Papercut. Chapter 8.

The bus.

Oh, damn, damn, damn.

I run up to it, dazed, trying to get the image of a cackling Lola out of my head. It’s not that attractive.

Why isn’t it?

I focus on how her face looks twisted, teeth showing, lips seem to harden in some sort of open snarl, eyes focused at something distant. Did I ever see her like that? Or is it just a fragment of my imagination? Drawn by shards of the past? It’s like in that banal and stupid to the core question what is fake and what is not? What’s real? What’s reality? Is it what surrounds us? Or is that the world created by others? The one we get thrown on television? How can we believe that there is a tsunami somewhere when we cannot feel it? Is it? Is it ours or somebody else’s? All of our thought crumbled in that insane mind of fate.

Fate has more than two personalities which stay with their eyes closed until the realization of death comes and they open one, bright coloured eye. We are at peace. They open both as he inhales them for the first time. They eye so bright that we stop giving the commands to the hearts. Resembling love in some way nothing rational. You just feel the presence of the second. The second is the judge.

Oh, I’ll die tomorrow.  The thought so transparent and has glimpsed in everyone’s mind. People laugh at it, not knowing how far from ideal life is, without a second glance. It sounds like the phrase said at the end of something, before the abyss. I am wasted, as average teenagers jump up and down. I’m above them all with the amount of vanity I hold. Bite me.

Hell with the next life, it won’t be me. I’ll rot in the ground or get turned into ashes and be stuck into some ceramic vase of sorts so that my great-great-great sons and daughters now among the average will stare at me in confusion blaming their parents in their lack of IQ to carry that vase wherever they go, forgetting whose ashes they were as they shall be drank with tea, held among gossip, instead of sugar, hoping to grasp something I had.

But then would it matter?

Why my lack of everything would make a prequel? A call out to theirs now with no insignificance.

I see a couple make out, ignoring everything around them. My eyes rest on them for a while as if they were a circus. But then should one show emotions or hold? It suddenly felt as if I could still storm into Lola’s room, (would I?) grab her by her waist and kiss her as much as I wanted. I could feel her taste upon my lips, I could feel her hair intertwined in my fingers, the heat taking over me lightly, letting me go with the flow.

They stop and the guy quickly glances at me with his dark brown eye, but the girl shrugs, whispers something in his ear, as her thumb brushes against his cheek and they continue. That was my cue to step into reality and not seem like a perverted stalker. They were making out in a public place. If they would be into it, they wouldn’t care. But they do.

I watch everything go past me, as the houses get richer; more shops fill in, not leaving any space for the regular houses, playgrounds and supermarkets. I see countless ads and shop signs replace the tress with its amount and brightness. Can’t there be some sort of ad ‘get rid of your shop sign and grow a tree’? Right, Greenpeace is waiting for me.

Everything seems to go in a flash that I nearly skip my stop. I manage to jump, seeing that the couple left, but not like I care. I jump out of the bus, the address and photos printed in my head. I turn around and see it.

Well, what can I say?

Different words spin threw my head, as I catch shadows, light and divide the whole building into rules as if I was drawing the university. I feel nervous all of a sudden, but then maybe I’m not. I feel my feet take me above.

Literally past the gates, into the embrace of the noisy crowd which is the opposite from the melancholy drenched in school’s alcohol. I observe, trying to memorize at least one friendly face, somebody I could come up to and socialize. But instead I head into the building, through the crowd, cutting it. Am I late? I’m not, but everybody doesn’t seem to hold the big yellow envelopes several people are holding or are besides them, sinking their nails into, waving with free eyes.

I’m scared.

My eye catches them as they sit in a circle, some with cigs; students, some must have drugs as the scent is lightly felt in the chilled and stirred morning air. I watch them, a near trip on the first stair and a quick look up to see the hazel eyed guy from earlier, look at me with interest. Where is his girlfriend? But thankfully, I don’t ask that aloud. Instead unlike the annoyed look, he gives me a small smile and digs his nose into the envelope.

A familiar face is a friendly face. Remember that kids, as you’ll choke on my ashes.

A moment of uneasiness leaks onto the air, piercing it, clouds the chill and sweet smell of weed from the city. He looks up, making eye contact and heavily holding himself from an eye roll. The brown eyed closes his envelope loudly, that even his dark hair moves or maybe it’s due to the wind?

