5. The Shining

Boo hoo, yes, The Shining is at the bottom of the list. I think I’ve already spoken about my grievances with the movie, so I’ll be brief. It’s based on a book that I only found to be alright. It’s not very scary at all, save for that two-second-long scene with the man dressed as a dog. The book I don’t find very scary either, but at least it made me feel something. Seeing Jack slowly succumb to the madness of the Overlook Hotel despite his best efforts in trying the rehabilitate and become a better husband is actually sort of tragic and depressing. In the movie it feels like Jack is just a complete wacko from the beginning, and there really isn’t the same feeling of a downward spiral into insanity. That could just be because Jack Nicholson is just a zany guy that plays zany characters, or it could be the script. The movie starts of pretty slow with not much going on, there’s a lot of strange sexual imagery I don’t recall being in the book (Kubrick is one perverted guy), and they kill off Dick Halloran for some reason even though he survives in the book, which is just another example of the black guy always dying first in every horror movie. It’s really lame: Dick spends the whole movie desperately trying to get back to the Overlook to save Danny and his mother, and he immediately gets axed. So much for that plotline.

Maybe I’m just not intelligent to understand the complexities of this movie. That’s fine. If people like the movie and how much they can analyze it, then that’s great. It’s not that I hated this movie. I just didn’t like it, and that is why it is at the bottom.

 

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Yes, I am putting A Space Odyssey near the bottom. Here is why: it can get very boring. I’m not sure if this is a Kubrick thing or just an old movie thing, but a lot of shots are just held there for so long, it gets tedious to watch. In most movies when someone is heading somewhere, you get a shot of them going, and then it cuts to them arriving. In this movie, when a character is walking somewhere, we get to see him walk all the way there. No cuts, no speeding it up, no dialogue over it. Just walking. In one part, a character has to leave his spaceship and maneuver a little space pod around. And we have to watch a minute of the space doors slowly opening, then a minute of the pod slowly detaching, the pod slowly turning, the pod slowly going up. Every single thing. If I wanted to see machinery operate in this fashion, I’d go to a nearby construction site and watch some guy swing around a wrecking ball, not just the part where he smashes stuff, but also the part where he slowly climbs into the vehicle, where the vehicle breaks down and they have to call in a repairman, where the repairman spends an hour fiddling around inside of it. Every single action just goes on way too long. A ship is docking on a planet? Watch about three minutes of it doing that. A group of apes are having tribal warfare? Two minutes of them just yelling at each other with everyone too scared to make the first move.

I imagine the reason why these shots go on for so long is because Kubrick really wanted to show off the stunning visual effects. I also imagine that sci-fi was a lot more alluring in the sixties, so it would be neat to see the innerworkings of how these futuristic machines operated, even if it meant going over all the mundane details of it. Honestly, I would sort of understand Kubrick if this was the case. This movie came out in 1968, the time when TVs looked like oversized radios, Stars Wars was yet to be released, and we hadn’t even landed on the moon yet. Even so, Kubrick was pumping out beautiful visuals that, and I’m really not exaggerating, wouldn’t look out of place in a modern movie. The imagery in the movie is extremely sleek and clean. I really am left scratching my head as to how the film looks so great despite coming out in 1968. There’s a part where a guy is jogging around in a donut shaped spaceship, and somehow, we see him looping around over and over. I have absolutely no idea how Kubrick achieved this effect. Here’s a few really beautiful shots in the movie that I like:

Overall, I respect this film. And if you shave off about half an hour of content, I would say that I like this film. The story isn’t too mind-blowing, but the ending definitely is. It’s a cool movie about human technology advancing to things we can’t even comprehend. Or something. I didn’t really understand too much of it.

 

3. Barry Lyndon

I’ll actually be going over the plot for this one unlike the last two. This is because by now everyone knows what The Shining is about, and because I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is pretty self-explanatory and nothing too insane (save for the ending). It also because I like the plot of Barry Lyndon.

This period drama set in the 18th century is based off the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. It is about an Irishman named Redmond Barry and how he starts from humble origins before climbing up the social ladder into aristocracy.  From that description, it probably sounds extremely stuff and boring, but it’s really not. Barry goes through a lot of crazy stuff over the course of his life. From being forced to leave his hometown after killing someone in a duel, losing all his mother’s savings to a robber, enlisting in the British army in the Seven Years’ War looking for glory, deserting after becoming disillusioned with war, and then being forced to switch sides once he is caught by the Prussian army, Barry’s life is extremely interesting to look at. And all of this takes place in the first third of the movie. I’m leaving out way more cool details in order to prevent spoilers. In a way, it’s like watching a documentary about the most interesting person ever recorded in history, even if his story isn’t true. It’s gratifying to see Barry start in such a bad way, yet still he slowly rises up the ranks in the Prussian army, gaining money and status along the way.

The music is great as well. A lot of classical pieces are used which I’ve never heard of, but they all sound good. Some of my favorite parts is just shots where nothing is happening, while a cold yet dramatic violin soars in the background.

Like A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon is also a very pretty film. Here’s some of my favorite shots from the movie. They straight up look like classical paintings, it’s great. In these cases, I don’t mind if Kubrick wants to linger on them for a minute or so. And accompanied by the orchestral soundtrack, it’s perfect.

If you like history, you should definitely watch this movie. It has the feel of a biographical film thanks to the calm voice of the narrator as he recounts the events Barry winds up in. It is probably one of the most beautiful movies ever made. I give it a 2 out of 5.

 

2. Full Metal Jacket

This one’s about a soldier called Private Joker as he goes through boot camp and then fights in Vietnam, all while he and his fellow men are slowly dehumanized and turned into killing machines. I always enjoy war movies, and this one is no exception. However, Full Metal Jacket doesn’t lean too hard into intense firefights and heroic military exploits. Instead, it’s more about the war machine and how war affects the soldiers’ psyche. The first act of the movie takes place entirely within the bootcamp, and it’s the best part. It’s very intense and suspenseful despite taking place far away from the fighting in Vietnam. While plenty of soldiers adjust decently enough to become the killing machine the army wants, some soldiers can’t take it. Constant screaming from the instructor and ostracization from the other soldiers build the pressure, the boot camp slowly drives them insane. This all leads up to an explosive climax at the end of the first act. In the end, the army gets its desire killing machines. But this is at the cost of the soldiers’ humanity.

The second act of the story isn’t nearly as exciting as the first, although now we do get a taste of some of the action. The fighting isn’t nearly as exciting as say, a movie like Saving Private Ryan, but it’s not really the point, and is more a means to an end of getting Kubrick’s anti-war message across. And I still found the action to be enjoyable anyway, so it’s more of a subjective thing. This part focuses more on the duality of man. Private Joker dons a helmet that has “Born to Kill” written on it, right next to a peace button. He jokes around: “I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.” But when the opportunity arrives, Joker’s conscience holds him back.

