The You I Am

The You I Am

By: Prof.998

There’s something different about you- as though some parts of you were removed from your body; as though your body is trying to fill in the blanks itself. Yet you still feel whole, even whilst whatever inside you consumes you from within.

It tells you you are something while erasing your existence; it tells you you are in love while it erases your heart. You know this and yet, you are unable to stop it- unable to lift your fingers to stop it.
For you knew if you were to get rid of it, you would’ve lost the last part of yourself that made you you.

You did this, you wanted this, and yet, it still haunts you. It makes you evil, it makes you fall, it makes you someone you are. It makes you the person that you “deserve” to be.
You stepped up onto the stage, watching a crowd gather to see you. Watching the hall fill, you steel yourself, hiding away the emptiness within yourself, getting ready to dazzle everyone with your performance. And you did. You readied another,  preparing a sparkling finale.
And sparkle it did, but at what cost?

You watched as one after another people gathered around you, congratulations slowly gathering, confidence slowly rising. Suddenly,  a thunderous symphony of claps emerged from the crowd. You’ve done it- you’ve danced yet another waltz, captivating everyone.

You slowly retreat back into your chambers, not wanting for another second to strike another chorus. Realising the irony that one such as yourself could captivate a crowd, someone without the soul to emulate their own emotions.

You became the faceless dancer.

You want to go back out suddenly, to feel the thrill of your own performance; to experience all those emotions you expressed so well on the stage. You want so desperately to tell someone your thoughts, but every time you try, another part of you tells you to stop thinking of the impossible. Perhaps though, for the first time in forever, it might be right about this.

You want it to come back. That’s something you know, even though you don’t want to believe it. You want it to come back to rebuild the pieces it left behind. Maybe it was you all along; maybe it was there to be with you, not destroy you.

But how will you know now? The show’s already over, and there will be no encore. Ever.

初恋 Scenario

初恋 Scenario

By : Prof.998

There’s this boy I like and he’s standing right here in front of me, maybe even just a centimetre away. He’s staring at another man, laughing and telling jokes and annoying the crap out of him, getting ready to step away and go home. All these people around me, all the friends I know are slowly starting to melt away, and I can only keep my eyes on him. I don’t want to admit it... but I know it’s true.
I really am an idiot for falling for him. =I
I guess there’s something that I can explain about this... thing. Something that I really enjoy about this person- something that I can feel and express, something more concrete than just mere emotions or biases. It’s a connection of the minds- a connection between people with more than just a light understanding of each other. It feels as though he knows me better than I know myself, and somehow, that doesn’t frighten me as much as it should. I like that he knows more than I do about myself.
It means he can see further than I can ever see.
Besides that though, there’s no real concrete way of describing my emotions about him. He’s a gentle soul despite appearances, and that’s all fine and good, but it still doesn’t explain anything. Maybe it’s just the way he talks, that makes me so shy and makes me want to open myself even more, until every part of my being can be seen.
It feels like a crush. an infatuation of some sorts, but the more I look inside myself the more justified this feels. I want to know him more and more and more until I can remember all the details about him. I want to know that his birthday is on the 21st of May; I want to know that he likes drawing; I want to know his deepest fears; I want to know what puts a smile on his face.
I just want to understand more and more and more, and it tears me up inside, knowing that I might never have the chance. Perhaps I just want to be happy to see him happy, perhaps it because I want to selfishly be happy, but I know that I want something.
I want to be something with him, maybe it is something more than just another friend. But maybe I’m just being stupid. If he’s happy, I’m happy; and if he decides that he’s better off without me, then so be it.
That’s what it means to love someone; That’s what it means to make sacrifices; That’s what it means to embrace love.

Love Letter

Love Letter.

By: Another

Hey,
It’s been a while since I’ve I wanted to tell you for so long now, but I just know that I can’t tell you anything. Call it fate, fear, ignorance, or anything else, I just know that the “me” I’ve built to this point won’t allow me to tell you. Frankly, it makes me so ridiculously sad I feel so conflicted about it, like there’s something that I can’t accept about leaving you alone. I really just don’t know.
Everyday just becomes a drag. It’s so funny, for the longest time I’ve felt like I could never love another any more- it’s not easy to just stop loving him. I feel responsible I am responsible for all the pain he’s been through, and I can’t just toss it away by loving another. In a a lot of other words, as much as I love you, I can’t do it. I can’t just say I love you, just because there’s just a nightmare of guilt on my shoulders.
You make it just a bit easier for me to keep on moving. And I thank you for that.

