"I wish somebody could tell me what to do with all this fucking inspiration I've got bottled up inside of me. Like a flow of distant images before my eyes; the feeling is there and I know that if I don't do something about it I'll blow up into little tiny pieces of something shiny yet not reachable and it'll all have gone to waste. It's awful. Really. Like trying to...catch a small, furry animal, a hamster maybe, but it's...oily and I can't get it to stay in my hands for more that maybe two seconds and still that's enough to make me want it even more. Even this fucking analogy is making me frustrated. It feels like I want to...elevate myself from the rest of the world. Like I'm looking down on them, not in a sense of me feeling superiour or anything, but rather that I am the one seeing the bigger picture. The biggest picture. Just to try and separate myself from everyone else. To know what really is...me. I mean, who the fuck am I anyway?" All of these thoughts go through my head in a matter of milliseconds and I try to form my absractions into grammatically correct sentences, I can't really hear myself talk because I'm not listening as I try to explain it all to the girl sitting at the other end of the table, nodding. She looks deep into my eyes and for a moment I think she's really understood what I'm trying to say but then I realize that I can't tell if that's just her noticing my blue contacts.
"You're great", she replies. She's stopped eating, as of out of respect. Maybe to leave room in her stomach for my huge ego. She wants to swallow me whole, I think to myself and try to make everything go back to normal. I start cutting my steak into little pieces and politely I say "thanks, so are you". She seems content with the answer and stares blindly into my eyes for about five seconds before continuing her meal.
After dinner, she offers to do the dishes and when I tell her not to she thinks I'm just being polite. I eventually have to let her, though, even though I really hate random people touching my plates and silverware, and I know in my mind that the next time I eat - the next time I put one of those forks in my mouth, the only thing I'll be able to think about is other people's hands touching it and I'll feel sick because I won't even know how thorough she's been washing them. She has clean-looking hands, though, and I try to convince myself that it can't be that bad, germ-wise. Don't get me wrong - I'm not this anti-bohemian freak who cleans his apartment every two seconds - I just like to know what I'm putting in my mouth. I dry the dishes after she's washed them and it feels like she thinks that we're really bonding; she keeps looking up at me with this smile like she knows me, like she knows what I'm all about. Fuck you, I think to myself, smiling. Fuck you, you don't know a single thing about me, I think, but at the same time realizing that I wish she did. I stop drying the dishes and turn off the water even though there's still lots of stuff in the sink and she looks confused when I pull her away from the foam-filled basin, kissing her frantically everywhere like I'm trying to devour her. She quickly adjusts to the situation, though, getting so excited and caught up in the moment that she actually starts shaking and she tries to hide it but fails miserably. When I realize that it's me - it's actually me making her this nervous, I suddenly feel a surge of power flow through my body and though I like it I get scared at the same time, half-worrying that I might do something to this girl that I'll regret later. I manage to push the thoughts out of my head, though, at about the same time as I enter her, and when I hear her gasp in my ear I find myself suddenly laughing. Not because this is a particularly amusing situation or anything but I just feel like laughing, and I try to sound like I'm moaning with pleasure or something but I really can't hide all this laughter uncontrollably bursting out of my mouth and now she looks at me like I'm psychotic and maybe I am but there's nothing I can do about it and when I come about five seconds later I still can't stop laughing and the last thing I remember seeing before I pass out is this girl looking down on me, sheet wrapped around her, with a semi-shocked, semi-disgusted look on her face.
I wake up naked and alone, lying on the floor. I've been sweating but I feel cold and when I accidentally touch my arm it feels mushy and corpse-like. I try to stand up but my head is spinning so instead I throw myself on the bed and try to sleep. The dishes are still in the sink and I think about having to wash them later and the thought is eventually so unbearable that I have to get up and do them now, even though I feel like I'm going to faint. Half-heartedly I scrub the porcelain plates and the stainless steel forks but the bearnaise sauce has already dried (how long have I been lying on the floor?) and it feels kind of useless since I don't have any strength in my arms now anyway. My head is pounding so I take an Aspirin and lay down in bed again to watch TV. There is nothing on, really, but I keep zapping from channel to channel, determined to find something to watch. Eventually my thumb gets sore from all the clicking and I get stuck in front the Home Shoppers Network and it feels good to know that no matter how appealing a new vacuum cleaner might sound I won't have the strength to get the phone and actually dial the number to buy it. The Aspirin starts to kick in and I start wondering how many I took since now the headache is nearly gone but the pounding is even louder. I look around me to see if I can find some alternate source for this strange and disturbing noise but it really can't come from anywhere else except inside my head (my neighbors are in their eighties and wouldn't be making this kind of noise unless they've bought a subwoofer or something which would be highly unlikely and to be totally honest I think they're already dead, rotting away in some cupboard next to the Shake 'N' Bake Muffin Mix). I start hitting myself in the head. With precaution at first, as if I'm fine-tuning my brain or something, but eventually I get more and more violent and before I know it I'm banging my head against the wall. Not aware of any kind of pain, just this fucking noise that won't shut up, I keep banging until I see blood, there is now blood on the wall and it's dripping from my forehead and I freak and instantly jump out of bed, head still pounding - I grab the phone and press the Redial button and when it takes several rings for this Redial person to answer I get furious and start screaming at the beeping, un-answering phone. Eventually, though, somebody answers, and fortunately enough, I'm not in the middle of a particularly insulting sentence.