But who really cares about the philosophical discussions? I don’t. I wanted to see people get shot. Disregarding all the themes that I don’t really grasp, it’s still a fun movie about Private Joker’s experience in the Vietnam War. Events don’t really lead into one another; in fact, acts one and two could be entirely different stories aside from the few characters appear in both. Things just happen, and Private Joker reflects upon them. This sort of sounds negative, but I like the disjointedness of it all. It makes it feel like a war memoir. And I do think Joker’s commentary on the events are pretty nice. At one point, when Joker sees his first corpse, he remarks in his head, “The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.” I’m not so sure what the profoundness of the statement is, if it even is profound at all, but it’s always stuck with me. And speaking of quotes, the drill sergeant’s lines in the first act are very funny and quotable, which is part of why it’s so good. While Barry Lyndon I would only watch alone while in a serious mood, Full Metal Jacket is something that I’d watch when I don’t feel like trying to analyze Kubrick’s art (although you still certainly could with this movie). It’s one of the few Kubrick movies that I feel could be enjoyed by a general audience and not just film snobs. You may say that just means that Kubrick’s other movies have more artistic merit, and perhaps you’d be right. But I value the entertainment value more than the meaning behind it.  I give this movie a poontang out of five.

 

1. A Clockwork Orange

I loved the book, so it’s only natural I’d love the movie as well. I love this movie enough that I wrote a whole essay about it for school. Here is a shortened and edited version:

“A Clockwork Orange is a film directed by renowned director Stanley Kubrick and is one of, if not the greatest work of cinema ever produced. One of the crowning achievements of the 20th century, it can be considered Kubrick’s magnum opus. The film follows a teenager named Alex, a vile and reprehensible member of society, who, alongside his gang members, takes pleasure in terrorizing the streets and harming the innocent. When Alex is sent to jail following a robbery gone wrong, he signs up for the controversial Ludovico Technique in hopes of being released from prison sooner. The Ludovico Technique aims to make Alex become repulsed by violence, and he is forced to watch horrific acts for hours on end, often accompanied with music from his favorite composer, Beethoven. By the end of it, Alex is physically unable to commit any acts of violence. Now in a defenseless state, Alex is released back into the free world, where the people he has wronged in the past come back for revenge. Kubrick crafts a grotesque, yet mesmerizing experience that is and will remain a work of art to be preserved in cinema history.

One of Kubrick’s remarkable skills is the ability to provoke a million feelings using imagery alone. Through long shots of silence and bizarre set design, Kubrick masterfully keeps the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen, forcing them to absorb the surreal and uncanny world being displayed. Near the start of the film, there is a scene where Alex and his gang break into a couple’s home. The house’s interior is decorated in a strange, modern minimalist aesthetic. The place is decorated with strange, futuristic looking chairs, the hallways are for whatever reason made of mirrors, and the desks and walls adorned with odd light bulbs that feel entirely out of place. The house seems familiar, but so freakish and dreamlike that it simultaneously feels fake and uncomfortable to look at. The uncomfortableness is only multiplied by the unnerving silence present throughout the scene, and the viewer can’t help but start to feel anxious as the camera sweeps from room to room. When Alex and his gang burst in and mercilessly beat the two homeowners, the uncomfortableness reaches its peak and transforms into full on disgust. This is the point; Kubrick intends for this scene to show the viewer the vile and repugnant crimes in a way that makes them feel absolutely sick. Although the actions that take place are awful on its own, it’s the set design that really takes the surreal and sickening feeling to the next level.

On top of this, themes are also an important matter regarding the quality of a movie, as well as how a movie stands the test of time. A Clockwork Orange constructs an impactful message regarding morality and free will. In the story, Alex is forced against his will to become a “good” person, becoming unable to carry out any of the violent acts he imagines in his head. In the process, Alex begins to find the music of Ludwig Beethoven unbearable to hear, since the Ludovico Technique was performed while Beethoven played in the background. Alex’s love of Beethoven was one of his only “human” traits at the start of the film, and he wasn’t much more than a monster otherwise. However, the Ludovico Technique turned Alex into a law-abiding machine, eliminating all traces of his humanity. In the government’s pursuit of a cure for degeneracy, they turned Alex into a robot. And as one of the characters in the film explicitly points out, “When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” After all, is someone really good if they have no other option? Kubrick expresses the idea that goodness can’t be forced—goodness has to be chosen, it must come from within. Forcing goodness causes Alex to be dehumanized; his taste for music is stripped away, he is referred to not by his name but by a prison number, he is treated not much better than a stray dog by the entire world. Perhaps we could turn the world into a crimeless haven of peace through the brainwashing of the people. But it wouldn’t be true goodness, and they wouldn’t be human. They would be gears in a clockwork. 

Although Kubrick has a myriad of masterpieces under his belt such as Full Metal Jacket and The Shining, A Clockwork Orange stands as masterpiece among masterpieces and is arguably Kubrick’s most striking and artful film. The distinctive set pieces, memorable music, and excellent camerawork, work in tandem to make each and every shot a captivating memory. Every line of dialogue is a story, each scene and each second building towards the thought provoking messages Kubrick wants to express. There has never before been a film like A Clockwork Orange, it is likely we’ll never see another film that reaches the same level of artistry displayed here. It’s because of this that we can consider A Clockwork Orange the greatest movie of all time.“

It really is the greatest movie ever made. I think it strikes a good balance of general audience enjoyment, the kind of fun that Full Metal Jacket has, and the artistry of Kubrick’s other movies, like Barry Lyndon. If you don’t enjoy Kubrick’s themes on morality and human choice, then you can enjoy the plot, which is mostly faithful to Burgess’ novel. Dystopian plots such as the one featured in A Clockwork Orange are always very fun. Even though Alex is such a horrible person, I began to feel sorry for him in the latter half of the film, and I was rooting for him to escape the government’s evil system.

It’s a masterpiece. My rating of the movie is twenty milk-pluses out of ninth symphony.

On its release in 1996, Pinkerton was slammed for being an embarrassing mess of singer River Cuomo’s personal baggage masquerading as music. Nowadays, the album is seen a lot more favorably as a hard-hitting album that discusses the darker parts of Cuomo’s thoughts. Even so, remnants of that previous area remained in some places, and I was put under the impression that the album was a dumpster fire, laughably bad collection of garbled noise as several sources claimed. I recall that I tried to listen to Pinkerton a few years back purely in an ironic way, to laugh at it. I heard about a minute of the first song, didn’t like it, and decided it wasn’t worth my time. It wasn’t laughably bad or anything. I just didn’t like it.

Now, after listening to the whole thing, I can say that I still don’t really like the first track, titled Tired of Sex. I don’t like Cuomo’s dead voice (though I suppose that fits the title,) I don’t like his weird metal screeching during the chorus, I don’t like the corny lyrics. It just sounds sort of lame.

However, I have come around to the album as a whole. I sort of respect Cuomo for being entirely honest with himself and saying things in a super blunt way. There’s no point where he tries to soften his words or make himself seem sympathetic and redeemable. He just blurts out the nastiest crap about his weird Japanese fetish and how he likes to imagine girls sploinking it in their rooms, or how he licked and sniffed an envelope sent to him from a female fan. I simultaneously think more and less of him after hearing all of these things.

Apparently, the album is titled after the character Pinkerton from the opera Madama Butterfly, who in the story marries a geisha in Japan only to abandon her and leave for America to find a new wife. I don’t really know what that has to do with this album other than the fact that Cuomo has a kink for Japanese women. And I suppose Cuomo thought this kink was important enough to title the whole album after it, which is sort of odd and creepy. But again, I respect it.

The first half of the album I don’t care for much. Getchoo is a song that I dislike for the same reasons as Tired of Sex. It’s kind of a mess of sound with Cuomo yelling “Getchoo!” over it, which I still don’t know the meaning of.  The chorus is just repeating “Getchoo, uh-huh!” several times. It’s an angry sound, but not a very catchy one. It’s not something I would ever listen to if I’m not relistening to Pinkerton, and it’s not something I would sing along to. Just not very fun.

No Other One and Why Bother? are two I like a little bit more, though I don’t love them. It’s when the tracks start feeling like music. No Other One has these nice electric guitar riffs that give the song a flood of emotion and pairs nicely with Cuomo’s depressed voice (he’s stopped his angry voice now). It’s a song about Cuomo being afraid to break up with a terrible girlfriend because he thinks he can’t find anyone else. The topic is pretty cool and depressing. I give it a 6/10. Why Bother? is about not even wanting to bother pursuing women because he knows it will inevitably end in heartbreak. The chorus is catchy and this song is a lot more upbeat than the previous ones. Not much else to say though. 7/10.

Every song after these I view pretty positively. I don’t feel like going over them all in detail so here’s a quick list on what the song is about and how I feel about it:

Across the Sea – This one’s about a fanletter Cuomo got from a girl in Japan, and how he starts drooling and fantasizing about her. It’s by far the creepiest song in the album, and I’m legitimately shocked that Cuomo had the balls to sing about this crap when the girl was only 18 and Cuomo was 26 at the time. But it’s pretty catchy, and I like the guitar. 8/10.

The Good Life – To be honest I don’t know what this song is supposed to be about. I think it’s about Cuomo hitting the streets again after feeling like an old man. It’s also by far the nerdiest sounding song in the album. The chorus has the lyrics, “Shaking booty and making sweet love all the night.” Cuomo made this album mainly to shake off the nerdy perception the public had of them after their Blue album debut, and by God did he fail. This song is so corny and dorky. But the chorus is pretty damn catchy and like always the guitar is great. Another 8/10.

el Scorcho – Actually, this is the dorkiest song on the album. It opens up with the lyrics, “Goddamn, you half-Japanese girls do it to me every time.” But I think this time the dorkiness is on purpose. It’s about Cuomo begging a girl to go out with him from what I can tell. All the while, Matt Sharp is doing these high pitched yells which is pretty goddamn funny. And by far the funniest thing is the line “I’ll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon,” which is so terrible it’s hilarious. 8/10. Again.

Pink Triangle – By far my favorite song of the album. The verses are catchy, the chorus is catchy, it has a poppy feel to it that reminds me of Blue. The lyrics again are pretty corny, but I guess in real life you can’t always say things so eloquently. My favorite part is when he says, “If everyone’s a little queer, can’t she be a little straight?” It comes off as pathetic and entitled, but in moments of desperation, we’re not always thinking so kindly. Great song. 9/10.

Falling For You – It’s okay. Corny lyrics, but fun chorus, which could be said about most of the songs.  I can’t say I have too many feelings about this one. 7/10.

Butterfly – Probably the second best song on here; a slow, quiet acoustic guitar song matched by soft vocals. Essentially it’s Cuomo’s apology for being terrible and saying terrible stuff and doing terrible things. It’s pretty sad, I think. I like how the verses alternate between getting higher and lower every line. I don’t know anything about music theory so I can’t go in depth as to why I like it. But it’s good. Another 9/10.

All in all I think Pinkerton is a terrible album. Weezer should be ashamed of what they’ve done here, they are a God awful band, and this album gets my first ever 0/10 rating. I’m thoroughly shocked that real living people had the gall to gather this collection of banging pots and pans and release it for retail sale. Thankfully, Weezer would later come to their senses and release the greatest album of all time, Raditude. This is why Weezer is the greatest band of all time.

 

 

 

I read Junji Ito’s Uzumaki recently, a thick 600-page horror manga about a town that is “contaminated with spirals.” The story follows Kirie and her boyfriend Shuichi as they witness the town of Kurouzu-cho spiral into insanity, haunted by the mesmerizing yet ever mysterious shape.

It’s an interesting premise. The main antagonist is not a tangible person, nor a being like a ghost. It’s a shape. We encounter spiral formations everywhere in our day to day lives, not paying it much mind; Ito turns this seemingly innocuous shape into something ominous and much more threatening than your typical horror villain. The spiral antagonist plays surprisingly well into typical horror scenes of gore and violence while simultaneously invoking a dark, psychological element.

The body horror is excellent. It’s disgusting, horrific, and I couldn’t look away. I won’t say exactly what is depicted as I don’t think my words would do it justice and a level of surprise should be kept for the impact of the page turn. But let’s just say that you will see people twist and contort into inhuman forms, be mangled and disfigured, stitched clumsily back together, grow and protrude out of their bodies what shouldn’t be possible, and experience a degree of deformation so grotesque that it could only be conjured in a vicious fever dream, all of this depicted in an appalling amount of detail. At one point I couldn’t even bring myself to turn the page because the images were so revolting that I did not want to touch the paper. Perhaps it sounds impossible but when I laid my finger on the picture, I could feel all the unnatural bumps and sickly skin, which quickly caused me to snap my arm back. I’m sure there are psychotic killers out there jealous they hadn’t dreamt up the torture that Ito has. This is mainly due to Ito’s fantastic art style, which has a level of realism and detail to it not commonly seen in most Japanese art, all while remaining distinctly within the realms of anime, giving it a hauntingly beautiful appearance. Even the pages where not much is happening give off an uneasy feeling, be it the distorted background of Kurouzu-cho or the eerie, mannequin expressions the characters wear that without a single word of dialogue express a sense of brewing madness within.

However, the initial shock wears off around halfway through the book. It’s not that the art quality gets any worse. I just got sort of numb to all of it. That is to say that I just didn’t find the book very scary. Repulsive and disturbing, yes, but not scary. The fear feels very surface level after the hundredth instance of a human doing something a human probably can’t do while still being alive. And because most of the gore involves corpses and not monsters, it wasn’t something I would lie awake at night fearing. And while the designs and illustrations are impressive, the stories amount to little more than ghost stories that you would tell around a campfire. For example, one chapter is about a lighthouse that melts people, another is about hair growing out with a mind of its own, another is about a corpse coming to life when Shuichi and Kirie try to open up the casket. And as you might have noticed, these stories don’t seem to have much to do with spirals. In my opinion, the book doesn’t go all the way with the ominous spiral idea, only the beginning and end heavily involving spirals while the middle part only somewhat adheres to that theme in a way that could allow spirals to be removed with the story intact. Even in the latter half of the story some of the things Ito comes up with to inject the spiral theme is just so ridiculous that it comes across as a comedy, like the gang that uses spiraling whirlwinds to fly around. But I guess horror is more of a personal taste, as I’ve heard of many people being deeply traumatized by the book. Although I’m not sure I believe that those stories aren’t just exaggerations.

There is one chapter though, chapter two, that I think was the most successful at putting me on edge, albeit still not exactly scary. It’s about Shuichi’s mother who has been hospitalized due to an extreme phobia of spirals, which has led her to shave all her hair off to avoid seeing the whorls, and for her to cut off the skin on her fingers to avoid seeing the swirling fingerprints. The page that shows her doing this is really great and disgusting, and more importantly provides a fear of what horrifying thing she might do next in her frenzy to remove all the spirals on her body. This fear intensifies when Shuichi notices a doctor’s anatomical chart that shows a small spiraling cavity deep inside the human ear: the cochlea. If Shuichi’s mother is extreme enough to cut off the tips of her fingers to be rid of the spirals, what will she do if she finds out that there is a spiral inside of her? Well, you don’t even want to think about it, but the idea is implanted in your head. It’s this incredible suspense that hovers over this segment that makes it my favorite chapter in the book.

Despite not being all that scary I still enjoyed reading Uzumaki. If you approach it less as a horror story and more as a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland type of fairy tale then I think it works better. In typical cosmic horror fashion, the threat is mostly unexplained and the ending is very vague. You can try to make sense of the happenings in Kurouzu-cho, to figure out what exactly the spiral wants, or if it’s even an entity that has want at all. Or you can accept the strangeness and find pleasure in the fascinating abhorrence of it all. Either way, it’s a good read.

A few days ago, I went to a wedding for Liem, whom I hardly know, and his fiancee, whom I don’t really know at all, save for one encounter at some Korean restaurant where at the time I was unaware even that she was present and I acted like some sort of hooligan, which probably wasn’t the best first impression. I wasn’t too excited about the whole thing. And I thought there would be girls my age there, but they were all old raisins, because Liem is a lot older than I thought. Anyhow, it took place in New York, not New York City like I had assumed, though that should have been obvious since having a wedding in NYC would be akin to hosting a party in a rat-infested sewer. No, it instead took place in some backwoods part of New York—everywhere is backwoods in New York since NYC is the only place that seems to matter—in some fancy-looking building filled with expressionless employees clad in smoothed out black suits, overlooking a scenic mountain range and deep, rolling green hills.

It was a six hour drive to Pennsylvania, or so I’m told; I slept through most of it. I’d brought a few things to keep me entertained, my Switch, a 3DS, and a book on writing, but all of them gave me a dull headache that ate away at my brain until I felt sick to even think about using them. After I regained consciousness, we arrived in the middle of nowhere, a forest filled with giant trees looming overhead, pitch black against the dark blue sky, and we drove around a winding road that wove in and out of the sycamores or maples or willows or whatever they were. It was too dark to tell, and you couldn’t see further than fifteen meters into the thicket of the woods, as it was shrouded in a cloudy black, and anything otherwise was unclear and tinted with dark blue. Our lodging was a cabin just in front of the forest, quiet and assuming against the houses around it which shone with light and laughter from within. The lights were out, we exited the van and went over to the side door where my dad struggled with the digital lock until Vien somehow got it open. A real cabin it was; inside there was hardly a thing close to modernity other than the occasional view of a TV or an electronically controlled AC, all of which stuck out like a sore thumb against the otherwise run-down, rustic feel of the place. The hallways and the rooms and even the ceiling felt too close together, as if they’d been compressed for the sake of using less materials. The bedrooms were small, empty, and lifeless, only a place to sleep in and nothing more. There was a closet in the upstairs bedroom, it was hot and stifling inside, tight enough to trigger even slight claustrophobia, and a singular lightbulb dangled from the ceiling with a little pull switch dangling alongside it. The whole place smelled old, if it’s possible to smell old, and the oldness of it made me think of pioneer life a few centuries back, though I doubt the cabin was built around then.

The game room situated out back near the bonfire offered a few more amenities: a poker table, a foosball table, some couches and a large TV. It was all very nice until we left the door open one too many times and the whole room became a nest for every sort of vile mosquito and moth and whatnot. Mindlessly drawn to the light, they rushed in whenever the door wasn’t immediately shut, and some were big enough to entirely cover my hand. I employed Bien to exterminate a few, but it soon became clear that the room had been taken over.

At some point Thuclam and Thucquyen and their dad showed up. More importantly, they brought towels, which the ancient cabin lacked for some reason, despite providing more than enough blankets for us all. Still, it was nearing midnight by the time they showed up, and I was in no mood for showering in what would probably be a rundown bathroom. Most of my time was spent in the game room. Vien seemed to really like the foosball table even though she was god awful at it just like every other game. I enjoyed it as well, but the little kids didn’t offer much in the way of competition, so I moved on to playing poker, which also isn’t very fun with little kids, and especially not fun using digital chips. In the end, only Bien and I remained inside, and at around one in the morning, the two of us fell asleep.

The next morning I was woken up by my dad, and then I fell back asleep. Then Bien came to wake me up, and I fell back asleep again. Finally, I was awoken to see that everyone was about to leave for New York, and I was feeling a little irritated that I wasn’t alerted to take a shower and pack before we left. All of us piled back into the two cars and went on a three hour trip to New York. I slept through that again. Eventually we arrived in a quaint little neighborhood somewhere in nowhere. There, I took a shower and got all dressed up for the wedding in a silly gray vest. Bien’s pants were too long, and Khoi’s suit looked a little silly; it was checkered and seemed like something that should have only been worn in the 1920s. The only thing that was missing was a tweed cap and a wooden cane. Vien had this hideous pink bow in her hair which probably would have been more appropriate for a Jojo Siwa concert or something. Everyone else looked normal, and once again, when the time rolled around, we crammed into the van and took an hour long trip to the wedding venue, which I didn’t sleep through this time, and instead was forced to feel the weight of that full hour upon my shoulders as my brain melted out of my skull and I dully waited for us to arrive.

When we did show up, our van was earlier than the other car by about ten minutes. We had also shown up early and so we headed inside the venue which I’ve already described in the first paragraph. There was a long windowed corridor lined with tables covered in white sheets, and further out the corridor was a door leading out to the overlook where the wedding would take place. It was as you might expect, lines of chairs, a long carpet, and a little arch in the front, all in front of the picturesque view. One of the employees shooed us out, which was pretty awkward. Apparently, they had big plans and we were escorted to the entrance where a few other families were waiting. We didn’t interact with them, they didn’t acknowledge our presence, and the whole wedding was feeling pretty awkward.

It started to rain when the ceremony began a light rain came in. Gray clouds crept from above and there was thunder in the distance; most of the families hung back under the cover of the trees, but of course I’m made of tougher stuff and our family sat down in the wet and dirt-riddled seats which stained my pants. Liem’s friend or whoever he might be gave a speech which was the typical praising of his character and some other people did the same, and eventually Liem and his now wife exchanged vows and were married.

The end

Today and yesterday I had state testing for English II. I don’t know if the Council of Ohioans will hunt me down for talking about it but I’ll say my piece anyway because I’m mad and censorship of speech is one of the defining traits of fascism so if they take me down the US government is fascist, confirmed.

Yesterday, I headed into my designated testing room upstairs and sat at the desk closest to the teacher’s, which was a big mistake. Two teachers came in that I didn’t recognize; they would be serving as the proctors for the test, administering it, timing us, all that stuff. One was normal and the other was this mentally challenged lady who walked in and thought that we were all eight graders taking the eighth grade test. For clarification, everyone in the room was a sophomore, and looked nothing like a squeaky fourteen-year-old. But whatever, I figured, since it wouldn’t be the first teacher I’d seen that did not know what a teenager looked like.

The normal teacher gave everyone a sheet of paper and a pencil so we could organize our thoughts and write notes. Then, we waited for the idiot teacher to approve us for testing, since it’s online in case you didn’t know. And even though we are clearly not eighth graders, she starts asking if we’re supposed to be taking the eight grade exam. Someone said that we were not. So she does God knows what for a little bit. And then she ponders out loud to the other teacher if we should be taking the eight grade exam. The normal teacher says no one in here is in eight grade. And a bit of time passes. And the mentally challenged teacher explains that she is trying to make sure whether or not we’re taking the English II test or the eight grade test.

I’ve seen some tech illiterate teachers in my time. But why the hell would you let someone so clearly incompetent proctor the test?

But again, I didn’t really care that much, since it wasn’t as if her stupidity was that obvious yet. It was just a little noticeable.

Anyhow, time passed, I took the test, and it was pretty easy. At the end of the test there’s an essay portion. My English teacher had been drilling essay-writing into our heads for the past year, being especially adamant on us writing outlines for our essays before we wrote the final draft. That sort of thing wasn’t my thing; I preferred to just skip to the writing part and let things come out the way it felt right. Even so, I wrote an outline for my essay, partly just because I wanted to respect the wishes of my ELA teacher, and partly because the essay prompt was pretty difficult. So I wrote my outline, wrote my essay. I saw the dimwit teacher looking at me from my peripheral vision, though I imagined then that it was because she was actually being competent, like checking for cheaters or something.

Eventually, I’d finished everything save for my conclusion paragraph, and the allotted time was up. However, you’re allowed fifteen minutes more if you’re not finished, which I decided to take advantage of. I asked for more time to the normal teacher. Technically, you get two hours; it’s just that only an hour and forty-five minutes are given unless you need more. Therefore, it was perfectly within my rights to ask for more time. My request was granted.

Then the snobby idiot teacher goes up to the normal teacher and starts whispering to her like I’m not literally right in front of them. And she says in this really judgmental voice, “Well, maybe he would have finished if he wasn’t drawing the whole time.”

I looked down at my paper. It was my outline, purely words, not even a single scribble or doodle. Not a single pencil mark that wasn’t writing. And she says that I was drawing. It dawned upon me then that the teacher was quite possibly a moron. She was looking at my paper as she said it too.

Of course, the normal teacher corrected her and said that it was an outline, not a drawing like the stupid old hag had thought. And maybe to save face, she starts complaining about my writing an outline. The normal teacher, God bless her soul, defended me and said that outlines are how some kids take tests. Anyway, how are you going to give everyone a paper and start throwing a hissy fit when they use it? I was very pissed off then and I wanted to cuss her out, but I said nothing.

Nothing of interest happened after that aside from me being relocated to use up my final fifteen minutes, which I didn’t even need half of to write my conclusion. I was very upset the rest of the day though.

The next day, I sat down in the same seat because I’m an idiot, right in front of the crazy old lady’s desk. Surprise surprise, the pig-brained teacher again could not figure out whether or not we were eighth graders. She spent some time trying to figure out how to approve us. Actually, that’s me underexaggerating. I straight up fell asleep, because it took her damn near half an hour to figure this out. We waited and waited and eventually we just started talking because she was taking so damn long. When I woke up, two more teachers had been called in and were taking her through the steps one by one. Dear God, we finally got started then. Half an hour after everyone else.

Things went as usual, the multiple choice being easy and all. Soon, I arrived at the essay portion, deciding then that I would write an outline for it despite the prompt being rather simple, partly to respect the wishes of my ELA teacher, and partly to rub it in the stupid teacher’s face, because look at me you crazy old lady, do you see me clearly writing and not drawing? Again, out of my peripheral vision I saw her staring at me, not even in a not obvious way this time. I thought smugly that she was seeing the truth right in front of her eyes. Suck on that, you moron.

To my astonishment, the dumb lady gets up out of her desk, hobbles over to me, standing in front of my desk, taking a nice old gander at my paper for whatever reason. I looked at her. I figured she would move on after seeing my outline and not the Mona Lisa like she had presumed. She did not.

“You shouldn’t be copying down the questions,” she says to me, in front of the whole room where everyone is silent and studiously testing. In that nasty, accusatory tone, as if she knows for certain that I’ve done something wrong. That dumb adult in authority voice.

I had to process this question in my brain before responding. “Copying down questions.” Like reading the question on my laptop, and then writing it down on my paper? To like, read it better or something? To give it to other people so they could cheat even though they’d be burning my scrap paper at the end of the exam? And even if they didn’t burn my paper, the questions are changed every year so it doesn’t even matter? And even though you thoroughly examined my paper and can clearly see that it is an outline? I thought about it some more.

WHAT THE HELL WOULD I EVEN BE DOING THAT FOR WHY THE HELL ARE YOU ASKING ME THAT ARE YOU STUPID OR WHAT YOU GODDAMN IDIOT PISS OFF

“I’m not,” I hissed, but quietly, because I for one was concerned with not disrupting the other test-takers in the room.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” she says in a not so quiet voice that everyone could hear. I felt very embarrassed then.

“I’m not,” I repeated.

“Then what are you doing?”

…

What do you think I’m doing. What was it established that I was doing yesterday. It is the same thing. You looked at my paper. You looked at it and you are asking me what I am doing.

“I’m making an outline for my essay,” I whispered.

“Huh?”

“An outline for my essay.”

“For your essay?”

“Yes.”

Then she asked me something that really pisses me off, probably to save face for being a moron or maybe because she really is that stupid. “What is it about?”

Stupid lady, dear old hag, my confused senior. You are overstepping your boundaries. That is wildly inappropriate. What the hell is it to you? Why are you going up to a student who is taking an exam and asking them what they’re up to? Why do you care? Just do your job and sit at your desk.

Imagine! Imagine if you were taking an important state-required test where you had to write an essay on a time limit, and out of nowhere someone goes up and starts interrogating you on what you’re writing about. I’ve things to do lady! Piss off and let me work, I’m on a time limit here, and you’re wasting my goddamn time.

Really, I’ve always thought that those kids having shouting matches with the teacher were always just silly little Neanderthals that think it’s cool to act up. But now I understand. For the first time, I genuinely felt like shouting or screaming at the teacher. Not a feeling of mild annoyance. Genuinely, absolutely, with all my heart, I despised her. I have never had to bite my tongue so hard in my entire life. How great would it be if I could tell her off, expose her for how wrong she was. But no. I was taking a test, and she struck me as a person who would drag me out and cause me to fail for some back talk.

So I answered her goofy little question.

Not satisfied, she went over to the normal teacher who was sitting in the other corner. Like a child tattling on their sibling for breaking a vase, she complained to her that I wrote an outline. In a “just a heads up” sort of way, as if she were reporting that I was building a pipe bomb under my desk.

I was pretty rattled, because everything I said, I had said in a slightly annoyed tone. Although I believe my annoyance was perfectly justified and that the old lady was probably too simple to figure out these complex things like emotions, I imagined that the dumb teacher would hang me by the thumbs for it.

The normal teacher, God bless America, completely disregarded her words and the dumb one slinked back to her desk.

I was mad. I was so mad, I sat at my desk and did nothing for twenty minutes. Call me a time waster, but I could not focus. I was so pissed off and I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair everything was. There is no way that I was the only person who wrote an outline, yet I was being singled out for it. I thought about it and thought about it and I could not concentrate on my essay anymore. I was so pissed off. I was worried, too. Maybe she would find a way to reprimand me. For what, I don’t know, but I was worried anyway.

She asked for my name when the testing period was over. Just me. I don’t know why. Maybe she’ll call Joe Biden and he’ll whoop me. But I swear to God, if I get in trouble for this, I refuse to apologize. I did nothing wrong and I know it. I will fight to the death, and if they punish me anyway after hearing the full story, I will kill myself, because clearly everyone is a moron then, and we live in a fascist country where there is no justice.

