gorgeous nightmare » lh ; mc

two

       :: 02 ::

» MICHAEL «

       Tell me, what is the true definition of beauty? Is it molded? Is it of the conventional?

Trick question. Anything and everything will become conventional if you try hard enough. Have you ever looked at a group, and then looked to another, and those two are so much different when compared? That is because they have their own conventional beliefs; within every system is a set of norms.

I am my own system. I do not believe in any kind of beauty other than that with which we see ourselves. It doesn't matter how beautiful I have found someone, because my opinion is of selfish intentions and purely based on a personally pleasing aesthetic.

I've never once found anything—tangible or not—to be beautiful. There's a kind of sick, artificial personality to the concept that I've never found myself appealed to indulge in. But, if there was ever anything to change my mind, I would have never guessed it to be a murderer. However imaginary he may be, I have for once defined someone as my own meaning of the word beautiful.

(Though, I've never attempted to be normal, either—another concept that is a victim of its own convention. What an unfortunate social construct.)

With the simple fact that my brain has made such a decision as to give me this selfish opportunity without any real evidence that the person is real—well, I really am dreaming. Of death, literally—but, in a figurative sense I am dreaming of an incredibly superficial world and can't help myself while I am.

But, as I ventured outside on one of few, rare occasions, and made my way through a city of judgmental views I found myself constructing thoughts of what made such a human being beautiful to me. Maybe it was knowing that, at least in dreams, I'm not the most insane. I've never committed a felony; that must mean something, obviously.

The wind picked up gradually on my walk and walking past me was a couple initiating small conversation on the topic of a thunderstorm. (But, honestly, my own imaginative depths are a much scarier force than Mother Nature). The thick hood of the sweatshirt I was wearing was of no help against the cold air seemingly rushing straight for the tip of my nose and surface of my cheeks. I've never done well in the cold and I'm not about to condition myself to be.

I'd also be inhuman if all of my overthinking hadn't made me hungry.

Being familiar with this side of D.C. from the times I'd visited Calum, I knew there was a bakery just a handful of blocks away to satisfy both my need for heat and the growling in my stomach that was beginning to slightly resemble what I'd hear in nightmares before the current series of Homicidal Figment of the Imagination.

Only one way to fix such a crisis, I suppose.

       + + +

"Welcome to Baked & Wired. How can I help you?" were the first words my nightmare spoke to me. I could feel my heart begin to plummet into an abyss of fear as I couldn't find it in myself to look at him again. I wanted to run away, to never come across this boy any place that wasn't in my own mind. I couldn't; I was placed in the corner of the bakery and had nowhere to go.

All I wanted was food, and I'd been trying to deter going anywhere in hopes of avoiding my inevitable departure, but it seems the world wants me dead. Because, I am in the same building as this boy who ripped my heart out of my chest barely forty-eight hours ago. He's behind the counter, with a rag to wipe whatever mess had accumulated since they opened. His headphones were in and I, for barely a second, wondered what he was listening to. I knew better; I have no intentions of dying yet.