Kid Against The World: Four

Chapter Four

Remember, you can’t love somebody without losing a part of yourself.

I drive calmly in this rundown sad excuse of an automobile, I don’t know where we are going, but I’m feeling electric tonight with her by my side. We pull down the windows, and let the wind enter, her hand is out, making waves out of it, whistling a tune she is common with. I am very certain that I am nervous, being in a car with her. I mean I used Pabil’s car before, and he is cool with it, so I’m not anxious about that. It’s the fact that I’m in the same car with this Goddess, that’s making my heart beat racing like a Formula One race car. 

We are closing in to the city now; Kuala Lumpur at night is just superb. Forget Paris; forget New York or London, Melbourne, none of that could compare the rawness of Kuala Lumpur. The bikers riding the roads, the homeless trying to get some food, the youth falling in and out of love, all happen under the sleepless nights of this city.

She takes a can of beer from behind the car, opens it up, there is the bubbling sound of it, Prssssss. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says as she take a slurp.

I don’t mind if you don’t mind me divide and fall apart right in front of you because my limbs aren’t intact when I’m around your iridescent presence.

This is just like a video game.

It seems that sleeveless t shirt and shorts are currently my favorite attire, and it’s not even mine to wear. I want to watch her get undress from those clothes as I take her body downtown.

I say, “Give me some,” and she leans in, I think maybe she wants to give me a big kiss, putting her scent on me. Instead she place the can of beer right at my mouth and I take a slight sip. Just like a video game, as my hands are still on the steering wheels, half concentrating on the road and half on her.

I want her to put those arms of hers around me, and tell me the whole world is going to be alright. Tell me the sting is just temporary.

“You feel like eating?”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “There is nothing food can’t help heal, right?” she asks me like she is begging it to be right, she wants to believe that something can heal her.

So, I turn to her quickly, “Yeah, food heals all,” I say very proudly.

From here, I know where to go.

“Why now?” I ask, I had to open my mouth and ask, I just had to. I am not going to lie, I have a little hole in my heart that she fills up ever since I saw her years ago. I had this mammoth crush for this girl, which stretches from the East Coast to the Peninsular, a chronic unrequited love affair. “Why are you talking to me now?”

The first time I heard her name, I carved in into my head, ever since then, it never stops bleeding.

“Because,” she finishes the can of beer, swinging unto her words, swinging with the twinkling stars, living for the moment she kisses my ear in the dark, the lights barely showing. Just like a video game. She acts drunk, but she is not, then holds me with her small arms. I am dead, the Grim Reaper invites me to a waltz and I follow his steps. “I like you, very much, very much,” she says this with the tenor tone that I have no obligation to make any sense of it all and just accept it.

I can sense the sincerity in her words, or maybe it’s because I’m lonely, pathetic, young and greedy that blurs out the deceit and foolishly accept this outrageous datum.

She laughs after she says it though, so I don’t know whether if it’s true. I want it so bad to be true.

I stay silent, not knowing what to say after that.

I am an iceberg, rough and dangerous, even Titanic feared me, but hearing her saying she likes me, I am slowly melting and I have never feel so complete with the idea of disintegration.

“Does this car have CDs? I want to listen some music,” she demands suddenly, totally forgetting the fact she told me she likes me.

“Turn on the radio then,” I say imprudently.

“No, God no. I hate radio music. It’s always the same thing, the same freaking thing every night and day. I hate those music where they go bzzz bzzz only.”

Everyone believes in God when they hate something.

“Just look around the compartments,” I say hoping Pabil left good CDs in his car.

She opens the compartment between the two front seats, that is separating us, and tons of CDs are stacking horribly, she takes them all out. She throws the ones she doesn’t want to listen to the back, after a while, she comes to a CD, it’s a Guns N’ Roses’ Greatest Hits CD. I love this band.

“Sweet,” she announces, please with her discovery, she immediately puts in the CD. However upon playing, the first song is nothing but a horrible screeching sound, and so is the next one, and the next, she skips until there is one song that is clear, and that is: Patience.

“Don’t skip,” I beg her. “I like this one.”

“I wasn’t going to change, I love this one too. I love this band.”

She loves this band, great. Now I have to love her.

She whistles to the song perfectly, she even does the whistling introduction justice. I think Axl Rose would envy the way she whistles.

I live in a question mark. (?) This is my actual my world.

