#I think the concept of the disgusting mass growing on the skin of the orange with a living thing inside of it

[cryptid-on-a-string]

severely fucked up dream that I had last night:

I was eating an orange in the same way one eats an apple. It is the best orange I had ever seen, absolutely exquisite. The only problem being that it had a disgusting, quarter-sized, black, cancerous growth on one side of it. Since the orange is so delicious, I continued eating it and decide to simply eat around the gross part. As I ate, I felt the black lump start vibrating slightly and even poke at my skin a little when I held it. Once I finished eating, I figured I would cut open the horrific tumor to see what the fuck its deal was. I cut it open, and a tiny baby bird wetly slid out of the incision on the tumor. Not “baby bird” that one may think of as a cute or innocent creature, but “baby bird” in the sense that this thing had freshly hatched from the egg, still covered in yolk, in its fetal stage. I stared at the bird, and having just hatched from the tumor of what was once on my delicious orange, it was still too early in its infancy to even open its eyes. The only thing it could do was reach its delicate little neck out, and harshly peck my finger. That was the same poking sensation on my skin that I had felt coming from the inside of the sickly cancerous mass when I ate the orange.

[dustedmagazine]

Punk’d History, Vol. VII: Sick Tunes*

In 1977, when punk rock was coming to the attention of institutional politics and mass media, the music and its culture were frequently compared to illness. In an infamously priggish rant about the Sex Pistols, English MP Bernard Brook Partridge used the word “nauseating” three times in forty seconds. Even the tentatively friendly coverage the Pistols were getting in some venues in the American musical press was informed by the comparison. In October of 1977, a Rolling Stone cover story declaimed, “Rock Is Sick and Living in London.” Charles M. Young, the cover story’s author, insistently characterizes the Pistols and their punky kin as suffering the effects of some sort of physical malady. When he meets Paul Cook, he notes that Cook’s “skin [is] pallid” and “his hand is limp.” Malcolm McLaren has “a pale face”; his assistants at the Sex Pistols’ Piccadilly Circus office space “are also dingy and gray.” Young’s description of Johnny Rotten is spectacularly rife with the imagery of disease: “All misshapen, hunchbacked, translucently pale…the vilest geezer [Young has] ever met.” Rotten is a “sickly dwarf.”  

It’s not surprising that music so rigorously focused on negation should be at least metaphorically associated with illness and decline. By now it amounts to obviousness to note that the mid-1970s Anglo-American historical milieu (during which punk suddenly became fodder for political hysteria and journalistic hyperventilating) was not especially possessed of health or vigor. In England and in the States, multiple economic recessions, seemingly countless governmental scandals and failures and a general sense of social malaise constituted the dominant structure of feeling and informed the cultural environment. But punk wasn’t only subject to comparisons to disease. Punk songs were also deploying the imagery and concept of sickness to effect a variety of responses to their times. Sickness became a symbolic weapon.  

Few bands were more fascinated and freaked out by weaponized sickness than Dead Kennedys. “Chemical Warfare” was a mainstay in the band’s live set from its formation in the late 1970s. The song’s focus on militarized and terroristic applications of bioweaponry was exemplary of Dead Kennedys’ deep-seated dread for dark perversions of scientific research and the medical rationality of the clinic. “Chemical Warfare” seeks some satiric recompense: its demented lyric speaker raids an armory and unleashes mustard gas on a fairway “full of Saturday golfers”; the tune acquires an even more vicious, antic charge when East Bay Ray plucks out “Sobre Las Olas” as the gas wafts toward “The stuffed country club / Effervescent ladies, so carefree….” The bitter, sardonic humor is characteristic of Biafra’s desire to invoke violence, even as he ironically distances himself from it. From such a distance, one can more broadly claim just desserts: Who better to suffer from the effects of such insidious illness than those who have benefited from the weaponry’s production?  

More frequently, Biafra would assume the guise of a corrupt apparatchik or evil undercover agent, doling out disease-laden punishment to enemies of the State and brainwashed rubes alike: see his speaker’s command to “Die on organic poison gas” in “California Uber Alles” (“organic” is a key element there); or “Trust Your Mechanic,” which observes, “TV invents a disease you think you have / So you buy our drugs and soon you depend on them.” Biafra gives those various anxieties a song-length treatment in one of the band’s most truculent recordings.

