Angst and Sullenness in Saint Paul

[MurderWeasel]

((Kimberly Nguyen continued from Lunch for the bored and hungry.))

Kimberly was in the dirty, smelly back alley, feeling dirty and smelly herself, simply by association. It was wonderful. There weren't many places she could go to make her life suck visibly. She was a victim of a terrible misfortune: he family was solidly middle class, and her grandparents seemed allergic to drama, or, for that matter, emotions. It wasn't fair. Here she was, in a fucking hell of a life, and no one would believe a thing she said because she didn't live in the street or prostitute herself to buy meth or shit like that. They thought she had it so easy, living in a big house with grandparents who didn't give a damn if she stayed up all night drinking. She pretended they cared, sometimes she even fooled herself, but it never lasted.

It all went back to Justin's party. She'd come home slightly trashed, reeking of alcohol. She'd been meaning to do something about her shirt, but in the end she'd just tossed it on the floor and slept the party off, and then she'd forgotten to throw her shirt in the wash so it had just sat for a week.

Then, yesterday, Friday, she'd come home to find it sitting, washed and folded, on top of a pile of laundry outside her door. Her grandmother had gone into her room and washed her fucking shirt, the one she'd spilled that nasty whiskey or whatever all over. She'd flipped out, of course. She'd known she was in trouble. She'd gone to her grandmother, all ready to beg forgiveness, and had mentioned that she'd noticed her clothes had been washed. Her grandmother had just grunted and told her to do it herself next time.

She should have been used to it by now. She'd never gotten in any trouble for anything. Her grandparents just didn't care. Her mom would have cared, but she had her own life now, and she only saw Kimberly a few times a year, and besides, she knew she was just practicing wishful thinking. He mother wasn't the sort of person who would make a good real parent. She'd proved that pretty well.

Still, though, her friends were always talking about their control-freak psycho parents. They made it sound so normal, so integral to life. She felt so alone. Everyone else had people who made their lives miserable out of love, and here she was stuck with the consolation prize of fucking apathy. She could do whatever the fuck she wanted, but it didn't even matter. Nothing she did could matter. She could probably go and get her tongue pierced or cut in half down the middle like a snake or whatever and she'd be lucky if her grandfather so much as raised an eyebrow over it.

So her she was, spending her Saturday in the back alley, away from the world, with her little black journal open, loitering, searching for inspiration. She decided that it could wait a second, that for now nicotine would do just as well, and fished out a cigarette. She lit it, pulled her favorite fedora down low over her eyes, and sat against a wall, hugging her knees to her chest. She was wearing all black today, tight pants, a modest tank top, and elbow length, fingerless gloves. She hoped she looked like a modern gumshoe or something. That would be better than just another boring high schooler. Another worthless freak no one cared about.

She sighed, flipped through her notebook. Time to start. She hadn't written in a week. It was time to get back to her poetry.

She wrote:
My life is like the underside of an oil tanker,
rough, unloved,
covered in barnacles and peeling old paint
never to see the light of day
unless the world is suffering beneath a film of slimy tar.

That was a start, but barely. She crossed out "life" and wrote "soul" instead. Maybe she'd get a theme of comparisons going here. She just needed something to express her hatred for the world and the worthless "authority figures" who inhabited it.

[Solitair†]

((Lillian Hayes continued from that one thread somewhere))

As luck would have it, there was someone else in that alley that day. She came here for the sake of the Helping Hands Homeless Shelter, where she was a regular volunteer. Lily was probably one of the few teenagers who even knew that the shelter existed. And yet it was within spitting distance of that most popular of teenage hangouts... oh, the irony.

So as such, she wasn't really expecting to see anyone else in this alley, or at least no one who wasn't in need of the shelter. But as luck would have it, there was someone else here, someone in her age group. And what's more, Lily recognized her from Bayview.

"Kim?" she asked, blinking and trying to look over the girl. She knew practically nothing about her except her name and that she seemed to be pretty gloomy.

She stepped closer to her and noticed that she had a small notebook with her. "Whatcha got there?" Lily herself had nothing with her; she decided that wanted to look at the world today, as corny as that sounded.

Now that she thought about it, Kim being in an alley wasn't that surprising. Didn't goths like her enjoy hanging out in gloomy places for the ambiance or whatever? She could just ask Kim when she got the chance, which was pretty much right now.

[MurderWeasel]

Kimberly made the word replacement, then started as someone called her name. She snapped her notebook shut, thankfully not very loudly, and looked up, surprised to see someone she actually recognized there. What were the odds of that? Especially since the person in question was Lillian Hayes, someone who, though not well known to Kimberly, she was still almost positive was not lurking in the alley to smoke.

Lillian asked what Kimberly was holding, and she stood up, smiling. "Hi, Lily," she said. "It's just a, er, notebook. I'm writing a short story set in a mall, and I figured I should take a look around the alley, you know, get the details right."

That was the easiest way to handle this situation. After all, she did have a bit of an interest in writing prose someday, maybe, if she ever worked up the motivation. Probably some sort of horror story. Maybe even something Stephen King-esque, with a giant pile of trash coming alive and eating people's feet or crawling down their throats and exploding them or something. Or perhaps something a touch more mysterious, a lurking presence that no one ever quite notices, but that's always there when people die in a small town.

