An Era

[This is where I’ll keep updating the book I’m writing. I don’t know where this will go. It’s not autobiographical. Felix isn’t me, at all. Any anonymous comments make my day. This isn’t perfect and I won’t take any money from it. Hope the few of you enjoy – If you dislike slow-moving rambling, starting at part 7 means the story still makes sense.]
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“An Era”.

1.

Sometimes they laugh at me because I’m self-influential.

I cross into reality from dreams. I like to live within my own thoughts. I depend on myself to build myself and remain oblivious to the all-action culture which is supposed to shape me.

Some days I feel as if I’m part of the problem. Other times, I feel as if I’m too good for it.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m part of the freak show the group I define as my friends have become. I live around a microcosm of society which laughs at injury and promotes sexism, racism and pure, constant bullying.

Life’s morphing into one big joke for me.

Optimism. It’s a concept thrown at those in depression, but to me it was nothing but a word. The lack of it, in fact, was the sole reason of my 14-year-old conscience flowing endlessly in and out of depression.

Optimism was a concept which stayed constantly just out of reach. But when I reached those heights, I felt like I was immune to such depression again. I’m past that era now.

I fall silently into the bleakly decorated exam hall and feel a million eyes on my still, emotionless face. Blue eyes fix on bricked walls in front of me. I’n shaking nervously. I say nothing.

Their eyes follow me.

I’m the centre of my mind, their mind and, in my view, the universe.

The year is 2018. My name is Felix, and in my mind I’m about to take over the world.

2.
Placed back into the perspective of a teenage boy who, in society’s opinion, exists as a pessimist, this exam means nil. But the nervousness for this is a constant built into me, moulded by how most sane people would react.

To me, happiness and money do not necessarily co-exist. It’s just another theory I’ve crafted as if I’m some sort of revolutionary, but in my eyes it holds slightly true.

This exam is nothing more than a platform for power-hungry monsters that society takes us as.

Good grades take you to a good university, which throws you into a good job, and there you are in your perfect little paradise with your attractive girlfriend and your bank account bustling with riches.

That’s not perfection to me.

I speak these bitter musings as an antidote to insist that what I’m doing is right. Perhaps I hold these beliefs purely as an unattractive, bleak, middle-class soul but to me they’re astonishingly correct.

Whatever happens briefly in my mind is shut out swiftly by my external self, Felix, as I shake myself back into focus and forcedly continue my exam. It’s pointless, but I force myself through the traditional motions anyway.

Their heavy heads are fixed deep in emotion within a messy wreck of cream sheets, yet for some reason my body still feels watched. My pen glides poetically regardless.

I could potentially ruin myself with this attitude. Perhaps I’ll look back eventually and wonder where I messed up so much.

The clock summons the effort to heave its plastic companion onto the next painful second. My head and the chemicals within it spin rapidly despite every minute taking an age.

I leak my emotion poetically onto my future’s script. Meanwhile, with a glorious suddenness to it, the exam bell rattles violently.

The end means nothing to me but solace from the nerves in my system.

3.

Brief mindless exchanges are followed by a slick stammer across pathways. My mind ticks.

There’s a thin line between mass confidence and a breed of madness. There’s a mental paradise you can achieve but you run the risk of disappointment and a mental breakdown when it falls false.

Underneath this, there’s an indefinite concept commonly referred to as depression. Avoiding that is my excuse for mass confidence.

That’s why, in my eyes, I’m a social hub filled with opportunity and mental wealth. My entire existence is poetry in motion. In the real world I’m rather modest, but I reach bliss via belief that I’m some form of god amongst men.

That, briefly, is the confused state my life is in.

To sum up humanity in a few words, everyone is reliant on the things around them to bring emotion out of themselves, rather than recognising that life can be lived practically entirely in your own mind.

I try my best to break out from that norm built so deeply into me. My feet fall silently in turn onto the thick gravel canvas. I’m home.

4.
The bland backdrop hits me crushingly as I effortlessly turn the key and fall into my natural surroundings. Lavish masterpieces don the walls. A diamond ring glistens painfully atop the mantlepiece, a bitter symbol of a family which flocks toward the norm. We’re typical, and I feel typical, and I hate it.

I wish constantly that this wasn’t the depth to which my mind chose to tick. There’s a breed, almost a different species, of mindless animals who live amongst us. The more my mind ticks in depth, the more I over-analyse the impact of my influence and of life and death and faith.

In a parallel universe my equivalent is free of any bad thought, and in this state I’m not far from assuming an identical reality.

