Live Wired (on indefinite hold)

Chapter III, The Oasis

After my near-death experience back there in the elevator, I want nothing more than to go upstairs-back to my home- and cry myself to sleep. Unfortunately, I had a quote-unquote important group presentation for my Christianology class. The school was merciless about these things. Your group would take a hit on their grades because they wouldn't have learned your part of the presentation, and you would have to give the whole presentation by yourself the next day. 

Right now I am headed towards the bus stop 3 blocks from my house. I take bus No. 1277 towards the commercial district where I stop and make a connection with bus No. 864 towards New Cambridge, where Arlington and the other big schools are located.

The view here is as sickening as always. Everything is grey, black, or some shade in between. Bleak colors are occasionally interrupted by the rare misspelled neon sign from a store or sex hotel. The tall apartments complexes are withered and half-crumbling. The ones that have colors like yellow have long been dirtied by the soot and smoke, making them even more depressing than the grey ones. I would bet my soul- if such a thing even existed- that there isn't a single tree in the whole area. As a result, air pollution acts like an insidious, asphyxiating blanket of mist here, killing you slowly from moment to moment. Rats the size of those small dogs you usually see rich, bratty girls have sometimes roam the streets, eating the garbage idiots throw into the street, justifying it by saying 'other people do it as well', and then complaining when they get floods. It is truly sickening. And do you know what the worst part is? This is supposed to be the "nice" part of the slums. The bad parts don't have luxuries like cement and apartments. They make their little favelas- because they can't even be considered houses- out of tin or lead plates they sloppily weld together into cubes. They then build over one another and stack their little primitive structures one on top of the other in perilous arrangements that are liable to fall apart at any second. They don't have electricity nor toilets. When they have to do No. 2, they just go to public holes in the ground.

I want to escape this fate. The truth is I feel like I was born for more in life, and I don't want to waste away in a hopeless place like this the rest of my life. I want to get syred to a rich master and live in an uptown place, hopefully, Billionaire's Row, where, like my friend Danny says, all the beaches and bitches are. But to have a fighting chance at anything like that, I have to graduate from The Arlington School of Servitude. Which takes me to me right now, with my fucking huge backpack that feels like I'm carrying a bag of bloody bricks. It's killing me. My back feels like it will develop a spinal fracture any moment now.

When I finally reach the bus stop, I sigh in relief and place the backpack on the dirty floor of the street. But, then I hear a wet squelching noise, like stepping on mud. Surprise surprise, when I raise my backpack to see what it is, I find a dirty diaper with a fucking enormous -now flattened- dung that is too big to belong to a baby. You know, I'm not even angry. Yes, not even a little bit. Not even a single, tiny, minuscule bit. I just.... really want to murder and cut into little pieces the degenerate animal sonofabitch that would shit on a diaper and throw it in the middle of the street. My backpack now received a new coat of paint on the bottom. A really brown -and green believe it or not- coat of paint.

I breathe deeply and count to 10. Then I grab my backpack and start scrubbing the bottom with the street. The friction takes care of most of it, just leaving a few brown stains and a foul smell. I guess I'll have to get a new one in the commercial district.

When bus No. 1277 arrives, I swipe my transit card on the sensor next to the door and hop on. I always sit on the front, next to the driver, because it tends to stir away trouble and the people that cause it. Don't be mistaken though, the driver will probably do nothing and look away if someone decides to beat you up. It just an instinctual thing. If you are alone, then you are more likely to get targeted by predators.