Author Information
Another time, another life
You don’t know how it escalated into this. Two years into the streets and the mean city lights have made you feel as a gangster from a Tarantino movie, even though you just turned nineteen last month. Most things don’t matter when your gang becomes tighter than your own blood and spaghetti western and rap become the genre of the soundtrack of your life. You believe some things are just bound to happen, even more with this lifestyle that only a few understand. What a bore they are. Words can’t even describe how revolting it is for you to think how they are so predictable with their nine to five jobs, doll-like wives, and dogs that look like pom-poms. That’s why you are an addict to the rush you get when you see the quick fright you cause in their eyes and how everyone’s enunciation differ as you hear them say the words “Please, don't”. You’d love to hear someone spice it up and maybe, just maybe you’d have a change of mind. But it all concludes in the same generic search of clemency: Either they beg you to stop because they say they have a family, or because they think that money can save them from you alphas and your unconventional intentions. Their naiveness just gets you all in the mood for more.
It’s time and you all meet up near outside the pawn shop that J decided apt for tonight’s game. At this point, none of you think much about it anymore, for the way you operate together is indescribably better than the engines of all the Rolex and Cartier you’ve collected since you started hunting. You don’t wear them because you know that they’re prizes which have only one function: to be a reminder that, what is rotten in a society, is truly subjective for all.
As you’re waiting for the suited up man to get closer to his car, you see her in the backseat. Is she totally asleep? She must not even be ten yet. In that moment, the lights from the posts start to feel as if they are burning directly all of your body. You see that she has a similar birthmark near her neck, as yours in your right cheek. A wave of nausea. In a matter of a couple painful eternal seconds, the memories start rushing in. The stills of a film you call your past start creeping in and you realize it’s an eternal loop that you can’t ever totally escape.
You miss Adeline’s touch. You hear her again, telling you how much she loved kissing your face and that moonlike mark of yours. Will you ever meet again? At this moment, everything and nothing collide into each other in a bittersweet embrace and all and none of it makes sense. Shots. Why aren’t you moving? You see her crying. Red and blue lights wrap what’s left of your vision and there’s no trace left of your so-called family. It starts to feel as if you’re just a passing stop in so many people’s lives but in Adeline’s.
You never liked how loud they are and then you get it. They are all the same too. Repetitive and predictable, so much black and white that they forget about the grays and occasional splashes of colors, lights, and sensations.
You finally open your eyes. The velvet curtains in the room make you wonder if its daytime or not. You take off your headset, turn it off and head towards your kitchen. Your father made you a cup of black coffee and a plate full of scrambled eggs, just like every morning. How will you explain your parents the mourning of a virtual sense of self-identity?
