The Roses We Conjour 1

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The Roses We Conjour

C.1: In times of War.

Who is playing that music? I am not sure yet. It is a song designed with single sounds that hold clever indulgences tucked away in each note. Yet the song itself is a suicidal song and kills itself with its complexities. I wonder who is playing the song and yet I know I will hate this person with such a passion. Can you imagine waking up in a room and not knowing how you got there? I can do more than only imagine it but I can design this thread of confusion to make a cloak of complete mystery. It feels like the only thing that belongs to me is this body. The other things are nothing to me. My clothing, my home and even my family are all stolen desires that I've captured. See, that is my mentality. I come, I see and I conquer. I know it sounds cliché and it probably is. It is easy to sound like everyone else when you don't understand who you are. You see everyone else and notice this pattern. They tell you who you are and they tell you what you should do. You are supposed to follow this to their satisfaction. No questions asked. What happens when that one person asks the question that they all avoid? Who am I?

At this time I'm panicking. I look at the calendar on my computer. December. How could it be December. Just yesterday it was June. It was June 7^th and today it was December 8^th.

I feel like there is something watching me. I don't know why. I look around the room. No one. Saccharine hadn't come to me any longer. She'd usually be here if I needed her by now.

There is a raven outside the window. The window is supposedly mine, but how can I claim something that is so horribly disgusting? It is the most hideous thing I've ever seen in my life. It has many cracks in the glass unlike the other windows in the house. When you look out the window everything outside looks distorted.

Ditch says he will replace the window, but he never gets to it. He is always busy selling his soul. He's looking for the highest bidder. He doesn't realize how dirty the window has become. I refused to clean the window so when it gets dirty enough Ditch will see that it needs replacement. I just hope it won't be too late to replace the window.

Of course I don't call him Tommy. To me he is Badger. That is what he does best. He comes in and he Badger's people. He badgers them for what they have until he gets it. Then he leaves again. He is barely at my house. He lives in the same building with my father's first cousin Samantha. That'd make him my second cousin. I'm surprised he's the one who comes in. He is always out doing whatever he does. He never listens to me. Why is he the one here?

"Why do you keep calling her that, weirdo? She's your mother. And she's busy. What are you screaming about?"

"Um...I don't know...what the hell...oh it's like the 6^th no...no it's the 7^th," he replied and nodded as though proud of himself for remembering all of a sudden, "Yup it's December 7^th."

How is that even possible? I think about talking to him about it but he already thinks I'm weird enough. He thinks I don't hear him and his best friend talking about me. His best friend is this character named Nick. Him and my cousinare so much alike. They are the bad asses in the neighborhood. They smoke out. They drink. They have their whole bodies tattoed up. My cousinis an uglier version of Nick. Nick is cute. He is really cute. I would call him sexy even. That's another thing. Yes, I'm gay. My family doesn't know. Ditch would kill me...literally probably and my cousin isn't around enough to even care enough to ask.

The stare of this black raven interests me. There are always black ravens that perch out on the tree in front of my house. Saccharine says that its bad luck and that Ditch should see to taking the tree down. I don't think its bad luck. I can see in the eyes of the black raven. The eyes are full of hatred. I used to wonder if the raven hates me, but one day I realized that it doesn't look at me. They are staring at my window. This raven seems to notice just how antagonizing the window is. It wants to destroy my window and I want to help it, but the window watches us almost like a worm at the end of a fishing pole. It will not end be destroyed easily. As a matter of fact, I fear the window will destroy me before I destroy it. I keep this secret though. I act as though I don't see it, but I nod at my ally and the bird understands me. We have agreed to take down that window, when the time is right.

I roll my eyes. Her voice alone is enough to stir my annoyance for her. I don't hate Saccharine, not really. I pity her at times but mostly I am annoyed at her. She is not a woman and she doesn't seem to notice it. She is a doll. She is a mulatto woman, but her hair is like a Barbie. It comes to her back and she brushes it far too much. She spends an hour preparing for a man. It is an hour wasted because her husband never notices. He sees right through her and she smiles hoping that things will be different someday. I want to tell her to go find someone who will appreciate her, but she is far too gone in her fantasy to realize that she's completely sacrificed herself. Without seeing her, I already know how she looks like. She is masquerading in this dress. She wears dresses because she grew up to think that women who wore dresses were happy. Little does she know; her naïve concept of happiness could be translated as torture by the enlightened.

It is usual for me to speak to her with this emptiness. It is clear to me. I want my words to hurt her and make her entertain the possibilities that her home was in shambles. She smiles to me in return because she does not recognize my lack of feeling and I am not surprised.

