Kid Against The World: Two

Chapter Two

Malaysia is boiling hot and very unnecessary damp. The way one would think hell is like, now times that by eighteen and you get Malaysia, but if you times it by twenty then you’ve gone too far and went to Australia or Ethiopia. So I shouldn’t complain, there are other countries out there suffering in much more extreme conditions.

I got home by train and now just few steps to my apartment, Block F.

Block F is a combination of life insurances and urine, and how fascinating and disgusting they all are at the same time.

Not too far from the apartments, you can see the big billboard on the highway. There is the large, swelled up face of our current prime minister, his white thinning hair swiped back matched with a Hitler moustache and a thick full red lips, this kind of face reminds me of a wolf, or a pig, take your pick. He points right at me, with his eyes wide open with those big glasses of his, and he is smiling, why? He is very calm like a Hindu cow for someone with a lot of scandals.

The prime minister is a goat, he is very coordinated because he can hold his balance in high grounds. I might find him inspiring if I don’t hate politicians. Politicians never do the things they are meant to. Politicians aren’t a system, they are not machines, they are humans and so they make mistake. I think when you get older, and you’re preparing yourself for bed, you have the sudden realization that nothing in life will ever be as good as you want them to be and so you have to blame something to fall asleep. Blame your cat, blame your dog, blame your door, blame your cheap computer, and blame the prime minister. Yes, the prime minister should be the one to blame because he was supposed to make things well. Yes, because I put my well-being and happiness solely on a man with a Hitler moustache and big thick red lips that makes him look like a clown. Yes, I should hate this man. I need to research about him so I can have a clear reason why I need to hate him. Yes, he does this to his wife, to his children, yes, he does this to his car, yes he does this to random people. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I think that’s the real point of a prime minister. The people need something to hate. We don’t really need a prime minister or anyone big to govern us, we can do that by ourselves, and every day we do that. We just need this person so we can accept life will always be horrible.

This is why our prime minister is a goat, he is still standing high, balancing himself.

Block F is a vision of beauty, old white walls with dirty green and yellow stains, rough cemented ground done improperly, and the smell of cat piss and cat corpses. I hate cats. I hate the smell. AS much I love their demise, the smell is horrid.

I take the stairs up to my door. The block I live in is dingy and rotten, it looks as if somebody peed on it and decided to call it art. Nobody does anything about it, nobody wants to, because nobody actually cares. I feel much more tired right now.

When I get up on the third floor, closing in to my door, this girl is staring right at me with eyes rimmed with dead stars and mouth that kissed the gates of heaven. I know who she is, she lives in the door in front of my house. I see her all the time, ALL THE TIME, and her name is Sybilla.

She goes to the same school with me, but she never talks to me because I’m pure trash, while she just lives in one.

She is very beautiful with her long wavy black hair and pale skin like the pastel moonlight, and I think she knows it. She is tall and skinny, not too skinny to the brink of death, skinny as in she looks good wearing anything and nothing. She is the whole shebang of looks.

I try not to look at her as I make my way to my door, but just as I’m taking out my keys from my pockets, she says to me with a soft voice, “Hey, we go to the same school don’t we?”

I turn to catch her leaning on that red door of hers, arms back. She is wearing this cut off sleeveless t shirt of a band she probably listens to, no bra, I can see her nipples through the fabric piercing out, and she wears this really short pants that reveals her clean thighs. “What’s with the black getup?” she asks. “You went to a funeral or something?”

My life is a funeral.

She say this to me because she discerns that I am wearing a black t-shirt, black ripped skinny jeans and black boots. “I always wear black,” I say as I hold my keys. I wonder at this moment, this instance, why a girl like her would want to talk somebody like me. She is one of the popular girls in school nonetheless. She never talked to me before, why start now?

“Yeah, I know,” she replies and I am somewhat happy to hear that because it means she notices me. “You always wear black, do you attend like a lot of funerals or something?” I can’t believe this, she is actually initiating a conversation with me.

“No,” I say as I push back my front hair. I have messy greasy long hair that should have been cut a long time ago. “I just like wearing black,” as I say this, my fingers are fingering the holes of my pants, nervous as I am.

