Antivegetarianism
Four
There was a strange multicolored glow flickering all over my surroundings. It emanated from the TV perched on the wall of the bus, just a few yards away and a few feet higher than me. I wasn’t really watching it. Some news show. I hate watching the news. It’s always so depressing. People dying all over the place.
I picked up the remote lying nearby – now retrieved from its hiding place – and changed the channels a few times, not really paying attention.
Cooking channel (I wasn’t hungry.), cartoons (too violent), Oprah- no, only crazy people watched that. Was there really nothing on?
Apparently. I paused the channel and went to the list of recorded shows. Among the hundreds of unwatched episodes of 24 and Beauty and the Geek – I didn’t even want to know – I found part of a recorded episode of CSI. It had to be something Gerard was watching. Shrugging, I selected it and watched as it started.
I froze as a set of faces appeared on the screen. I recognized a few of them. It was that same episode we had watched earlier- or, more accurately, the one he had forced me to watch. I decided I should see how it would turn out. I saw that nerd Wally lying on the floor of his equally nerdy apartment in a pool of his own blood, all of it having poured out of a large gash on his forehead.
“See these cuts around his forehead?” the coroner, Alex, pointed out to one of her colleagues. “They’re more shallow. Hesitation marks. Common in suicide.” One of the CSIs nearby grimaced when he heard this.
So Nerd Boy killed himself after all of that? Bashed in his own skull with that axe? Wow, didn’t see that coming. He never seemed like the suicidal type to me. A little…out there…but not suicidal.
Then again, I guess it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
Oh well.
I turned the TV off and retreated to the back of the bus, feeling my sock-enclosed feet slide effortlessly over the now-spotless tiles of the small kitchen’s floor. It didn’t take me that long to clean it up, considering. Brian was always such a stickler for keeping the bus clean that there were enough supplies around to last three maids a lifetime. I knew he’d be a little upset that I had to use the last of the Windex for that spot on the window, but it was better than leaving it there, wasn’t it?
I finally crawled into bed a minute later. Sighing into my pillow, I pulled the blanket over myself and waited for that sweet, long-awaited sleep to take me.
It didn’t.
I shifted slightly, frowning. I was exhausted. It felt like I had been awake for at least two days straight. There couldn’t possibly be any energy left to sustain me. I took slow, deep breaths, attempting to fall into the world of sleep I missed so much. I almost begged the drowsiness to overtake me.
It didn’t.
My mind began to race. Thoughts rocketed through my brain so fast I couldn’t even keep up with them. Broken, unsorted memories filled the space in my skull. I almost wondered if anyone else would have been able to hear it. It seemed loud enough to me. I had to find something to drown it out.
Sighing, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then stood and began wandering the bus searching for the one thing that would distract my scattered mind long enough for me to get some rest. I finally found my iPod on the table and picked it up. It loosely dangled from my fingers as I returned to my previous spot. Sliding the small earphones into the crevices of my ears, I ran my thumb across the clickwheel. The screen lit up after a few seconds, casting a garish white light all around me. I winced and blinked several times as my forehead began to hurt from looking at it.
I realized there was something on the clickwheel, something rough and crusted over, dark against the glowing light. I scratched at it with one fingernail, and a few flakes of the strange substance fell from their place and dropped into oblivion. I knew what it was and internally cursed myself for missing that spot.
I finally selected a song, something that was literally mind-numbing. The earphones began to vibrate as the decibels of sound passed through them and over my defenseless, abused eardrums. Any other time this would have calmed me down right away.
It didn’t.
The minutes passed and stretched into hours. One song blended into another until I was no longer focusing on the music, but instead on the persistent pounding of my heart against my skull. It was as if my brain itself were throbbing, pleading for sleep as much as I was and desperately wanting a way to escape.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped the earphones out of their places, finally allowing air to reach my ears that had been shocked into a sudden deafness by the lack of sound. I dropped the music player on the floor. My only hope was that no one would step on it. The pulsating feeling in my skull began to subside quickly; it was like my brain had been starved for air and choked by music. Interesting.
It’s quiet now. So, so quiet.
I hate it. I need something to distract me. Not music, though; I already tried that, and all it did was give me a migraine.
Oh well.
This thought entered my mind and decided it did not want to leave.
I stood once again, hoping to find some Advil or another form of relief nearby. I needed sleep, but it seemed to be purposely avoiding me, perhaps even mocking me. I didn’t want to watch TV for the fear my mind would only be set off again, but once the thought occurred to me, I did remember something.
I found a piece of paper nearby and scribbled something on it, a poem I had recently invented. Clutching it in one hand, I reached up into that same cabinet and found the tool that had started everything. That kid Wally had killed himself, hadn’t he? He got to sleep forever. At the moment that didn’t seem like a half bad idea. But I wasn’t going to do that. That was insane.
