I was standing at the edge of a narrow hallway. More specifically, I was situated at the very end of the line, which rather suited my status in the hierarchy of things.

I was sick of the sadistic routine I was made to go through week after week, year after year.

Never mind that this whole “experience” shoved down my throat was boring. Never mind that none of what I was about to be indoctrinated with the moment the next bell rang would have any bearing on my future adult life. More than that, the one thing that actually got to me was the scum I was forced to share my breathing space with.

Everyone in line in front of me was chatting away with someone else like they were most important people on the goddamned campus. They had their own witty little inside jokes and their obnoxious laughs to let everyone else know around them what a good time they were having. But even more than just that, it all just reminded me of how much an outsider I was in this very alien—…alienating environment.

I never would have dared to admit it to save my life, but these were my role models, and the only ones I had ever known. I was forced to spend eight hours of my conscious life each day surrounded by them and be silently ostracized by these conceited pricks.

Thanks to them I knew that the saying about it being all about who you knew was right. Popularity was a religion and a drug defined by the very reliance it instilled its followers. If you knew the right people you were a ‘someone’. Of course, I knew no one. Banned to the worst fate of any student, I spent my days as an outcast and a visual recipient of the world I would never be an heir to.

The most important skill I had developed was shutting my senses down to the world around me. I had to create a shield to protect myself from the judgmental faces surrounding me, and my mind was my last defense.

A slowly…failing…defense.

Today would be different. I would see to it that it would—I promised myself that it would. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the liberation I had dreamt of all those times during world history I, but for the sake of my own diminishing humanity it would at least represent my final cry of defiance in this nightmarish existence filled with narrow hallways just like this one and surrounded by people who probably couldn’t stand the sight of a social-illegitimate such as myself.

In reflection, the feeling was probably rather mutual.

I blinked and realized 5 minutes had passed.

I was now seated inside a cramped classroom with the heat cranked up beyond mortal tolerance. Never mind the school gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in private tuition—heaven forbid they invest in a modern heating system with these neat little gadgets called “thermostats” that allow you to control the goddamned temperature.

And what in the hell was up with this god-awful perfume aroma in this room? Combined with the obnoxious heat it made me want to gag the way my dog does when it has eaten its own shit in the backyard. Did the janitor come in every morning and spray the room with this cheap-ass, revolting shit? What the fuck?

God, it didn’t help that I had an average of 4 hours of homework each night. There was no time for to unwind or recuperate. But fuck that anyway because there was nowhere to run away. I couldn’t think for the life of me given the aromatic claustrophobia that instilled my gut with a slow-rising panic.

I was asked a question by the teacher.

I barely knew what was going on and replied with a half-assed “what”.

What was the Berlin Conference of 1884-85?

What…?

One of the dumb-as-shit bimbos in the row in front of me threw up her hand and answered the question correctly.

Oh god, not only was it humiliating to be shown up by a twat who happened to have her textbook open to the relevant chapter with the explanation in the opening paragraph, but it was doubly maddening knowing that you just got shown up by the fucking school skank who was more intimately familiar with every member of the varsity basketball team than an obscure event a hundred and something years ago that happened to seal Africa’s fate as the world’s biggest rape victim.
Fuck her, she had no idea what it was like to have everything ripped away from her and to live in social trauma and daily self-perpetuated victimization.

It was time for me to teach these cuntholes the other side of history.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a 9mm semi-automatic.

A snicker came from two rows down, but I’m pretty sure the guy laughing thought I was holding a toy gun or some shit. His tune changed very quickly when I aimed it at the smug head of the slut who was so damn proud of herself for pulling a fast one on the class loser.

Without blinking, my eyes narrowed and I pulled the trigger.

I missed, but only by a few inches. Blood was pouring out her shoulder and she was screaming like the little bitch she was. Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up…

The room had broken out in a collective repetition of generic English phrases normally uttered to express alarm or in reaction to the sudden realization of one’s own imminent mortality.

The clamor of panicked voices pissed me off even further.
I told everyone to shut the fuck up and back up against the far-corner of the classroom opposite to the door.
One of the kids next to me asked quietly why I was doing this. I looked him in the eyes and saw empathy. I think he already knew the answer.

"It's a little late to be asking that."

I replied quietly and motioned to the wall where all the other cowards had obediently gathered toward like frightened rabbits.

The teacher then made his own move and tried to rationalize with me to put the gun down and talk.

Yeah, as if he or anyone had ever been interested worth a fuck in what I had to say.

I told him to, with all due respect, shut the hell up or else I was going to put a hole in somebody else’s shoulder. He responded fine, but at least let the girl I just shot go to the hospital or some shit.
I said whatever. Something about her living for the rest of her life with the memory of me shooting her was very appealing. I let her go with the kid who had looked at me moments before nonjudgmentally. As far as I was concerned he was officially excused from this class.

I looked back at the remaining pathetic bunch.
My grip around the gun tightened.

This is what my life had been revolving around all these years. They were all just a bunch of stupid kids kissing the asses of equally clueless adults who received a degree in some bullshit academic subject. They all knew nothing, just the same as I knew nothing. They would all die one day regardless of whatever they accomplished for themselves in this stupid life, just like I would.