Of course, that was all for the future. Right now, she had to get the conversation steered a bit away from her notebook. It wasn't that she was embarrassed by her poetry; she actually shared it with some of her friends. She just didn't think Lillian was the right sort of audience. The girl seemed somewhat unlikely to appreciate it.

"So," Kimberly said, trying to regain control of the situation by reversing things, "what brings you here today?"

[Solitair†]

Lily chuckled and glanced at Kim's notebook. She couldn't see a single letter of her writing, which was probably for the best. "So what genre are you writing in? Slice of life? Romance? Could it be... horror?" She grinned. "Well, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

Then the subject of conversation turned to Lily's affairs, probably because Kim didn't want her poking around her business. Fair enough. She knew a lot of people who liked their privacy. "Well, I was on my way home from volunteering at the homeless shelter," she said, pointing back in the direction she came from. "You know, Helping Hands? It's not a very high profile place, I had to look for it, you know. Lots of nice people there, even if they can't afford to maintain good hygiene." She looked a bit nervous at this bit of blunt honesty escaping her lips. "Not that that's a judgment call or anything..."

Would Kim mind another question about her business? Lily deliberated for a second, then decided she'd go for it. "How come you decided to go into the alleyway? Is there some sort of scene in there? Kind of contrasts with the usual mall setting, doesn't it?"

[MurderWeasel]

Lily explained that she'd been helping helping out at a homeless shelter. It sounded... well, actually, pretty horrible. Kimberly didn't have much experience with homeless people, but the ones she'd seen in the past usually hadn't been in the best of shapes. Alcoholism, drug problems, and, as Lily herself had so candidly pointed out, poor personal hygiene, all came together to make the homeless shelter one of the last places in the city Kimberly would want to go. She spent time in alleys and other sketchy places, sure, but at least there she was equally in control. It wasn't like stepping into someone else's territory.

Lily then asked a little more about the story. Kimberly shrugged, buying a second to think, then said, "Yeah, the contrast seems like a nice touch. I want to write a horror story, you know, but not just some slasher. Something actually scary. The sort of thing that makes you check your closet before going to bed."

She flashed a smile at Lily, all teeth.

"The real trick to making something scary is leaving it to the imagination," she said, paraphrasing someone—Lovecraft? King?—now. "You make something just familiar enough that whoever's reading it can put themselves there, see everything, and then you change things, just a bit at a time, and make them more and more nervous, leave'em waiting for the creature to jump out, but then it never does. It's just always there, right out of sight.

"Except, sometimes, BANG!" Kimberly clapped her hands once, loudly. "You catch a glimpse and then you're dead.

"I want to write something like that."

Actually, the more she described, the better the idea got. Maybe she actually would write this story. It was fascinating how something so little, so simple as a split-second lie could blossom into inspiration.

[Solitair†]

Lily nodded as she listened to Kim give her elevator pitch. It sounded like a good idea, even if Lily herself wasn't into that sort of stuff. "Sounds creepy," she said. "I can't promise I'll give it a look, but I'll pass word onto my brother. I think he likes that sort of thing. It's been a while since I saw him getting into it."

She started walking out the alley, to the dividing line between the grungy underbelly of St. Paul and the nice clean surface where she and her peers lived. Then she turned around and looked back at Kim. "So are you done being inspired yet?" she asked her. "How long have you been here, anyway?"

[MurderWeasel]

"Thanks," Kimberly said, when Lily offered to pass the information to her brother. Kimberly couldn't remember at all who the girl's brother was, though she was pretty sure he also attended Bayview. Would that make him a Junior?

Then Lily wandered out of the alley, turning at the end to ask Kimberly a few more questions. Kimberly answered while slowly walking over to Lily; it wouldn't do at all to let the other girl dictate the pace on her own.

"Yeah, I think I've got just about all the ideas I need for the day. I've only been here fifteen minutes or so. I can't stand spending too much time in nasty places. I'll only go so far for inspiration."

As she spoke, Kimberly was planning to finish her poetry later, when she was somewhere a little bit more private.

[Solitair†]

Lily nodded and waved. "Alright, well, seeya later, then!" she said to Kim. "Maybe you can show me or Roland the rough draft! You know, so we could help you revise it!" She didn't know if Kim would be open to the idea of peer review. She could still be a private person, as far as Lily knew, but today lLily learned that Kim wasn't as bad as people made her out to be.

She left the alley and went to the parking lot, looking for the car she borrowed so she could get some well-deserved rest at home.

((Lillian Hayes continued in Let the Dance Begin!))

[MurderWeasel]

Kimberly smiled, waved goodbye, thanked Lily for her offer, and then, once the girl was gone, wandered back into the alley.

It was no good, though. The brief social interaction had inspired her in an entirely different way, and she just could not return to her sullen, upset state. Fuck. Her poem would never get done if she was happy.

Well, it wasn't really as bad as that. Her grandparents were sure to piss her off again before too long. It would just have to wait until then.

Having decided, Kimberly left the alley and headed home.

((Kimberly Nguyen continued in MIA))