The song ends, and then the next song is Sweet child o’ mine, and I pray to God it doesn’t screech. Everyone believes in God when they are hoping.

And God bless, it’s not screeching, and we let it continue playing. Sybilla gets really comfortable and starts waving her body by the guitar skills of Slash, she closes her eyes, totally losing herself in the music, her legs atop of the seat. She plays air guitar as the wind coming in pushes her long wavy black hair. I compare her to a natural disaster, and how I would name a hurricane after her.

In the words of Axl Rose himself, she takes me away to that special place and if I stare too long, I’d probably break down and cry.

We stop in the middle of the city, the night is fill with party goers, just like every Saturday night. And even they have their own story to live, while we have our own. I park the car in an alley and we make our way to this mamak stall.

We walk side by side, she smiles at me every time she catches me staring. The streets are dirty etched with dead animals and dead dreams, the entire city is festoon with this ambiance of gritty hope. You have to accept the true ugliness to live here, you can’t ignore them. You have to live with the feces around the city.

I am alright. I say what I want to, and be what I want to, there are centipedes crawling in me. I will not have a grave for myself.

She takes my eyes, but still I’m not blind.

We take a sit, there are still people around eating, and the air is warm as always. Here in this restaurant, I look at Sybilla who is looking at the people around us, and then she turns to me, eyes rolling and says, “We should lock up. We don’t want anybody else entering our box,” she does this weird action, pretending to lock an invisible door, and then swallows this imaginary key.

She laughs at this, I can smell the beer from her, she’s not drunk, she is pretending.

“What will you have?” this skinny man ask what do we want to eat.

“Do you serve tigers?” she jokes.

The man made this obligatory laugh, he probably doesn’t know what is going on, and so do I.

“Milo and fried rice,” I say to the man.

“I’ll have what this gentleman is having,” Sybilla says.

Remember you will always be fat even after you loss tons of weight, so eat up and die.

Sybilla is a suicide jumper, who lives in a tall building, she wants to jump. Why? I don’t know. This girl is afraid and confuse, so she thinks there is nothing to lose and live for.

I am an anti-suicide policeman, if there is one, who just wants to save this poor little girl. Why? I don’t know. I am this boy who is lost and empty, thinking that another person’s love will make me feel complete.

“Don’t jump, Miss Sybilla. Don’t give up. There is still some beauty left in the world,” I shout from down below where Sybilla is. I make the world is still beautiful mandatory speech. “You might think you don’t have an option, but you do. You always do.”

She laughs at my attempt to save her. “That’s it? Ha!”

“No option, no choices. I was not given any choice. There is no reason to live, I was dead long time ago,” and then she jumps and her body splatters right in front of me. My uniform covered in her blood, I cry like a baby. I rush to the cadaver to only see bits of red goo plastered on the street. The other anti-suicide police squad members laugh at me. I feel guilty.

I am the death sentence to a man convicted for pirating DVDs.

I put a gun to my head, and pull the trigger, my body falls on the street being covered by my blood and hers.

We finish our food within a short time period. “Quick,” she says, looking at me keenly, and this conversation needs more puppies, in my opinion. “Let’s dine and dash, are you cool with that? Or you too afraid?”

Dead puppies.

Life decides to sell lemons with an appropriate price and I decide to say, “Screw it, I’m going to steal.”

“Okay,” I agree to her proposal, she slowly gets up from her as do I. We are quiet as we do it, and then she grabs a hold of wrist tightly, and wisps, “Run! Run! Run for your live!” and we take off, from the restaurant like a speeding bullet, the workers didn’t even had a chance. Maybe they choose not to care at us.

We run to a street, near where the nightclubs are, and then start walking instead of running. “You’re not a bad runner,” she laughs, her breasts her shaking when we were running, but they stopped bouncing. “I wonder why you don’t run for the school.”

She says this because she runs for the school.

Sorry, what I meant was, she flies for the school. She is the fastest person, nobody can out run when her legs are in motion. Those long legs of hers that goes on for miles.

I count her eyelashes: forty, forty three, forty eight and nine, and ten, and eleven. It’s not right, it’s impossible to get the exact amount right.

“I don’t do much in school.”

“Yeah, I notice, you just hang at the basketball court with the freaks, smoking.”

“Freaks?”

She pulls back, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s not like I’m saying you’re a freak. I mean you hang the same place with those people who just don’t do anything in school.”

