i laid on a white hospital bed in a white hospital room. the only color besides the white that consumed the room was the red blood that lay beside me in a bag. a women came over and pulled it from my skin. 

i fell back into the darkness.

i believe it has been just a few days since my last blackout. since the doctor told me i was slowly crumbling into pieces. since the doctor told me i was broken and could never be fixed. since i realized i'd be better off dead.

i started hyperventilating yesterday. i couldn't breathe. i couldn't live anymore. i simply expired. i remember so vividly falling apart right there on the bed, gritting my teeth at the pain that spread through my body. i remember nobody being there for me. i remember all of everything. how i was teased. how i was bullied for being a 'nerd'. how i wasn't average. how i needed to be cured. how i should kill myself. how my parents left me. ashamed. how i had no one. i remember all of everything. so vividly, clearly. 

the doctor said i was dead for a full fifteen minutes. i was dead. i was gone from this world. 

when i came back to life, i remember my heavy breaths, i remember staring at the walls for endless moments in the room, i remember the pain i felt in my head, my body. it pulsed with pain.  i remember being alone.

about three days later i heard the door squeak open. the doctor found me, surprised that i was alive. 

i was still immobile.

but i was alive.

i gasped as the doctor stuck a needle into my head. He pulled up on the syringe, pulling blood from it. i was stuck. 

he left shortly after, and all i could do was watch the white wall, immobile, not average, different, just like me.

he came back a day later. he said it was a miracle. he said i was cured.

but if i was cured, why can't i move?

but if i was cured, why do i still feel this way? 

I woke up with a start. I gazed around in the room that I was in. Brown desk, blue walls, brown bookshelf. I was home. But something felt off. I suddenly felt the itch to do things I wasn't supposed to. Things that nobody was allowed to do until you were 25. 

What was wrong with me? I can't be any different now. I've worked so hard to be average. 

Realizing I had school in just a few hours, I pulled myself up out of my bed and got dressed.

This was going to be a long day.

"What's the answer, Miss.Pierce?" my math teacher asked.

A feeling of ecstasy filled me as I answered.

"23532"

The class laughed at me.

Was I wrong??

"Miss.Pierce, I was asking for number three." he tapped his foot impatiently.

"Sir, I think you calculated wrong." I said unconsciously.

As I gasped at my own words, murmurs filled the room with judgement and fear.

Fear that I wasn't average anymore. 

"Miss.Pierce, detention."

I immediately fired back, "Sorry, just thought that you would've wanted the correct answer." 

What was wrong with me?

As the teacher got even more red, I flushed. I picked up my things and ran out of the room. 

Still I could feel the aroma of judgement around me. People staring, looking, watching for my differences. A thousand eyes surrounding me, driving me to the brink of insanity. 

 She sat there in silence with only the light of what seemed to her an angry moon screaming into the window. What is this feeling? Is it fear? Anger? Guilt even? She wondered if the hollow feeling would ever come to an end. “how is one supposed to feel right now?” she said to herself. She stands up after what felt like hours and sets the blood covered knife on the side table and walks to the window, she opened it welcoming the cool night air on her face. “well I guess I have a mess to clean up,” she said as she walked to the light switch.  

Myra Renae 

01/18/17

“AAGGGHHHHHHHHH!”

He screams in agony. I mean pure fucking agony. There’s nothing quite like it really. When you stub your toe on the corner of the bed in the middle of the night, and you let out that little yelp, the one where you immediately feel emasculated even though it hurts like hell and you have to cover it up by shouting “Fuck” a few times, yeah that’s nothing compared to this. This sounds like a squealing pig being roasted alive. Which, actually is a pretty apt description of the situation. He’s right on the third rail, pinned to it I think. Or melted to it. Either way he’s stuck there with what seems to be an entire electrical storm running through his body. All he needs is a tribe of men and women all chanting around him and throwing seasonings as they offer him up to the gods.

“PLEASE. HELP ME!”

It’s quite unpleasant really. The sight for one thing is terrifically awful. Like watching raw steak cook with the heat all the way up, it chars on the outside and pillows of smoke rise up. The smoke is rising too, and filing this damn subway tube. I remember when I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve years ago and this girl I used to hang around with, Kathy I think her name was, we used to light things on fire with a magnifying glass. Those little things like ants and leaves and small things like that. But there was one time we found this rose. This perfect rose that stood out from all the wilted ones. It was fall and all of the plant life was starting to curl up and die like most things do in the cold. But this beautiful rose was still standing strong amidst its relatives and we plucked and admired it for a quick moment. We had to admire it, it was something remarkable. The stem had only three thorns on it, but they were razor sharp. I know because I used it to draw a bit of blood from my fingertip, as children would do. And after we admired it, for the impossible specimen it was, we took it over to the pavement in front of my house and we lit it on fire, having our own little offering to the gods. In seconds it was up in flames. Not the little flames around the edges that the leaves from the oak trees would do, but real full on flames with smoke rising and swirling in the air. It was intoxicating, the smell was at least. There’s nothing quite like a burning rose. It lingers in the air and swims up into your nose, holding onto the hairs so you can keep smelling it for hours afterwords. Maybe it was just me, I don’t remember how Kathy liked it, but to me that smell was worth anything in the world.