As I pursue the tragic pattern of built-in events that encapsulate and practically nullify my existence, I over-analyse whether there’s actually a purpose to the over-analysation of my over-analysing. In a way, it’s brought up my mental state that I have even an idea of this concept I’m going on about.

At least I maintain control of my instance. The beauty of this life is where I can take it. An incredible amount of the events and feelings which are present in us revolve around our beliefs and attitudes and we can control them, abuse them, and mould the world around our idea of perfection, independent from external standards and the norm.

That’s the realism that keeps me alive.

Life goes on.

5.
I force heavy feet up each bleak stair, simultaneously throwing my rucksack behind me in a single slick expression, my eyes fixed determined ahead of me. Every night a different part of me attempts to force wisdom upon the rest to build me into a towering figure of influence but I lack the mental perseverance to change my universe that dramatically.

My brittle stature lurches forth with each second. Sometimes, I feel like I exist almost separately from it. My palms caress each surface that hits them. It’s a pattern built deeply into me.

I sit practically every lesson now reminding myself that what I am trying constantly to learn means near to nothing to me. It’ll just get me all your petty “As” and “A*s” which will lead to a so-called better university, which will lead to allegedly greater job opportunities, which will surely lead to a stable income, which will lead to me being filthy rich with all my undeserved authority in your ridiculous little perfect world.

However all this over-analysation affects me, life goes on.

My heavy head collapses and my mind fixes itself in emotion within a messy wreck of cream sheets. The notes begin to fall. Vague boundaries disappear.

A new, reckless masterpiece begins to form in front of my weary eyes. To me, and only to me, I’m have art and poetry in my skin.

Tonight is the trivially chosen date for when I’ll showcase this masterpiece.

Hours pass alone in a fixed state of perfect focus. I’ve made my mind up. Everything will change.

A vast canvas stops static in front of my dark, glaring pupils. The tightened skin on my fingers strike harshly upon the plastic lettering beneath. These next few hours will tell me everything about myself.

6.

My masterpiece wasn’t quite as fashionable as I had anticipated. My musical creation was ridiculed. It hurt. I’ll cut it there.

“Don’t let the insults affect you!”

That’s what everyone says. To everyone. But theoretically, surely I’m exactly what I’m perceived as? The world doesn’t change according to who I actually am. What I’m actually like inside is irrelevant. What I am is what I’m perceived as. Basically, the insults might as well all be true. That’s why the insults hurt.

I can’t help my ugliness, and my naïvety, and my self-obsession. To myself I’m poetry in motion. In reality I’m not. You’d be right if you told me I’m just a mislead kid who’s never going to be particularly purposeful or influential in life. But there’s no point in spoiling the mental paradise which exists inside me sometimes.

To myself, I’m a masterpiece of a creation, in fact. Almost abnormally brilliant. There’s no purpose in believing otherwise.

Next time they convey to me merely that I’m wrong or ridiculed , I’ll force them to convey why they’re even doing it. Sure, they may be right, but they may also be just another sufferer of this world’s addiction to patterns and normality.

Hate and violence are inevitable factors. There’s a pattern which society creates where it’s so common it feels inevitable and almost logical. The circle of hatred blossoms.

7.

Days pass.

The crushing sense of inadequacy that struck me was seemingly impermanent.

Life goes on. Today, the sky above is a cloud-covered haze of sparkling yellow light as my body lurches forcedly into blank spaces in the teen crowd. My hair is ruffled and unbalanced, as is, in my eyes, my mind. School is built with unquestioned mechanisms of pattern and normality, and I choose to walk rather than fight it.

Leather soles brush cautiously against sharp, tainted segments of brittle rock, appearing to send them crashing into splits of crafted organisms of their own. They spin poetically yet cautiously out of danger wherever I step. Soon, I feel powerful.

Faceless bodies pass. Since my social group developed into some form of tragic freak show they’ve been faceless to me.

The suffocating field of dust around me settles slowly and my vision is restored to its usual perfection. My eyes dart hurriedly around the playground’s spectrum with sparks practically flying off their lashes in all directions.

I stumble briskly towards the notice board with an extremely slight, restricted smile blurred across me, ruffled paper in hand.

The notice board sits motionless, supposedly beautifully unaware of what it’s about to sustain.

“The Front”.

Surely a title so intriguing sits atop my work that it’ll entice any potential companion to read the small print. I hammer down sweetly on the smooth plastic pin my journey relies on. I repeat the motion, then stop abruptly, springing back swiftly to appreciate my deed.

