Zedric's Hotel

prison box

Warning. The title track to Green Day's underrated album, which I'm playing the shit out of my drums to. I'm truly the greatest drummer in the world.

When I finish the song, I take a sip of water and look up to see Vaggie. She stares at me in silence, and has this mean mug on her face that I've seen a million times from her before. "Can I help you?" I ask. "It's 6 in the goddamn morning." Vaggie replies. "I'm aware of the time. Are you aware, that once again, you didn't knock on my fucking door?" I retort. "Do you have any respect for anyone else here?" Vaggie asks. "What, like you? Fuck, no. There are only two people I respect here- Alastor, and Charlie, but I only respect Charlie because she lets me stay here." I say. "You know, I'm getting real fucking fed up with you, Zedric." Vaggie says. She's getting all riled up, and she has no right to. She's standing in my room. "I got a solution for that actually. Instead of learning to knock on my door, you can just not show up at all." I reply.

The creator of this story doesn't know how to put this in words, but basically a psychological battle turned physical, which ended with most of my room destroyed, a knife lodged in my foot, and a dent the size of Vaggie's head in my crash cymbal. I was winning until Charlie walked in which gave Vaggie an opportunity to jam a blade in my stomach. It hurt like hell, and in one last attempt, I grabbed my pedal and hurled it at her head, hitting her directly in her other eye. Later Husk is removing a knife from my foot and gives me a walking boot. Charlie takes me into her office where Vaggie is sitting down. I'm about to make my case about why I want a restraining order against Vaggie but the look Charlie gives tells me that I don't want to get into this right now, so I respectfully sit down. "So, you two seem to have a... strong dislike for each other, that which I don't know what started it, and frankly, I don't care. But I do know one thing- trying to kill each other is not gonna solve any of your problems. So, I propose an idea, that I've been experimenting with for a while-" Charlie starts before I cut in. "I don't mean to interrupt, but if you say some hippie shit, I'm gonna puke." I say. "No, Zedric. It's not some 'hippie shit', and I'll show it to you." Charlie says, and me and Vaggie both follow her in silence. She takes us to some giant room with a large window splitting it in two. Charlie motions for me to get in. I do, but when I hear the door shut behind me, I try to open it. There's no handle. "What the fuck?" I mutter to myself as I continuously try to find a way to open it. I look over at the other side of the room. Vaggie enters and Charlie closes the door on her too. Charlie enters a small box next to the room and I hear her voice over a speaker. "So, this is it. My most recent idea." Charlie says. "Are you fucking crazy? You put me in a prison box with that bitch and hold me against my will?" I say, pointing at Vaggie. "No. This was the plan. You guys can yell at each other all you want, but it won't solve anything. In here, you two have to confront your problems and work to fix them. When your conflict has been resolved, I'll get you out of there." Charlie explains. "Exactly. Prison box. Holding me against my will." I retort. "I know you two don't like each other, but think about it! You two have more in common than you think." Charlie says. "Yeah, right." Vaggie and I say at the same time, before we give each other a look. "See? Your minds are almost alike. If you guys just actually agree on something for once, I bey you could be friends." Charlie says. "Charlie, I'm not fucking kidding anymore. Get me out of here." I say, almost demanding. "I gotta go, Alastor needs my help with something. I'll be back soon!" Charlie says and walks away. I walk up to the window. "Charlie! I'm not fucking kidding! Get back here! Come on!" I say, hitting the window, hoping it will give way. It doesn't. Naturally I start hitting harder. In a desperate last attempt, I charge at the thing headfirst. Bad idea. After I impact with the window, I fall down with a sharp pain through my brain.

"I don't even know why you bother. She fit it with the strongest panes in all of Hell. Same with this window here." Vaggie says, motioning to the window in the middle. I'm naturally assuming that's there so I don't walk over there and kick her ass. "Thanks for letting me know afterwards, you bitch." I say, still grabbing my head in pain. I find my phone in my pocket and I call Charlie. She picks up. "Hey Zedric." She answers all happy-like. "Just gonna act like you didn't just fucking lock me in a box with your fucking psycho girlfriend. Is your goal here to drive me insane? Because it's fucking working!" I retort. "It's for your own good, Zedric. Trust me." Charlie says, and hangs up. "Charlie? