I awoke. To hear the sound of dying birds. They were not actually birds, but my mother cursing and screaming at my father. Another useless cause. Cause=Time. Each new one marks the days that go by. Days lost to the unknown cause. She came into my room after I had woken up to the dying birds and asked me very calmly, “Will you eat these?” referring to a box of trail mix bars. “Sure,” I said. As she left, I thought it might have been my imagination again, forming sounds that would shift my perception. Her voice was so calm. They must not be fighting after all.
About to go to sleep. And there they were. More screeching, more squawking. No end. A house lead by a mother and disturbed by a father. He never has anything to say. He tries to yell back but she’s too good at rebutting. I looked at my comforter and saw a shiny purple slug-fish. It had bright white eyes and a long tail. It was swimming happily, until it squirmed over itself again and again, trying to escape the attacks of a giant bird, whose purpose could not be seen, but who grabbed and slashed and pestered the meek creature again and again. She is an orange bird with long talons and big bulging eyes that see everything. Her feathers are always ruffled and she has no time to preen them, but just lets the days go by.
Last night I had a dream. We were all in school. Everyone was. All fourteen hundred. And we were in the gymnasium. There was a huge net, kind of like those nets on golf courses, and when you came into the room, it was right there, blocking off the rest of the room from you. I came into the room, and I stood on a platform with hundreds of other kids, none of them did I know, as usual. The atmosphere was just like at a dance, only the lights were really bright, and the music was the sound of voices cheering and screaming at one another. These were all coming from the other side of the net where people were facing away from me, looking towards the stage. It was a small stage, compared to the vast amount of people around it. And believe me, there were a lot more kids down there than there were up on that platform.
Applause erupted as one of the sophomore girls came up on stage. Then I realized that it was her birthday party that I had been shoved into. An assembly that was not of my choice to attend, by that was mandatory of all of us. She stood there soaking in the cheers from everyone, who now looked like the crowds at Woodstock.
I am destined to be a metaphor.
She took a microphone and went into her usual friendly chatter, joking about sex, colors, exclamation points, and other random shit that no sensible person would be able to stand. And then she started deciding. She was deciding who would be allowed to join the Woodstock-like crowd (Heaven) or be banished and be forced to jump off of the platform, towards death (Hell).
At this point in my dream I started to hear a narrative voice, speaking about those who had been allowed to cross, as if narrating my own death scene. “Those standing were the ones that were loved. If not by one, then by everyone.” “They were the pointless, the plucked, the perfect, the pinkified, the perverted. All joined together for this magnificent occasion, which everyone except me cared about.” “Screaming at the top of their lungs, ‘I wanna bang U!’ or ‘Your so sexi! ur my beastttt!’ That’s what it’s like, if you really want to know.” “Out in the crowd, you could spot the funniest kids in school, the potheads, the skaters (which weren’t much different), the rich girls, the girls who thought they were rich, the cute guys who weren’t given a chance to escape, the football team, and so on, and so on, and so on.”
She started calling off names, like an attendance call, which is exactly what it was. “HOW ABOUT, let’s see here…I’ll take the swim team. Come down here!” And a rush of perfectly defined, bleach blonde girls come out from behind me, and go join the mass. It went on like that. She just stood there and saw our faces, and decided our fates as if this was a game show, and we weren’t really dying when she didn’t call us.
I wanted to be called down so badly. I want to go and join those who would live through this, and go home to rave about how much fun it was. I wanted to be sucked into the shallow pool below. So I cried. In fact, I was hysterical. I couldn’t stand looking at it any longer. This was all I was to them. Not even a life, but a thing that only added to a room. This was all I had managed to add up to, after fifteen years. And how could any godly force allow this to happen? How could anyone not see that these sick, unreal people were ruling this institution? How could no one see this and do something about it? Why was it always the smart, imaginative people that had to suffer?
“OK, I THINK THAT’S IT! IT’S A PARTY!” And at that I jumped off of that platform, down what seemed like five hundred feet, and crashed into the floorboards below, crumpled into nothing but a waste of a life.
I couldn’t tell you why I have these dreams about the most unimportant people in my life, the ones I go to school with, but have never spoken to in my life. It’s as if my subconscious takes in blips of their faces when I see them on myspace or facebook, and I just can’t forget. The childish blogs, the stupid, stupid comments. They stay with me even though I wish they didn’t. The story of my life.