Happiness

Short story Friday again! This time it's creepy. I just can't write anything nice and pleasant about puppies, can I?

The man leaning against the wall of the darkened alleyway is wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled low over his eyes. He reeks of suspicion, but Grace approaches him anyway.

He flashes her a bright smile. His eyes are open a little too wide and the smile drops off of his face later than it should. “How can I help you?” he says in a voice that lilts in a way that makes Grace nauseous.

“Are you selling Happiness?” Grace asks hesitantly. The man unnerves her.

The grin crawls back on his face. “Of course!” he says.

“H-how much?”

The man rattles of a series of prices and deals that make Grace blanch at the cost, but she has all ready resigned herself to get what she came for. “I’ll take two of Happiness,” she says, “And do you… happen too… maybe… sell any Hope?”

The dealer’s grin becomes uncomfortably wide. Another high price is stated. Grace gives him the money and he hands over two bright yellow bottles of liquid and one pink.

“Thank you,” she says and quickly hurries out of the alley. She barely makes it home before she collapses to her knees, unscrewing one of the yellow bottles with trembling fingers and swallowing its contents in two quick gulps.

The effect is instantaneous. Her despair, her sadness, is all gone. The only feeling is happiness. Happiness at everything. She listens to the crickets chirping in her rush to get home. What a wonderful sound they make! Happy crickets with their happy cricket sounds and everything is just great! She should make tea. She loves tea! Tea is delicious and it makes her so, so, HAPPY. She can’t remember why she was so upset earlier. She can’t remember ever being upset because right now is about the best she’s ever felt, ever. Wow, the sound the kettle makes when it’s hot is just like a little happy whistling sound. How nice of the kettle to alert her that the water is ready! Everything today is just wonderful and she is so happy to exist in such a wonderful world!

Grace stops. The water she is pouring from kettle overflows out the cup and the hot liquid spreads across the table. Tears stream down her face. The Happiness is gone. The sadness has come back. There is only one solution.

Her eyes lock onto the second bottle.

Angstangstangst

Four days into school and I'm ready to find a nice-looking cave and hibernate for the next century

When I wake up, I am fully expecting homework, mornings, and asparagus to all be outlawed.

If not, it's back to the bat-cave for another nice, hundred year long snooze.

School is gradually turning into it's usual blurred haze of exhaustion and I have turned to drowning my sorrows in angsty music.

A good guitar solo can do wonders for the teenage soul, especially when played at an unhealthy ear-shattering volume while gazing out a grimy bus window and reflecting upon the general unfairness of the world.

If you're looking for a good dose of pure, unfiltered, angst I highly recommend My Chemical Romance as a good I-Hate-The-World soundtrack. This band does not play with actual instruments. They pull their music out of the dark void of pure angst.

True fact.

Attack On Homework

Homework.

After a blissful, work-free summer break, I had completely forgotten what it felt like, but on the first day of school I received a grim reminder.

Arguably, homework is worse than mornings. Maybe even worse than asparagus. It's a tough call.

Homework sucks away at free time until nothing is left but the hollow echo of what could of been a joyous day spent on Tumblr.

School itself would be way more tolerable without the added knowledge that once I get home, I'll have to pick up right where I left off in class.

Worse is when I end up working late into the night, and the dark, still silence is only broken by the skritching of a pen and the tortured howls of the previous owners of the textbook I'm using who died a slow, agonizing death from doing too much homework.

Even procrastination doesn't help, because there is always that nagging voice in the back of my head whispering 'yooooouuuu should be dooooing your spanish homework right noooooow' in a tone eerily akin to those of the tortured souls from my textbook. I can try to shut it out but the voice only gets louder: Seriousssssly man, it's like, threeeeee whole paaaages looong. Get it dooooooone.

If anyone knows how to get rid of tiny nagging voices in the back of people's heads, please help. You can find me at the nearest mental hospital.

First Day

Somehow, on a mere four hours of sleep, I managed to stumble my way through the unique torture that is the first day of school.

