Friday, December 7, 2012

The Stranger's Story

I wrote this as a short story exercise in dialogue. And please, it's a work of fiction. I've never done drugs. Anyway, a little backstory, /b/ is an imageboard (and for those of you visiting from it, please, don't hate, i'm not saying where) on a website (very specifically) that has been notorious for harboring the underbelly of society and allowing them to exist as an anonymous community, Omegle is a chat website used to find random strangers to discuss anything and everything. our story follows the conversation between "You", the user sitting at this end of the conversation, and "Stranger", the user sitting on the other end of the conversation. I didn't do this for class, so i can't say i got an A on it, but I would like to point out that creating distinctively different typing styles was challenging when i actually tried to do so. I hope you enjoy it, it... was difficult to write, but I honestly feel it's one of my best works

The Stranger's Story

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Okay, /b/, I was on Omegle today, had this conversation with a stranger. It started randomly, progressed randomly, and then... arrived here. which... well, read it.

And don't worry, /b/ros, it's typed up first, so it'll be coming quickly. I just copy/pasted it and added this bit to a doc. I'll bump with wallpapers? or YLYL that has made me laugh. Your choice. Vote on it, I'm starting with wallpapers.

>…...........................................................
>...After some time in the conversation....
>…...........................................................
You: I don't really see a point to life without kids.
Stranger: well, i don't really see a point to life, so... haha, i guess i just try to have as much fun as possible, within reason of course.
Stranger: i'm not one to... indulge in severe excess.
Stranger: at least, not publicly.
You: Good for you.
Stranger: i have been known to binge on oxycontin in private though, i had a pretty severe addiction for almost a year. i mean... before then too kinda. and... kinda after then still a little bit... but more under control?
You: Sad.
Stranger: but i dunno, it wasn't the party scene, i'm a recluse. it was the trap house scene. you know, depressing people doing depressing things because we're all depressed?
You: Why do you think that is?
Stranger: well, haha, because... we were all depressed? hah i dunno how to explain it really...
Stranger: everyone's got a story, ya know? and that part was... well i don't think about it too often.
You: brb
Stranger: life has a way of kickin us all in the nuts with different pairs of shoes.
You: back.
You: How so?
You: And while we're on the topic:
You: I feel more and more people are depressed nowadays...
You: Maybe I'm just old and think my time was better.
You: But I don't know.
You: Don't think I'm that old.
Stranger: nah, it's not that you're that old.
Stranger: it's the times man.
Stranger: you're not that old, times are changing at... an alarmingly accelerating rate.
Stranger: and, i dunno, we were all depressed for... well, whatever reason? some of us in the house had dead friends, or no parents. some parents actually lived there. but... i don't know, i saw depressed people, everywhere. in and out all the time, and some of them had become bitter, and angry. but i saw content people too. thinking back really, there were the...“white sheep”? those, well.. you know, living in ignorant bliss of the state of the world, oblivious, floating high above any possible problems. sometimes it felt like nothing could touch us out there. our lives were about getting pills, getting high, and sitting around, waiting for the next time we would get high.
You: yeah....
You: weird...
Stranger: yea...
Stranger: i mean...
Stranger: i dunno man, when you hate yourself
Stranger: and you hate everyone else
Stranger: and you can't put your finger on why
Stranger: and you also can't help but feel like everyone hates you, after all you, you hate everyone, and you hate yourself, so why wouldn't everyone else hate you too?
Stranger: and all the voices in every movie, every video game, every conversation happening at every table, in every restaurant, every hallway, every street corner, the voices become those people you remember from that place that doesn't exist, and they're still... laughing.. and... why...
Stranger: you don't even know what they're saying most of the time, and they're so mean to everyone. you know they can hear you too, everyone can, and you can hear everyone, everywhere, sometimes you just sit and scream in your head as loud as you can, at least then it's just one noise... just, just one noise... for a little while.
Stranger: but then you find a little pill that, when you snort it, gives you an hour or two of silence, and for the first time in years, there's just the one voice, that... it's your own. you recognize your own voice for the first time in years and...