The town was silent and still, as if dead. Even if one were to wait and listen intently for anything, not a single chirp would be heard, not the soft rustle of the leaves or the gentle passing of the wind. Time no longer existed—the town was motionless, like it was only a painting, devoid of life, destined to show only what it showed then and there. Most disturbing of all was the lack of any people. It left a horrible atmosphere about the place. If something were to happen, even something so mundane as a plastic bag drifting about, it would lend itself to some feeling of being alive. But without the presence of anything at all, the town could only be described as uncanny. The vacant houses, the empty streets, the thicket of trees lining the edge of the road, they all seemed to be screaming without making a sound.

Then, intruders arrived. Their footsteps crept in quietly, gradually growing louder and louder, breaking their way into the stillness of the painting. And finally, three figures appeared on the horizon, just at the road on top of the hill that oversaw the rest of the town. Each of them had a large backpack slung over their shoulders, filled to the point of bursting with an assortment of items: canned foods, toothbrushes, duct tape, and heaps of various clothing items. The three figures trudged down the hill with their heavy loads before arriving at the main street, the street with the most homes, which appeared to stare at the trespassers eerily. The boys paid the houses no mind; they carried past the dwellings without much more than distrustful glance, almost like they were actively ignoring them. Only one showed any real acknowledgement, the boy in the back, the smallest and youngest of the group. His name was Noah, and he gave each residence a forlorn look with every passing.

They continued down the middle of the asphalt road without a word said between any of them, the motionless nature of the town infecting their leader with grim caution; he was the tallest boy walking in front of the other two, watching his surroundings warily, expecting nothing yet something to appear. After all, the town was not decrepit, not enough time had passed for the wilderness of vines and plant life to overtake the streets and buildings, most houses had their front lawns recently trimmed and the environment seemed well enough to house a thriving ecosystem. Surely something would appear, a human or at least an animal would come about the party anytime then, because it would be unnatural if that weren’t the case. But the town stood still. And all three of them were aware that there would be nothing and no one. Perhaps that was to their relief. Or perhaps they were hoping that something, anything would jump out at them. Neither option was comforting.

Eventually, they reached the end of the road. What met them there was a white void, the end of the world, as if God Himself had sliced off the rest of the earth with His finger, leaving only a slice of land left. Right there at the edge was a quaint little house painted a garish shade of pink, positioned precariously along God’s carving, only a hair’s width away from its foundation being suspended in air over the edge of the end of the world. The boys stopped there, the leader of the three taking a curious and cautious look down the white void where he saw nothing but nothing before returning his attention to the house which stood modestly in front of them.

He watched as Noah stepped onto the white porch and in front of the oak door, adorned with a shiny, brass knob. Just below the door was a worn-out rug that read in faded letters, Welcome. Several pairs of shoes littered the veranda, ranging from a small pair of pink shoes and sandals to several rugged work boots that were covered in mud. Noah kneeled down and reached into one of the work boots, and as he had hoped, there he found a silver key, just where it had always been. With that, he inserted the key into the knob and entered the home, the two other boys following behind.

The inside was normal, the main doorway leading into a living room with a small kitchen on the other side. Noah set his bag on the ground and somberly peered at the numerous framed photos adorning the mahogany desk along the living room wall. The leader instructed the last boy to rifle through the kitchen pantry before proceeding to kneel down next to Noah.

“Are those your parents?” he asked, pointing towards a photograph of a smiling family, one of which being a much younger-looking Noah.

 

Noah nodded, staring at the photo wistfully.

The two said nothing for a moment, until the leader finally spoke. “We could take these with us, if you’d like. Our sleeping space is looking a little barren, I think, and maybe some decor could help. These’ll look nice by the windowsill.”

“Oh, but I haven’t got any room left in my bag.”

“That’s alright. I’m sure I could fit some in.” And the leader made a great effort to place the frames in his bag. However, none could fit in the already jammed bag, which was only barely able to keep the supplies near the top inside. Try as he might, attempting to push the supplies further down to the bottom only caused a concerning crack to fill the room, which when investigated, revealed a toothbrush that had been snapped in half. “Christ,” the leader muttered.

He turned his attention back to the kitchen. “Mal,” he called out. “Have you got any room left in your backpack?”

Mal poked his head out from the wide-open pantry doors. “No. I could leave some food behind, if you want me to.”

The leader shook his head. “We need to get all the perishables around town before they spoil. And I don’t think Schaffer would appreciate you doing that much.” He crossed one arm across his chest and bit his thumbnail, a habit of his when he was thinking.

Noah, who presently seemed embarrassed to have caused all the fuss, quickly interjected before the two others could work their heads around the dilemma. “It’s really alright, Dell,” he said. “There’s no point in hauling them around. I don’t need them.”

“Are you sure? I mean, it’s your family and all. You probably miss them.”

“I’m sure,” he lied. His face expressed none of his sadness.

The leader gave Noah an incredulous look, though ultimately deciding to believe him. “How about you then, Mal. We could stop by your house so you could pick up your belongings.”

“No,” Mal said softly. “There’s nothing I want, and I don’t think we should focus too much on our past lives anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because we’re all going to die soon.” Mal stopped shoveling food out of the pantry. “We should enjoy ourselves while we’re still here, I think. Instead of crying about everything.”

An uncomfortable reticence washed over the three. Noah, who had already been very depressed, gained no improvement on his condition after hearing those words. The boy was only fourteen, and the distress of recent events was too much to bear at such a young age. And he stared back at the photos, thinking that if he were to die like Mal said, then he’d like to see his family one last time.

Dell, noticing Noah’s melancholy, took a deep sigh. “How pessimistic. You’re scaring Noah, you know.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Mal returned to his scavenging task.

Dell gave Noah a pat on the back. “Chin up. We all miss our parents. I’m sure you’ll see them again soon.”

Although Noah was certain Dell could not know for sure the things he was saying, he still felt reassured. It was easier to be comforted even with lies. And with a newfound confidence, Noah stood up. “I’ll carry the photos by myself,” he declared. He scooped every single frame into his arms and marched out of the house.

When Noah was long out of earshot, Mal spoke. “I did mean what I said in a more optimistic way.”

“What’s so optimistic about it? You said we’re all going to die.”

Mal passed by Dell and headed towards the door, walking slowly as to not falter under the weight of his bag. “That was just my guess. Maybe it will happen. Maybe it won’t.”

He stopped before leaving. “And dying isn’t so terrible. It’s not as if we were all immortal before all of this happened. The best we can do is keep on living, even if we’re all going to die regardless.”

“I suppose I can agree with that sentiment.”

The trio passed the end of the world, back up the empty neighborhood streets, silent once more until they reached the hill that overlooked the rest of the town. Their figures disappeared under the horizon, and soon their footsteps as well gradually faded out. Then, they were gone, as if they had never been in the first place, and the town became still once more.

They inhabited a town in the middle of nowhere, in a literal sense, for smothering the town was nothing, empty and endless, so much so that neither the sky nor the sun was present, only a white void being visible overhead and in every other direction. Despite the lack of the sky, light shone upon the town as if it were eternally day, in a sick and uncanny way that almost made the inhabitants wish for an eternal dark. One could describe the situation with a diorama of a town and its people in a brightly lit white box, suspended with strings so that it sat in the center, not touching any side at all, no gaps or holes to show the little diorama the world outside of the box. In that case, there might as well be no outside world, because the little figurines that lived in the diorama were contained within the diorama, so the diorama itself was the whole world. And because the diorama itself could not move, could not get closer to any side, there might as well be no end or corners to the box, so the box itself may not exist at all. The same was true for the inhabitants of the town; their world was restricted to the area that they lived in. There was nothing more and nothing else. To live in such a world was not tragic in and of itself.