“Black has it all. Its beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony,” she says this like a Shakespearian actress. “Coco Chanel said that. Right?” she ask me as if I know. I know of Chanel, but I don’t know the slightest, the quotes this person has ever said.

It occurs to me that the little brown in her eyes sparkle a bit as we are talking.

“Hey. You have a smoke? I’ve seen you smoke before, so you must have some, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I pulled out my pack of Marlboro, these killers are expensive, it’s a good thing I stole them, and then I hand her one cigarette and one more for me, but she quickly say this as she is holding unto hers, “No, how about we share, you don’t want to waste.” And with that I place it back, and then I light the smoke between her seemingly flawless fingers. She takes the first drag, long and hard, and then puffs out the smoke so coolly. Even as beautiful as she is, she is still poor. Why else would she live in a dump like this, for fun?

She pulls her phone and clicks it and clicks it again as her soft pink lips clasps on the smoke, texting one of her friends perhaps.

And then she hands me the cigarette, I place it between my lips and then I have the weirdest sensation that I feel her rims on mine, it feels like the way I want it to: some kind of a slippery chromed bliss, a dead night sonata cursed by the moon river.

It’s like I have been this dead guy, but now I’m this freaking awesome Jedi.

It feels unbelievable. And then I take a drag, my third smoke of the day. My mind is poisoned as I take it in, my lungs are what the Devil wears as his dancing shoes.

I don’t know what to ask her, I don’t quite actually know what to say in a conversation. The problem with me is I would rather imagine how the conversation goes rather than playing it out in real life.

So what is a good conversation? How do I proceed to be in one? Just talk, a good conversation is when two people are talking.

After a while she stops texting and then her eyes look up to me, she is an inch shorter than I am, not that I’m really tall. When our eyes catch each other, I find her to be lacking and desperate for help; her eyes were like the poster town of regret and mourn in the rubble blest whirlwind mixed with the rougher side of gold.

I give her the cigarette and then she, thinking it is high time for a proper introductions says to me, “My name is Sybilla by the way. How about you? What should I call you?”

“Call me Kid.”

“Just Kid?”

“Yeah, just Kid.”

“That’s a nice name, very cool,” she say as I finish, and she smiles a little, a crack. Her voice is low and silvery, smoky like the smoke she puffs out, and drop dead gorgeous like the structure of her face and the lines of her body. “How are you, Kid?” she asks out of the blue. And I’m glad she asks me this, it’s been a long time since anybody asks how I am doing.

“I’m okay,” I give her a nod as I lie with the words I spoke. “How about you? Are you doing okay?” I asks as well, because it feels like the right thing to do.

“I’m… I’m doing, okay.” After she say this I can hear the way she clears her throat as if she is regretting even speaking to me. I gave her my cigarette and have this lovely chat, and now she doesn’t like me, I’m not even surprise. “Look I, I’m just. I don’t know what to do. It’s good that you ask, really, but, it’s my fault.”

This conversation is like a horse ride; she is the horse while I am the rider. And instead of the horse serving the rider, I serve her.

I know she is lying as well. We are all bunch of liars, lying to each other, and we know we are lying to each other and ourselves. We want so bad to believe we are ‘okay’, but we’re not.

“You’re not okay,” I say this with spiders in my head, and in my mouth, but I am thinking that I am picking out the bullet in her head. “I don’t think you’re okay. And to be honest, I’m not okay too, actually,” the words come out like a strum of an electric guitar.

“That obvious, huh?” she drags the cigarette for one last time and then throws it to the ground and steps on it. “It sucks doesn’t it, growing up. It’s better when we’re younger. When we don’t know anything. It’s the point where we start to know things that it gets sucky.”

I don’t think she understands that my walls are breaking. And I don’t think I understand her too, she is like a faraway distant galaxy and the only way I can truly see her is with a mega telescope. And where can I get one at the moment? I really want to know her right now. I just want to.

After she finish with her piece, a long period of silence wisped the air between our two souls, she smiled at me and me to her.