At that moment I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. I was still full of anger. The righteous indignation burned like acid in my stomach and it was too late to turn back now.

I took a brief glance outside. Nothing. No cops, no ambulances yet.
But deep inside I already knew it was all over, and I was okay with that.

That morning I left a handwritten note in my parents’ bedroom. It wasn’t a plea for understanding so much as it was one of those things trying to explain to them that it wasn’t their fault. At the very least I owed them that much.

Nobody would understand the rationale behind my actions that day. The corporate media would do its usual circle-jerk and play it off as the result of video games or not receiving enough love from my parents, or some otherwise completely unrelated bullshit.

People like getting quick convenient answers to things they don’t understand. That’s why shit like this keeps happening over and over. I wasn’t the first one standing here, and I won’t be the last. The worst part is that I don’t care that people don’t understand (or care themselves).

For all any of us know this is all just an incredibly complex and realistic lucid dream with a lot of fucked up characters.

But getting back to the point of all this, I wasn’t out for answers. I wasn’t out to get recognized. I wasn’t out for empathy. I certainly wasn’t out for understanding.

I was merely an escaped animal from a laboratory cage doing the first thing that would naturally be expected out of any desperate living being when given the choice between this continued existence and escape.

Paused in thought and without blinking, my eyes narrowed.

The humid June climate was enough to make Eric want suffocate every time he stepped out from the cool marble floors of his hotel, located just a stone's throw away from the bustling Taipei Main Station. 

The purely concentrated ball of steam hit him in the face so suddenly it nearly knocked him back from the silent sliding doors.  Perhaps it served as a reminder that he was no longer in Boston, where it was no less than 10° C cooler and the streets only got this crowded during a home game at Fenway or the Boston Marathon.  Eric thought about this as he made his way down the sidewalk to the Dunkin' Donuts he discovered the previous evening.

"Head On Straight" by Tonic was running on repeat in his head. 

There come times in most people's lives where everything from their emanating emotions down to the particular scent in the air can be captured in a single song.  This song took Eric back to his transpired life in Boston, and with every passing second it reminded him how impossible it would be to coalesce everything he had known his life with this environment.

Lucy would likely laugh.  Indeed no one would ever think about looking for Eric in Taiwan of all places.  Would anyone honestly care.

4 days ago, Eric was hunched over in Lansdowne Street piling his guts out as Lucy held his shoulder-length hair back.  Not exactly an ideal situation to be with someone you had a crush on, but getting fired again in a 6-month span was more than enough reason for Eric to hit the bars and clubs. 

Lucy and Eric graduated from BU together and knew each other well before their "official" adult lives, and that included a litany of weekend dorm parties, clubbing, and irresponsible drinking binges following major exams and final papers about shit they both resolved to forget as soon as they passed the course. 

It was a beautiful relationship whenever they went clubbing.  Eric's presence would guarantee that Lucy never got hit on by sleazy head-greased club guys, and Lucy always looked after Eric and cut him off whenever he had too much to drink.

Eric fell in love with Lucy when he first saw a picture of her in full make-up and dressed in a dark velvet gown for high school prom.  Since Eric first met Lucy at freshman orientation, he knew she was not much given for dresses and that she would often favor a comfortable pair of denim over a summer dress.  She definitely had a sense of fashion that perhaps marginally saved her from the tomboy label, but upon the moment his eyes came into contact with that semi-crumpled photograph laying near the top of a pile of photos in Lucy's "unused photos that I just may or may not want to throw away" shoebox, he realized for the first time that Lucy was in fact a girl, and not a bro who happened to be a chick. 

Shit, everything on the goddamned menu is in Chinese. 

Eric mused to himself silently that at least they had the store name in English as his eyes lazily scrolled up and down the overhead menu.  The characters were each so intricately written that Eric couldn't help but wonder how it was possible for anyone to read this like it was something normal.  He almost took an intro to Russian course once, but at least it somewhat made sense to him and each character could be drawn in less than 5 strokes. 

For instance, what the hell was 濃縮咖啡, and how could anyone look at those words and recognize them instantly each time with the same meaning?  Such a concept tugged at the back of Eric's mind as he stared blankly at the menu.  Deciding to take a chance with fate he pointed absent-mindedly at the first item on the menu.  The girl at the register looked first at Eric's finger, then back at what his finger was gesturing toward, and then back at Eric.

"Espresso?"

Oh thank God, she speaks English.

"Yeah.  Uh, do you also have any sandwiches?"

To his inquiry, the girl pulled out an English menu and briefly gestured toward the sandwich section. 

...she just could have shown me this the first time, but then again I never asked, thought Brian as he leaned his face in to get a better look at his options. 

"Give me the Smoked Chicken."

After being rung out, Eric took a spot by the window and gazed out at the passersby. 

He imagined Lucy waving to him through the window from the sidewalk.  He then imagined her going through her normal daily routine working at that NGO up in Cambridge as though he had never existed.  Maybe she finally found a way to open that used CD shop on Newbury Street she was always talking about.  Eric would always criticize the idea, arguing that most people under the age of 35 only buy mp3s.  She'd always laugh and pat him on the head as though he were the one who was crazy. 

Maybe she was right.