But how the inhabitants differed from the figurines was this: First, that there was no definite proof that the inhabitants were in a box in the first place. Whereas a human could open the box with the diorama and peer inside, there likely was not a higher being that could open up the inhabitants’ box and see the town inside. So, perhaps the town was trapped, or perhaps everything else had disappeared. The inhabitants could hypothesize and ponder their situation, or pray that a higher being would open their box (if they were even  trapped in one) and tell them.

The second difference between the figurines and the inhabitants was that the figurines had known no other life. They knew not that there was a world outside of the box or that they were even entrapped inside a box at all. They could not yearn for more because there never was any more. The inhabitants, however, were different. Things hadn’t always been that way. They recalled a life outside of their cage.

It was May 21st when the world ended, and humanity went extinct soon after.

The choir boys were singing, the bells were ringing, and snow hurled down like angels’ tears. Just behind the church was a playground, where I sat waiting for nothing on the swings, watching the snowflakes drift by. The last heavenly verse came to a close, it went silent; then a deep voice began to recite the Gospel. It was nearing Christmas then.

My parents had sent me all the way up to North Dakota to live in a no name town with my aunt. Here, there was nothing to do, except to weep and repent, because everyone in the town tried, they believed in God, and I was bored out of my mind. As I lamented over this fact, my coat began to fly in the wind, revealing my school uniform. Just over the chest was an emblem depciting a dark horse, lifted up valiantly on its two hind legs. Vivamus est fames, embroidered above. I had ripped it off when I first arrived. They had to sew it back on.

A figure emerged from the white fog and sat down on the swing behind me. It was Nicholas. He was a choir boy. He was my cousin. He was deformed. One of his arms was missing, so his shirt sleeve dangled lifelessly in the wind, as if it were sick and withering. His left leg was abnormally twisted and bruised, a shade of unsightly purple. When he walked, he hobbled, because he was in pain, and though he was always smiling, I could tell. He took each step slowly, one at a time, as if the next might kill him, and someday, it really would. His face was heavily scarred from the surgeries. An obtrusive hearing aid protruded from the sides of his head. The doctor said he would go deaf soon. Nicholas was twelve years old.

“Hey.” He gasped out a single word. The walk from the front of the church to the back had taken its toll. Still, he smiled.

“Nothing much,” I said. Then I gave him a big, phony grin. Like a devil. “How about you, though. Shouldn’t you still be in there?”

He gathered his breath before answering. “The procession is all over now, so Mom’s busy talking to all her friends. I thought I might find you here.” Then he burst into a coughing fit, which lasted an uncomfortable amount of time, before he cleared his throat and looked to me.

“You didn’t have to go through the trouble of coming over here, Nicholas.”

“Ah, it’s not a big deal. I can handle myself fine. I don’t want anybody to worry too much about me.”

I frowned. Sometimes, Nicholas sounded too mature.

A moment of silence blew away in the wind before I spoke. “Nicholas, wanna see something cool?”

He nodded, and from the inside of my coat jacket, I pulled out a knife. The handle was dark black, perfectly well-kept, without a speck of dust on it. The blade was razor sharp, I made sure it was every night. I’d been looking for an excuse to whip it out.

“Balisong. A butterfly knife. I saw it in a store and I had to have it. Costed me all my allowance, about fifty bucks, maybe. I like to wave it around when I’m losing a fight.”

Nicholas leaned in closer to me with wide eyes, taking in every fine detail of the knife. “Wow,” he whispered. “And you use this thing in real fights? Like the movies?”

“Mhm. Check this out.” I held the blade closed in my hands before flicking the blade open and rolling the handles through my fingers. The sharp end spun round and round, just enough to not cut my hand, making a mesmerizing pinwheel motion, over and over, until I sharply flicked the blade back to the left and snapped it shut.

Nicholas opened his mouth in amazement, not moving for a second before clambering over to me and begging, “Let me try!”

“That’s probably not a good idea,” I told him, but he insisted, and not wanting to spoil his fun, I obliged.

I watched as Nicholas grasped the handle, tightly and nervously, his hand shaking. “Hold it at the end,” I said. “Then flick it open and spin it around your finger to start off.”

Nicholas’s eyes concentrated solely on the blade; he took a deep breath. The wind was howling at that point, the bells rang. Then, all in a blur, the blade flashed open revealing its steel edge before Nicholas lost his grip and flung it into the snow. I leaned over to pick it up, but Nicholas stopped me.

“Let me try again,” he said.

“That’s not a good idea.” I sat back regardless and watched.

This time, Nicholas stared at the knife for a long time before he began, only the wind’s screams filling the air. The bells had stopped, the choir had stopped, the Gospel spoke no more of its wisdom. And in my head, I thought that the only thing here was to weep and repent. The blade flashed open, shot quickly across Nicholas’ hand, before he let out of wince of pain, dropping knife, which was stained with his blood. His hand shot crimson, and the bright red seeped into the snow.

“Ah, Christ, Nicholas.” I walked over and wiped off the blade in the snow. “Jesus, your mom is going to kill me if she sees that.”

I looked over at Nicholas, who had fallen over and was kneeling, looking hard at the ground. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Just clean it up in the snow, alright? And don’t tell your mom.”

He nodded, silently digging his wounded hand into the snow. The wind finally died. I was bored out of my mind.

“Can I try again later?” he asked after his blood had all been absorbed by the snow.

I sighed. “Of course not. And stop trying. You’ll never be able to do it.”

And then I gave him a big, phony smile. “Well, I’m bored now. Let’s go see if your mom is ready to leave.”

There’s no kids to fight in North Dakota.

The car ride home was dead silent until Nicholas finally spoke. “There’s a new organist. She just moved in.”

“That must be real exciting, Nicholas.”

The car ride continued in silence. Squirrels were finishing up collecting for the season. People, finely dressed, walked in and out of the church to worship. Students bearing the same uniform as me all crowded into the library in groups.

“I want to try again,” Nicholas muttered.

I thought of my school uniform: We must live with hunger.

Living is starving. In that case, I’d rather I wasn’t alive at all. I’d rather die, and then laugh at the people dying.

I imagine the kid didn’t like the beating very much, because the next day during homeroom I was hauled off to the office alongside a blubbering little child and a stern-faced principal. Stephen, I learned his name was. His mother was there too, sitting in the corner and shooting me nasty glares all throughout the ordeal.

As soon as I sat down, Stephen’s mother began going off. “This boy is a menace!” she said, only just managing not to burst into tears. “I cannot believe you would tolerate this type of behavior. My son, he could not even walk for an entire day. And he cried! He never cries in front of me, not since he was  a baby, but when he came home he broke down!”

There was an almost comical tone to her meltdown. I thought it was funny. I kept glancing at Stephen to see if he thought so too, but he was too busy looking down and pretending he had obtained some sort of trauma from his beating. That was fine. If I had been humiliated, I’d be keeping my head down too.

When Stephen’s mother finished, she took a deep inhale, completely red-faced and out of breath. “And that’s all I have to say, regarding this situation,” she concluded. The principal nodded, and with the same grim expression, she turned to me.

“I called your parents.” She took a pause, as if she were expecting me to flinch. “Although it seems they haven’t arrived yet, I’m sure they will be very disappointed when they hear what has been going on.”