The buzzy, muscular opening riff of “Government Flu” is as close to crossover metal as Dead Kennedys ever got, and the rest of the song is suitably breathless, matching the song’s descriptions of sickness. The band plays with razoring precision, a zippy sprint, as Biafra barks, “Got a head cold, got a chest cold, and it’s three days old / Goin’ on forever / Make you hazy, make you lazy, drive you crazy / For days ‘n days ‘n days ‘n days ‘n days and years!” Yikes. A dire prescription. But Biafra’s technocratic voice assures us that it’s all for a good cause: “Slip it abroad / Keep a-slowin’ down the USSR!”  

The lyrics’ conspiratorial extremities oddly presage some of the crankier contemporary commentary on coronavirus. On March 13th, Jerry Falwell, Jr., joined the jolly morons on Fox and Friends and winked-and-nodded his way through a typically paranoid routine, speculating that North Korea and China had cooked up and loosed COVID-19 on the world in a plot to bring down the Trump presidency. There’s a weird symmetry to the way Falwell, Jr., and Biafra follow their visions out to geopolitical scales, especially given the frequency with which Falwell’s father was a target of Biafra’s wrath. History is always stranger than fiction.  

California’s punk history runs wide and deep, and numerous hardcore and crust bands further explored the symbolic and political ramifications of Biafra’s fixations. Bay Area band Christ on Parade’s first EP, Sounds of Nature (1985), featured “The Plague,” a song that associated humanity’s presence on the earthball with biological malignancy: “Civilization’s a cancer… / People are only mindless cells / Spreading a terminal disease.” Band member Noah Landis would eventually move on to join Oakland heavies Neurosis, whose first LP Pain of Mind (1987) included the grimly titled instrumental “Geneticide” and a song called “Self-Taught Infection”: Scott Kelly sings, “Our world’s a disease / The germ is us.” A few years later, and some miles farther south in Orange County, crust band Dystopia added to the chorus on its excellent EP The Aftermath (1999).

“Population Birth Control” delivers an apocalyptic elaboration of the symbols and themes: “Malignant cancer of the ecosystem / Gnawing at a mother / Children she loves / Cankered womb and body.” As the song progresses, the metaphors clarify: the “mother” is the earth, her “children” are humans and humans are a cancer. The song grinds and crawls and pummels away, like the machinery and industries it excoriates. Dino Sommese howls, “The tumors feed and grow / All the land turns to stone / Biodiversity reduced / From a parasite’s abuse.”  

Of course, punk and crust bands didn’t invent these rhetorics and discursive maneuvers. Any number of SF novels—from Huxley’s Brave New World to Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz to John Brunner’s excellent The Sheep Look Up—have inventoried, gamed out and riffed on human technologies run amuck and their production of profound ecological collapse. But we should note that crust punks who are serious about their crustiness have always been an earnest bunch. They don’t just produce art; they live it, inhabiting real, material austerities: squatting, assiduously following a vegan diet, releasing music outside of capital’s mainstream markets for exchange. Even the more performative elements of the subculture that other folks might label with the awful term “lifestyle” have material consequences for consumption: not bathing frequently, wearing the same denim and leather for weeks on end, dreadlocks.  

Soon after releasing the EP version of The Aftermath, the crusty boys in Dystopia would record a cover of Rudimentary Peni’s “Cosmetic Plague.” Much of Rudimentary Peni’s work can be thought of as an extended meditation on social alienation and psychological illness, and it’s all pretty brilliant. But a number of bands active in the English anarcho-punk scene that Rudimentary Peni drifted through engaged with disease in a more politically materialist fashion.

“Myxomatosis” concerns a disease caused by a pox virus, which proves particularly devastating to various European species of wild rabbit. In the 1950s numerous national governments intentionally introduced the virus into their populations of European rabbits to curb species proliferation. Like many of their fellow anarcho-punks, Flux of Pink Indians were strident advocates for animal rights. The band was disgusted by the deliberate spread of the virus; they saw it as exemplary of Western modernity’s insatiable desire to control nature, to impose destructive forms of human will upon other critters: “Experimentation, vivisection, devastation, starvation, torture, war / All mindless slaughter are basically the same / Manmade oppression, manmade pain.” Perhaps the most effective refrain in the song is “Oppression stinks” (and “Myxomatosis” isn’t the first song in which Flux of Pink Indians focused on a corrosive smell). Oppression signifies the idea of a coercive, politically motivated behavior. The term necessarily abstracts, a cognitive action that helpfully sets parameters for a general category; less helpfully, the abstraction operates at a distance from the lived reality—frequently a violent reality—of the behavior itself. “Stinks” is a powerfully organic term. It invokes the piles of bunnies, riddled with pox and writhing, dying and rotting. It vivifies our awareness of the full force of oppression, of how it impinges on and damages and debilitates bodies. It’s horrific.

