Lee Stupendous

I am on fire. 

Burning and waiting until I turn to ash. 

The cause is unknown but it is swirling, on a continuous cycle. 

The burns have scarred and burned again. 

Never getting the time to heal before it bursts into flames. 

Moments of calm but not when I choose it. 

Just like the fire, it's all a surprise. 

At this point, I try to shield others from the fire. 

Though this never proves to matter. 

I wonder, who wants me to burn up? 

I think it's me but I can't answer that question. I don't know for sure. 

I'm not ashes yet. 

As I walk through the village, I am greeted by familiar and new faces alike. Things have changed since I have been here last but the foundation is the same. 

The people are sadder than I remember but maybe I am looking closer now. The villagers are filling their cups and having a second dinner. It is a celebration. 

There is a group of younger folk that are running through the village, much like the celebration, for no reason at all.

A woman is crying, red tears - bloodlike. She is the village pariah, why is she crying so much?

I wave to her and she doesn't wave back. I start to say that I have cried those red tears before but it's too late, I've walked away. 

The village is smaller than I remember or maybe I'm taking up more space now. 

The tears start to flow as I have stayed too long. I have to be careful to conceal my weakness for fear of judgment. 

I wipe my face and the clear tears are turning in color. I have to get out of here before I am discovered. 

To my surprise, I was not alone in this. Not the Pariah, her face was free of tears. The villagers were now crying these tears and my tears, like Pariah's - vanished. 

She cracks a smile and goes on her way. 

I too must leave this place but I'll be back sometime soon. 

I began my day with a cup of coffee that I brewed in the large kitchen. I made myself a full spread for breakfast, anything that I could find in the fridge. After that, I watched television for a little while on the 70-inch TV, glorious picture. I decided to shower and get ready for the day. The walk-in shower with different temperatures and the heated floors on the bathroom, mwah. I made my way into the walk-in closet that has some of the nicest clothes I've ever seen. I tried on a few things before I decided on what I was going to wear for the big day. I grabbed the Tesla keys from the keyring by the garage door. The Tesla is beautiful and I decide to go meet some of my friends for a great day. 

Everything was going so great, I was having drinks and feeling great about how the day was going. All of the sudden, the place that we were at became swarmed with cops, sirens so loud I could barely hear my friend's hilarious joke. "Damn, wouldn't want to be the guy they're looking for". 

The next thing I know, I am in cuffs and I tell them they have got the wrong guy. 

They ask me one question. Is it your birthday today? I say yes and now I'm spending the next 25 in jail because I guess it's "not my house" and "I broke in?" Sorry for wanting to have a good birthday, sue me? 

Update: After I said that, they are suing so happy birthday to me. 

Insert witty beginning here *     *.  

OH, hi there. I didn't see you. I was writing a story. 

I was hoping to make it equally weird, funny, appealing to my peers and I want it to say something about the state of affairs and I want what it is saying to be ambiguous so it is also mysterious. 

I was thinking that I could reference recent cultural events to let the audience know that I am informed and I care about what they care about.

I definitely have to include self-deprecation for the men so they don't think that I'm too full of myself. 

I should probably be careful what I say about women too because I don't want them to think I'm too full of myself. 

I can't write something too depressing because then I think it would be too honest and the reader doesn't love that. I think I should try to keep it light so my peers think I enjoy my life and maybe want to be my friend. 

I was thinking that I could make my main character a genius because people love relatable genius stories. 

I got it, I will write about a troubled genius who smokes a lot of cigarettes and drinks himself to near death most nights. He is abusive but that is only because he is a genius so we give him a pass right? Yeah, that'll do. 

I have to come up with an ending that really blows my readers away, something so out of the box and witty. 

What if I reveal that it was all in his head?

That he was right the whole time and all those people who were trying to get him to change were wrong and that he is a genius just like he thought and...... he is a ghost and it was a dream too. 

Yeah. 

There is a factory that gives us the things that we possess now. I know this because I have been there and in it, you'll find all the usual suspects. Make a left when you first get in and you will find the Old Lady Pixie Cut sector, very popular. If you decide to make a right, you'll enter the Teenage Boy Vape & Masculinity Complex sector, you probably don't want to go there. I've been there and they asked if I was gay. This is not an offensive thing to say generally but if it comes from a Teenage Boy or White Man over 60+, you will hear the offensive part. It's something they do with their voices. They got it at the factory, I think. As you make your way down the main hallway, you'll pass several "Urges", some will include: the Female urge to draw their eyebrows on, the Male urge to critique professional athletes on their performance while no longer being able to see their own penis when they look down and the mid-20s urge to be productive in an attempt to impress their peers but ending up lying in bed for the most of the day. This is a dicey sector, to say the least. As we get deeper into the factory, we will start to find subsets that are tailored to a certain demographic. 

We will come across the 60+ White Male inkling to condescendingly congratulate women and minorities. "I did not expect a female to be able to do that", "You're the smartest black guy I've ever met", and "Wow, you speak great English for a Mexican". You get it. We will also find that 40+ Female desire to talk with a higher voice and very sure language when talking on the phone and rolling their eyes after getting off the phone. "Oh my God, the kids would absolutely love that. We should definitely do that. YES!!" Directly next to this subset is the adult male urge to put their arm around their significant other and essentially put them in a headlock in an attempt to outwardly claim them as their own. Walking a little further, we come across the human urge to learn something new but never doing anything to learn that thing and then telling yourself it's not because you're lazy but instead attributing it to the fact that you just weren't interested and it wasn't meant to be, has its own wing of the factory. 

The factory is a big place and could never be visited in its entirety on your first visit. 

(Brought to you by the millennial inability to finish anything.)

 TiL nExt TiMe.