A Christmas Miracle

There it was, sitting in the middle of the empty room. 

It was neither male nor female, and held a certain ambiguity about itself. Almost as if it could not decide what it wanted to be. He looked at it in disdain, standing in the doorway to the room. Through the door, a dim light shone into the room, illuminating the creature's few features. From what he could see in the faint light, it resembled a small child, but at the same time it also resembled nothing. He looked down at the key gripped tightly in his palm. It was truly odd, he reckoned, that off all the nondescript doors in that long corridor, he knew which door this key opened.

Behind him, a dry cough sounded. The caretaker of the long corridor was growing impatient, he sensed. Him meeting her was yet another strange occurrence. He had received an ancient slip of paper with details to an unmarked building on an unmarked street in an unnamed town. He still wondered why he had even bothered to come here at all. After all, it was not the first note he had received anonymously, such was his line of work. The reason why he had taken the decision to head to that address still eluded him. How he managed to find the building stumped him even more.

He was dragged out of his thoughts by another dry cough from the caretaker. Silently, he nodded and handed the key back to the caretaker. He took a couple of steps forward and bent down on one knee before picking it up slowly, as though it were a fragile thing made of glass. The moment he touched it, it became, with a quiet noise, a little girl. It was almost as though it willed itself to become one in line with his thoughts. Why he thought of a little girl was beyond him. It was just one of those things, he supposed.

The moment he walked out the door, the caretaker swiftly shut the door and disappeared down an adjacent corridor. He looked at the little girl and took a deep breath before picking the girl up and putting her on his back. She was surprisingly light, almost as if she was stuffed with feathers. Five minutes later, they were out of the building and out on the street. Ten minutes after that, the two of them were on a crowded train heading for the city center. It was getting late, and he wanted to get home as soon as possible.

On the train, people seemed to want to avoid him, as if he was sick with an illness that could spread by eye contact. People would empty the train carriage as soon as he got in and soon he was left alone with the little girl. He placed her down in a seat and sat across from her. She looked at him with large, glassy eyes that seemed to be filled with a mixture of grief, anger, and boredom. After staring at him for exactly two minutes, she looked him in the eyes and asked him,

"Did you read the sign on the door?"

"Was there a sign?" he replied.

"Does it matter?" came the counter-question,

He hesitated, unsure to answer, but by the time he had an answer prepared, she was preoccupied with the scenery flashing by out the window. He settled himself in for the remainder of the train ride and ignored her. A few minutes later, a bell dinged and a vaguely female voice announced the next stop. He got up from his seat and put the girl on his back before preparing to disembark. As they got off the train, he was surprised by the act of everyone physically recoiling from the sight of him and the girl. Putting it off to pure ill manners, he ignored them.

He walked silently down a street with the girl on his back. Neither of them said a word, and they did not meet anyone on their journey. After a solid ten minutes of walking in the crisp, cold autumn air, he stopped in front of an old abandoned house and set the girl down. He nodded at the girl and turned to walk away, back to the train station. He needed to get home. After all, he had wasted more than enough time on this fool's errand.

"Do you want to know what the sign read?"

He paused, foot hanging in the air.

"It read 'Do not open till Christmas'." said the girl nonchalantly.

He fell to the ground as though struck by a bolt of lightning.

Look! Water Slides!

Hello, everybody. All is well; I have just been a tad bit quiet. Pardon the lack of material, but I just haven’t been able to finish projects that I've started. Projects such as the 15 or so unfinished pieces that will probably never see the light of e-day.

You did this, you know.

But, there is still hope here. I have been working on this short piece for about 2 months. Rewriting and rewriting it over and over and over again. Too bad I’m now overdue and have to finish it. Hope this doesn't really disappoint.

Doors are one of the most prominent inventions in the effort to maintain privacy of humans.

Anybody who’s anybody will tell you that doors are also a great source of surprises and shocks.
You never know who’s going to walk through those doors. Which brings me to a question. Is the person who walks through the door more important than the reason why they walk through the door?

Never mind. Such trivialities are not worth bothering your minds with.

Estonia is a country in the middle of Europe whose main export includes metals, goods, and brown goods. Rubbish, in my opinion. Nobody really knows what brown goods are. Are they just goods that are brown? Logs are brown too, but they fall under wood.

Still haven’t figured out what’s happening?

On the other hand, my main export is sarcasm and subterfuge. Those words both begin with the letter “S”. How coincidental that the letter “S” is the 19^th letter of the alphabet. Exceedingly coincidental, in my opinion.

Good heavens, look at the time!

After all, one must always make an effort to not be late.  Maybe if I hurry I might not be- oh well. Everyone should have figured out what’s happening by now but if you haven’t, too bad.

Sorry I’m late.

Spoiler: Initial letters.

Secrets and conspiracies.