I looked across the table that was in Purgatory. It was a table that was designed with all the meaning of her love. I looked at it and saw how worthless it was. My cousin walked past just a second later. She smelled of cocaine. I knew she noticed by how she lifted her head and sighed. She didn't say anything to him. She was horrified of Badger. The food held all her meaning and I realized that it took away my appetite. It was commercially appealing almost like you see in Burger King advertisements. I watched as she tried to maintain her lies in front of me as though it was the meaning of perfection.

I watched her expression and I knew that I was slowly dying by the poison she perceived to be adoration.

She watches me with this foolish attempt to look disappointed. A few seconds later, she realizes that she can't force me and so she leaves the room. She smiles on her way out and tells me that she loves me, but I just look at her wondering what there is to smile about.

I pick up two pieces of bread and wipe a lot of peanut butter all over them. It won't fill me up, but it will keep me alive. I wonder what I really want to stay alive for, but I eat because I am more afraid of death. I eat the bread and wipe the peanut butter away from my mouth.

I looked across the table that was in Purgatory. It was a table that was designed with all the meaning of her love. I looked at it and saw how worthless it was. The food held all her meaning and I realized that it took away my appetite. It was commercially appealing almost like you see in Burger King advertisements. I watched as she tried to maintain her lies in front of me as though it was the meaning of perfection.

I watched her expression and I knew that I was slowly dying by the poison she perceived to be adoration.

The voice is different now. This time it is Ditch. He walks up to me. He doesn't smile like Saccharine does. He doesn't even look at me. He doesn't care enough to see me and I know that he's never seen me. He crosses his arms and looks at the meal that his wife has prepared for him on the table. He goes up to the counter and takes two pieces of bread. He spreads peanut butter on him and wraps it up in foil paper.

He walks out, ignoring me and signaling for me to hurry up to follow him. Ditch doesn't take me to school, but he takes me to the bus stop. We live in a high rise building in Staten Island. Ditch works in Manhattan, but till this day I still have no idea what his job is. He probably mentioned it several times but I doubt I ever listened. I never cared. He made enough money to keep our expensive third floor condo and drive a new Chrysler, though.

He drives me up to the bus stop and pats me on the shoulder as though I should say thank you. I whisper something and truly I don't know what I said, but it was enough that he probably figured I whispered a thank you. I walk to the bus stop and look around.

I turn around to see a girl. I forgot her name, but I remember that it was something like Jasmine...or Ariel...or some Disney character. She looks at me and smiles with this broken smile. She looks beaten as though life has taken too much of a toll from her. She is very skinny and around her eyes there are black spots that makes me think she isn't attractive.

Her right arm has marks from broken needles. I wonder if she sees me as one of her drugs. She thinks I'm addicting. She sees the way that I dress and I think she likes me. She doesn't see that my expensive clothing is my sperm donor's way bribing me not to complain about the life that we are leading. I would have figured that by now Ditch would have figured out that I am not the complaining type. He just never pays close enough attention to notice.

She starts to talk to me but my entire attention has crossed the street to a plastic bag. I don't know what it is but there was a force that was moving that plastic bag and I felt it. I tried to think about what it was moving that plastic bag. It was something. Some sort of force and for a moment I thought I saw something.

"Yeah, I mean the wind but yeah...I could like SEE the wind...you know like...it was a thing. I could feel it like..."

I had lost her. She was watching me. It was kind of amusing how she folded up so quickly. It was even more amusing how she had decided to sit on the other side of the bus on the way to school. She was always the type to sit right beside me. She never missed a heartbeat when it came to that. What was different now?

They look at me as though waiting for me to apologize. I was walking but they were running almost backwards. I guess he figures that since he is a more muscular person and perhaps more liked in the school that I owe it to him. I raise an eyebrow as though questioning what he is waiting for.

He sounded as though he was distressed by it. It was Nick. My cousin's buttbuddy. We had definitely been a long summer and I'd forgotten most of the people in the school.

He drops his mouth from being surprised I don't remember him, "I didn't mean it like that. Just having a weird, weird ass day."
He is acting so weird like he is trying to remember something. There's not much to remember between us. His name is Nicholas Podarge. He plays basketball, but never gets any playing time especially since he started hanging with my cousin. He has been on the team since the freshman year. He isn't as tall as the other players. He is a bronze skinned boy but isn't as cultural as a lot of the other people in the school. He seems lost of culture in fact. When asked his ethnicity, he just says that he's black and that's all. He doesn't look fully black though. I think he's lying actually. His hair was a reddish brown color and had large natural curls. His skin is a golden tan that is able to adapt into almost any surrounding. He's camouflage. He is able to blend into all types of different social groups and often does. I watch it in annoyance a lot. It is so annoying. He walks around with this skinny upper lip that curls into the bottom one when he smiles and he thinks that everyone thinks it's cute. He has one of those personalities like he is too cool for anyone. Everyone loves him and he loves no one. Last year he hung out with all the starters getting them drunk and into parties so no one would notice that he was one of the worst players on the team. I found this so pointless. He told me one time in Biology class that I should be quarantined for something rude that I did, so I asked him how many times he played in the last basketball season really loud and he made some half-witted excuse that caused me to expose him further. He never spoke to me from that day on.