He hesitated. I wouldn’t.
Frank Iero took an axe
And gave his best friend forty whacks.
When he saw what he had done
He gave the others forty-one.
I picked up the remote lying nearby – now retrieved from its hiding place – and changed the channels a few times, not really paying attention.
Cooking channel (I wasn’t hungry.), cartoons (too violent), Oprah- no, only crazy people watched that. Was there really nothing on?
Apparently. I paused the channel and went to the list of recorded shows. Among the hundreds of unwatched episodes of 24 and Beauty and the Geek – I didn’t even want to know – I found part of a recorded episode of CSI. It had to be something Gerard was watching. Shrugging, I selected it and watched as it started.
I froze as a set of faces appeared on the screen. I recognized a few of them. It was that same episode we had watched earlier- or, more accurately, the one he had forced me to watch. I decided I should see how it would turn out. I saw that nerd Wally lying on the floor of his equally nerdy apartment in a pool of his own blood, all of it having poured out of a large gash on his forehead.
“See these cuts around his forehead?” the coroner, Alex, pointed out to one of her colleagues. “They’re more shallow. Hesitation marks. Common in suicide.” One of the CSIs nearby grimaced when he heard this.
So Nerd Boy killed himself after all of that? Bashed in his own skull with that axe? Wow, didn’t see that coming. He never seemed like the suicidal type to me. A little…out there…but not suicidal.
Then again, I guess it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
Oh well.
I turned the TV off and retreated to the back of the bus, feeling my sock-enclosed feet slide effortlessly over the now-spotless tiles of the small kitchen’s floor. It didn’t take me that long to clean it up, considering. Brian was always such a stickler for keeping the bus clean that there were enough supplies around to last three maids a lifetime. I knew he’d be a little upset that I had to use the last of the Windex for that spot on the window, but it was better than leaving it there, wasn’t it?
I finally crawled into bed a minute later. Sighing into my pillow, I pulled the blanket over myself and waited for that sweet, long-awaited sleep to take me.
It didn’t.
I shifted slightly, frowning. I was exhausted. It felt like I had been awake for at least two days straight. There couldn’t possibly be any energy left to sustain me. I took slow, deep breaths, attempting to fall into the world of sleep I missed so much. I almost begged the drowsiness to overtake me.
It didn’t.
My mind began to race. Thoughts rocketed through my brain so fast I couldn’t even keep up with them. Broken, unsorted memories filled the space in my skull. I almost wondered if anyone else would have been able to hear it. It seemed loud enough to me. I had to find something to drown it out.
Sighing, I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then stood and began wandering the bus searching for the one thing that would distract my scattered mind long enough for me to get some rest. I finally found my iPod on the table and picked it up. It loosely dangled from my fingers as I returned to my previous spot. Sliding the small earphones into the crevices of my ears, I ran my thumb across the clickwheel. The screen lit up after a few seconds, casting a garish white light all around me. I winced and blinked several times as my forehead began to hurt from looking at it.
I realized there was something on the clickwheel, something rough and crusted over, dark against the glowing light. I scratched at it with one fingernail, and a few flakes of the strange substance fell from their place and dropped into oblivion. I knew what it was and internally cursed myself for missing that spot.
I finally selected a song, something that was literally mind-numbing. The earphones began to vibrate as the decibels of sound passed through them and over my defenseless, abused eardrums. Any other time this would have calmed me down right away.
It didn’t.
The minutes passed and stretched into hours. One song blended into another until I was no longer focusing on the music, but instead on the persistent pounding of my heart against my skull. It was as if my brain itself were throbbing, pleading for sleep as much as I was and desperately wanting a way to escape.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I ripped the earphones out of their places, finally allowing air to reach my ears that had been shocked into a sudden deafness by the lack of sound. I dropped the music player on the floor. My only hope was that no one would step on it. The pulsating feeling in my skull began to subside quickly; it was like my brain had been starved for air and choked by music. Interesting.
It’s quiet now. So, so quiet.
I hate it. I need something to distract me. Not music, though; I already tried that, and all it did was give me a migraine.
Oh well.
This thought entered my mind and decided it did not want to leave.
I stood once again, hoping to find some Advil or another form of relief nearby. I needed sleep, but it seemed to be purposely avoiding me, perhaps even mocking me. I didn’t want to watch TV for the fear my mind would only be set off again, but once the thought occurred to me, I did remember something.
I found a piece of paper nearby and scribbled something on it, a poem I had recently invented. Clutching it in one hand, I reached up into that same cabinet and found the tool that had started everything. That kid Wally had killed himself, hadn’t he? He got to sleep forever. At the moment that didn’t seem like a half bad idea. But I wasn’t going to do that. That was insane.
He hesitated. I wouldn’t.
Frank Iero took an axe
And gave his best friend forty whacks.
When he saw what he had done
He gave the others forty-one.