap that doesn't let me sleep. And so I stay up until 5 am wondering about life, and I just wonder about everything and I know I've made the wrong choice worrying and that just screws me up all over.

But therein lies the beauty of life. We have the ability to make our lives what we want them to be. It's probably the best we can get out of it...Well, the ones who can, because there are people out there that just take what they can get and can't even bring themselves to think of other possibilities.

So, yeah, I complain about life. I bitch a lot. But think about it, life does suck for everyone, at one point or another. If you're poor, it sucks cause you have no money. If you're stinkin' rich, it sucks cause you have too much money and you have no idea of what else to do with it (after recreating yourself through surgery, of course). But, in the end, we will all die and get together in the after-life to laugh it off with a cup of coffee and some butter cookies.