“All right, everyone stand back. Make a hole please. Make a hole!”

The paramedics and police are running around trying to get down onto the tracks. They’re all covering their faces, trying to block out the smell. It’s horrendous. I feel a bit queasy and I’m almost positive someone threw up already, from the sight or the smell I’m not sure. It could be both. It’s something almost entirely unlike the burning rose. I say almost for the mere fact that this is something that has already clung to my nostril hairs, my clothes, my skin, my hair. It will cling to me. It will stay with me. At least it should. It’s like burning rubber concentrated to right in front of you. I’m still sitting on the bench. When I walked down it hadn’t started. I’m not actually sure when exactly this man jumped or fell onto the tracks. I don’t think anyone saw him. No one screamed. No one noticed. We all just sort of smelled something. It wasn’t bad at first. A bit like burning the wrong leaves during a bonfire. But then the screams came. I think the screams made the smell worse. Once you become aware to the horrible things around you, it all seems so much worse than it is. Once we heard the screams, someone yelled in horror. Not as much horror as the man on the tracks I’m sure, but an appropriate amount for someone seeing another person burn alive right in front of them. What happened next is the same thing that happens during any extreme situation, though I’m not too sure if this would be logged into that category. I can faintly hear the paramedics. One of them has a shovel I think.

“We’re going to have to scrape him off.”

“Kill me. Please. Just Kill me.”

“Lift him up.”

“How?”

“what do you mean, just fucking pick him up.”

“He’s melted to it, I can’t.”

“Let me die…”

I put in my headphones and the screams stop. Bankrupt On Selling by Modest Mouse comes on. An underrated song to say the least. Well underrated for most people. Obviously anyone who listens to Modest Mouse loves the song. It encapsulates not only the album and the times it was made, but it really leaves the subtleness out of the scenario. That’s something that sadly gets a bad rap. To be outspoken is something too out of the ordinary now. Well to be outspoken for a cause. It took up around the nineties and through maybe twenty-twenty. But those were the times that cushioned racism and economic downfall was all too real. But then somehow everyone sort of lost touch. People still yelled about things, but nothing important. You would hear people yelling on the street about how they deserved to be treated with respect and such, when they were showing no respect to anyone. It became a fad in a sense, to just yell whatever was on your mind. Then, at some point, everyone stopped listening to each other. So then the streets were full of loud ramblings that no one even paid attention too. After a while people started just screaming out what they were wearing. You could walk through the financial district and hear “ARMANI BLACK SUIT! BROOKS BROTHER’S TIE!”. And god forbid you tried to go to a gym, you would have been defeated by an array of “NIKE! NIKE! NIKE!” Being outspoken became as played out as being subtle, and now we’re left with todays artists and musicians in a constant struggle of trying to figure out what to do. It’s become so detrimental to their mental stability that schizophrenics have been kicked out onto the streets from mental hospitals because of over population of artists. And the ones that have refrained from taking the short bus to the nut house have been left on the street with the schizophrenics yelling on the top of their lungs their subtle messages. It hasn’t seemed to work for any of them yet, but they’ll keep trying until they lose their voice or they strike it big.

The man, well most of him, is hauled off the tracks on a gurney. His hair has burned off and the front half of him looks like charcoal, while the back half of him looks like a really bad sunburn. The people are all lined up right at the edge of the tracks, just like they have been for the last half hour. Each one not looking at the man in agony but at their phone as it records the man in agony. It makes it easier for them. I’m sure in their conscious minds they’re thinking something along the lines of “Holy shit, no one is going to believe this”, but in their subconscious it dulls the reality. Looking through a screen makes it seem as though it’s been written in a script and we’re all just watching a movie. But we’re not. This is reality, everything around us. Most people it seems just wish so hard that it isn’t, that they’ve become so entranced with what really isn’t and have formulated that to be the reality around them. They live in a rainbow’s explosion and only focus on their favorite color.

Finally the train comes and the doors open. Everyone puts their phones away and puts their eyes back on pseudo-reality. Isaac Brock launches into some bit about God being an Indian Giver, and the doors shut. 

He caught her singing "Fake Empire" near the deli section. She was filling her bowl at the olive bar and swaying to the beat.

He made his way over to her casually. He was always a shoegazer. "Compliment her copper hair?" He asked himself. "Make a joke about her singing? No no no". Then, she was gone. Around the corner before he could muster his courage. He wandered some more but no luck running into her again. A wave of relief swept over him. His approaches never really worked anyway.