“The Front”.

“Companions needed for discussion of attempting to completely revolutionise the school system. Social order, authority and elitism will be revoked. Only the mentally elite should join. Food provided.”

My mission is greater than that of the masses. Unlike the average 16-year-old revolutionary, I hold the mental brilliance required to succeed.

I launch myself smugly away.

For greater or worse, these next weeks would continue to mould exactly what I’m perceived as.

8.

Days pass. Presently, I’m preparing for the spectacular unveiling of a new class, “The Front”, to what could be the masses.

I place my palm delicately upon the stiff, rusty key to the shed and adjust my wrist. The creaking door snaps briskly open and I’m greeted by a magnificently blank stage to showcase my ideas.

To admit hurriedly a bleak truth, most of the ideas I’m planning to showcase are not yet in existence. The core of my brilliance, however, glistens.

I sweep my knotted dark hair across nervously, as my eyes slickly switch onto the motioning doorknob. The plain slab of mud-stained wood cracks suddenly open. Ruben’s figure confronts me.

Ruben wears a painfully clean blonde cut. His posture is wonderfully majestic. He gives little away.

Ruben stifles half a smile. I can’t see inside his head, but I like Ruben.

He’ll evolve to produce The Front’s 2nd array of sensational ideology. He’ll develop eventually into a calm influence on a reckless mastermind like myself. I like my mind’s perception of Ruben already.

Realisation hits. I summon the energy to reach my lengthy slim fingers deep into my right pocket, clasping them around a crinkled yet uneaten packet of “Space Raiders”, arguably the ultimate item which can be bought for corner shops nationwide with just a mere rigid 20 pence piece.

In a single, nonchalant movement my arm unravels to calmly place the ruffled plastic packaging in front of Ruben. I watch closely the bony structure of his hand grabbing at them. Ruben smiles broadly. “You alright, Felix?”.

“Yep” I mutter shortly afterwards. Frankly, as the perfectionist I am, it would’ve been preferable if he avoided indulging in such half-hearted small talk. Phrases like “You alright” are shouted into my weak ears daily by the masses and emitting this mainstream pattern from The Front would be admirable. I conserve my hatred for this imperfection, however.

Suddenly, the high pitched ringing of the bell echoes deep within my head. Ruben arrived late and subsequently time flew.

Ruben’s glint of a smiles dies immediately. Within seconds I’m alone in the shed again. The Front’s first call is over as suddenly as it had begun.

9.

Days pass.

Deeply I still believe The Front is going to evolve into exactly what I expected it to be, an unrivalled master plan higher than traditional concepts, and higher than normality.

This particular February morning is a Monday. The skies dominate with bleak authority over mood.

Again I place my palm delicately upon the stiff, rusty key to the shed and adjust my wrist. The creaking door snaps briskly open and I’m greeted by a magnificently blank stage to showcase further ideas.

My body tense with anticipation, I hold inside any emotion and simply wait for Ruben and whoever else perceives themselves as adequate to join the mentally elite.

It’s struck me that there may genuinely be a personality anyone can become which is literally everything they want to be. There’s a lot of pressure surrounding being “yourself” and being “genuine” while not putting on an act to get yourself to where you want to be, whereas in contrast society often makes the assumption that we’re all the same.

It’s struck me that, to a certain extent, a fixed formula of trial and error can almost be used to influence finding a new version of yourself who is eventually more influential.

Maybe I’ll change. I have the mental ability to branch out and attempt to create perfection.

Suddenly, the high pitched ringing of the bell echoes deep within my head. Ruben hasn’t arrived and resultantly time flew.

I exhale emphatically. The Front needs a stroke of higher genius to kickstart sweet action. I collapse lazily onto the murky brown plank and exit the shed resigned.

10.

My feet dig violently into the thick crumbling ground beneath with my arms flailing, in my eyes, poetically.

Sometimes I wish I’d see sense.

By sense, I mean that one day I’d just lose everything. I’d sell all these consumerist luxuries I’ve obtained and live on my own mind and nothing else.

The bitter truth is that I’d be more practical for the world if I was homeless. Each penny I spend on these pointless rags of clothing I live in is a penny lost by poverty. I consume. They die.

It’s mind blowing that poverty could be eradicated effectively for an estimated 88 billion pounds considering how much fuels war, hatred and leisure.

