A short story... or something

[Toby]

Hey everyone,
This is something I wrote quite a while ago. I take it out sometimes and think about adding to it, but I've never quite gotten around to it. Let me know what you think if you take the time to read it. Thanks.

St. Peter
I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to do it tonight. I swear to fucking God this time I’m just going to do it. I’ll slit my wrists with a dull butter knife just so I have to saw really hard. I’ll scream when I do it too. Not a girly little bitch scream, but a real scream, a man’s scream… No I won’t. I know I won’t. I don’t even want to die I just want the attention. Goddammit I’m whiny. Why am I always so whiny? I don’t even have anything to be that whiny about. I’m a middle class white American boy from the burbs. There’s starving kids in Africa who got their hands hacked off and all they want is an education and I’M thinking about killing myself. Fucking FDA man, it’s all the shit they put in our food that makes me think this way. MSG, ADD, 2,000 advertisements a day, no wonder we’re all fucked up. Kids in Africa don’t have to eat that shit. What the fuck? They’d be thankful to anything to eat at all. Holy shit man that was fucked up. I don’t really think that I know I don’t. I’m lucky I really am. I’m so grateful. Thank you God. Why doesn’t anyone ever wave at me? I see people I know all the time. I wave to them and they don’t wave back. Assholes. Everyone on this God forsaken planet is just a fucking asshole. They don’t care about me, all they care about is themselves. Caught up in their own miserable, unimportant lives like any of it really matters. Hey, guess what assholes, it doesn’t! None it matters because you’re all going die. My life doesn’t matter either so why don’t I just FUCKING DO IT!!! Oh, here’s the bus.

The bus was late, but Peter didn’t care. It gave him time to think. He liked to think. (When the bus was on time in the morning he usually missed it anyway which gave him a guilt free excuse to skip class. What? He thought innocently The bus was early. No it wasn’t, shut up. Well, almost guilt free.) He was last in line to get on the bus again so Peter had to sit next to Katie, even though he really wanted to sit next to John. John was cute, John would understand him. Nobody wanted to sit next to Katie because she was really hard to sit next to; she took up most of the seat.

“Hi Peter, I really liked your speech in Evans’ class today,” she fluttered.

“Thanks, I wrote it during lunch.” That wrapped up the conversation. Peter hated it when people tried to talk to him on the bus. This was his thinking time. Besides, it distracted him from staring at John three rows ahead of them, who in turn was busy staring at Amanda, two rows ahead of John.

Preppy whore, Peter thought. She would never appreciate nor understand the depths that are John. I’d appreciate him. When Peter got home he noticed the mail was still in the box which meant no one was home. Thank God. Peter hated it when He’d come home and find his mom or dad was already there. I spend all day at a high school that I hate full of nothing but ignorant jock jerks and I listen to a bunch of assholes try to impose their own self-importance on me by telling me how I should feel about myself based on what they think of me even though they don’t even fucking know me and all I want is to just come home and not have to be bitched at for just ten minutes, is that seriously so much to ask? Yes it is. Cathy, his mother, pulled up in the driveway. Son of a bitch.

The door opened and Cathy came in clicking her payless black high heels. Her cotton pin-striped power suit swished together as she shut the door behind her. Generally, this type of get-up can come off extremely threatening to fellow competing co-workers when worn on casual Friday, however with the removal of the shoulder pads, the effect was lost.

“God dammit Peter, can you at least pick up your socks off the fucking floor before I get home? Jesus Christ.” She was in a bad mood, Peter could tell. Must be Linda again. Linda was Cathy’s boss and lifetime arch nemesis. A couple years ago Cathy applied for Linda’s job as manager of personnel at the social services station while Linda already held the position. Cathy knew it was a dangerous move but went for it anyway. For as Cathy would always tell Peter, “The things you always regret the most are the things you never did.” But Peter was beginning to realize that that’s not always true.
When Linda was doing vengeful, sly womanly things to upset Cathy, Peter always felt the aftershock. Whenever Cathy would go off on how self-centered Peter’s Dad was, it was Linda. If Cathy would shout about how unappreciated she is it was Linda. This would usually only last that evening as the next workday would cause a new focus point for Cathy’s mood. However, if Linda could manage to ruin one of Cathy’s Fridays, the mood might last through Sunday.

Peter was obviously very aware of the meanings that his mother’s moods brought and would have to plan his time out of school accordingly. He decided he’d go to the library today.
Leaving as quietly as he could, Peter gathered his backpack and the bud he’d stolen from his father’s closet the night before. Peter learned that if he only stole about one nugget a week, his dad would never notice. If he did happen to notice his stash was a little light, he would’ve figured he must’ve smoked a little more than he realized, for Frank would never have thought that his perfect baby boy would be toking up, let alone be stealing from him.

After he shut the door behind him Peter could still hear his mother screaming about the shoes being lying in the middle of the floor, which Peter thought funny seeing as how said shoes were now on his feet. It would be a good five minutes before Cathy realized she was engaging in a monologue.

Stepping onto to bleached sidewalk Peter began the fourteen block trudge to the public library. With each lush trimmed lawn he passed he began to feel a little better. The weather was just beginning to get way he liked it; gray and moist. School had only started a few weeks ago so they hadn’t had their first rain yet, but Peter could tell it’d be soon. That always put him in a good mood. Peter liked to walk but his neighborhood was not a fun place to walk. Nothing ever changed nor was anything ever any different from anything else around it. The houses were all two storied and each was as white as their residents. Occasionally some houses would toss out a Nome or a flamingo in order to establish some pseudo sense of individualism. Sameness out of fear for loneliness but just little different from fear of the lack of identity.