Another 1980s English anarcho-punk band, Subhumans, recorded numerous similarly themed songs: “Us Fish Must Swim Together,” “Pigman,” “Evolution.” But more relevant are the band’s songs that address illness. “Germ” is a song from the Evolution EP; Dick Lucas sings, “I play with your health, I destroy all there is / I’m the germ in your mouth when you give her a kiss!” He almost cackles with glee—it’s a typical punky demolition of conventionally saccharine sentimentalization of bodily experience. The song’s skepticism about the efficacy of “the National Health” indicates the band’s ideological opposition to government and institutionally dictated forms of normativity. In the spring of 2020, it’s hard to hear that skepticism clearly, when we are in dire need of nationally and internationally coordinated responses to massive public health crisis.  

A glib response (powered by an impoverished notion of anarchism, all too common in some reactionary punks’ selfish appropriations of the term) to that need might be some version of “reap the whirlwind.” To briefly give that perspective an airing: late capital’s systems of production have indeed propagated uneven development and ever more efficient global interlinkage, as well as industrially scaled agriculture and fossil fuels consumption, all of which have issued in world systems and climatological conditions ripe for pandemic. The less glibly observed fact must be that many of the people who will suffer the effects of COVID-19 have not benefited from the operations of late capital. They suffered them, and they will suffer more.  

Subhumans address those issues with greater complexity on Worlds Apart (1985), one of the best punk records of the 1980s. “Someone Is Lying” revisits themes and symbols that are familiar by this point: careless manufacturing of toxic, hazardous substances; the substances’ escape into the lifeworld; the working class’s disproportional immiseration, both by the mode of production and the diseases that spring from it. The crisp, brisk riff underscores the song’s growing anxiety. More stirring is Dick’s vocal performance in the song’s closing minutes. He repeats, ad nauseum, “These people are dying! / Someone is lying!” The band swirls behind him with growing intensity. People are dying. Someone is lying. In 2020, the scenario has loosed itself from the song and infected our reality. To be sure, the Real is stranger than fiction. Throughout the winter and spring, institutional powers worldwide have lied and obfuscated, always in rank self-interest, in ruthless effort to maintain their grip on power. It is sick, diseased, repugnant. And the lies grow from and exacerbate deep social problems.

In England, in 1985, the song’s phrases gestured toward specifically English ideas, with specifically English resonances: “inbred snobbery,” “wipe out the ghetto,” “the civilized nation.” It seems that we are no longer worlds apart; Dick sings about a “British Disease,” but America in 2020 suffers strikingly similar symptoms. At the song’s crescendo, when Dick is diagnosing the illness, he shouts, “Ignorance is your disease! / Ignorance and apathy! / Ignorance and bigotry!” That turns out to be an apt depiction of a significant portion of the American citizenry, credulous boosters of a “PATRIOT law” (my caps), idiotically basking under the glow of fluorescents on the floor of Target or Whole Foods, whining about an unbelievable access to plenitude: “What? No fresh jicama!” It’s easier to bask and whine than it is to consider all of the crushing injustice and violence that have made that plenitude possible. Or to live in a way that struggles to fashion an ethical response.  

Some folks are more vulnerable. They have no choice but to become intimate with those crushing forces. Try walking out into the Target parking lot and adjusting your vision. You’ll likely find a car somewhere along the fringes, its driver gorked out, needle hanging from a vein. Another victim of the American disease, another person in malignant, soul-destroying pain, trying to self-medicate. You’ll walk past, plastic bags bulging. “You thought this country was so great.”  

Perhaps our new disease will provide a change in perspective. Current conditions suggest otherwise. At the time of this writing (22 March 2020), in spite of the callow cynicism, repulsive preening and empty macho pose of our newly self-declared “Wartime President,” the Trump Administration’s national job approval numbers are ticking up. Ignorance and apathy. Ignorance and bigotry. When does the disease become terminal?  