My bus somehow became twice as crowded as it was last year and even though I thought it was physically impossible to assign this much homework on the first day of school, my teachers managed to pull it off.

Complaining aside, I actually had a pretty good first day. I got to see all my friends again, and most of my teachers seem okay.

Of course, I did wake up at six a.m. and the pound of bricks that is exhaustion was just dropped on my head about half an hour ago.

But I still wrote a post! What a wonderful, determined, and considerate blogger I am!

They should give out awards to bloggers like me.

Really important, PRESTIGIOUS, awards.

With large cash prizes.

Please.

I want an iPhone.

OH NO

This is it, guys.

School starts tomorrow.

I AM NOT EMOTIONALLY READY FOR THIS.

Kill Dem Zombies

I ended up writing about zombies instead of serial killers, but this still turned out REALLY VIOLENT so be warned:

Kara hefted the bat onto her shoulder and looked out across the parking lot. The undead were advancing at a slow but steady pace, some limping from missing limbs. Beside her, Devin ran his fingers along the twisted piece of pipe he was holding.

They waited.

The first one to get close enough was on Kara’s side. She swung the bat hard, aiming for its half-decomposed neck. The bat hit with a slap and the force of the blow sent the zombie's head spinning off into the air. The remaining body swayed before crumpling on the hard asphalt. Beside her, Devin knocked off two zombie heads at once, sending rusty blood spattering across his cheekbones like scarlet freckles.

Kara glanced at him and wordlessly they turned to stand back-to-back as the undead advanced on all sides. The sharp end of Devin’s pipe plunged into the forehead of an zombie missing both an arm and a leg. His next attack at the one behind it went straight up and through the jaw. The silver tip broke through the top of the zombie’s skull and shone wet with blood. Devin pulled the weapon out with a slurp, letting the zombie fall to the ground.

The remaining three zombies advanced. Kara pulled out a knife from her pocket and threw it at the closest one, hitting directly between its eyes. She put both hands on the bat and brought it down hard on top of another one’s head. Behind her Devin kicked a defeated zombie in front of him to the ground.

Kara looked around the parking lot, making sure it was empty before turning around to face Devin. “All that for a bag of Doritos and some instant coffee,” she said, pulling off her backpack and opening it up to show off the crumpled bag of chips they had salvaged earlier. Devin opened up the bag and popped a chip into his mouth.

“Worth it,” he said.

Sharpie Shoes

First off, short story Friday will be moved to Thursday this week because Friday has been canceled.

In other news, I went back to school shopping for school supplies today. I hate everything that has to do with going back to school, except for shopping for school supplies. I mean, you get to pick a color theme for all your items and pick out a backpack and I just- it's so fun!

I know, I know I'm weird.

I also have a habit of covering every school supply I own with sharpie decorations, which is also super fun because sharpieeeeeeeee!

I convinced my mom to buy me a pair of completely white converse and I literally spent a week deciding what decorations to draw on them (fyi: use fabric markers for clothing). They turned out like this:

I just really like drawing on things, okay? I drew on a pair of blue ones too:

After the blue ones basically got destroyed I got a new pair of red converse and I'm still plotting what to draw on them.

Evil, Thy Name Is Mornings

There are two things I absolutely hate. One of those things is asparagus. The other thing is mornings.

There are a few rare, vaguely humanoid creatures in this world who actually enjoy mornings (one of which is my brother). They are NOT TO BE TRUSTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. I repeat, if you find a morning person, back away slowly and make pleasant conversation about the weather before screaming and running away. Neadless to say, I am not one of these so-called 'early risers'.

I have three separate alarms on school days in order to wake up and get myself out of bed. THREE. Because of this, whenever I hear the sound I've set as my alarm I immediately flinch and look around frantically like a frightened squirrel.

Mornings are made even more difficult because I haven't yet discovered the wonders of coffee. I love the concept of coffee. It smells delicious and it gives you energy, but the actual coffee tastes sort of like hot tar to me. I mean, I've never actually eaten hot tar, but I imagine it would taste sort of like coffee.

