Disconnected

You wake up at 5:59AM. You laze around as you wait for your ph-

You jolt to your side, react on instinct, and disable your alarm just as it croaks it's first breath.

You relax your taut muscles and lie back in bed...

You wake up at 8:23AM. Your alarm does not ring.

Why of course it does not ring. You're late for school, genius.

School. At least that is what they like to call it. To you it is a lot like purgatory. In between heaven and hell, but not some place you would want to be in, either.

And you've got myriads of faceless entities walking around in visually unscrupulous chaos, devoid of expression or any form of social interactions. A sea of Davids dressed as Goliaths, characters of mice aspiring to be falcons, all trying to look down on each other.

But you don't merely see beyond their façade either. I mean, who does? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We're all pampered with the illusion of courage and pride.

Behind you, duty calls.

"Good morning, rat head."

"How's your day already, latecomer?"

"What did you do last night?"

Keep walking. Just keep walking. Ignore, detach. Time flies. Ignore, detach. By the time you hit the 26th name, you've already forgotten the first. Ignore, detach.

"Hey you, behind over there. The one with the pink shirt!"

You know that fool is calling you. You also know that that fool knows your name. So you pretend to ignore him.

"Don't try to ignore me, um, can somebody at least tell me what is his name? Ryan. Yes Ryan!"

But your name is not Ryan. Rather, Ryan is somewhere on your left. He flinches, and jumps to his feet.

"Yes Mr White!"

"Shut up! You're not Ryan! Ryan tell me who is Carl Gauss."

You almost wished you could feel the slightest remorse, even guilt, for every single soul around you, enjoying every available minute rotting away the living flesh clinging onto their ice cold bones. Not to mention, Mr White's poor guinea pig Ryan. To Mr White, Ryan is anything but Ryan, and everyone else is Ryan. It's almost hilarious to think about how much more of a tangled mess Mr White puts himself in each and every day.

The fire alarm- wait, no it's just the school bell. Wait. No it's the devilish gatekeeper of hell, concealing his mischievous grin as he sweetly jingles the bell, beckoning the demon wannabes to amble off into their demise. Welcome to Blood Red Candyland.

And the infinite cycle of disorganization continues. As distance strengthens, talking heads begin blabbering unintelligible malarkey that you hardly even want to care about.

And then there are your so called friends. These ecstasy-laden impostors don personality masks and expect you to join them in their quest to master the art of backstabbing. And because of what they appear to have to offer on the inside, you blindly jump onto their carriage to hell.

But that is what the world has so shamelessly evolved into. A society so stuck up in paperwork and titles. Yes, especially titles. Branding, titles, and ranks. Leaving behind the scrubs to settle their own set of issues, which they have virtually no sort of solution for.

You take another step and you land in the food center. Here disorganized chaos seemingly transforms into organized chaos. Or so it seems.

Or so it seems.

Or so everything seems.

Quench your nagging thirst and soothe your burning hunger through the ritualistic practice of food consumption. Dopamine shocks stab you with brief illusions of pleasure, your taste buds feign excitement over the sight of whatever limp and lifeless lies on the plate.

But you choose to have none of those. To you, hunger is passion. Hunger is pride. Hunger is peace. Hunger is pleasure. And so you chuck away the half eaten "delicacy" into the waste basket.

But everything else is also a burden. The false sense of security, the longing to fit in, the pressure of maintaining the high standards of your academic grades.

"Do something about it."

But you can't do anything about it yourself.

"I'll help you."

Then it's you against the world.

Where does this all end? You clinching a bright future in the eyes of the bleak? You being the shining star in a world so desolate? And what good does that do?

You know this world is not meant to be lived by one man alone. No superhuman, no artificial intelligence, no man made god, can ever exist in a dimension of solitary confinement. And that does not even explain our innate social nature.

But how about inception of life? Do we all begin as identical beings, adapting and picking up traits along the way, or are we predestined before birth to have set rules and characteristics? And when is enough ever enough?

You board the moving cuboid with rolling rubber for feet called a bus as you head back to the place you call home. Not exactly the place where you began, though. A lot like a timely checkpoint in the journey of a lifetime.

And we have only just begun.