* N.B. This essay was written at furious pace, at the close of the first week of social distancing as COVID-19 arrived in Philadelphia, PA. There are many, many punk bands and songs that address sickness that haven’t been included: the Germs, Flipper’s “Survivors of the Plague,” GBH’s “Sick Boy,” and so on. But the essay is not interested in offering any sort of survey or comprehensive account of punk’s symbolic treatment of illness—and “Sick Boy” is a thunderingly stupid song, anyways. Additional apologies for the essay’s fast-and-loose organization. Furious writing bears the marks of the psychological dissonance its writer (ahem) suffers. And angry words likely should not be prettily put.  

Jonathan Shaw

[wee-chlo]

More Pennyspawn ideas I had.

There are actually dozens of them initially. They swarm into the cavern, disgusting twisted little creatures that fight so viciously over the uninjured Losers that they end up unintentionally protecting them. The group will brace for impact as one of the spawn charges at them, and then another will leap out and tackle the first into the rock and tear it apart.

Like a seething mass of starving rats, the spawn of It eat each other, eat themselves, famished from the moment they wake up.

Except for one.

One stays in that little side tunnel, having smelled the blood of a dying, terrified man clutching a jacket to his shattered ruin of a chest. It’s smaller than it’s progenitor, more slender and less detailed. The humanoid body sprouting from the arachnid body is vaguely feminine but blurry at the edges and utterly devoid of anything objectively female.

Eddie’s too weak to do anything but choke on his own blood and hold on to the jacket tucked around him with the last of his strength as the creature reaches out slowly. The hand that cradles his cheek starts off slimy and slender, but abruptly changes into a more familiar touch, with long, warm fingers that tuck into the line of Eddie’s jaw and along his cheekbone. When Eddie opens his eyes, the pitch black monster eyes are blue, the face familiar, the touch at his cheek weirdly gentle, and he doesn’t even have it in him to scream.

It peels his psyche and memories back, one after the other like the skin of an onion. Myra, his mother, his job, his medications, everything peeled back and examined like it’s nothing, tossed away with vague disinterest after a moment. The cold feeling in Eddie’s limbs goes away but it’s replaced with a horrific, sharp pain in his head, like a serrated icicle digging deeper and deeper towards his brain-stem. 

What are you afraid of?

He’s afraid of a lot of things. He’s afraid of dying. He’s afraid of that thing in the cavern, but only because of what it can do to his friends. He’s afraid of the idea that he’s still that same stupid kid that kissed his mommy good morning every day and believed her when she told him how dirty and dangerous and terrible the world was. 

He’s afraid that while he’s here, helpless and dying, that thing might be hurting Richie or Bev or Ben or Bill or Mike and he didn’t do anything to stop it again.

The spike in his brain pauses, the pain recedes slightly. The touch of alien acknowledgement lingers on this. Presses.

What do you want?

He wants to be who they think he is, who Richie thinks he is: someone brave and capable. Someone who doesn’t chicken out. He wants to keep these people close and never forget them again. He wants to live and grow old and die with the person who loves him.

An image drifts to the forefront of his brain. More of a concept. An apartment in some city, not a big one but big enough. A slightly messy room, a ceiling fan humming above them, the sound of traffic and birds filtering in through the windowpane as the early morning sun stains the far wall a warm orange.

Richie next to him in bed, limbs akimbo, face and mouth slack with sleep, a gentle snore accompanying each inhale. Eddie’s fingers itch to touch his lips, his jaw, his bare chest, the divot at Richie’s hip, and there’s a giddy burst of triumph that he can, whenever he wants. He reaches out and covers Richie’s mouth with his hand to muffle the snores, and Richie’s eyes flicker open. Eddie feels the sleepy-slow grin against his palm, hears the slurred “mornin’, eds”, and laughs.

Ah. Love.

The image grows, blossoms, expands. It’s like some sort of wonderful sitcom, some slice of life thing. The others are there, Ben and Bev with their kids (beautiful kids, of course, of course); Bill and his new book that Richie cheerfully rips for the nonsense it is; Mike visiting from Florida having not experienced an actual winter in years; Stan inviting them to his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

No Derry. No evil clowns. No pain. Just love and warmth and family and don’t we deserve this? Haven’t we been through e-fucking-nough? Doesn’t everyone deserve to love the people they love and be with the people who care about them and raise their kids and grow old and live and die and just be glad they were here at all? Why do things like you have to exist? Why do you have to exist just to hurt people, to make people feel sad and small and disgusting and weak and sick? What the fuck do you gain from it, huh? What the fuck is it?