“Hullooo.” And an arm flops around the dark head’s shoulders, bringing the making out dude closer to the skinny guy. His gray blue eyes look at me with interest, a grin forming upon his lips below his messy light brown hair covering his eyes. The guy’s haircut seemed to be way shorter and is screaming ‘hey’ to a stylist to bring his bangs into shape, if he’d ever care, as all of them seem to be different length, but they stick in different directions as if he is electrified by love in a cheesy way, only there was no girl to cling onto, just the raw feeling, but in a sort of messy neat in need of a haircut way. He doesn’t seem anorexic at first as his oversized red hoodie is hiding it holding at the lives at stake and baggy jeans asides from the black converse peeking out to breathe some air to stash for winter.

“I’m Melvin!” He exclaims it in pauses, trying to cause an epic effect. I hold myself from giving out my usual ‘wtf’ stare and instead I nodd. “He’s Frank, Frankie, Franco, Francesca and ow!”

Frankie gives him a friendly punch as his name is left corrupted in ashes. So that is the reason Melvin shuts up and leans, his messy hair falling on his eyes once more, as a gesture for me to introduce myself and Frankie’s light yawn, not bothering to cover it with his mouth.

“Oh, hi, hello, hey, greetings, hola…” I pause, my attempt unneeded and clearly a failure by judging Mr. snogging on the bus’s reaction, a smirk clearly hinting ‘look at that loser’, but then he didn’t seem as friendly as a friendly person can be. Melvin on the other hand smiles at my attempt, giving a light nod so I’d continue. 

“I’m Roman.” Pause. “Nice to meet you, Melvin, Frankie.”

“Frank, you-“ Frankie mutters, not concentrating on me and looked off into the crowd, as Melvin’s eyes quickly follow his gaze. He gives a small frown and looks back at me, the grin back as if it never left. He pauses for a second, looking up. Praying? Predicting the future? Expecting a flying TARDIS? But as he looks up, he looks down, his grin never leaving him for a second, but showing that something is missing no longer, even if it’s just in his mind.

“I didn’t know any Romans. Actually, you’re the first Rome I know. Hullo, my dear friend!” And then his other arm gives me a pat on the shoulder falls back down as the other still rests on Frank’s shoulders, hinting my current rank. I look at both of them, most of my attention capturing Frank. His eyebrows are pressed together, his muscls tense and no evidence of the one and only possibility of a smile playing on his lips seems to be possible. I look down expecting to see familiar footwear, but I fail. I look at his dark brown, definitely not Converse, until I realized that he had docs on.

Maybe there was the possibility of him actually having some sort of creativity there. As Converse seem to be a must-have now. I struggle trying to understand what he wants to do for a living. Show me your footwear and I’ll predict your future. I could see how he sketches now in my head, heavy, rough lines pressed against the paper at the tip of his pencil nearly resulting in a hole. He reflects anger threw his sketches doesn’t he?

Anger at what?

The docs seem to be a desire to hold onto the ground, but to be alone at the same time. But the point is, he’s there.

Then I glance at Melvin, who seems to be comical, like a clown compared to Frankie. His lines would be messy never to make that ideal straight one in that pool of small lines forming some unknown besides from him, form. I could see him stretch his arm out to get paint out of his brush and paint away what he would feel make his canvas look like some insane drunk dream bursting with colours and first impressions. I could see him grin from ear to ear as he would tilt his head, walk several steps back and look at his masterpiece, something not all could understand, let him alone.

It just looked Melvinesque.

What about me?

I’d press the other dry end of the brush against my bottom lip, running over the possibilities of different colouring for each object I created. I’d lean against the wall, chewing on my bottom lip, ruffling my hair, fiddling with my hands as I examined the best option.

I look back at Frank studying his canon ideal face and his square jaw which seems heavy until you’d look at his rather built body and big hands. Gym? I was overreacting but calling him a wimp was like calling an elephant small. His nose straight and his lips what you called full, it felt as if he just stepped out from some old Greek mythology with his cold gaze and focused expression to terrorize women and make-out in busses.

He seems like a womanizer to me back at the bus until he glanced at me with his piercing brown eye, which hinted annoyance instead of ‘oi, mate, I’m making out, be jealous’, which I usually labeled on womanizers. Was I womanizer? Well, I doubt that as Lola was my first. So I mean the years could turn me into a modern day Casanova, but until now I was a dude who broke out of his high school romance on the day before he left to university. Quite the bastard, aren’t I?

Chapter 9