After getting in his car he opened his box of donuts and turned on the radio. As he pulled out of his spot he heard a scream. There she was. He had nearly run her over. He shot out of his car and looked at her. She was waiting for him to say something. He had powder from the donut in his mouth and on his face. He just held it up, as of to say "I'm sorry, this donut was so delicious it blinded me and I couldn't see you." She squinted and laughed.

"You almost ran me over and that's what you have to say?" She scolded.

"Olives." He said. "You like Olives?"

"What?"

"I saw you at the olive bar singing "Fake Empire". I wanted to say hi but you left."

"Oh.... well, this is your chance to say hi." She said and blushed.

#poetry #getlit #itslit #prosechallenge

I slashed at the dragon in front of me, and sure enough, it disintegrated into smoke. I grimaced as some of it washed over me — it tasted like the ash of decomposed skin, or what I imagined it’d taste like — and it hit me. I turned to Alexi with a frown. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sheathing his own sword. Now that I really looked at him, I could see how…flat his eyes were. His entire face, really. I reached out to touch his cheek, and I yelped. It was flat…but my hand shifted to curve around his face, as if it weren’t flat.

I gulped. “Why do we do any of this?” I asked, and I grimaced again as my stomach turned itself over.

“What do you mean?”

I gestured at where the dragon had been. “All we do is slay dragons. Have they ever even caused harm to our village?”

“All of the stories say —“

“But have they ever killed any of our people?” I repeated, shaking my head. The world continued to grow more and more peculiar. I could hear a kind of…music floating in the air, and shivers spread down my spine. There was a buzzing, too, a kind of snapping…

“Not since we were kids, obviously, but —“

“No, there hasn’t been a single attack — not since our grandfather’s grandfather!” I ran a now shaking hand through my hair. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

Alexi’s face started to go into and out of focus, and the music around me became more disjointed. “No, I don’t.” He peered closer at me. “Do you?”

I took in a long breath. “No, I suppose I don’t.” I forced a laugh out. “Sorry, I guess I’m just going a little crazy today; I didn’t sleep well last night.”

The music returned to normal, and Alexi’s face stopped vibrating. “That wouldn’t be an issue if you just let yourself get a little drunk every once in a while!”

I shook my head. “Nice try,” I retorted, but my voice didn’t have the bite it usually did. 

You know, they say that Heaven is where the Angels go. Where the good people end up, surrounded by lights and loved ones and music and whatever they could dream up. It’s where people live their afterlife in happiness and comfort.

So, this isn’t to say that I wouldn’t enjoy living up here, but holy hell — pun intended here — this place was nuts.

For one: that “pearly gates” garbage is total bullshit. Some thing dropped me on Heaven’s front door without even a word of: “Oh these are the parts of town you should probably avoid.” Meanwhile, I’m just staring. Sure, there was a magnificent castle at the center of all of this chaos and there were guys with wings flying around — whom I presumed were the Angels — but these so-called Guardians were chasing people around with flaming pitchforks. Which, if I must remind you is literally the image we force feed children and say: “This is the Devil.” Now, I guess Lucifer technically started off as an Angel, but still. I didn’t think I’d hear people screaming in Heaven or be worried that I’d be struck by lightning — because, let me tell you, that was one angry storm starting to form over the city.

“You look lost,” someone drawled, and I blinked, dragging my eyes back down to the rusted doorway I’d been so graciously set down at. Her wings glistened like a dark touchscreen — only it wasn’t littered with fingerprints — and knives hung from her crooked and sagging pants.

“I mean, I feel like that’s a given.” I frowned. “Unless you’ve seriously met someone who didn’t look confused when they got sent up here.”

She laughed, and the melody ringing in my ears, now that sounded much more like Heaven. “It wasn’t always like this; we weren’t always so bored up here… And besides, once upon a time, you humans feared us.”

“But still…”

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Are you saying that, if you could live forever, you wouldn’t eventually run out of “good” or “holy” things to do? Because let me tell you: we’re not that different from you, mortal. We really just have an evolutionary advantage over you in that we can fly and we’re God’s messengers.”

“Only.”

“I don’t know if you realized this or not, but the guy upstairs hasn’t had a whole lot to say to y’all recently…which means no work for us.”

“Must be such a struggle.”

She wore too much makeup and too little pride. 

The evening air sank into silence and she sighed, sucking in the humidity and throwing away tears. She had forgotten why she had stumbled away from the club. She forgot his name and his advances, but she vaguely remembered him. 

Hazy recollections of June lips and December eyes remained. 

These flashes of forgetfulness blazed more often now, the present already slithering out of her fingertips into the forgotten. 

Exhaustion gnawed at her brain. Her head sought comfort on the sticky seat of the bus stop bench and sleep soothed her cries.

As she fell, I stood up and wished I hadn't heard a word.