Stranger: and, and, it's just you! and you had your rituals about it. when life got too much, you'd put the evpatoria report's golevka album on, and you would put your headphones on, and the silence would begin to fill up as you sat on the couch. music filled it slowly at first, chimes and tubular bells. then a launch cycle countdown began, as if perfectly timed, when you swing your feet around and up onto the couch, laying down as your eyelids flutter shut. as the timer counts down, you now know not to expect the beat, it doesn't come. instead, the synthesizers begin.
Stranger: it would start mellow, and you could see orange clouds behind your eyelids, and you could feel them rolling in as if from over a cold morning hill, dense and low hanging. ambient yellow music danced calmly through the orange clouds at first, high pitched and sharp, until the drum roll thunder split the scene, striking the rhythm of blue rain patterns out of the orange clouds. the yellow lightning lashed the orange clouds to a fiery red ash, and as the song would crescendo, the red ash and blue rain would mold to form a violet-blue flower of comfort and tranquility, which would grow roots behind your eyeballs, wrapping your brain in a floaty and foamy, all violet-blue, and calm, quiet... you could almost feel your soul getting lighter.
Stranger: and for those two hours, you felt... it was the softest warmest blanket, on the darkest coldest night, big enough to hide under and keep the monsters away. it was prayer time before being tucked into bed by your mom and dad, sneaking a book you know they saw you sneak, and exploring new worlds til you passed out with the book still open on the floor, your hand still holding your page. and it was quiet.
Stranger: and you smoke more cigarettes than you can really afford to in those two hours, because those two hours are everything you've been waiting for, exactly what you ordered, and the smoke slithering through your sinus tunnels is... just worth more now. value, ever elusive, reveals itself in such a personal way.
You: damn you really break that down
Stranger: and when you come down, you watch the feeling leave with a look on your face that's best been described as lost, cold, and despondent. feeling the comfort slither off your shoulders, the itching starts, and you spend the rest of the day trying not to scratch the scabs as they heal. just thinking about it....
Stranger: how it was so quiet, how the voices just... went away. where did they go? and... god... god, why did they have to always come back? you knew they came back, but you sent them away anyway. every day, more and more... do you remember those hours?
Stranger: how no one could hear you, how you couldn't hear anyone but you? the hours, the days, the weeks.
Stranger: you want to know what it's like? it's like paying outrageous prices for a product—unchecked taxation running rampant, risking life in prison; living amongst people you once wouldn't have given money to outside a gas station, just to get a couple hours a day of peace and quiet.
Stranger: and at first nobody there knows your name, and they don't care
Stranger: because they're in their own hell, and you're just another part of it; like you're in yours, and they are to you.
Stranger: and you don't know anyone's name, and you don't care.
Stranger: and you sleep with any broken dreamer who bats her eyelashes at you, because you're both here, and you're both alive, and it's quiet. there's... so much silence to fill...
Stranger: and when you look over, and you see their fragile limbs trembling and twitching as they soar in their dreams, far above the stained sheets they sleep in, and you see their noses red, their hands marked, and their skin aging; you can just tell that they were beautiful at one point. beautiful creatures, abandoned by the world, forgotten by god, who had turned, as you had, to the only solace they had found in this world, a little blue pill.
Stranger: but you generally try to keep your distance from everyone anyway, after all, you don't belong there right? these aren't “your people”... but soon... the house becomes family. and ray, big goofy ray, tricks you into taking too many muscle relaxers, “switched days on ya,” he called it laughingly. you slept for a full 25 hours on the couch in the same position, and woke up a day later. you all laughed a lot, and you learned a great way to sleep a couple of days away.
Stranger: then, one night, out of nowhere, she asks you to sleep with her. it's so simple, you were just sitting on the couch getting ready to fall asleep when she asked it. “you wanna share the bed? the couch is pretty full, can't lie down. come on, you're sleepin' with me.”
Stranger: and with that, it started. you slept in that room for a month, and when the family moved trailers you slept in a new room for a month, and so on, sleeping almost a half a year with her, often after she had just had sex with someone else. because you never had sex with her anyway, remember?
Stranger: you just held her. from that first night, you never made any moves on her. she slept with her back towards you, “i like to cuddle” she had warned you that night. “but don't worry, i don't bite.” then she got herself comfortable. you wouldn't even hold her until she told you it was okay, poking fun at your shyness. You were always so careful not to move her arms, she had those wrapped around her five and six year old sons in front of her, and even though they slept like rocks, you were always just so careful.
