To my favorite liar, to my favorite scar

A short piece based on Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today by Fall Out Boy
TW: car wreck, blood, death. This is dark.

• • •

In the silence that follows, you stand up from the guard rail that you've been sitting on for two hours. Warmth and feeling returns to the back of your legs in a rush, rendering you dizzy for a second. You step over the rail to the side away from the street. The land drops away next to you, maybe fifteen feet down to gravel and sparse grass. You stop a few inches from the edge to look down.

There's a lot of blood. You can't see that as well as you can the shining red exterior of the car, though. Broken metal and glass holds two people, now nothing more than broken skin and shattered bone, blood and more blood.

You can't help feeling satisfied.

In the passenger seat, without even the idea of a windshield separating her from you, is the girl. The one you almost pity. The one you had no chance with and never will. Nothing about her has changed but her appearance, as far as you're concerned. She picked someone else over you, but you could have lived with it if the thought of her boyfriend hadn't made your stomach so sick. She gets almost-pity because she was almost-innocent.

The boy with his limp fingers still on the steering wheel meant nothing to you, never did, and he deserved it. You wished with your whole self for this to be his fate. Dreams come true, then. You don't think about his dreams, what he might have done with the rest of his abruptly ended life. You don't think about what his last thought might have been. You don't think about how young he was. You stare at his frozen, bloody face instead and feel your satisfaction.

Then you realize how stupid it is to still be staring at this mess. It's disgusting, and you see nothing that you didn't expect. The girl and the boy aren't the first to skid off this corner, victims of a guard rail that ends a little too soon. The allure comes from the fact that you witnessed it, which was a miracle. It's not every day that you sit on a guard rail at the edge of a quiet back road wishing someone would die, and then they show up and do it.

You don't think the boy even saw you.

So you turn your back to the scene and walk away. Someone else will find them, eventually, and you don't want to be a witness. You'll keep this moment to yourself, the sort of perfect satisfaction you shouldn't harbor. No one will think you had anything to do with it, because you didn't.

Everything about this was an accident.

• • •

I've been drawn to writing darker things recently. I'm not sure how to feel about that.

Quotes to fuel midterm week

I have 4 midterm tests this week. If you're in a similar boat, here are some quotes from my friends.
If these can't brighten your outlook, I don't know what can. Enjoy.

• "You can be dead. I'm gonna cry on you." 
• "Curling irons are gay."
• "Kittens are prettier than Jesus." 
• "Just your average ripped pregnant lady."
• "Shh, I'm trying to learn about killing people!"
• Walks into class "Oh good, we're summoning the devil!"
• "Not everyone needs pants all the time."
• "Can we get our drugs out after the test?"
• "He looks like a really gay McDonald's worker."
• "I may not look like a banana on the inside, but I sure do on the outside!"
• "That's not an insult! Bill Nye is gay!" 
• "The police are afraid of me." - my French teacher (you get context for that one because it's not as funny otherwise.)
• "Guys, you're both ugly. Wait, I meant they're! Please don't hate me."
• "If someone asks you to do something and you can't do it, just lay on the floor."
• "McDonald's may or may not have a vampire working for them." 
• "You murder small stuffed animals by force feeding them kale?"
• "Your mom's a bootleg Disney movie."
• "We can feed him raw fish and not be arrested."
• "I'm going to eat a homeowner."
• "No, I found him on the floor. His name is Rob."
• Whispers "I killed your husband."
• "I don't know how necromancy works under constitutional law."

Man, I really wish I could remember what some of these were from. I wrote them down without context.
Good luck on your midterms and stuff. I'm going back to studying.

(And to anyone who was expecting only poetic things from this blog, note that I said "unfiltered.")

Stop Spinning

Written 11/18/19

It's hard to be on time when you don't care. When you're going somewhere you don't want to go, when the world is both too dark and too bright. When what-ifs come too easy. When something about how you exist feels wrong. When the world is loud and you are soft and quiet and calm. None of it settles in my soul the right way.

I spend too much time lost in my own reflection, not in its imperfections or lack thereof, but more in the fact that I am a human with a physical form. I stare at my face until it doesn't look like mine anymore, and then I start to question things. That's when I realize that it's too late, that I'm late, and run outside to my car and leave. I can't fix the problem, but I can minimize the damage. What even is the damage, anyway? Why do I have to live in my world and not someone else's? There are too many other worlds, in bound paper and film and neurons in my skull, for me to be satisfied with this one.

I'm not. That's the simple answer. Why can't I just melt into a puddle in the corner for a few weeks? I would miss things, but what am I not already missing? It's a fair question and you know it. I don't care about this, none of it, because it doesn't matter. It's hurting me, but getting rid of one thing doesn't stop the flow and all of it just keeps coming, a river that never ceases. Maybe it will someday, but right now it doesn't.

I'm rambling, the other world from my brain spilling over into this one in the form of words. It's almost the same world, but not exactly. If an eye is a lens and a brain is a filter, how could it be that two of us have the same brain, lens, and world? Impossible.

I notice that the world is darker, and the traffic lights gleam off of the cars and the wet street. I feel like I'm waking from a trance. I move my head for the first time in minutes and it feels heavier than it should be. Why is it like that? My thoughts are scattered and I don't know. I remind myself that I'm driving and need to pay attention, but the sky is pretty, and sights drag my eyes away and away. I'm grounded in air and the chill that makes it through my clothes, which is to say, nothing at all. The planet doesn't stop spinning and neither do I.