That seemed about right. My dad was probably busy flopping over the streets and being a prostitute, and my mom was probably busy being passed out at a bar being a drunkard. Or maybe not. To be honest, I had no idea what my parents did. At any rate, they were always busy.

“Expulsion may even be on the table,” the principal continued. “You understand what you’ve done here is taken very seriously, correct? We don’t tolerate any sort of fighting, and you can imagine your actions don’t reflect well upon the image of this school.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“The kids here, we fight all the time. Maybe you’re unaware because you’re the principal and all, but everyone knows it. Me personally, I’ve fought loads of kids. And we both enjoy it. It lets off steam, you know? I don’t know why it’s such a big deal now.” I pointed towards Stephen. “And this kid started the whole thing anyway. I didn’t realize he was going to be such a pansy.”

Stephen’s mother glared at me. “It was a tough fight, though,” I added.

The principal gave a deep, long sigh. Then she took off her glasses and set them on the table before leaning far back into her chair, so much so that I thought she might fall off. “Is all of this true?” she finally asked.

“Of course.”

“Stephen?”

Stephen looked at the ground, then at his mother, who seemed to be at the edge of her seat despite being the only person in the room standing up. Then, he looked at me. “No,” Stephen said. “He’s lying.”

Rat bastard, I thought. But oh well, I tried.

“My son has went through hell because of this boy. It’s only proper that you expel him immediately.” And his mother, she was near tears again.

It was pretty depressing. Stephen’s mother, so deeply concerned for her boy, and Stephen, quietly taking in her grief, knowing full well that he didn’t deserve her love. All of it communicated by his uncomfortable glances, looker anywhere but at his mother’s pain-stricken face. What an estranged relationship, I thought. His mother didn’t ask for this. And I suppose, Stephen was in a very awkward position himself. It was this, not his mother’s pleas, nor his bruise-covered face, nor the disappointed look of the principal, that made me feel somewhat remorseful for what I had done.

Stephen. He truly was a pathetic specimen.

Negotiations began to wrap up, and my parents had still not yet arrived. “Is there anything else you want to say?” the principal asked.

I stared blankly at her.

“I know you haven’t been honest with me. Whatever it is that’s really going on, you have to let someone know. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

I paused for a moment, then spoke. “I like to hurt people. It’s what I enjoy doing. Maybe you can’t understand that. And that’s fine. But this is what make me happy. It’s my only reprieve from this hell. Pursuit of happiness, right? I’m only doing what I enjoy doing. It’s my happiness. Stephen, perhaps he doesn’t like it when he gets his teeth kicked in. That’s fair. It makes him happy to not be beat into a bloody pulp. I would never try to take that little reprieve away from him. That would be cruel. But I won’t sacrifice my happiness for his, the same way he would not allow me to kick his teeth in to fulfill my desires. To me, it’s cruel that you’re taking away my happiness. Why place one person’s pursuit of happiness over another? Everybody deserves to be happy, I think. So you’re being cruel. This whole world is cruel, if I really want to go there. Man, this really sucks.”

I was expelled shortly thereafter.

 

I like to hurt people. Most people don’t get to experience it, but there’s a thrill in seeing someone writhing on the ground because of something you did, whether it be a kick to the groin or a baseball bat to the head. We don’t usually fight with weapons, but when we do, we wear a helmet so no one is seriously injured, or at least not visibly injured. Lots of guys think they have concussions afterwards and are always panicking about it. What we do is we ask them how many fingers we’re holding up and then they’ll answer and then we say that they’re fine. Nobody has gotten a concussion yet, not that I know of.

Anyhow, I was about behind the school after class let out with three other guys, standing a bit off from the parking lot where all the departing students were. Two of them were my friends. The first, Aiden, is smart but ugly. The second, Ted (Teddie if you want to annoy him), is ugly but stupid. As for the third guy, I didn’t know him very well. I didn’t know his name either. All I knew was that he had on those huge, repugnant Harry Potter glasses. He looked like he ate books in his free time and wore a bowtie at home, complete with a pair of suspenders.

The reason we were there in the first place was because the nerd and I had an argument during lunch. I won’t go into details because it was really childish and stupid, but I was calling him a retard and he was calling me a ****ing idiot and it was a whole thing. And as we were screaming our lungs out (I was winning the argument by the way), he tossed out there that maybe we should settle things like men. And I guess he didn’t expect me to agree because a surprised look shot across his face when I did. But you can’t really back out of a fight after you’ve proposed one, you know, because that’s just really embarrassing.

Aiden and Ted wanted to watch. Nick because he’s a loser with nothing better to do, and Ted because he’s braindead and also has nothing better to do. They wanted to record it even, but the school is really cracking down on fighting and even gave us a whole boring assembly on how you’ll get suspended for even just sharing a video of a fight. Which is really dumb in my opinion.

To be honest, I was really surprised that the kid even showed up, even if he looked like he was about to piss himself. Typically I kind of get these shaky jitters before a fight and I think about what sort of injuries I might get and even think that maybe I should just chicken out. But this kid, he looked like his bones just from getting out of bed. So I was feeling pretty confident.

The fight went about as I thought it would. In the high school movies, you always see kids throwing hands like they’re boxers. Let me tell you, not a single kid in this school knows how to box, or even fight at all. Most every fight goes the same: they both try to tackle each other at the same time and end up on a hugging match on the floor. Whoever is heavier (or fatter) gets on top and its done. That kind of thing is why we sometimes used bats, by the way.

The nerd was no real exception. I guess even he could tell that his twig-like body wouldn’t be able to topple me, so instead he threw a punch, or at least what he must have thought a punch looked like. It was more like a motion similar to knocking on a door or bringing down the gavel. It was so pathetic I almost had to laugh. I didn’t know how to throw a punch either, but that didn’t matter because I just slapped him with a clenched fist and he dropped to the ground like a used tissue.

He wasn’t knocked out or anything. In the movies you see these guys get knocked out by a single punch. That sort of thing never happens in real life, because after you hit someone in real life, they don’t get scared or too hurt, so long as you’re not Mike Tyson or something. They get pissed and embarrassed, and they try as soon as possible to get back at you, to protect their pride. And let me tell you, those kids who get embarrassed have this wild look in their eyes, teeth gritted, and you can tell just from a glance that they are going all out with every ounce of strength. At that moment the only thing you can think is “Oh crap,” and try to defend yourself. Then if you get hit real hard, you get pissed and then it’s even.

My remedy for the situation was to keep beating them after they take the first hit to have no time to think. As soon as he hit the ground I started kicking him in the groin over and over as hard as I could, which almost made my groin hurt just thinking about it. I guess you could call that a low blow, or kicking a guy while he’s down, or a dishonorable ball kicking. I disagree, because once these guys go into a frenzy, honor goes out the window for them too, to the point where they’re pulling your hair and poking at your eyes, so I’d rather take the cheap shot first. And if you care about honor and whatnot, you just don’t want to win enough. Since most kids don’t know how to fight, the result either comes from who’s heavier, or who’s more ruthless. I’m not that heavy, so I like to be more ruthless.

Aiden and Ted were laughing their heads off. The kid was crying and whimpering and yelping at first, but then it became quieter until it was just pathetic sounding peeps. It was no fun after that, so I stopped. Then I took my bag from Aiden, who had been holding it for me, and left the parking lot.

That’s pretty much it. On a side note, my teacher made me take a quiz on the countries of Africa, and there’s like a hundred of them. And Roblocks shut down my account. That’s about it.