By this point, I suppose I am tripping slightly. I’m running more or less on empty, and I feel all the better for it. I have always wondered why people always have so much to hide. Be it crimes, falsehood, or even the fact that you had toast for breakfast in the morning. Secrets are fun, I’ll give you that. It’s always fun to hold the upper hand over someone else, even though the information is of no use to anyone. If it appears to hold value to one party, it will hold value to another. After all, information is power. And if you hold the power, you hold everything. Thus, it is easy to see why humans love to hold on to secrets. Why humans will do anything in their power to keep others from knowing about their secrets.

Secrets are one thing, but conspiracies are another. A great failing of people is the assumption that the world is conspiring against them. Just because you dropped your ice cream cone on the ground, the world hates you. That is but a simple conspiracy. What of those conspiracies that make everything seem like a blade, ready to stab you in the back? In the age of the Internet, sincerity and good graces have all but gone to hell in a hand basket. Everyone is a mere mask, ready to step out of the shadows and break your neck with a swift chop to the gullet. We learn to watch our backs, and sooner or later these habits bleed out into the world.

By this point, everything will seem like a trick. Everything will seem like a ploy, a plan for someone to get the better of you. And it probably is. You learn smidges of things and your curiosity forces you in, driving you to know more, to gain knowledge, to earn power. That is, until the power is too great and you are left alone on the beach, shipwrecked and without companionship. And all this happened because you could not contain your desire to have power. To have information. Some people do this willingly, to drive themselves into solitude by digging too deep and awakening something in the darkness. Yet, the thing does not emerge from the darkness. Instead, we are pulled further and further in, to the point where we do not even know who we are any more.

They are fun things, secrets and conspiracies.

Care and change.

I guess I’m on a slight writing binge here. After all, writing is where I find solitude. I find that I feel most comforted when I spill virtual words upon virtual paper. I don’t really care if anyone reads these or not, I guess. To some, it might seem a little clingy and attention-seeking, but then again that’s just probably how I am. Can I change? I doubt it? Will I change? Probably not. Do I want to change? Now that is a question worth asking. Most people say that you can change if you really want to. Most people. Some are content to remain as themselves. Am I one of those people? Possibly.  But who cares? Honestly, what does the word “care” mean any more?

According to an online dictionary, the word “care” means to feel concern or interest, or to attach importance to something. Everyone throws the word around. I don’t care about this, you don’t care about that. It doesn't mean much, really. All it means is that nothing holds much importance to us. Should anything even be important? People say we should care about the feelings of others. We should care about the well being of others. What would happen if people stopped caring? Would we stop being humans? Would we be animals? I doubt it. Animals do care for their own kind, after all. So, not caring would make us sub-human, sub-animal, sub-organism.

I guess our existence depends on the fact that as long as there is one spark of love and care, we might just remain human. But do we want to? Is it even necessary? They say us humans are social creatures that thrive on the attentions of others. But what if that care was not reciprocated? Would we merely run dry? Or would it be replaced by something else? What could replace care in the very core of a human? Arrogance? Depression? Or something worse, such as violence? Self destructive behavior has become a norm recently. What if it became the very essence upon which the human soul sustained itself?

Caring is overrated, I guess. People talk about it as if it was the end all of humanity. They talk as if the day we stopped caring was the day we would regress, turning into beasts. Survival of the fittest and all that. As they say, it’s a jungle out there. One should take care.

Traits.

They say traits are something you’re born with. They say that the moment you emerge into the light of the world, your life is laid out before you. There are no junctions or forks in the road, they say. Only bends and sharp corners. It is, after all, life. There is no human element in life. Your path is already chosen for you. Who you are, what you do, where you go. All set out neatly before your eyes. However, what if, what if you could break away from the path? What happens then? Does one simply go insane, as I would imagine? Does one degenerate into a husk of a person, less than human? Maybe that is how those who are mentally unstable are formed. Maybe.

I believe that I have traveled down this road. I used to know what I wanted, where I wanted to go. Now, I’m not so sure. Life seems to have dealt me an interesting hand. Maybe, if we could look back. Look back at our actions. Maybe it’s just karma. After all, nothing comes without a price. Maybe that’s how traits are formed. Your traits are all just based on your karma. With every action comes an equal and opposite reaction, or so they say. Does this mean that your attitude towards life, your personality, all of it is based on your past life or past actions? That doesn't even begin to make sense.

It is a human fault, I suppose, that we only see the best in ourselves. Very rarely do we look at our own visages in the mirror and think of what there is to be corrected. Very rarely do we stare into our own eyes and attempt to pry away at the layers covering our souls. Very rarely do we ever contemplate our past mistakes. The past is the past, after all. We need to live in the now and look forward to the future. But sometimes, sometimes we can correct the future by fixing the past. I cannot even begin to count the number of mistakes I have made in my life, small yet significant mistakes.