Eddie doesn’t know if he’s talking to Derry or It or the thing peering into his heart and soul, but the presence pulls away almost sheepishly and he’s left gasping for air, curled up on the stone in a ball. His chest hurts and his stomach hurts and his head hurts like someone stomped on it at least four times but his heart is pounding and air fills his lungs and explodes back out in a rush and he’s alive.

“Don’t move.” Eddie looks up sharply to see Richie, little Richie, with his too-thick glasses and shaggy mop of hair, standing over him. “Just... Stay.” It turns and starts to walk towards the cavern. Eddie pushes himself to his knees, feeling like the movement alone will send his chest exploding out again.

“What are you gonna do?” he asks. It looks back at him, its expression an exact match for the exasperated fondness that Richie would get when Eddie ticked him off as a kid.

“Fuck your mom,” it says sarcastically. Then, more seriously, “Eat my sisters. Then...” it sighs and rolls its shoulders like something out of a kung-fu movie.

“I’m gonna help you assholes kill this fucking clown.”

[yuki7900archive]

Random Drabble: Broken

This oneshot is a little different to my other ones. This is more of a vent than anything. I’ve been wanting to write this for ages, because I think getting feelings out is important, but trying to explain all this I find really difficult. Even when I read over this it feels like it isn’t right. But I can think of any other way to explain.

- - -

Jay wasn't sure what was wrong with him, but he knew he was broken. There was nothing more infuriating to him, as a fixer and inventor, than not knowing where the problem was and how to mend it. It annoyed him more when people said he was fine, because he knew he wasn't fine. He just knew that something was wrong with him. The issue however, was trying to explain it.

His mind was just a pool of bad memories, conflicted thinking, worrying, fearing, screaming. It made sense in his head, whilst simultaneously it didn't. He understood, or at least he thought he understood, but trying to use words to write it out or speak just never worked. Even though he used the words in his head and repeated them a thousand times over, aloud or on paper they didn't seem correct. That's what he was dealing with, a broken mind that was determined to stay broken.

He'd woke up in the morning, feeling groggy and tired (which was rather ironic when he thought about it, elemental master of Lightning and all). Edna came and told him to get up for school. He didn't want to, but he had to. If he had the choice he'd stay cocooned in his blankets all day, hidden from everybody. Unfortunately life didn't work like that, and going to school was the law, which was a giant shame.

He'd dragged himself out of his bed reluctantly, groaning and slumping to the bathroom to clean himself up and look at least a little presentable. He'd stood at the sink, washing his hands and face and getting off any dirt marks from oil or dust that could easily get smudged on his skin due to the environment he lived in. As he did that he'd checked the mirror and stared at his reflection for a good few minutes in dismay. He'd looked at his freckles, his mess of brown curls, his illuminative blue eyes, the shape of his lips, his rounded face, his eyebrows. He examined every part of him and it lead to the same conclusion of self-loathing. Why did he look so ugly? Why did every other human on the planet look normal and yet he didn't? It's like they all looked like a human, and he did too but a different human. A human that wasn't human. Humans in general as a concept was weird anyway, I mean really think about it for a second. Think about the Earth forming and God looking down at the tiny mass of rock and water and going "Hey, ya know what this needs? A soft, curvy, spongey little human." And then BAM. Now we're here. Why did all the others look normal and like they should, and yet he was cursed not to be?

With a sigh, he'd left the bathroom and dressed himself ready for school. He threw on something comfortable and also something a little big on him so people couldn't make out his slightly chubby body shape. He'd covered up as much as possible because who wanted to see his grotesque features that we'd already discussed in the bathroom? He'd worn a white, long-sleeved shirt and then covered that up with his large, bold blue cardigan with the orange lightning bolt in the centre. He'd matched it with a thick, orange scarf, one his Ma had gotten him years ago during one particular winter season where it had been colder than usual. He'd put on a pair of beige trousers so the material didn't cling fully to his legs and also didn't stand out with the rest of his outfit. He had to have a bland colour thrown in or else he'd draw too much attention. Not that his outfit wasn't already doing that with the scarf and cardigan.

Next was breakfast, which some mornings he felt sick eating. This morning was sadly one of those times. He was starving but everything he ate just tasted sickly and off. He'd forced it down anyway because he knew he'd feel better when he did, he just had to go slow and not rush or he feared he might throw up everywhere. Plus his parents would nag about to him about having balanced meals, and he didn't want his parents worrying. They did enough for him as it was. They adopted him and raised him when his own parents wouldn't. He should be grateful for that.

