A slight

Hi, I'm Vincent Flynn.

I'm turning 17 today. Cynists would say it's one additional time stamp on my journey towards death. Although, like most of you i try to think it's a beautiful remembrance of the day I was born.

I awake and take control of my body settling back into my mind. The mind of Vincent Flinn.

So weird isn't it. The fact that I am me.

I open my eyes and instinctually grab my phone like a junkie and turn it on in front of my face, blinking until my eyes adjust to the bluelight that i know has been damaging my eyes for years.

I see Notifications.

My brain rewards me. I swallow, i grunt with my crispy morning throat as my fingers doodle on the screen tapping and scrolling into the texts I got from my friends wishing me happy birthday.

Most friends buy each other gifts, or throw a party or a big surprise on the day of their birth, to let each other know how much they love each other. But all there was between me and everyone ive ever known was bland interactions.

"Vincent, come eat your breakfast", my mom's voice makes it through the floor separating us.

"Okay ma!"

I start with my shoulders and roll off of my crackling bed. My blood leaves my brain for a second adjusting to gravity and I feel dizzy while I stretch my muscles and click my ligaments. As my blood flow stabilizes I make my way into the bathroom and start brushing my teeth in front of the wide square mirror lightly annoyed by the new acnes that popped on my face this week. I get my face closer. One was on my nose, from when I wiped it a tad bit harshly last Tuesday after a hot bath and the other, smaller, redder, on my cheek, where I press on my pillow cloth every night.

My eyes focus closer at myself, as my thoughts board into a moving train.

I'm familiar with this train.

i familiarly board this train in most normal days.

Today it started with acne.

Acne...

Bacteria...

Creatures a million times smaller than me... outnumbering my cells ten to one, living in the body of a carnivorous bipedal that's taken 60 million years to evolve, yet so small, a million times smaller than earth... infinitely smaller than the universe all in a blink of existence, 6 billion years, a blink in time if Time is a line, or a fabric, a never-ending self repeating river-

The door behind me opens and hits my back.

"Hey, Vin I really need to use the bathroom"

It was my sister, her name is Shelly.

"Ok I'm almost done"

"Hurry up!"

"Okay !"

As I'm eating my breakfast, I start to think about whether or not I could make this linguini pasta my mom just made for me when I'll be in my college dorm swiftly dusting away in my own company next year.

Linguini pasta... Pinguini lasta.... Linguini pasta

My mom turns on the TV and foreign voices fill the void.

"I should get going", I leave my chair.

"Okay have a nice day, Vinnie"

I smile into her eyes like I always do and let my feet walk me outside and I take the same route I've been taking for the last six years.

It's my first day of senior year. Each one of my steps symbolize a beginning of a new life on which I would introduce a newly improved version of myself to the world.

It's a beautiful day.

I try to ignore the nauseating polluted air that just swiftly entered my nose.

It's a beautiful year.

I will join the school soccer team and the talent show program. I will work hard on my grades and get a scholarship.

It's a beautiful year.

As I slowly approach the green gates of my school I start to wonder if they'd finished rebuilding the gymnasium, or if they'd repainted the poorly attempted graffiti walls last year's seniors left us to deal with.

As I'm stepping foot into the school, I cross paths with Cal.

"What's up loser!"

Caleb is my oldest friend.

"Sup jerk"

Sometimes I think we're two different sides of the same coin.

"How was summer?"

"Pretty chill actually"

"Did you kill anyone?"

"I skinned a few overly curious children here and there but I didn't kill anyone, I'm not a monster."

"Yeah, course not."

"Did you go out much?"

"Just to go to the gym sometimes, you?"

"Same. How much do you weight now?"

"Like a hundred and eighty pounds"

"With or without the boob job?"

"Glad you noticed the boob job. How much do you weight?"

"I don't know"

"Huh..."

"Yeah"

"Okay"

We can be boring most of the time with exceptions, but in a peaceful and calm way.