To take a positive, at least I’m alive.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

An element exists within of anger for the traitor Ruben. Change is invented by dedication and I thought he’d recognise that much at least. The hatred which brews inside would fuel nothing. I leave it be.

In the real world, I lack freedom purely because I’m constantly paranoid that it’s all some form of audition process for a social life. That’s why I lack a social life, to an extent. If Ruben was a friend, he’d mindlessly worship anything I shone before him, perhaps. But that’s not the case.

11.

Truthfully The Front is hardly bursting with fresh ideologies. It’s not exactly the bustling social and mental hub I anticipated but there’s foundations visible undoubtedly.

I craft ambitions silently. I’ll find fellow minds whether that includes Ruben or not.

I place my palm delicately upon the stiff, rusty key to the shed and adjust my wrist. It’s empty.

I feel empty as if I’ve been worshipping repetitive built-in regimes for too long.

My face blankly drained, I slump into the fragile plastic structure and sit.

My face blankly drained, I continue to sit. Abruptly, some foreign burst of electricity swarms towards the shed. And as insignificant of a miracle this is, my mind is pierced and nurtured by these sudden blurred rays of spectacular light. Fellow minds, perhaps, exist.

My face remains sternly unfocused within blacker surroundings as I watch the tainted plank door rustle excitedly. My sparkling blue eyes snap freely into deep focus.

“Hi”.

That’s a greeting practically bowed to by society and entirely too mainstream for my own use, but during brisk moments of panic it’s possibly slightly forgivable.

I’m confronted by 2 towering figures.

Oscar was cut by no master craftsman. His rigid body and stride are spectacularly uneven in a fashion that made you wonder how mental ability could fit inside such a being.

Oscar stands unconvincingly, blankly upright while suffocating from nervous perceptions.

I strike swiftly down my hand to scan calmly for the twisted packaging of “Celebrations”, another fantastic treat in my eyes, and available from the majority of food outlets for an extremely reasonable price.

I thrust rough cardboard goodness at Oscar and Rosalie. “Food provided,” I muttered enticingly to both, hoping they’d appreciate the accuracy of my quotation of the notice I’d placed upon the notice board previously.

Rosalie isn’t towering. The manner in which I perceived her at first suggested she could be a daunting prospect, but realisation now hits of her calmer authority within The Front.

Rosalie parades sleek, never ending blackened hair. And she’s beautiful, albeit not in a physical sense but more to the extent that she’s appeared at this progressing calamity.

3 nerve filled bodies fill the shed in unstoppable anticipation of upcoming events.

12.

Blood rushes emphatically impatiently around my near to hollow head, my mood switching rapidly to a stunning extent, as I beautifully gather myself somewhere between desire for the spotlight and likable modesty.

Rosalie and Oscar probably perceive a calculating glare from me, but in actuality I’m letting them move first. Being no genius, it’s almost greater if society rather than myself leads The Front, in my eyes. Superior circumstances will subsequently appear.

“So…” mutters Rosalie, her blank eyes fixedly placed upon the shed floor. The motive which influenced that is beyond my mental excellence. This is a project thrust into the spotlight by its members and for one to even nonchalantly suggest there’s even a hint of social awkwardness present angers me. I’ve made my mind up with Rosalie.

Now, we’re all absorbed into a fascinating state of unpleasant silence.

For a mastermind, in my eyes, I know socially very little.

My bitter eyes dart rapidly now between brick walls and disguised emotion. This emotionless solace disgusts me.

“So…” I exclaim suddenly, mocking my newfound accomplice Rosalie with reckless bitterness.

Hatred is something which disgusts me but sometimes I feel the need to sink into it’s ways. Forget my norm. I’m near-constantly consumed by a sensational burning pain of inadequacy and towering above my peers allows me to break out from all that.

Things click.

A fresh new perspective comes into focus, and I now feel like I’m truly a mastermind.

Order tires me. Forget order. I have plans to destroy order.

“What have we become?”

I figure each little element of my idea must be sublimely placed to fully communicate my perfection to these kids.

I struggle to prevent reality clashing emphatically with dreams. As a figure fuelled purely by petty little dreams I have the potential to be ruined.

“Tomorrow, we’ll wreck any sort of identity we have. Crush human perception of who we exist as”.

They stare. I continue regardless. Tonight, I plan to do no less than wreck myself, not mentally, and not violently, but physically. I feel a pulsing need for destruction of anything which they could still call an “image”.

A few more brief exchanges and my 2 acquaintances and they know all they need to destroy this discoloured bliss we live in.