The question seemed to hit a vibration in my back. I wasn't the only one who was lost. How weird was it that Nicholas Podarge was just as lost as I am. I look at him and we exchange a sense of understanding. I'm not sure what it is we are understanding with one another but it feels like we have that bond for a second. How can two people understand the idea of not understanding when they were? It was such a strange thing.

I took the staircase to the basement. When you are going down you stay on the right and when you go up you stay on your left. The rules were the same every year. I made my way down the left side of the staircase and realized that I was lucky I had my first class in the basement. The basement of the school was not near as overpopulated as the rest of the school. It had only few rooms, but the rooms were large and spacious. They were comfortable rooms. The hallways were designed like a maze, which usually made the dumb kids transfer out of basement classes and made the classes smaller. I too had not really figured out how the basement of the school was designed. Sometimes you felt like you were going down a straight hallway but all of a sudden you were back from where you started.

I turned around to see a boy. He kind of looked like Siren, but his image was false in the sense that I could tell he was not as muscular as he tried to perceive himself to be. He squinted like Siren did and was as dark as Siren was. I wasn't sure of his ethnicity and wasn't interested to ask. He could be black...but what would describe his seemingly natural straight hair? He had slanted eyes that seemed to cross but really didn't once you looked close at them. As a matter of fact, he defined sophistication. It felt so strange that I had never seen this boy in my life.

I looked down on my schedule and noticed that I had Philosophy class as well. I looked at the kid again. He could have been new to the school. I should help him right? I should give him a kind smile and pretend like I am comfortable around him even though I just met him. That is what they do, right? We both had the same class so immediately we should be friends. The fact that we may be complete opposites doesn't matter right? Wrong. Honestly I had no idea that the school even offered courses in Philosophy.

I started to walk away, trying my hardest to remember what I had learned of the maze so far. Siren said that I should check the patterns on the walls and that would be able to tell me how far in the school's basement I had gone. The problem was that all the patterns were the same. How could I tell how far I had gone if they all looked the same to me? It was the same ugly green and white triangles that were outlined in bold and had clovers at each angle to symbolize the Irish ancestral links to this school. I found this completely strange since this was a public school, but I was never the type to complain.

I look back at him. He is an extremely innocent looking person in the sense that he looked like he was a little distraught on not finding his way to class. I swear, once again I am fooled into thinking that his eyes are crossed ...both focusing on the center of my forehead. It seems to me like he had been looking down in this basement for what seemed like forever. I wonder why he didn't ask anyone else. A couple people had been walking up and down the hallway.

I shrug my shoulders, "I have no idea, bro. I'll tell you when I get an atlas installed in my brain."

The boy laughs. I find it quite odd that he didn't take it personally. He reminds me even more of Saccharine. I walked up to him and showed him my schedule. There were just hallways. There were no rooms to check the room number.

"Right," he agreed with me. Was he lying? He continued, "A mouse doesn't need to be taught to eat cheese, but the desire for a mouse to follow through a maze of questionable choices is when he realizes the true worth of that piece of cheese."
He is a liar too...good...then we are a pair. I look at him as though I had somehow bottled my own Socrates. Maybe he spoke like that because we are on our way to Philosophy class. Or maybe he really does understand what it means to dig a little deeper. I smile at this wise fool and wonder his true identity...past the lies.

Just as I think about it, a girl rushes past both of us. She rudely bumps both of us and doesn't even seem to notice. She is rushing and I know why she might be. The bell would be ringing any minute now and everyone outside of class would be marked late.

"Yeah, that chick brushing past me like she has no manners," I replying, my mind caught of balance.

It really sickened me. People acted as though they pissed gold or something. The girl was pretty, but she definitely wasn't America's next top model. She had no reason to think that she could get away with anything she felt like.

I look at him and raise my eyebrow. I can't understand how he could have seen it. Then again, he did have glasses on and I was half-blind. I should have been wearing contacts a long time ago, but I figured there was no use. There was nothing in this world that was worth seeing clearly except my reflection. And soon I might get tired of seeing that as well.

