Once again, I’m dreaming. More like day dreaming cause I don’t remember closing my eyes. That’s the funny part about sleeping, though. No one ever remembers closing their eyes. All they know is that at one point they’re in bed, and the next they’re steering a ship floating in midair, commanding a crew of very fashionable pirate skeletons. 

As for me, after a few minutes of enjoying the basement walls, I found myself growing bored. What else can I do except daydream? Count the amount of stars in the sky? Well, I can’t do that since I’m in a basement. I can surely count the amount of cockroaches I’ve seen, which is two, surprisingly. This is a well kempt basement.

But counting cockroaches gets boring after a while, so I retreat in the special place that is my mind and give the controls to my brain. Wherever I go, it isn’t my doing. Well, it is, and it isn’t, since the brain is technically me, but I also hate what my brain thinks. What my brain is thinking now is something that I definitely do hate.

“So, what do you want to read?” 

Freya and I sat on a bench on the Juxten plateau with a pile of books in between us. None of them were any of her porn books, since she never took them out of her home. It’s not because she gets embarrassed, either. She just doesn’t want them getting damaged cause in her words, dirt on the pages would make it harder to read the spicier scenes.

The books that sat between us were rather large books that rivaled the dictionary for page count. At least that’s what it looked like to me, but Freya said that they averaged at six-hundred pages. Old me would hear that and complain, but after I met Freya, and she got me into reading, six-hundred pages is nothing. Especially after I read a book that had over a thousand. 

Each one of them were standard fantasy stories. In just the short time I’ve spent with Freya, I’ve figured out the main crutch of these stories. Most of them come in a series of three, for instance. She calls them a trilogy series, which is three books sharing the same overarching plot with different progressions. 

At first it was interesting reading them. But once I reached the third trilogy, I noticed something off. Out of all the three series I read, they all share a very similar quality pattern. The first book is wonderful. It sets up the story, conflict and characters effectively and keeps people like me anticipating what will happen next. They’ll end on a cliffhanger that will promise big changes in the future. 

Then the second book will roll around and smack me in the face with boring shit. I’m being very serious when I say that I read an entire chapter about the main character eating a delicious cake. Have a paragraph dedicated to the cake? No, that’s stupid, since it’s understandable. I definitely want to read about seven thousand words about how the cherry filling melts in their mouths as it slowly devolves into nothing but innuendos. 

The second book gets me worn out so much that when I get around to the third book, I’m burnt the fuck out. It may be better than the second book, and in rare cases better than the first, but the taint of the second book lingers on my tongue. The third book will wrap up the plot, most of the time in the laziest way possible, and leave so many plot threads hanging that I could use all the leftover thread to bungee jump off of Mount Everest.

That got me to think about the restrictive nature of these stories. Why is it always three books? Freya told me it started because a famous fantasy story was a trilogy and people wanted to copy the formula until it became this silent trope, but I can’t help but disagree on that. Why would the author make a third book to put in between two good books because other people do it? Most of the time, the second book is ninety percent filler, just like this conversation in my mind, so why should they feel forced to break it into three?

“Are you there?” Freya waved her hand in my eyes. 

I snap out of my thoughts and sift through the books. I pick one that I’ve never heard of before and present it to her, and she nods with anticipation. 

“I love this story.” She snatches the book from my hand and flips to the first page. “You want to know what it’s about? Wait, no, shut up, me.” She looked at me with a smile on her face. “You’ll have to read it to find out. Put some effort into it, you know.”

She held the book in between us, and we began reading the story. The first words started off with something about a war, and the prologue was just the author jacking themselves off about the world they created. Such an amazing world indeed where I need to know what bar of soap the protagonist wipes their ass with. I’m not kidding either, that’s something they put in there. 

To summarize it, it’s about something, something war. It’s also about something, something the great rot, and something something the Church of Holy Weakness. The Church of Holy Weakness wants to something something the great rot and free the something something from imprisonment which will stop the something something. I could care less since I haven’t even met the protagonist yet. I only heard about him through the soap washing.

Suddenly, I heard a knocking behind me, so I turned around and saw three people standing behind me. One of them was rapping on the wood with their knuckles with a frown on their face. 

“So this is where you were.” The person knocking on the back of the bench said to me. 

“What do you need, Henry?” I ask. Freya turned to look at them and a worried expression crossed her face. 

“Nothing really. I just thought we were going to hang out today.” James said.

“Yeah dude. You left us hanging three times.” Hannah, the only woman of the group, said.

Henry, James, and Hannah. These are the three people that I’ve hung out with for the longest period of my life. I consider them some of the closest people that I’ve hung out with, besides Freya, of course. 

“I thought that was tomorrow.” I said, coming up with an excuse. Of course I knew they wanted to hang out with me today, but after we scheduled our day today, Freya wanted to hang out, and of course I wasn’t going to choose Freya over anyone else.

“Well, tomorrow is today, so get your ass up. We’re going to McDonalds.” Henry reached for my arm, but before he could grab onto it, I pulled back. “Dude, what the fuck?”

“I’m not going.” 

“It’s fine.” Freya said, trying to calm the situation. “We can read another day.”

“No, I’m not leaving. You want to spend time with me, and I want to spend time with you, so I’m not going.” 

“You’re literally choosing the horny bitch over your friends.” Hannah remarked callously.