“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t grow up then.”

Totally ignoring what I just said, she turns to the left to catch the absent air and say, “Don’t you just hate it when the person you think that won’t hurt you, decides they want to? It’s just sucky and stupid.”

This is the chemical formula for love: C8H11NO2+C10H12N2O+C43H66N12O12S2. It is dopamine, serotonin, added with oxytocin. I know this because I read it somewhere. I also read it can be easily produced in a lab, but right now, I am producing it in my body like there is no tomorrow as I gaze upon her glory.

“Yeah,” I add.

“You’re really cute, do you know that?” says she finally. I kind of scoffed, bewildered by her outrageous statement. Puppies are cute, baby piglets are cute, black skirts are cute, cats? No, cats are the Satan’s little devious play things, just like me.

“You’re very dark,” she continues. “Very interesting. There is something about that makes me want to know more.”

“Alright.”

“We should hang out sometime, it would be fun.” I can sense the conversation was about to be over, and just about when I got used to it. I won’t lie; it was like a guilty pleasure. I live my whole life thinking talking to somebody was inane, but it is not. I want it more, I want to talk to her longer, again and again till her mouth runs dry and her tongue plops out. I don’t want it to end.

“Okay.”

“See you, thanks for the smoke,” she says as she closes the red door behind her, and the last thing I saw of her is her behind, and how stunning it is. “See you later,” I say timidly a little too late.

With the chat coming to a close, I am beginning to get really tired again, and having nothing else to do, I open my house door to see the woman I call my mother, half naked, smoking a cigarette, sitting on the run down coach we have in the small living room, watching the television. And then in another second, a tall chubby hairy man comes out of the toilet, only wearing his boxers. He goes to my mother and scuffles her hair, and then proceeds putting on his pants and shirt on.

“That was fun, Lievre,” this man says to my mother. “I’ll come over same time, next week,” he goes out the door ignoring me, not before placing a handful of money on the coffee table and my mother quickly took it and places it in her purse. As he went out, I stare him and he stares me back.

“Anytime you want, Bob,” says my mother. She has a sweet voice, a gentle one, trapped in a harsh world. “You fat bug,” my mom curse the man as the door is close.

She turns to me, fixing her hair, and then putting her smoke out, “How was the movie? Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, it was. We should watch a movie together sometime,” I say this like a small frail boy.

“No, the movies aren’t for me, honey,” she says, unapologetically. “I got work to do, work that feeds us and pay the bills. That reminds me, I need to get ready. My shift is starting.” She works late night shifts in a fancy Chinese restaurant, but that doesn’t pay all the bills and put food in the fridge, so she has another work that cater men who are lonely and wish to feel the love of a woman. My mother. My mother is a class act. A proper rock and roller, she is. Not because she wants to be though, because the situation we are in necessitates it.

“Alright, okay,” say I politely, taking a sit on a chair and taking my boots off. “Who was that?” I ask of the man named Bob, for he is certainly new.

“Some rich accountant, he lives in up in the city,” my mom explains this, and I was half listening. And then she talks about something else that caught my ears. “I was listening to you and the girl living in front of our house outside talking just now. How is she?”

“She’s fine,” I rub my feet; the boots are always heavy on my legs every time I wear them. “She wanted a smoke, so I gave her one.”

“Oh,” she chuckles frantically. “Do you like her?”

“I don’t know,” I say timidly. “Don’t know her enough to like her. I’m going to my room,” I left her then to head to my base.

My chamber is small, like everything else in this house. No posters, no nothing, just a mattress on a floor and a closet filled with only cheap rugged black clothing.

I take off my t shirt and then fall to my mattress.

My temporary death (sleep) will launch in five.

Four.

Four in a half.

Three.

Three if life is static.

Two.

Instead of ashes of toxin coursing through my veins, it is stardust.

Still not able to sleep I push my head deep into my wore-down mattress with no bed sheets, no nothing, only has one old pillow I had since I was seven.

One. Zero. Nothing. Nothing after zero, but negative.

And before I realize it I am dead.

It was a successful launch. I fall asleep. This is how I die.