The moment breakfast was over he'd collected his bag and made his way to school. He'd walked along the street, panicking every time he went past another person in case they assaulted or attacked him. He walked quickly and tried to block everything out with music on his phone, anything loud. It was mostly N-Pop, being the anime fan he was. That made him weird apparently, so he stopped telling people he liked it. One less reason for people to hate him. He strolled along and kept a neutral face to hide the fear he truly felt inside. With each person he passed he would hold his breath. He didn't know why. He just subconsciously held his breath. It was a pain when he had such a far way to walk to school, it made it ten times more difficult as he would tire himself out so easily. Then he didn't start breathing again until that person was far away from him. He'd had to take his headphone out in order to breathe though. Because what if he breathed too loud? Then he'd look stupid. He'd also have to tap his fingers in time with the music, he just had to. He felt weird not doing it, even when he got weird looks off people. In his mind he seemed less weird for doing that than doing nothing.

This kept up the entire journey, even upon arrival at school. The moment he turned that corner and saw the front of the school, all the kids stood there and talking away as they waited for first period, his stomach filled with an usual feeling. This feeling he couldn't describe, but he had gotten so used to it everyday he didn't even have to think what he was thinking because he already knew too well what he was thinking (I know, confusing). All because of that unease in his body. He figured this feeling was what judgement was. He walked up the path to the front door, sneaking his hand up his cardigan sleeve and scratching his skin viciously as a replacement for biting his nails. Everybody stared at him, even when they weren't. He knew they were watching him, all of them. They may not have been staring right at him but he knew they were. He could feel their eyes on him. And when he went past them, his head kept down at the ground, he heard laughter from a group of girls nearby. They were talking about something else, nothing to do with him, but they were definitely laughing at him. He knew they were laughing at him. Why were they though? Could they see his ugly body? Was his face so disgusting that it was funny? Or maybe his entire existence was just a joke in itself.

Jay felt a tap on his shoulder, prompting him to take his headphones out after his entire body screamed to run away. What if this person was a murderer? A kidnapper? What then? He'd played right into their hands. Then they'd kill him and bury his body somewhere nobody would ever find him and so no one would ever know what happened to him and he could never tell anyone because he'd be dead.

Thankfully though it wasn't either of those things.

"Hey," Cole smiled at him. Jay relaxed a little. It was just his best friend. "You okay?"

"Yeah." No.

"Good to hear. You ready for first period?"

"Yeah." No he wasn't. He never was. A classroom filled with other teens, all shouting and being annoying? Not his cup of tea. Too much noise and his brain felt like imploding, and when that happened he would have a meltdown and would start crying in the middle of class, then they'd call him a crybaby and tell him to grow up, even though he couldn't help it. He couldn't help it when noise was too much and he had constant noise in his head. He didn't need triple the amount he already had because people couldn't just shut up and get on with learning—

"Same, I've got my playlist ready." Cole grinned cheekily, making Jay laugh a little. He wished he could be like Cole. He wished he could listen to music all day and pretend that nobody else exists. But he doesn't learn that way, and if he didn't pay attention then his grades would slip. Not that his grades were more than average anyway. He was only just passing three quarters his subjects, acing only three of them and struggling to get through the rest. Damn Cole for being naturally smart. He was envious. But he shouldn't be. He felt awful. Cole was his best friend yet something about him just made the brunette feel so angry. His attitude? The fact he didn't care? The fact that he was actually liked. Unlike him.

The conversation between them carried on the rest of the morning as they stood by their lockers. Jay's mind was fairly quiet, distracted with what they were discussing up until everyone else arrived. He greeted all of them, they greeted him back. The topic changed to something else, their attention focused on a fascinating fact Zane had found out about how bread is made, followed by Lloyd's bullying issue. They all focused on that, everyone chatting and having their own input on the matter. Except Jay. Jay just stood there, saying nothing and listening instead. His friends all had something to say, they all talked and made their points but not the brunette. He had thoughts on it, but what did it matter? His opinion had already been said and repeated. Besides, did anyone really want to hear what he had to say? Probably not. They'd think he was dumb. Even though, like I said before, the opinion he had was similar to others in the group, that wouldn't stop them from thinking he was stupid. Or just a copy cat that couldn't form his own opinions. One of the two. He could see the look in their eyes whenever he spoke, the disinterest and uncaring. They'd gloss over whatever he had to say before someone more interesting than him said something more intelligent and he'd be forgotten about. Their eyes would light up again and the conversation would resume without him. So again, what was the point in telling them what he thought?