"James residence." I've never heard such an even, dull voice in my life.
"Hello?", I ask, "is this James? It's...me", I say, trying to figure out if I even know this person or not.
"Yeah? Who exactly would that be?" His tone of voice scares me a bit but the pounding is suffocating me, draining my body from every little molecule of oxygen and I have to vent, have to open myself up before I burst into one big explosion.
"You have to help me. Somebody's hammering inside my head and I can't get them to leave. I tried to beat the shit out of them but they're tougher than they seemed to be at first. I'm getting really annoyed now and I need you to come and tell them to stop." I can hear perfectly well how fucking psycho this all sounds but I need to exaggerate so he won't think I'm just your average teeny-moodswing-moron. I'm fucking psychotic, for real, and I get this overwhelming desire to make him fully understand that. What was his name again?
"Have you tried smoking them out?", he replies - indifferent. What the fuck?
"...no. I guess I haven't."
"My aunt had these gross satanic-looking rats in her attic, and she smoked them out with a trash can, some old newspapers and lighter fluid...although I'm not so sure that would be a strategy applicable to, uh, head vermin." Yawning, he continues, "there's always suicide, though."
"I've never seen the point in killing yourself. I mean, going through all that trouble, dying as dramatically as humanly possible, and not even having an audience there to witness your carefully planned sortie. Such a waste of time."
"If you must be so self-centered..." I hear him puffing on a cigarette. The blasé bastard. "...I'll be your audience. I've got nothing better to do anyway, I might aswell 'witness your carefully planned sortie' as you so eloquently put it. Got popcorn?"
I hang up.
Outside the sun is shining. There are people all around, faces up in the air, as though the sunlight were pure oxygen and we're all trapped in a huge fishtank. It feels like everybody is going in the exact opposite direction of where I'm going since I bump into so many people on my way that it feels like I'm in a football game. I find myself smiling at random people - singling them out from the crowd and then gazing deeply into their eyes for fifteen seconds (I time it with my wristwatch) before moving on to the next one. This kind of freaks them out; a huge, muscular dude with a shaved head first looks confused about it, then frowns homophobically at me before giving me the finger.
When I eventually get tired of doing this I sit down on a bench beside the water. The surface of the water intrigues me somewhat since it's clear but yet kind of oily and I start thinking about pollution, world peace, whether or not I've recycled my trash this past week. It sort of feels like my mind has detached itself from my brain and is now going around in circles without any assistance from Yours Truly, and I let it do so for a while.
After a couple of minutes I notice a really young girl, probably not a day over twelve, sitting beside me on the bench. She's trying to feed the ducks some bread but when they don't accept her offer she starts throwing pebbles at them; strategically aiming at their heads. When one of the ducks is hit in the eye and starts running around like the poultry version of Cujo, she just sits there apathetically and keeps on sadistically flicking her little rocks at the ungrateful greenish birds.
"You shouldn't be doing that", I tell her, not making it sound like a reprimand at all but just a general, take-it-or-leave-it, fact of life.
"Yeah." She pauses, looks around for something else to throw, then resumes her animal torturing. "I mean no. I know."
"It's no good talking to strangers either, you know", I say while trying my hardest to remember how on earth it's best to talk to these incomprihensible little creatures we like to call children. Sound like a Teletubby, make funny noises? Smile until my cheeks get sore? Shout like I'm in the military?