I am naturally distrustful of energy drinks like red bull because if you have too many it can ACTUALLY AND LITERALLY KILL YOU. I am a very small person and it probably wouldn't take many cans for me to get a heart attack.

Without the boost from caffeine, I am forced to slog through the mornings as a zombie. I sometimes stick my arms out and moan "braaaaaaaaaains" for effect.

There are those rare mornings where I wake up jittery and nauseous from lack of sleep and am able to avoid the zombieness until around noon, where it hits me with the full force of a freight train on steroids. Not that freight trains can actually take steroids, but I think I can bend the rules of reality for the sake of a metaphor.

Point being, wake me up before noon, and I have the energy and enthusiasm of a salt covered slug. Okay, ew, I should really stop it with the weird metaphors.

Crime Time

You know, I should really like, become a serial killer so that I can talk about something actually interesting happening in my life. I could write posts about who I was considering murdering, my preferred methods of strangulation, that sort of thing.

Of course, I'd probably get arrested really quickly after telling the internet all about my crimes, but at least it would be fun to write about. I'm actually thinking about making the next short story about a serial killer, and maybe the protagonist can be an honest cop with nothing left to lose. I've just been reading this really creepy serial killer story online right now and it's really inspiring (inspiring for writing, not killing people). Plus, there's all these gifs and pictures of Hannibal (the TV show) on tumblr. I really want to watch it, but I also really want to sleep at night.

It's a difficult dilemma.

I mean, how disturbing could a TV show possibly be?

Don't answer that.

Maybe I could write an on going mystery story and post it once a week, along with the short stories! That's actually a pretty good idea. That is, if I every get around to writing something longer than 1,000 words...

Eye on the Pie

There comes a time when every teenager is forced to clean their room by their parents against their will. This tragedy happened to me today. I usually get through it by putting on some music and pretending I'm in a montage. Months can pass by in minutes in a montage, which is why I pretend I'm in one so cleaning my room doesn't seem like it takes that long. I highly recommend listening to I'll Make a Man Out of You as your montage music, because if an entire army can be trained during the course of this one song, then one room can be cleaned in that time too. I'd put it on a loop just to be safe though. Especially if you haven't seen the floor of your room in weeks.

Which I haven't.

I can't remember if it's a hardwood floor or carpeted. Maybe I should get a shovel and just dig my way through the swamp of clothing and books just so I can see what it looks like.

Update: It's carpeted!

In other news, I made a pie with my grandma today, in honor of Dean Winchester, and also I just really wanted to learn how to make pie.

Because it's so delicious.

And for all you pie haters out there- you have not had my grandmother's pie. The U.S. government should air drop that pie onto all the civilians who have only had store-bought pie their whole lives. The approval ratings for the government would sky rocket, I promise you.

Sea of STICK TO THE BOOK

In a sudden, uncharacteristic flash of socialization, I actually went out with my friends today! We went to town center which is basically like, the center of town, and saw the Sea of Monsters, a movie adaptation of the Percy Jackson book which really should have stayed true to the book. I mean, would it hurt for Annabeth to refer to Percy as 'seaweed brain' at least once? Honestly, I would kill for a movie adaptation of a book EXACTLY like the original book. Books that become movies are popular in the first place for a reason! 

Oh, and I also went to the farmer's market this morning. Yay fresh produce! 

Vandalism

It's short story Friday again! Yaaaaaaay!

Tessa shakes the can of spray paint furiously before spraying one long vertical line down the side of the train. It’s almost one in the morning and our only light is the steady glow of the moon.

“Tessa, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” I say, watching as she finishes off the last letter to the phrase “TAKE BACK OUR RIGHTS” in dripping red letters. The writing is slightly crooked but the message is clear. “They could kill you for this. Seriously, anti-governmental statements is enough to get you thrown into jail for a lifetime not to mention the vandalism-“

“Oh shut up,” says Tessa, cutting me off, “If they don’t catch us, they can’t kill us.” She moves on to the next car of the train and begins writing a capital Y. “Here,” she says, tossing me the second can of spray paint. I barely manage to catch it with the tips of my fingers.