Stranger: and the opiates had only been attacking your body for a couple of months, so your face hadn't started to sink, a little youthful skin still clung to your tired bones, but you were getting there. give it time.
Stranger: your eyes still had a little life, though the world had taken its toll, and when she looked at you, you could almost see life returning to her eyes. but they were long glazed with a glass mask so perfectly fused that it seemed only you could see through the fog. she called you her little brother often, you woke up every morning you stayed, which was every night you weren't out somewhere else, to drive her kids down the country road to the bus stop. and those kids would go crazy when you would get back from a long run, play a little guitar for them, and give them candy from the gas stations you'd stopped at along the way. life was simple; life was dirty; life was exciting. but most of all, life was quiet when you told it to be.
Stranger: but then you get a call one night, a thursday actually. you were out drinking on the pier. you always went thursday, when the place was quiet and you could sit around and stare over the water into the clouds and the moon... but you get a call, and it's her. when you answer, she's crying, and crying; there's just a lot of crying, and then she says his name, before bursting into more sobs.
Stranger: turned out ray died. after calming her down i finally got the story out of her, she had found him laying in bed with the needle still stuck in the vein in his hand. she said he had been acting weird so she went to check on him, and he wasn't breathing.
Stranger: but ray knew his limits. and we all knew he'd been torn up for over twenty years. what with the combination of his son dying from an accidental overdose, then his wife dying of a suicide, both of the same medicine, it was no surprise when we saw what he used to take his own life.
Stranger: we all knew he did it on purpose, and i mean, i don't think lowly of him for it. he decided he was done, i admire his courage if anything. he owed me... thousands of dollars worth of pills, but hey, i'd dump them in the toilet if it brought him back.
Stranger: i didn't go back to that house though. i don't know what happened after that over there. i threw my burner away and went back into the csu, got out in a week and a half, and quit doing pills as much. i still saw her every now and again, after ray died, but she became distant, only calling to borrow money to get scripts, and never returning it. i don't even mind. i wish there was more i could have done.
Stranger: change is a sudden and radical thing in my life, and so i had to just, move on. the future is now.
Stranger: but i mean, you asked... “what it's like?” so... to sum it up... i guess it's not really just a bunch of depressed people, doing depressing things... because we're all depressed to some extent, right? so we must have the opposite yet equal potential within us to be just as happy, right? and the times i've had, the people i've met, the path i've walked, who i am; has led me to where i am, and i'm pretty okay with who i am. truth be told, the world just keeps spinning man, and really fast. we're all just trying our hardest to hang on, and maybe learn a thing or two before we have to let go for good.
You: I don't even know your name.
Stranger: david. david d. davidson. i'm just your average guy trying to get by. i've always wanted to, i don't know. change minds i guess? but i don't know how i possibly could. regardless, i'm going for cigarettes. glad we got to exist together for a while, david. i've gotta be honest, relishing in the past... ah. anyway, cigarettes. gotta go. peace, love, and chicken grease, cancer calls.
You: My name's not David.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.



He disconnected before I realized what he meant, but the things the stranger and I talked about before then, his life... Well, I enjoyed the got some feels from his story, and I thought I'd share his experience with you, his /b/rothers, so you could get to know one of your own, david d. davidson, and remember that we're all just trying to hang on, and maybe learn a thing or two before we have to let go for good.


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david d. davidson is a popular meme on /b/where a thread will consist of everyone posting that their name is david davidson, or some variation thereof, when the Stranger called himself david d. davidson, he clued in to the fact that he frequents this board, and i'm actually about to post this to /b/ to see what happens. i'll probably get at least a couple people angry for mentioning their secret base, but whatevs. also, today marks the day that my blog goes public. don't you jerks make fun of the fact that i never update shit. get off my case dammit.

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