The bell rang for class, making Jay sigh to himself before him and his friends made their way through the corridors. Students stared at them all. More of the staring, the constant staring as they mocked and sneered and judged. And all the boy could do was be consumed with the voice in his head asking questions he didn't have the answer to. Why were they watching him? Why did they hate him? What did he do? What was so bad about him? Could they read his mind right now? Maybe they could. Maybe they were laughing at how unbelievably pathetic he was.

They all got to class and sat down in their seats, bringing out their textbooks as the teacher walked in and shushed them all. She began teaching her subject to the class, lecturing and writing notes on the board for students to copy up ready to revise for a test later that week. Jay scribbled down his notes in his book, his right leg bouncing up and down rapidly without him even realising for a good few minutes. When he did he halted immediately, cursing at himself. He began to write again, but he totally lost his rhythm from before. When he did gain it back, his leg started bouncing again. Eventually he gave up on trying to keep his leg still, accepting that his body was never going to cooperate with him, and just wrote down what he needed to as it was way more important.

Halfway through the lesson the teacher began asking questions, and his heart sank. He hoped, he begged for him to be ignored. He averted his gaze and kept his pupils locked onto the writing in his book. She called upon certain people and they gave the answer. Right or wrong, they didn't care much, nobody did. Not until—

"Jay?" He was asked a question. He thought he knew the answer, but what if it was incorrect? What if it wasn't even close to the correct answer and everyone knew this? They'd all laugh at him for being so stupid. They'd whisper and make fun of him, tell all their friends who weren't in their class who in turn would tell their other friends and so on until the whole school knew that he was an idiot. "What do you think it is?"

Say it. He told himself to say it. It didn't matter if it was wrong. But it did. It really did. Even when it didn't, it did. But he had to give some sort of answer, so he needed to say it. But, what was his answer again? What was it? He had it in his mind and now it was gone. He had to say something, anything that came to mind, anything at all. His brain was in a frozen stand still and he couldn't say anything. He forced himself to speak but nothing, no matter how hard he tried, came out.

He spent five seconds opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, followed by slowly sinking into his chair and hiding half his face in his scarf as he blushed furiously, small squeaks escaping his mouth. Some people in front turned to look at him, that same old expression he knew too well. You guessed it, judgement. He could feel other students behind him burning holes into his head, laughing to themselves at the shrivelling wimp before them. He was totally pathetic and he knew it.

"Alright, anyone else know the answer?" The teacher left him alone, having sighed a little. The students turned back around and began focusing again, but Jay was totally lost in his own mind. He stayed curled up in his seat, burying his head in his left arm and scribbling on his paper with his right. He went to the very back of his book and doodled, drawing a whole manner of things to help take his mind off the embarrassment he felt. He started in the top left corner and drew a planet surrounded by a dozen baby stars. From there he drew outward. He doodled random hands, an extra detailed anime style eye, even wrote some words and favourite song lyrics in a variety of typefaces ranging from block to cursive. His favourite drawing on that page, the one he'd put the most effort and time into, was the one of Nya. It was a quick sketch but he was proud of it, as he was with every drawing he did of her.

When the time came for class to end, Jay never left first. He packed his things slowly, allowing everyone else to clear out before even thinking of leaving himself. His friends would be waiting outside for him anyway. Today was no exception either. He left and all five of them stood there, looking at him sympathetically. Kai gently rubbed his arm and hugged him whilst Cole ruffled his hair.

"You okay bro?" The brunette asked him.

"Y-Yeah. I'm fine." He wasn't.

"Don't worry about them." His best friend nudged him gently. That was easier said than done, Jay had thought bitterly. "We know you're smart."

The rest of the day played out exactly the same. The same looks, the same uneasiness. However there was a brief moment of joy for the small brunette. He had been in Science, one of his best classes. He was seated next to Nya as she was his lab partner. It was one of the few classes he enjoyed (that and Art class). That lesson was different to the one earlier that day. He was called upon to answer another question, but this time he was certain his answer was at least 60% correct, so this time his nerves were not as evident. He stuttered as he spoke, and was a little on the quiet side, but his teacher had nodded with a smile when he'd got the right answer, and Jay felt overwhelmed with joy. He grinned at his teacher before turning to look at Nya, who gave him a thumbs up. She knew the reason for his happiness wasn't just getting it right, but also being able to answer and not freeze up like usual. He felt so happy and gleeful at his achievement.