“I don’t think I should…”

“God, Sean, just write something, will yah?”

I sigh and begin shaking the can. I walk up next to Tessa just as she finishes writing the phrase “YOU CAN’T CONTROL US”. Under it I write in blue letters “BE FREE”. “There,” I say, “Happy?” Tessa opens her mouth as if she is about to say something but then shuts it.

“Did you hear that?” she hisses, glancing around the train yard.

“No…” I say, but then I hear it too, the distant sound of footsteps and the faded howling of a dog. “Wait, I hear people,” I whisper. Tessa drops her can of spray paint. The footsteps sound louder, and closer.

“Run!” she yells, and for the first time that night I see fear in her eyes. I grab her hand and our boots make crunch on the gravel as we race between the still, silent trains, but the dogs are faster. We can see them behind us now. My breath comes out in pants and I can feel my heart beating against my chest. Tessa’s hand clenches tightly around mine. The dogs, which we can see now are police dogs because of their massive size, are gaining on us, their handlers not far behind. We finally reach the end of the train station but Tessa’s foot catches on something, she falls, hitting the gravel hard and her hand is wrenched from mine. She cries out in pain and clutches her ankle, which is twisted unnaturally. I suddenly feel like I’m going to throw up.

“Go.” She says, determination set in her eyes. I know this look. It means nothing is going to change her mind.

“No! I won’t leave you-“

“I said go. Now.” I look behind us. The policemen are barely 20 feet away.

I run.

Procrastination

I've given up on my summer packets for today and have officially developed a new strategy which is to check every five minutes to see if they have magically completed themselves. So far, no luck.

I think I'm going to have to write that method off as a failure. Which means I'm back to square one and have to actually do the work myself. Maybe I can close my eyes and concentrate really hard on imagining that the work is done, and when I open my eyes all of the packets will be finished, but somehow I doubt that will work either.

When these strategies fail, the only thing left to turn to is my old standby: procrastination.

Here are some procrastination techniques I like to use:
1. Eat something that takes a long time to prepare
2. Check facebook
3. Check tumblr
4. Check facebook again
5. Watch that one Doctor Who episode you skipped over by accident and never got back to
6. Flip through the summer packets and tell yourself that reading the questions is actually pretty close to answering them
7. Eat something else
8. Take a short nap
9. Look up 'kitten in a cup' on google images
10. Check facebook one more time even though you are really starting to hate that website
11. Sigh because you are never going to get any actual work done at this rate

Use these patented procrastination techniques and you'll get no work done in no time, guaranteed!

Summer + Work = Does Not Compute

It's that time of year where students across America realize that they haven't actually started any of their summer packets yet and school is going to start up again in less than two weeks (we try not to think too much about the 'school is going to start' part).

Since I'm a chronic procrastinator, I hadn't even looked at the summer packets let alone completed them. So of course today I ended up desperately trying to remember all the things I'd worked so hard to forget over the summer. Plotting an exponential equation? That information is blocked out by the glorious week this summer when I discovered Attack On Titan (it's an anime). Conjugating verbs in spanish? Obliterated by my family's vacation to San Francisco.

This basically means I have to rely on my trusty friend Google in order to have any hope of completing  the summer packets. I've asked Alfred, my fuzzy pink alpaca, for help but he just sort of sits there and looks cute. And then my parents ask me why I'm talking to a stuffed animal, which is followed by a long discussion about why "For the last time Mom, I don't need any therapy! I'm perfectly stable!"

Point being, summer packets are boring and it's a lot of work re-teaching yourself a year's worth of Algebra 2 with only Google to help.

Also I could be doing a lot more interesting things, like watching paint dry. It's a hobby of mine.

Meet Alfred

Confession time: I wasn't actually completing ritual sacrifices to Satan over the weekend. I was at Otakon, which is basically a convention for 'asian pop culture' which translates to 'COME HERE NERDS'. It's the nerdiest thing ever but also the coolest thing ever, especially because I got to spent twenty dollars of my hard earned money on a fuzzy pink alpaca:

His name is Alfred and he is ADORABLE.