Peter started playing games in order to keep things from being too stale. He would add the address numbers of each house up and divide it by the number of houses on that block to find the average address. It turned out to be 78 on his block, but he already knew this. He’d have to find some new thing to keep his brain busy. Hey everybody, why don’t you all just have a big 78 tattooed on your garage door? Then you won’t have to worry what everyone else thinks about your number, assholes!

Instead of going down Arbol Lane, Peter decided he’d take a detour down Cherry Street even though he knew he couldn’t really call it a detour anymore since that’s the way he always goes now. Before he turned the corner to Cherry he could already hear the low, echoey drum sound of rubber being beat on asphalt. Peter took a deep breath, stood up straight and began walking as confidently as he could manage down the street.

He saw, as he had hoped, John was playing basketball with three other guys from his class that Peter didn’t much care for. He knew their names and knew they all played for the team at school which Peter figured was about all he needed to know. One of the things that Peter couldn’t understand was why John felt he had to be friends with them. He was way too good for them. The other three were just jocks, but John was sensitive, he was intelligent, and he was the only one of them that had ever talked to Peter.

About three months ago, Peter was doodling in Mr. Green’s physics class while they were watching a Bill Nye the Science Guy video, which everyone in class thought insulting because they were sophomores for Christ’s sake but which everyone secretly enjoyed anyway, and John had noticed. It was a cartoon that showed Jesus using his crucifix as a flame thrower torching a gaggle of Buddhist monks in quiet meditation.

“Hey, that’s cool. Did you think of that yourself?” John admired.
“Uh…yeah.”

“Cool,” and John sat back down. Peter spent the next few weeks replaying the incident in his head. He also tortured himself for not saying something a little less cavemanish. With each passing day, though, as Peter thought about it, the improved conversation became lengthier and more involved until soon Peter had completely forgotten what had actually happened.
“Hey, that’s cool. Did you think of that yourself? Man, I can totally understand what you’re trying to say with that. Have you ever thought of becoming a professional cartoonist?” John would inquire.

“Oh what, this? This is just something I like to do when I’m bored,” Peter would invariably blush. “My real passion lies in theatre.”

“Now way, are you serious? I love plays. Did you ever see the production of Menagerie they performed in Carringtown? Their Tom was outstanding.”

“Oh my God, I only saw it like six times. That show totally changed my understanding of what good local theatre is supposed to be. If only our school had a theatre program that could produce shows like that.”

“I so know what you mean. Well hey, I really like your cartoon, man. We should get together and play some basketball sometime.”

“Yeah, definitely.” And so on and so forth.

Peter was walking on the opposite side of the street that the boys were playing on. He kept staring in their direction, but kept his head straight, facing the path. The routine was that Peter would walk to the library or the video store or wherever and pray like hell that John was outside so he and Peter could spark another engaging, soul connecting dialogue. However, the problem was that every time John did happen to be outside, he was always way to busy to talk. He would either be playing basketball with his friends, or taking out the trash, or sitting on the curb waiting for his older brother to him a lift somewhere.

So instead, Peter would walk by on the other side of the street and wait for John to notice him and hopefully invite him inside his house to hang out, which has yet to happen. Peter was beginning to wonder if John had even noticed him walking outside his house almost every day. He’s probably just got a lot on his mind, always carrying everyone else’s problems on his shoulders. Sensitive types are like that.

Peter figured that there would always be some reason why contact couldn’t be possible. He decided that if anything was ever going to develop, he would have to be the initiator. The things you always regret the most are the things you never did.

Before he could stop himself, Peter quickly shouted, “Hey John!” Unfortunately, he said it at a time when John was fending off attackers as he was trying to find a gap to drive up the court. John looked up quickly in response only long enough to have an opposing teammate swat the ball from his hands.

“Ah shit.” John looked around him in disbelief. When he tried to spot the owner of the distraction, Peter was far out of sight.

Dumbshit motherfucking idiot! As Peter sat on the steps behind the library, he decided he would never detour down Cherry Street again. I’m not going back there just to humiliate myself again. He doesn’t even really know me anyway. Peter hated it when his rational side began to wake up. This decision upset him for two reasons: first of all he knew he would never have a shot at talking to John ever again, and secondly, he realized that if he wouldn’t be walking down Cherry, he would have nothing to forward to anymore. His school days would go by anxiously in a blur, just waiting for his after school walk. Why did I do that? I was perfectly happy just seeing him and waiting for him.

Even though nothing ever happened, and even though Peter logically knew nothing ever would happen, it had still been something to forward to every day because it gave him something to hope about. As small as his hope was and as insignificant as the realization of that hope would be, it was still something. A reason for waking up in the morning, an excuse to comb his hair. It was that very hope that Peter felt was his compensation the universe owed him for the poor hand he’d been dealt.

_


"Trees are vertical when they're alive but horizontal when they're dead
Just like people except people can be horizontal when they're asleep
Which is like being fake dead and sometimes when people are dead
They get all burned up just like trees get when people want to be warm
Or made into houses when people want to be safe and when people die
We mostly get buried so no one has to look at all the dead bodies everywhere
Because they're people but those people don't mind being pretend dead
Inside the dead bodies of Trees."

Peter sat down looking at his shoes. Mr. Johansson remained staring at the now person-less spot in front of the whiteboard. After a long while he said to the spot,
"I take it you don't mind failing Peter?"
"No."
"Okay." Then mister Johansen scribbled something into his notepad.

[nikgee]

Actually it's pretty good. Holds your interest. Wanting to know what is going to happen next. Then it stops, leaving you hanging. I realize it's not complete, but maybe it should be. Who am I to say I have tons of unfinished write.