"You don't have to worry about that." She's picked out her favorite duck now; it's been hit in the head several times and is now laying on its side and making a panicky, coughing noise. "I'm usually quite harmless." She's now bored of the duck-killing and turns to face me instead of the green bird cadavre. This scares me somewhat and I don't let her eyes meet mine but instead I stare right ahead at the horizon; or at least where it would be if it wasn't for pollution and construction workers. "What's your name?"
"Uh, Adam", I lie, glancing down at the ground.
"Hello, 'Uh-Adam'. I'm Uh-Miranda." She's actually teasing me? "I guess this would be where we shook hands if I were ten years older or so. Seeing as I'm not, it would feel totally strained if we did. Do you mind?" She brushes some dust off her dark blue jeans which seem to be disgustingly expensive for a twelve-year-old.
"I don't...mind." I try to stall, try to figure out what kind of information this little dwarfette is trying to suck out of my brain. "So...do you like animals? I mean, why do you hate them? I mean-...what do I mean?" I laugh nervously and notice her staring deeply into my eyes and smiling calmly yet brutally. "I think you know what I mean?", I half-say, half-ask her, gesturing vaguely at the murder scene before our feet.
"Maybe I do. And I don't know." She picks up a couple of stones from the ground and rhythmically throws them at the dead bird. "Maybe - it - was - just - its - turn - to - go."
"What do you mean 'its turn', though? You're making it sound like we're all in some huge cosmic death queue. The phrase 'it's his/her/its turn to go' is such a fuck-..., such a damn cliché. A platitude that can't be argued with since eventually we're all going to die. It's like that stupid commercial: 'when you gotta go, you gotta go'. I mean - duh! P equals P, enough with it already, stop telling me things I already know and/or have been able to figure out by myself since the age of three." I notice myself sweating and I have to try really hard to actually shut up this huge rant I can feel bubbling inside of me, and I finish by sighing: "I just want to know what the hell a pre-teen girl named Miranda is doing alone on a Friday afternoon in a park with a stranger, killing innocent ducks. That's all...that's all I want to know."
"This suddenly seems very important to you, Adam." The way she pronounces my name makes me feel like I'm the one who's in fact ten years younger than her, and I get vague flashbacks of my principals office; rulers snapping at fingers, loud male voices shouting into my ear.
"It's not. Nothing is," I sigh. "It's like, you know, I know all these people. Acquaintances, I guess you could call them. I guess that's nice enough, it beats being alone I gather, but still...that's all I really am. I have too many acquaintances and not any real friends. Everything is so shallow, you know." I pause for a second, noticing how the constant stream of words are ejaculated from my mouth at a machine gun speed. "...do you know? I mean, is it the same for a kid these days?" I try to sound like I care only to realize that I do care. She gets up, walks around kicking in the sand for some moments, then sits down on the ground gazing blankly at the water.
"Are you really interested in my reply? You just told me that acquaintances were pretty much useless, and from what I remember, we just met some ten minutes ago."
"That's not what I said. This isn't shallow, we're actually talking...about things that matter."
She laughs at me.
"Adam, does everything have to be so damn meaningful all the time? Life isn't one outstretched philosophy class. There has to be something in between those Moments of Truth and self-realizations - you could call it the putty of life. Stop fucking around with the balance of things, I mean, seriously...to have friends, you have to have been acquaintances at some time. To be awake, you have to sleep. You are just another human being. Stop trying to figure it all out, and most importantly; stop looking down on the ones that don't. There might just be no bigger picture. Even if there is, why trade in your happiness just to raise yourself above everybody else?"
I get up and walk away. Miranda doesn't blink or look in my direction for even a second; instead she starts dissecting the nearby duck corpse with a sharp rock.
At home, I can feel the pounding noise building up inside my head again. I place my hands over my ears but it doesn't go away, instead it continues to grow stronger and louder; a steamroller crushing my thoughts and turning them into broken glass, scratching at my nerves. I will give anything to make this go away, I keep thinking on my way to the balcony. As I smash my forehead into the railing repeatedly I feel no pain, only a slight sense of dizziness that becomes even more apparent when I make short pauses in between smashing sessions. I'm having difficulties standing up so I sit down while continuing to exorcise the noise from my head. Just a big enough hole for ventilation. I see blood and stars and rude pre-teens in front of my eyes and I hear myself making retarded gargling sounds that accompany the banging perfectly. An orchestra of madness. Everything goes black; I feel it all slipping away from me and my hand releasing its neurotic clutching grasp of reality. There is no need for anything, anymore.
