“Why were you in such a hurry to leave this Earth?” he asked the tombstone. “Were we not good enough to stay around?”
“If I had another chance, I’d be better. Were you so eager to be an angel?” tears fell from his eyes onto the amaryllis flowers below. “I’d move mountains and bring heaven to earth, so you could stay with us.”
He'd never felt more powerless. Those simple words he could spout out endlessly. But they didn’t mean anything, did they? Because who was left
“Look at all the colors.” he told John when the sunrise finally came. “Probably the most beautiful one yet.”
He’d never understood John’s fascination with sunrises until he died. He always rolled his eyes and called John a sentimental fool whenever he was gushing over one. But since he’d died, David had gotten up at the ass crack of dawn and drove over here to watch it with him every day without fail.
“I wish I wasn’t such a stubborn ass. I should have gotten up with you and watched the sunrise.”
“Did your skin glow in the orange hues of light? Did you look as angelic as I imagine?” his voice cracked. “Was your audition as an angel good enough to let you go early?”
The sun was now fully in the sky. He should go to class. Afterall, the world waits for no one. But it felt so hard to get up.
Every day it felt harder to get up. The weight on his chest only got heavier and heavier as he got weaker and weaker.
When he got word of John’s death, the world should have stopped. Everyone should have been as still as David had felt at that moment. He could still remember hearing laughter down the hall.
How dare they! Didn’t they know his best friend was dead? This wasn’t a time to laugh, it was a time to mourn. But it seemed only he got that message. The morning still came. The mornings kept coming, even to this day. The sunrises are beautiful, but they should have stopped the day he died.
“I can’t cry forever, I know that. Mourning always ends as the days go on. I’ve got things to do. I can’t break down constantly,” David told the tombstone. “But maybe I can be sad today. I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise.”
“-lost his tooth yesterday. I tied a string around the tooth and yanked. The kid took it like a real trooper, I’ll tell you that. The tooth fairy was extra generous that night, giving him five dollars of spending money.”
David nodded along politely, pretending to pay attention to his professor gushing over his grandson for the past 10 minutes.
He questioned why he had to pay so much for the privilege of taking this class if this was all he learned. He certainly didn’t take this class to learn about the joys of being a grandparent, he took this class to become... well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to become, but it sure wasn’t this.
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He glanced over at his classmate sitting beside him who hadn’t even bothered to hide his boredom. He was watching some anime. David didn’t watch anime, but he didn’t judge those who did. He did, however, judge that guy.
His computer was showing an anime containing a bunch of scantily clad and large-breasted women. In short, his classmate was a degenerate who should be put on some sort of watch list.
But hey, he didn’t need to be friends with the guy, he just needed to peacefully coexist with him until the end of the class. Too bad it’s been only –he checked his watch- 30 minutes since class started.
When all his classes were finally over, he went to a courtyard to eat dinner. There’s no longer anyone to horse around with. Dinner had become a quiet affair as he went through the motions, a time where he ate his food and nothing more.
His heart beating in his chest was the only reminder that he was alive. His senses were dulled, his reaction time slow. Stringing together idea became an exercise in futility.
David had never felt less alive.
After eating his overcooked burger and an apple, he went inside and walked up the stairs to his dorm room.
Unluckily for him, his roommate was already done for the day. His roommate wasn’t a bad guy, but he didn’t know when to shut the hell up.
“What’s up man? Feels like we haven’t talked in a while,” Matt, his roommate, called at him from his desk. Next to him was his friend Icarus. Who the hell names their kid Icarus? His parents must have been fucking idiots.
Icarus and Matt made for an odd-looking pair, with Matt looking like your standard All-American high school football player, while Icarus looked like a theater kid that Matt would have given a wedgie a year back. They had a height difference of a foot, which was quite obvious when they stood next to each other.
“Hey,” David grunted at Matt as he went to pass out on his bed. He wasn’t in the mood to talk, especially not to an idiot like him.
“Icarus and I are gonna’ head out soon, want to come with, man?” Matt asked him, unfazed by Davids’s attitude. “We got done with a hard exam and wanted to celebrate!”
“Come on dude, it’ll be fun!” Icarus beamed at him. They both seemed oddly intent on getting him to go. “Every time I visit, you’re always cooped up in the dark. It ain’t healthy.”
They always did this every time they went out. He wasn’t sure which was worse, the possibility that they were so dumb they couldn’t get the hint, or the idea that they got the hint and were intentionally ignoring his wishes. It was really getting on his fucking nerves.
“Can you just fucking quit with this fake friendliness bullshit?” David snapped at them.
Matts smile dimmed a little.
“Sorry, I just wanted to hang out. You always seem so closed off.”
David groaned. “If I go this one time, will you finally leave me the fuck alone?”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Matt’s smile came back in full force. “Now let’s go have fun!”
Matt stuck his arm in the air as if doing a victory pose. Icarus snickered behind him.
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The Journal of John (Entry 1)
There’s electricity in the air. Not the romantic kind, but the lightning kind. Illuminating the backdrop of this gray room and casting shadows on the wall. The unknown become creatures of the night, eager to sup upon my unaware body.
I’d never been a fan of lightning. I’ve always imagined it as gods battling in the sky. Zeus and Poseidon letting themselves be known through rain and lightning. Trying to reach Hades in the underworld. We humans are just collateral. Like ants, not worth their time. When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled on.
I’ve never liked that feeling of helplessness. I don’t think anyone likes that feeling unless it’s some weird kink. To each their own, I guess. One of my defining traits is my unwillingness to follow without question.
A loud rumble interrupts my train of thought. The sound like the guttural moan of the earth taking its last heaving breath jars me. It’s a haunting sound, the rumble a call for action. For salvation.
I follow the rule of self-preservation. Some call it heartless, I call it survival. Stay in your lane and don’t try to help. It’ll only cause trouble.
I think it’s a product of anxiety. Maybe that’s why I don’t have many friends. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just grasping at straws.
I mean, I do have a lot of acquaintances. I’d consider myself an extrovert. But I don’t have many true friends. People who I’d hang out with and talk about personal things. I only have one, but he’s got his head so far up his ass he can see what he ate for breakfast. The rest of the kids were mostly superficial friends who would talk about superficial topics with superficial smiles and superficial promises of maybe hanging out outside of school sometime. But they always have work when you ask, and they never ask. They give superficial pity that wasn’t asked for, and superficial beliefs that they didn’t truly stand for, and superficial relationships that they never truly cared for. Dangling conversations that they never truly grabbed for. They made superficial attempts to pretend that they’d tried. With superficial words and superficial lies.
I’m a joker, a comedian. I make people laugh. That’s it. That’s all I’m good for.
-Superficial promises and superficial rules,
A Fool