For two seconds. Then he heard students snickering behind him, and saw other peers looking at him and rolling their eyes. That's when it all came flooding back again. And suddenly he didn't feel so good anymore. What kind of loser gets excited over answering a question correctly? Him, it seemed. The boy hid his face again and got to scribbling. He just wanted to go home.

When school finally had ended for the day, his friends had taken him along to the sushi bar to get food. He didn't really want to go out, he wanted to get back to his house and just eat there, but they were his friends and he felt bad saying no. So even though he was drained of any energy to be sociable, he spent another hour with his mates. He didn't make conversation, just let everyone chat amongst themselves and pretend he wasn't even there. Or at least he stopped trying to talk when they ignored him three times he'd tried to speak. Perhaps he was being too quiet and they couldn't hear him, or maybe they just didn't care what he thought. Whatever. He was just there to be there he supposed. Did any of them really want him there? When he just sat fiddling with his scarf and not joining in with them and taking an interest in whatever they were chatting about? Maybe it was a waste of time to even bother hanging out with them. They probably invited him out because they pitied him staying inside all the time. He could be at home doing homework, or painting with his mom, or helping his dad with mending. Instead he was sat here with his friends, all of them too engrossed to pay him any attention. But that wasn't fair of him. He was being selfish. He couldn't have all the attention, no matter how much he craved it (and he craved it badly). But he craved the good attention, not the bad, which is why half the time he didn't attempt trying to obtain it as all it lead to was him feeling shitty as everyone silently looked between each other and said nothing. Kind of like what happened in Science when he felt proud and then realised what a sad little worm he was. Why should he be proud of something that small? He really was the worst creature on the planet.

Nya had given him a lift home, knowing his neighbourhood wasn't the safest place in Ninjago. He didn't want her too but she insisted, so he felt bad complaining about it. It wasn't as if she was safe driving him home either. That didn't stop her from parking her bike to talk to him before he went inside.

"You sure you're okay Jay?" She persisted, climbing off her motorbike and walking over to him. He clutched the strap of his messenger bag and squeezed the material in his hands. He really did hate lying like he had been. He couldn't tell her what was wrong though because it was selfish. It was attention seeking. He knew it was. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't okay but he knew that was the part of him talking that just wanted someone to give him the attention he wanted. The attention he wasn't allowed to have.

"Yeah." He nodded and smiled, but she was unconvinced. She hummed and stepped forward again, bringing him in for a hug.

"It's okay to tell me. I won't tell anyone, I promise." She muttered softly, rubbing his back as he flushed. Maybe he should tell her what was bothering him. But how did he explain it? And how much did he explain? Did he explain just the day or every other day too? Sure it would take all night to try and untangle every little thing in the awful mess that was his mind, but at least then maybe he could finally fix himself. Nya was smart, just like him, she'd know what to do. And even if she didn't she'd try. She'd try so hard. She'd look after him.

"Really. I'm fine." He hated himself. So much. She was offering help and it made sense to accept it, why did he turn it down? Why did he pretend every single time that everything was fine and he was fine?  Why couldn't he just bring himself to say it?

Nya pulled away with a sigh, a frown on her face. "Promise you'll text if something's bothering you, yeah?"

"Promise." Already broken. Just by saying he would he had already lied yet again. What a shitty person he was.

She gave him a small smile and a ruffle of his hair before taking off back home. She zoomed off and left Jay in the dust, who looked after her with sad eyes before trudging back to his house and heading inside, slamming the front door shut.

His parents weren't home just yet, probably working or doing shopping. Jay didn't mind. He wanted alone time anyway. He let his bag fall from his shoulder and flopped onto his bed with an angry sob, tears spilling from his eyes. Why was this so complicated? He knew what he wanted, at least, he thought he did. He wanted help but at the same time why did he want help? He was smart! He could figure it out himself! Eventually...

As if anyone could understand him anyway. He couldn't even understand. Or he could, but...couldn't? He didn't know.

He groaned and buried his head in his pillow, gripping his hair and tugging in frustration. Why did this have to happen? What went so wrong in life that caused all of his? He was fairly certain other people didn't feel how he felt. Normal people didn't fret over literally everything, they didn't care about every detail, they just got on with it and didn't feel like crying every two minutes. God, what was the point of it all? Why even bother? Maybe this was how it was always going to be. He was going to spend his entire miserable and worthless life being a waste of space.

He hoped tomorrow would be better than what today had been. But it never was. It was always the same. Always broken.