Otakon was pretty awesome, not only because the availability of fuzzy pink alpacas (also sold in yellow and purple!), but because there's just so many cool people who all like the same things in one place.

Today was spent looking at all the loot I got at Otakon and cuddling with Alfred. Gosh he's adorable.

Drown Me For Real

This turned out longer than I expected! It was sort of a 'what happens after you die' kind of idea and I got carried away with the concept. Hope you like it:

My arms thrashed frantically in the water, but I could feel myself sinking. “Help I can’t-“ water filled my open mouth and I coughed, kicking my legs frantically, trying to stay afloat.  “I can’t swim!” I finally gasped out, but of course there was no one there to hear me. My head sank bellow the surface and I could no longer breath the precious air above me. Bubbles streamed out from my nose and I drifted deeper and deeper down into the water. My lungs felt like they were on fire and my vision was dimming, the world spinning before my eyes. The only thing I could hear my heart beating and the distant sound of rushing water as my lungs finally gave up their struggled and I inhaled the murky liquid.  I realized, as my vision grew black around the edges, that I was dying. The blackness overcame everything and I let my body relax, the tension flowing out as I settled at the bottom of the lake.

I awoke with a gasp, immediately blinded by the blaring white of the room I was in.

“So how was it?” said a smiling woman standing beside the hard bed I was on.

“I- I’m sorry…?” I said, confused,  “Where am I?”

The woman tilted her head to the side, “In the experimental center of course. How was your stimulation?”

“My… stimulation?” I said, now completely disoriented. The memories of the lake slammed into me all at once, and I gasped as if I had actually been hit. “I was drowning- I DIED! What’s going on!” I attempted to get up but my wrists were connected to the bed by a tangle of brightly colored wires, some of which went directly into my skin.  “Where am I? Who are you?” My eyes darted around the pristine room, like a crazy person’s.

"You don't remember?" the woman asked.

"Remember what?' I spat out at her.

The woman’s face hardened as a realization dawned on her. “Control, we have a 451 case here, patient 68200B,” she said softly into a cuff around her wrist.

“What’s. Going. On.” I said, yanking at the wires on my wrists.

“I’m sorry, there’s been a slight malfunction with your stimulation. It appears your prior memories have been erased. It’s not uncommon-“

“Not uncommon! What are you talking about? I just DIED. My mom- I have to talk to my mom!”

The woman- a sort of nurse, I assumed- sighed, as if people losing all their memories was the most annoying thing in the world. But I hadn’t lost any of my memories, I still remembered everything up until that moment in the lake. Arguing with mom, storming out, slipping on the rocks and tumbling into the water… “What you remember of your life was just a stimulation,” the nurse said, interrupting my thoughts, “When you come back to the real world, you’re supposed to retain all your previous memories before the stimulation but sometimes there are… complications. You just lived what you thought was fifteen years but really it was only about…” She checked her watch, “…three minutes.”

“…Why?” I said not believing what I was hearing, “Why have these… ‘stimulations’?”

“It’s a social experiment of sorts.” Just as she said this, a girl my age burst into the room. She was had on plain white clothing, like what I was wearing.

“AMYYYYYYYYYY!!!! How was it? Where the parents rich? Did you have any siblings? How did you die?” she squealed, jumping on the bed next to me.

“My name’s not Amy, it’s Erika,” I said, recoiling from the girl.

“Very funny, ‘Erika’,” she said, “Well in that case, I’m not Dana, I’m Charlotte! Oooooh, we could use our stimulation names like code names. That would be awesome!” She laughed.

“Do I…Do I know you?” I asked. Before Dana (or Charlotte) could respond, the nurse placed a hand on her shoulder. “Amy has suffered a slight malfunction, please excuse yourself so we can take care of it."

“I… What?” She said, reaching toward me, but the nurse was all ready escorting her out of the painfully bright room.