My face heated up, and I was about ready to slap a bitch. My anger’s worked for me before. It worked when that gang of people jumped me as I was walking home. I didn’t escape unscathed, but I made them bleed as much as they made me bleed. If I just get angry, then no one can mess with me. Not even myself. 

“She says that she’s good.” James walked up to me. “So just come on.” He reached his hand to me, but I swatted it away.

“I’m telling you this one last time. I’m not leaving.” 

James gritted his teeth, but before he could lay into me, Henry pushed him out of the way and stepped forward. He looked at me with a look that stayed in my mind for a long time. Even to this day, I remember it so well that I see it anytime I look in the mirror. 

It was a look of disappointment, anger, callousness, but despite all three of those emotions swirling in his eyes, a fourth emotion joined in the dance. That emotion was understanding, the emotion that I’ve never understood for the longest time. How does understanding fit in with those three? I wondered about that for a long time. Can someone give me the answer? I’m tired of searching for meaning in something inherently meaningless.

“Do I need to beat some sense into you?” Henry raised his arms. “Or are you going to come with us?”

I chuckle and wipe my lips with my thumb. I raise my fists with a smile spread across my face. This isn’t the first time we ever fought. Anytime one of us gets into an argument, the next logical step is to settle it with fists. It’s definitely not a normal or healthy way to settle an argument, but it’s just what we did. We didn’t know any other way to settle our differences.

“Who says I’m going with you?” 

He sighed, then raised his fists higher while closing his eyes and lowering his head. I dug my feet in the ground, preparing myself for the first blow. 

As soon as my feet were firmly planted in the ground, Henry opened his eyes and raised his hand. His feet powered himself forward, lifting dirt and dust in the air. His fist flew at my face, its target, my nose. 

I ducked out of the way and moved myself around him. Taking the chance, I spring my fist forward. Henry raised his hands and blocked my punch and countered with his own. His fist firmly dug itself into my gut, shaking my stomach so much I felt my breakfast try to escape. 

I grit my teeth and swallow the vomit back down. I grabbed his arm and pulled him to me. He let his guard down and lost balance. I raised my fist and slammed it against his cheek. Spit flew out of his mouth, but he managed to regain his balance and pushed himself away from me. 

He planted his feet in the ground and clenched his fist. With daggers in his eyes, his fist barreled toward me and clipped me under my jaw. My teeth slammed together and my brain shook in my skull. My vision went blurry and my arms limply hung by my side. 

Henry wasn’t finished with just that, however. His fist slammed against my cheek, sending me falling to the ground. My face tasted the fake grass that felt more like needles than actual grass. 

“Tyler!”

Someone’s calling my full name? How long has it been since I heard it? I shortened it to Ty a long time ago. No one likes the name Tyler. Only Tyler’s like the name Tyler. 

“Are you getting up?” Henry asked. I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but the only thing that left my lips was a pained moan. “You’re pathetic, you know that. What’s so special about her, anyway? What happened to the Ty that would make us laugh by hanging out with us?” 

Henry bent down and looked at me on my broken down level. “Remember when we first met? You wanted to join us so badly that you bullied the neighborhood kids to get a chuckle out of us. It made us laugh for a time, but that was your only joke for a while. Do you think that impressing us is your only goal in life? Well, you got us. You made us laugh at first, but then you got boring. 

“So now that we’re not laughing at you messing with people anymore, you went to the next person willing to give you attention. That’s fucking pathetic, and if anyone here knows what feeling pathetic is like, then it’d be me.”

My anger rose higher and higher the more he berated me. His words stung like a hornet, but unlike a hornet sting, I couldn’t just ignore the pain. It dug its way into my very core, but instead of doing the natural thing and making me cry, instead it rose a deep, guttural anger within me.

Henry stood up and turned away, his back facing toward me. “Hey, Freya.” 

Freya looked around. Seeing no one else named Freya react, she pointed to herself. “Me?”

“Yes, you. It slipped my mind, but what’s that saying when an apple falls?”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” She clarified.

“Thank you.” Henry laughed as he walked away. Little does he know what he awakened. 

“Henry.” James called out. Henry looked at him, confused. “Look behind you!”

He turned and grunted. I stood up with my fists clenched with such force it tore my skin. My face twisted with an unimaginable anger. The anger was so strong that my head was completely empty of everything except the sound and rhythm of my heartbeat.

I dashed after him, screaming the entire time. My throat tore itself apart, but that didn’t matter as long as I can exact vengeance on my name. 

I drew back my fist and launched it forward. It contacted his nose, and the snap was so loud it drew everyone’s attention to us. Henry’s scream rose from a place of primeval pain, and he clutched his nose as blood poured out like a fountain. 

Before I could unleash my full fury against his face, someone behind me grabbed my arms and locked them behind my back.

“The only time I leave my post and you kids are doing this shit.” I know that voice from anywhere. Larry grabbed hold of my arms and pushed me to the ground, pinning me down. I continued to struggle, my anger rising higher and higher. 

For years of keeping my emotions to myself, I took the first chance that I had to let it all go, and I took it. I screamed for such a long time that my throat damaged itself for an entire week. I can still hear them.

***

I woke up from my daydream. I’m still in the basement. The walls are still gray, I’m still tied up in the seat, and I’m no closer to being awake than when I went to sleep. 

“I’m tired of getting angry.” I whisper to myself, before going right back to sleep.