Cherry Soda Boy

I don’t feel like I truly exist.

My mind is blank. Empty. Racing thoughts have come to a standstill. Frozen in the delicately woven fabric of my brain. Memories are like pictures turning black- thick, tar-like, black. Melting into a giant abyss- a void. A black hole that leads to nothing. My words are air. Transparent. They blow away in the wind. No substance to keep them grounded. I am melting. My skin tingles and slips off my bones. Milky white puddle sinks into the plush beige carpet. Voices come in waves like AM radio. Like bricks they fall on my bones. Crush.

I think my eyes are opened. The blank white ceiling stares back- mocking me. Two jagged cracks meet to form a sick grotesque smile like it knows. It just knows. The point where they meet, the vortex, is long and inviting and black. I get sucked in. It’s suffocating and right. I can’t breathe. Sharp rocks like accusing hands grab and snag my arms. Pulling me, pushing me, cut me deep.

Just breathe, I hear, just breathe. Lungs full up with plagued air. Toxicity burns through tissue like nobody's business.

And it isn’t anybody's business what I poison my body with. Not my mother’s, not my father’s, not my teachers, not my friends. Not even you. Whoever you are.

“Well,” you say, “Well try speaking.”

“I,” I say, “I can’t stand my own mind.”

I think I say that out loud. I smile at my stolen words and somehow I fall out of the black home, and land in my body with a jolt.

Shoot up. I breathe in thick black air. Smoke from three lit cigarettes moves about the blue light radiating off the big screen T.V. I close my eyes and allow the strangled sounds to come into focus.

Gun Fire.
Boots on desert sand.
Russian.

“Robin, put your fucking head down, bro!” James or Devon shouts.

I fall back onto the beige carpet. Someone laughs and states the obvious.

I look at the T.V. to my left. Pixilated men, dressed in desert camouflage, run in and out of rundown buildings. Guns propped up. Aiming. Set. Fire. Fake bullets singed the air. Erupting into a fire fight. Two Seconds: blood squirts from player two’s head and Devon curses.

“Boom! Headshot!” James shouts excitedly.

Bob Dylan plays in the background.

I note the irony with a weighted sigh, and wonder if the 60’s was turning in its metaphorical grave at this exact moment. The world was going to hell as we sit here in this dank, dark, basement dwelling, and…here we are playing simulated war games while thousands of people die from very real guns. Damn, what would the youth from that generation say? The youth from a generation who stood in streets to petition against a war that didn’t make sense? Who stood in front of loaded guns with pure white daises asking for peace? Would the stand before of us…asking for a revolution?

This generation was fucked.

Idealistic individualist with their IPods and IPhones. Sick self-serving sadist raised on reality T.V glorifying all these traits. I mean, does anyone even do anything anymore? No one has a voice. They have nothing to say.

I roll onto my stomach with a strained gruff and slither like a bug towards the bathroom several feet away- much to the amusement of Angela, who briefly pulls her eyes away from her phone to stare at me. Once I am close enough to the bathroom, I pick myself up- another gun shot goes off. James cackles.

The bathroom is too bright. And white. And clean. I wonder why people insist on making the shitting room sterile white. The sink reflects the light off its pristine porcelain, that it seems like a sin to even touch it.

My reflection glares at me.
I’ve changed…
Well, physically at least…
How tall was I now?
Six feet?
A long stretch from 5’8.

I clock my head to the side and examine the being before me. Playing football in Miller's Field has done wonders for his body. No longer a scrawny fifteen-year-old. Not by a long shot. Aqua blue eyes that enchant with every glance. Messy blonde hair that literally glows in the sun! Blemish free, modest features that do not offend…

And white!
How lucky is that!

Never having to know the torture of being a minority in this country.

The reflection smiles sardonically.

In this lighting, he looks like Tyler Durden. If Tyler Durden had been in a fight with Hot Topic….and lost.

I guess that makes me Ed Norton. Which is fine. Ed Norton is cool to…

I place my hands on the counter, gripping the white edge tightly so I do not fall into the sink. It’s broken. The plug is missing. There’s a dark black circle staring at me, and against the whiteness it stands out like a zit on a high school cheerleader’s face.
It’s obvious. A blemish upon perceived perfection.

My eyes glide back to the reflection. More gun shots from beyond the closed door- someone’s controller hits the wall with a loud thud. Frustrated muffled voices leaks into the cracks in the wooden door. Do they wonder where I am? I wonder where I am…

I’ll be dead by thirty-five, and I am quite content with that. I’ll make sure to cut all ties with those close to me, so they feel no pain when I depart. I just see no point in living beyond that. And it’s my life; shouldn’t I be able to decide when I die? This notion of God is crack- he didn’t create me. Sperm meeting with eggs fueled by alcohol created me.

I am in control of my own destiny.

I am in control!

My hand slips and I almost fall into the void in the center of the sink.

There’s a knock.

“Robin, did you fall in?” James giggles. Everyone laughs.

“Not yet,” I respond. More laughter.

“We are going in for round two, you in?”

My eyes are so blood shot, they look like two bleeding balls. My legs refuse to move. And my hands are slipping. The room wobbles. When I close my eyes I see war. Bob Dylan is no longer playing in the background; now it’s Scary Kids Scaring Kids, or some other generic pop-punk band.

“Yeah, sure.” I sigh. I stand before the door. Wood smiles. Judging me for sins I have not yet committed. I put my hands on the door knob-

I am in control.