The nurse turned back to me after she shut the door behind Dana. “I’m afraid the solution for most 451 errors is termination. Please do not struggle.” She walked over to the side of my bed and pressed a small yellow button by the headboard. I immediately felt dizzy and panicked at the same time, and the wires connecting to my wrists began to grow hot.

“Hey waaaddayaaaa mean ter-terminashion?” I asked, my mouth feeling disconnected from my body, like the words were forming two minutes after I thought them in my head. The world was beginning to dim again, just as it had when I was drowning. “S-stop…” I said, weakly trying to pull the wires from my wrists.

“Just relax,” the woman said with a cold smile, “This time, it’s for real.”

Kittens Are Magnetic

I need to post something for today but that tumblr is calling to me... No. I must stay strong. I must resist the urge to look at more gifs of adorable kittens. Must... resist.... but.... they're just so cute...

So I was very productive today and got dressed! I'm very proud of myself. I mean, I didn't actually leave the house (that would be drastic) but I did change my clothes. Now I just have to talk with other people besides myself and I'll almost be at the same social level as most normal human beings.

And now for a quick notice: I will not be posting anything this Saturday or Sunday for various reasons that may or may not involve ritual sacrifice to Satan. I'm informing you of this now because on Friday I'll be posting a short story instead of a normal blog post. Yaaaaaaaaaaay creativity!

I have a pretty cool idea forming in my head and I hope it turns out okay on paper. I mean, on computer screen.

You Wish You Were This Dignified and Sophisticated

Greetings loyal blog minions, and innocent people who will become my blog minions soon enough because of my mystical writing powers.

Today, I made pizza. After two hours of hard work, the entire thing was devoured in fifteen minutes. I mean, it was a delicious fifteen minutes, but really, can we just slow down and appreciate how long it took me to make it for a second?

I also went to the orthodontists but that brings back bad flashbacks and I don't want to think about it that much. If you or a loved one is brought to an orthodontists, RUN. RUN AND NEVER LOOK BACK OR SUFFER THE AGONY OF A LIFETIME'S WORTH OF KANKER SORES AND TOOTH PAIN SHOVED INTO A TWO YEARS OF MISERY.

Other than those two things, I spent the rest of the day doing very important productive things and definitely did NOT watch a ton of Teen Wolf because I definitely do NOT watch a show with a name like Teen Wolf because I am much, much, to dignified and sophisticated for that.

And I absolutely did NOT spend the time I wasn't watching Teen Wolf on Tumblr because I had much more important things to do instead like... cure cancer. Which I am working on in my free time. Because I am just that dignified and sophisticated.

Yup, that's me, Miss Dignified and Sophisticated.

Yup.

Totally.

I am also in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, but you know, no biggie.

An Introduction

Hi

Welcome to Encyclopedia Insanica, which is run by your charming and definitely extremely attractive host, Nina.

This blog is actually a project (a MYP project, to be exact) but since the guidelines were pretty vague, I decided to create a blog, because I wanted to do something that didn't involve going outside. Or sunlight.

Just kidding! I chose a blog because it was an activity I enjoyed that I thought would enrich my sense of self-purpose and eventually lead me to grow to be a better person with more experience and achievable personal goals.

Speaking of goals, I plan to try and post something at least once a day. Of course, I might skip a day occasionally, but no hard feelings, right? RIGHT???

Fridays will be creative writing days where I will post little 300-800 word short stories. Or maybe one long story continued over various posts. Who knows! The possibilities are endless! Creative writing days may even switch to Saturdays! Nothing is certain! Is my name even really Nina? Is this even for a school project? Or am I just rambling? And should probably get back to writing important things now?

Anyway, on non-creative writing days, I figure I'll just write about what's going on in my life and what I'm interested in at the moment.

For instance, my current obsession is Welcome to Nightvale, a hilarious podcast about the mysterious happenings of a desert town. You can listen to it for free on iTunes! I listened to eighteen of the podcasts in like, two days. I think I might have a slight problem! Probably! Definitely!

So that's about all for now. Tell all your friends about this blog because I'm not afraid to shamelessly self-promote due to my lifelong dream of becoming famous!