He was already following behind her. I stay close and trace both of them. He is calling to the girl, but she pretended like she didn't hear him. I watch the stuck up girl make her way through a couple of corners and realized where she was going. I should have known, but I guess I hadn't paid close enough attention last year. I tell the young Socrates that I know how to get to the class from where we were. He listens to me with this trust but I don't let him down. I take him to the class and we make it just before the bell rings. The class is just how I like it. It is positioned like some kind of auditorium. The seats are fixed in a sloped semi circle and there are about more then two-dozen students in the class (which is good). I look around to see if there are any people that I recognize.

I see the girl, the stuck up one who sits right in the first row. She is carrying the biggest book bag that I've ever seen. Her clothing is very specific as though she starched everything. She doesn't smile, not even a little bit. Once again, I am not too certain of her ethnicity. She seems to fade into just a simple question mark like the rest of the people in the school. I think that she is some kind of Middle Eastern at first look because of her auburn skin tone or perhaps some kind of Asian country. She was beautiful if you look past her obvious demeanor. She had light tinted hazel eyes that could easily capture a man if she wished. She could possibly capture me with those hazel eyes. She doesn't though. She stands there, giving me the most unwelcoming stare that I've ever gotten from an attractive girl. It was almost as though to degrade me. She was telling me that I would never have her, no matter how much I admired that beauty. It was fine by me. As I walk past her, I can't help but to whisper, "bitch" in her ear. She looks at me, but doesn't seem too surprised. She gives me this look as though she knew the type of person I was already.

It was as though I had seen this look before. She gave me a look as though she KNEW me.

I sit off away from the rest of the class by the window. I am going for an open window. I like to feel the breeze. I'm not really surprised when my Socrates companion sits next to me. He seems real cool, even though I don't know him. It was almost as though I did.

I notice the teacher in the front of the room. It was actually the first time that I noticed her. It was so weird. I could not remember her face even as I look at her. She has one of those faces that are forgetful. I cannot tell if she is a beautiful woman. I want to tell the boy sitting next to me, but I'm afraid it might sound a little too weird. I silently watch her movements. She is very graceful. She moves is pacing across the room as though waiting. I don't really see what she is waiting for because everyone is sitting in our seats and we all are silent.

She continues to talk. I'm not really noticing though. I'm noticing something else. I notice the breeze as it sails through the room. The feeling is so soft. It's so familiar. Why is it so familiar? It comes to me and it dances in my ear. The breeze stays there as though it is meaning to tell me something? I'm losing my goddam mind. It was as though the wind was speaking to me.

I realize I find myself wanting to talk back. I don't move my lips though. I just think things. The paper. I want it flipped. All of a sudden...it happens. It flips the paper.

I notice Socrates sitting beside me notices it. I think he notices it. I'm not sure if he does or not. He is looking at me not the pencil. Is he looking at me now because he saw what just happened to the pencil or had he been looking at me the entire time?

Suddenly the door opens and someone walks in. It is Nicholas. My annoyance starts to stir up immediately. Two loose girls notice him walking through the door. They make whistling noises or something because I guess they find him attractive. Nicholas is a kind of pretty boy. He believes that he can capture people with his smile, but what about the people that don't like smiles?

He is a bad ass and the girls love it. There is something I particularly don't like about this kid. He is just like all the other kids and I don't like them either, but I go out of my way to feel angst towards him. It seems to me like he is forcing his normality a little too much.

Then I realize where we are. This teacher. There was something off about this teacher. It was a new school year and there was something off about this school. There was something off about this time. Everything was wrong here. This woman was a ghostly woman...there was no other way of describing it.

She's looking at me out of no where. It was almost as though she was in my head.

I try to have eye contact with her, but she seems to be staring at someone else. I notice she is looking at the boy who is sitting beside me (the young Socrates). She raises her hand gracefully almost as though she was lifting a wing to take off in flight. She points at him for a slight second and backs up a little bit.

She nods and turns to the girl who had pushed past us. The girl is right below her. She looks down at the girl and asks her.

The girl refuses to answer. It was such a strange thing. There was almost tension there. I didn't get it. The girl all of a sudden looks back at me. She is looking back at me for something but I'm not completely sure what.

There was something wrong. It seemed like it at least. What was all this about. Auster gives her a weird look as though wondering what the point of her exercise was. He gives me the look after he gives it to her.

After that she doesn't ask anyone else what there name is. She goes on to actually dismiss the class for the day. That was it. She said it was philosophy, asked four people what their name was, introduced herself by W and then dismisses us. What was all that about? I had questions but I think everyone looked just as confused and bewildered as I did.

None-the-less everyone was happy to go. I wondered for a moment why there was one person who wasn't rushing out of their seats. It was that girl Patra.

She was still seated and she was actually looking at me and Auster as we walked past her.

How was I supposed to know then what I know now? These people would shape my life completely. I knew from the beginning that this wasn't a regular day. I knew from the beginning that something was off. Something had gone wrong in the universe and it was centered right here in this classroom.