Spurr

Jinxed. Every calculated moment thought out to the most elusive edge of insanity. I, oh but I -- I had been jinxed.1

Simple, isn't it? Each second passing on the deliberate excuse to call upon an unlucky eventuality that would make my self-image crush in upon itself. Just me to sit here and take it as another reason to find lady-luck to be my worst, and so under appreciated, enemy. For so long I'd dodged bullets of her bully-tude towards me. Each day another close call to the catastrophic event that would tear my life to pieces and make me at an ends with it all. That day had finally come.2

Again, jinxed.3

A long story short, I'd never meant to live this way. Dodging bills, watching my credit crash into a cold abyss of which I'd never escape. Loan sharks, bill collectors, and a never ending stream of phone calls -- until that was cut off, too -- were just the nondescript tidbits this hell of life. That had all been fun. Now, home had to be this cardboard box.4

I'd tried the shelters. Those were fun for awhile, too. You live there awhile, get what you hoped would be a free meal, and then you lived the life of a slave, early eighteen hundreds style, or maybe not. I wouldn't know, I never payed attention a day of and real history class, so to speak. Too 'boring'.5

Yes, the cardboard box and plastic blanket. Where'd I find these again? I don't want to remember, why would I? I mean, this might have been one of the ones that I'd found outside the local everything store. Ever find a way to super size something other than a meal? That store was super sizing personified, minus the person. Heartless.6

Maybe I should turn to happier days of my life, like High School. Those days had always been fun, you know? Back when life was carefree and my motivation ended at poetry and journal entries, instead of finding the next alleyway to sleep in. Heck, I could remember one of those poems I wrote back then. Must have been early winter, I would say. Perhaps around the time all my peers were wishing for that coveted "Christmas Vacation" they'd all been so fond of. Ah, yes, those were the days...7

It was probably a cold day, at least I'm sure it was. Might have been snowing, but I couldn't say for sure. I'd been doing what I was good at: dodging the public eye, whimsically wondering about what some of my more intelligent peers were thinking about, hiding away in some corner, and writing in one of my many, many notebooks. Oh, I could never keep track of which one I'd set aside for what, so by that time, I think I'd given up. But in this one, I'd been writing a poem to explain how my life was meaningless -- lo and behold, look what it has become. Should have thought about it more, Sherlock! -- and it had gone something like, well, this:8

Delilah
How dost thou cease to exist
But in myne mind, a thought transposed
Sadistic
Lied here upon thy sanest humanities
Such cold winter supremacies
And only myne truest self, a memory9

Dost thou remember me?10

Aye, I had been such a dreamer, such an idealist. I thought maybe such a poem would get me somewhere in life, but nay! Now it is just I and my cardboard, a burden to all who even know who I am. Now, where was I?11

Oh yes, that poem of mine. Just so take it that I did at one time have "friends", those little people one keeps around themselves to make the days pass faster -- slower if that's what floats your boat -- and one of them happened to dodge my dodging of the public eye that day. Oh, such a sweet voice, that of honeys and dew that I would cry to reminisce upon today. Ah, such mental orgasm.12

"Very nice," the girl had spoke over my shoulder. Me and my long hair turned to meet her curious eyes. Oh, she'd been such a free spirit, immune to the pressures of reality that seemed to plague every human soul on this frigid planet we've named "Earth". I can only wonder what befell her. Perhaps now she's lost that ember within her that left her unable to fear the future of these lives we live, befell to the harsh personality of this world and became a whore. Perhaps I should think better of her, but alas, she was just a woman, though brighter than most.13

And those emerald eyes. No, a deeper green than emerald, but not quite jade. Looking into them as they dodged my own ugly blue eyes and read my paper, I wished I'd been stunned. It was not to be, I hid my work from her and shriveled it up, tossing it away. She'd not let me be, though. She jumped around me and took it, unraveling it in her thin little hands and taking it to those eyes. Her lips moved and she'd read it in some way I'd never imagined a human being would speak it. Her flow made mine childish, her tone made each word perfect, and nothing could take away from the way she'd positioned her body with each stanza, awkwardly off key with the context, but with the emotion spot on. She never failed to strike me with her beauty.14

Sadly, her name escapes me. Like every other woman I've known, save my dear old mum, she was just some bimbo. Naive, stupid, like every other girl of her time who dared to be an adolescent. Ah, the maturity of a woman who has learned life's lesson that men aren't worth putting on make-up for, those women are the only exception to the stupidity of their entire gender of pin-up dolls.15

Of course, not to say men aren't "stoopid" either.16

But, oh, her innocence back then. And mine, too. Those were days when being carefree meant you still lived in your parents home and you probably didn't do your own laundry, and no one could blame you for it! Now being carefree meant you'd lived the high-life, caught the good breeze and rode with it to a low input, high output job, and retired at thirty. That or you were the town character. A houseless clown that always seemed happy in hopes that you'd make others happy. Your own sadistic, masochistic depressions waived by your fallacy self-worth at making others laugh. Obviously, you delude yourself to the fact that no one really can laugh with you and they're really subconsciously ridiculing you as you continued to convince them it made you feel better. Because it did, but that's besides the point.17

And her words were like honey. Did I say that yet? And I was a fool for ripping that page from her hand, crumbling it up, and throwing it in her disillusioned, stupid face. Of diamond.18

I don't think she cried. I don't really think she chuckled, though, either. I want to remember her staring me down, seeing through the cloak that masked me, but it didn't happen that way. She hadn't said a word, nor did she stay around to witness my pity anymore than she already had. Perhaps she shouted, "JERK!" at me, maybe slapped me, put me in my place, and didn't talk to me for weeks. Or maybe I just wished that was what she'd done.19

But if she had, I could say this day that she would have been the only person to understand how ugly I really am.20

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