We see each other everyday and each one of our moments is just a slightly altered repetition of what we did on the day before, and by the time we're 17 we just stop resisting the walk of life our parents and their parents prepared for us while we were still dust particles roaming freely around the universe and now we just walk through life as delusional apes with our eyelids covering most of our eyes waltzing to the melody of the unchangeable state of everything.

Our school environment was almost perfect to make an anxiety tolerating nice dorky boring person out of each one of us, almost as so we're being prepared to softly blend into the adult world, who knows what sort of horror is waiting for us in adulthood.

Sometimes I think about all the shows we grew up watching on TV. It was always action, action, action, but in truth reality was just indecision, indecision and procrastination.

Cal and I meander into the fresh paint scented hallway, recognizing familiar faces with novel haircuts and some new ones we'd never seen before. Eli, Lou and Blake notice us from the cafeteria entrance and join us, and one by one we start to regroup with the old gang.

The five cunts.

Lou immediately pulls me aside.

"Hey Vin, how are you? How's everything? How's your sister? heard she's going to college? Did you try the new call or duty that came out? Did you remember to prepare a cool outfit for tonight's party? Did you watch the new season of peaky blinders? ", he wraps his hand around my shoulders and poses a dozen of questions at once. I guess he really missed me. In all truths I missed him too.

"I appreciate your useless concern, but I'm not coming to the party. You know I don't like parties. And I'm fine and everything's fine. I did try the new call or duty, I've reached level 121, we should play online, I'll shred you apart and yes, of course, I watched peaky blinders, it was a really great season. I'm looking forward for the next one"

"I know right, what a clever writing. And I shredded Cal on COD last night so pretty sure I can take you down too. And really you should come to tonight's party, Emily will be there"

"I don't care if Emily is going to be there, how's your music coming along by the way?"

Well maybe I care a little bit.

Emily and I have known each other since middle school, and as much as I hate to admit it she's always caught my interest beyond my rational explanation for some reason. She has an intuitive depth that most people don't have and her words always sound like they know exactly what I'm thinking and since I'm not much of a talker, I could just listen to her for days.

"Oh I'm glad you asked" Lou pulls out his airpods and sticks them into my ears.

"Ready?"

"Just play the damn thing"

"Jeez okay"

He plays his song and pleasant nonesense fills my ear. Music is certainly one of the rare things our generation isn't nihilistic about. It's like a drug. In fact it is a form of drug. I try not to consume too much of it.

Lou has been working on his craft for a few years now, he's pretty adamant of himself and that he will become famous one day and he's even prepared a few catch phrases he's going to shout out at his concerts.

Since he started, the quality of the music he produced went from pans and cans banging to something almost transcendent and I'm honestly impressed.

My eyes tighten as a grin covers my face.

"Pretty nice dude."

A grin covers his face too.

"Thank you"

"You two love birds wanna join us?", Eli interrupts us on behalf of the group.

"Long time, Tarzan", I reply. "Cool haircut".

Apparently Eli grew his obscurely dark hair all the way down to his shoulders during the summer and gained a few pounds of muscle. He looked like John Snow's magazine cover adaptation. All the girls lined up to get a chance with him last year, I wonder what will happen once they see the new look. Staring at his face for too long makes me want to eat it. I avoid doing that.

"Thanks, thought I'd do something crazy"

"You look like a porn version of John Snow" Blake smiles.

"A paid porn version" corrects Eli.

We chuckle collectively despite it not even being that funny. That's all we do now. Make things more than they are to feel less boring.

Boring... Bo...wing..... Bo....ing

The rest of the day passes by, slowly, each hour slower than the last. Slowly blinking my way through it, feeling like every time I focus an hour has passed, and we're in a different class.

~~~~~~~~~

I find myself standing outside in the dark. I don't know what I'm doing here. I can feel the bass boosted music thumbing against the walls from where I'm standing. I'm in front of Chris's house, clearing my throat, wearing my leather skinny jeans and white shirt. I wanted to keep it simplistic and classy.

My palms are sweaty. It feels like my life is about to begin for the first time.