The Curtains Fall

The Curtains Fall

By: Aris

Weiss encouraged me to believe in Ryan- to believe that he would emerge back into our sheltered life with supplies and food, enough for us to start something here- something worth living for. So, I believed in him, even as the others slowly started to lose their nerves, eating away at the remaining parts of our food, trying to distract themselves with entertainment, watching slowly as our deaths began to march towards us. Yet, Weiss and I held strong, trying to pull together all the broken fragments of our souls together.

We tried. We really did. We tried to grow crops, we tried to call for help, we tried to keep our morale up. We tried our absolute hardest to keep believing in the Ryan that might never come back- to keep on surviving until he brought us relief. It was as though we had formed a miner’s coalition in this cave, trying to mine enough space for all of us; trying to make the little food we had last us.

Death was hanging over us - a feeling I’d thought we’d never need to understand again.

I suppose we all never realised what it feel like to finally start dying- feeling for once what it felt like to watch all your organs stop functioning, feeling the weight of despair crash over... To feel for once how the victims of the Titanic felt. I don’t think I’ve ever heard stomach rumbling this loud; heard laughter so psychotic; seen faces so deranged and thirsty. People I thought we my friends started to stare at each other like animals. Perhaps even thinking of them as a sacrifice necessary for survival.

An apoptosis that we’d probably deserve.Things were so quickly devolving out of our control, so much so that even I started to lose myself. Weiss kept me believing it was just a symptom of our hunger, kept on saying it was just the hunger. Maybe he was trying to convince himself.

Darius even dug up the plants, trying to reserve the process to get by our products. We all know how that turned out. Zi Lun and Louis tried stepping out of the cave but every time they tried, the monsters would jump down, as though showing us how far we could go, how far our boundaries were. They probably had no intention of killing us- they just wanted somewhere they could call home

Or maybe they wanted to watch us struggle.

I think it was days before we last heard from Ryan- and by that I mean saw him leave the cave towards the monsters. Too long have we waited for a miracle, and maybe finally it’s time to you know... throw in the towel. We’ve fought it for so long, but it could finally be the time for us to pass the baton to other people. I don’t know...

We don’t deserve the lives we’ve been given... I know. It’s time to give them to some one else. Some one better.

A Fading Dream

A Fading Dream

By: Rysaac

 “There’s this dream I keep having Rhys, and frankly it scares the hell out of me.”
 “You guys would just leave me behind, and I would just stand here like an idiot and let you all walk away with a smile on my face. A smile that hide the truth so well you thought that I was being serious and you continued walking towards the endless light in front of you.” I turned to look at the Rhys that dozed off on my bed, sleeping so innocently.
 “And, I don’t get dreams that don’t come true.”

 I suppose I could see it as a benefit that I don’t have to deal with the “friends” that I thought cared more for me, but there’s something lying beneath the surface that is far more scary and grounded in reality. I just lost the last group of people that remotely even cared about me, or at least, they tried for a tiny moment and then immediately gave up. They were the first group that even bothered to help me, even if the help they gave me damned me further into this spiral of despair.
 When you help someone and then you ignore them, what do you think will happen? Odds are they’ll just sink back into the darkness that you chose to help them with, but of course you’re too busy watching that Youtube video for the millionth time or playing games to bother. Oh but if someone invites you to play in that same time frame then you’re totally free. Why is it that I’m always the only one that talks to people and checks in on them? Why do I have to try so hard to fix all the relationships that we had?
 In the end, even Rhys, the guy I thought would care for me; the guy I thought would care enough to ask me how I’m doing or start a conversation with me instead of the other way around, even you left me for the guy who would willing joke about me killing myself. You were the last person I expected this from, as someone who understands how it feels to spend hours in bed just thinking about living the horrible life laid out in front of them, But of course, no one cares in the end.
 People only care when you die, then they start to spread “suicide awareness” or whatever the crap just so that they don’t have to feel guilty. Then, they move on not even caring about that very same depressed person around.
 Now, I truly have no one left to talk to. Not my schoolmates, not my online friends, not my family, just me, myself, and what’s left of the shell within me. I alone have to hold my pitiful excuse of a life together, while trying my hardest to not disappoint my parents who have done so much for me. I would beg for dreams of a life where I would have someone I could lean on who wouldn’t let go for once in my life. Alas, the kind don’t receive awards in life- only the successful do.
 I lay in bed again, this time hugging a pillow and my stuffed dolphin, instead of the one person that could understand me. Parents yelling from outside the room- already 9.00 in the morning, and I have to get my sorry ass up and go help them with their lives, while helping my other two vastly more talented siblings. I dreamt again the same dream. A nightmare so real that I could see it unfold before my eyes on my laptop- The fading messages, the constant ignoring of me, all signs that the inevitable was going to happen.
 But no matter, I’ll just put on the bravest face I have. No one wants to see the puppeteer behind the puppet of my existence anyway.