Thinking about these things can drive a person to the brink. I do believe that I am at the edge, afraid to look over lest I fall over, yet afraid to return lest I am shunned for my cowardice. I believe that there is no place for me. Lacking the traits to be a contributing member of society, I am a mere shadow, who spends too much time on the Internet behind the veil of seeming anonymity. Sometimes, I do long to tear away the veil, but the longing never turns to actual action. Maybe cowardice is just a trait I have. After all, they say traits are something you’re born with.

Title.

Night. My favorite time of day. It is a time where I can be alone, with nothing but my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some sort of loner, in fact, I enjoy being with a crowd. Note the usage of “with” and not “a part of”. Most days, I long to be on the sidelines, a mere spectator as people talk, debate, and bond. I wish I could just be the silent companion, giving input only when input is needed. 

Most people know me as what you would call a chatterbox. I resent that title. I speak a lot only to make up for the lack of voices surrounding me. In an age where most of my acquaintances, yes, acquaintances not friends, where most of my acquaintances seem to be preoccupied with other people or maybe other things on their respective plates, I feel lonely. Not lonely, but alone. 

This might seem a little needy and attention-seeking, but if that’s the way it has to be, so be it. I will not pull any punches. I am a needy person. I feel starved of attention, thus I crave it. My behavior  my antics, my writing. All of them a method with which I attempt to attract attention. That is not to say that I do not have passion for these things, it is just that there is an ulterior motive. 

I have come to notice, in recent times, that I seem to be the one initiating conversation with people. Oh, people do come to me, but only when they need something, be it a helper, a guide, or a partner in a game. Not once, has anyone ever come to me for trivial matters. People who know me will realize that I do come to them for trivial matters, and they most likely think that I am merely a pest, an irritating specimen, as my mother would say. I too, realize that. 

But maybe, just maybe, I am looking for someone like that. Someone who feels the same way. A kindred spirit. Someone to call “friend”. Friends. The concept seems alien to me. I have read of these people, I have made my own observations from the sidelines, yet I cannot seem to find anyone who meets my criteria. Maybe I am aiming too high. Maybe I am being unrealistic. I probably am, stuck in a world of romanticism as I am. 

At this point, I have already written 404 words, and have come to a complete halt, which some may find ironic. But now is not a time for joking. In fact, there never was a time for joking, at least not for me. I should go now. I should do something productive. Yet, my fingers continue to tap away at the keys, putting words on an electronic page. It seems that the only place in which I have friends is the internet. Or do I? After all, who wants a needy, annoying person as a friend? In fact, who needs friends? What have they ever done for you? Honestly, why bother. Why bother at all.

feelsbadman.jpg

Hello there.

As you can see, some changes have been made to the blog. One, background changes. Two, my name. Anyway, that's irrelevant. Or is it? I suppose so. So, what shall we write about today? I've already covered sarcasm, obviously covered randomness, gone through cliffhangers, burnt pass narratives, and done the boring stuff. Which leaves us with one thing.    A sad story. Well, I wouldn't say sad.  Maybe a little sad, but more reflective in nature really.

About eleven years ago, yours truly stepped into the magical world of education. It was an amazing time, filled with unicorns and human spiders. Eventually, I grew up, as you can see. No longer was I a child, but I became a root vegetable. Not really. Anyway, fast forward to tonight. I sit here, tapping away, but for what reason? Nothing particular to say the least. It's just that for a moment there I felt a little melancholic that I might never be in school for the rest of my life come next year. But who cares? This is taking a very odd turn. Let's head somewhere else.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if superheroes weren't superheroes? If the events that made them superheroes followed the laws of logic? This was inspired by a few people who I will not name for fear of over-inflating their already over-inflated egos. No offense, guys.

Let's start off with the obvious culprit. Spiderman. What if, the magical radioactive spider had done nothing? Where would he be? Would he still be nerdy Peter Parker, still a loser? Of course not.

He'd be dead.

Moving on, Batman. Bruce Wayne lost his parents and became a magical ninja. What if things had turned out the other way? What if the murder of his parents had not compelled him to become a man of the dark? Simple. He'd be the rich junkie that brings a small knife everywhere he goes and calls it "protection". 

Sooner rather than later, he'd be dead.

Next up, Captain America. What if America's favorite superhero wasn't s super? Would he end up dead as well, after enlisting in the army to fight the Nazis? Would people find a scrawny soldier dead in a trench next to the rifle he couldn't lift? Obviously not. He'd be at home, unable to even join the army because of his size. Eventually, he'd die by suicide because of not being able to serve his country. 

Yep, he'd be dead.

Our fourth superhero to go under the microscope is Superman. This one is an easy one. Dead because of the horrible rocket crash? Nope. Dead because he survived a horrible rocket crash without anyone noticing? Nope.

He doesn't exist.

Our final candidate: The Incredible Hulk. Overexposure to gamma radiation? 

He'd be dead.