“Like me?” I know the people she is talking about, and no, I’m not friends with this ‘freaks’, and she’s right about them not doing anything, but so do I, I don’t do anything. “I’m a freak? Okay.”

I kind of accept it, but in a way I don’t want her to see me like that. I am more, if she lets me show her. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am nothing.

My throat is blistering in flames, probably because of all the cigarettes I have drenched it with or maybe it’s because there are words I am yearning to blurt out to her, but couldn’t because I don’t have the balls set to do so.

“No you got it all wrong. I’m sorry, can we just forget about it. Just please. Please. Forget about what I said. I say stupid stuff all the time, it’s me.”

“Okay,” I say it with breeze because I don’t actually mind being labeled a freak. It doesn’t mean anything. It has no gist.

“Will it help if I say I knew your name even before I asked? And that I always see you in school and around the apartment. I mean, I want to say something to you before, but you looked like you didn’t want anybody to bother you, with wearing all black and all.”

“Oh,” I say with a smile as we walk along the road, leading us to the busy nightclubs.

I like wearing black, wearing black is easy, it is for the lazy. It makes me mysterious, and being mysterious means being unknown. I want to be not known, I want to be a question. And the good and probably the saddest thing about wearing black is that it gives the message; I don’t mess with you and you don’t mess with me.

Just like a bullet shoot right at my eye, just like an off tune guitar playing on a stage, she bedazzles and confuses my life. It’s not the same anymore, she flickered an endless flame in me. Just like whiskey ruining a kidney, just like my life in shambles, she’s blowing my mind. And I wonder why it is, that I succumb like this, never before with anyone else.

She has this look no known words could describe, she kick starts my heart.

This night, I know she is the only one. She has been the only one because she is just like my favorite song, a side fire that captures my dream, no, wait. She is my dream. The more I turn to catch a glimpse, the more life make little sense, a cerulean ocean waves push and pull me, it’s supposed to make me afraid, but I know it’s alright.

I don’t know how much my eyes can I take it, it’s a pity. Pity. Pity for love’s sake she doesn’t even have to try, can’t we just lie on the street holding each other’s hand? And die together.

I know this is a sick insane infatuation of a young boy, and it is probably because of the moment, but there are tons of truth in the words I think when it comes to her. So please don’t ask me to stop, don’t tell me how disgusting I am, I know what and who I am. I know. I am the feeling of limbo used to describe the pain of brain cancer. I’m the screeching, stabbing sound-motion of extraordinary viciousness score in a horrible CGI horror movie.

We talk for a bit about school and the people she hangs out with and that we are the youngest and at the same time oldest at the moment, it is mean to strike up an intelligent discussion but we end up laughing our butts off sounding because we sound so pretentious. And then we proceed about books that turn movies, “Uh, look at me, I’m a wizard!” she interjects, mocking Harry Potter by speaking with this horrible English accent. “No, you’re a lizard!” I add. And then she acts like a dinosaur, a Velociraptor, her hands form claws, and she opens her jaws wide as she walks like a fool, “No! I’m a raptor.”

“You’re very funny,” I say as we are about to enter this nightclub that has the least amount of people. “I didn’t know you are a funny person.”

“Humor is very attractive, yes?”

“Yeah,” I say with dead stars in my heart, she got me star struck, star dead. “Do you think guys find that attractive in you?”

“I don’t give two birdbrains what guys find attractive about me.”

We enter the club, she lightly takes my hand, and the place looks almost half dead. She turns to me and say, “You want to know what is funny? Twenty four,” and then bursts out laughing like a maniac. I laugh too, not because of the joke that I didn’t get, but because the way she loss control of herself.

“Okay.”

“Hey, can you come up something funnier than twenty four?”

“Uh,” I took a long pause. “Twenty five?” and with that being said, she almost fell to the floor, will all that mirth coming out from her.

“That’s a good one.”

As often as I could I run in the desert, it isn’t bad as it sound if I properly explain it to you, but I can’t. It’s not that I’m stupid, maybe I am, it’s just that I’m a ghost stealing bread crumbs. I can’t be this way forever though, this too shall pass. Singing with a jamboree, using mayonnaise as my choice of instrument. I make ghost sounds.

This place runs with smoke ash and hard liquor.

I wish I have a job to quit, a life to exit.