The Dance Of Life

The Dance of Life

By: Rysaac

The search for a place we can call home, the search for a place that could shelter us from the horrid truth of this despair-filled country, we kept telling ourselves that, hoping and praying that this time, maybe it would be the escape we needed. A world full of horrid monsters out to claim their territory in this existence; A world we had no place in. Yet, it was a world that we still fought for.

Maybe the world did really need a new owner. Maybe, this fight we fought would be the last to ever be recorded by us here.

We found a place. It’s nothing special- a tiny cave, perhaps something lived here, died here. Finally, we can rest from the horrors outside, probably just waiting for us to make a wrong move, probably waiting for one of us to stop surviving and start living, probably searching for a place they can call home too. Somehow, these creatures aren’t even that horrid, almost human, and maybe, just maybe, more empathetic than us too. Well, definitely, more empathetic. We definitely aren’t.

We hunkered down in the cave, shivering, all screaming curses beneath our breaths, surviving like the plants outside. I swore I could hear Jessie and Alan confessing their feelings as though they were about to die. Isaac tried to keep us to together, to keep us surviving, but eventually I knew Isaac would realise as I have that we would just extend the clock for humanity by but a moment. Still, I fought, not for justice or for survival, but because I wanted to be occupied.

Then maybe, I wouldn’t have to think about the monsters waiting just outside the door.

Aris and Weiss too tried to keep us together, preparing the last few meals we had left, trying to help with the injuries we’ve sustained, trying to show again what it meant to live. Everyone else just sat there and waited; waited for the monsters outside to send us somewhere better; waited for a saviour that wouldn’t come. All the while, some of us getting ready to step outside to find salvation for the people within our walls. Some heroic, some ready to die, some without reason.

Everyone reasoned with me, trying to stop me from venturing beyond the walls of safety and confinement, trying to stop me from experience life again. With their wills alone though, their weakness showed in their arguments, and I convinced them somehow to let me out to get food for everyone who’d already agreed to live in the cave for the rest of their lives. The sun shining into the cave is just waiting for me a step away.

And this time, I wouldn’t make the mistake of letting my only chance go. I would live, maybe for a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a month, perhaps even years, and I would finally stop surviving, and start to live.

The sun looked so beautiful for the first time...

This Is His Life

 This is not my life. This is our lives. Our lives were like the threads of time itself; ready to be unraveled, broken, twisted then reformed again into a new thing, yet something that was completely different. Our lives were like twins in a womb- conjoined, yet not together. Such was the lives that we led, and we knew it right from the start, but now, we had no choice but to accept the fate that we were dealt. I knew someday this would happen, and he did too, but we chose to be ignorant, so the days came closer and closer, until time decided to play it's trump card. The time we spent on that faithful day was like a ray of light that shone on our boring day, but it was covered quickly. This is my story, no, our story.

  This was our last meeting, he and I knew this, but she didn't, and I was too conceited to tell her about our fates. Aaron was the only person who knew about our fates, and he tried to help us reverse this fate. As fate would have it though, life would pass the both of us by, and we would have returned back to the strangers that we were in our earlier years. So, in defiance of our fates, I fought, and took the last chance I had to clear up the mist shrouding the two of us. It was the afternoon practice for our class drama, and I met with Aaron outside the abandoned classrooms beside the field. I knew she would come here, because she always did whenever she needed time to cool her anger and disappointment. So I said, 

  "This is the end of this. I want to tell her about this, before things go out of hand, but I can't find the chance to tell her," I said to Aaron, who was very concerned about this meeting.
  "Are you sure about this? You know it won't end well right?" After Aaron had said this, I heard a voice echo through the wall of the dilapidated classroom and I knew she was eavesdropping on us. So I said with authority,
  "I'm sure. In fact, I even know she's listening to us right now. Come on out, you've been discovered."

  Aaron was a little surprised when he heard that but he hid it well under his face, and left promptly so that we could have a face-to-face, or rather, a heart-to-heart. She appeared, nervously, around the corner that hid us from the all-seeing eye of the school faculty and suddenly I felt nervous too. In that brief second of seeing her, I did something that I would regret for the rest of my life, and sure enough, I ran away from the problems that I had been dealt selfishly. She was happy sure, but I knew that the instant where the clock began to move again, she would be undeniably sad. But, knowing was the hardest part- knowing that you have hurt someone on purpose for their sake was more painful for yourself. Yet, this can't apply for a selfish action like mine.

 The next day came, and I could feel the pain that pierced her chest from the new ground that I stood on. This ground on which I stood was the faraway land of Canada, where my vegetarian brother was not present. I tried to reason with my parents to let me stay here with my brother, but they insisted on my coming because it was a better atmosphere for my health, and I would get an overall more conducive learning experience. Thus, I was doomed to live with my unrealistic infatuation with her, in a land where the realism of the relationship became more obviously impossible. This hurt me, but I had one chance left with me, and it was with a compromise with my parents. This compromise gave me the energy to cope with the advanced education in Canada.

 Time seemed so fleeting as I waited for the day where I could act on this compromise- I would go to Canada, if and only if you allow me to go and visit my friend in Malaysia. But, if she agrees to come back with me, you will allow her to stay with us until she's done with her studies here. They were very tired of arguing with me so they accepted and I tried to contact her to inform her, but it seemed that whenever I tried to do so, her phone was off or my message couldn't get sent. So, this whole trip became almost like a secret to her. I tried to contact Aaron, and he willingly gave me her address, and said that he wouldn't tell her about it, although he had doubts about my plan. So, I went onto the plane, and slept with a sigh of relief, knowing that she would return back to my life soon.

 I got off the plane when the moon had just shown it's face, and I went to the hotel that I booked in the general area of her house by a Grab car. I could feel the excitement brewing in me as I picked up my phone and dialed her number. Before I could do so though, a long list of missed calls by Aaron caught my attention, and I couldn't help but call him and ask why did he call me so many times. He was very flustered when he did pick up the phone and it sounded like he'd been panicking before I called him back. So, I asked,
  "Hey it's me, Aaron. Wait, why do you sound so worried on the other end?" I was mid-sentence when Aaron hastily said,
  "Why? Because your sweetheart took off for Canada yesterday!" Then, I could feel my heart sinking as I quickly stopped the call, and asked the driver to turn back.

  I arrived at the airport, and ran towards the reception and asked when was the earliest flight back to Canada was. She replied that it was tomorrow morning, so I lodged in the airport waiting room after I bought the tickets back, threw my old return ticket away and waited for the flight to arrive. The flight eventually arrived and I got on hastily and went on my way, uneasily waiting on the flight. By the time I reached the airport in Canada, it was the late evening, and I was looking around for her, knowing that she would have to come to this airport if she came here. So, I waited, and sure enough she came, although I was asleep when she did.

 I had no confirmation that it was her, but only someone who knew me would bother covering me with a jacket, and the only person who fit this criteria was her. She had abandoned me, with only this jacket of hers. And at that point I knew her intentions, and I knew that we both realized that we were doomed to this fate right from the moment we laid our eyes on each other. We had chosen to fight, but this fight was almost a doomed defeat. Maybe we were never meant to meet each other, but as I saw the last plane for Malaysia fly away I waved it goodbye as if it were the last time I would be given a chance to be with her. I could almost heard Aaron's words over the wind.

  You and her are like fire and ice,

Hot like the flames, yet cold like the snow,

The gods had already cast their dice,

and you were the victims of this slow,

slow and painful, fading relationship,

and from that day you kissed her lips,

you had shown your intentions,

but you will never beat a God.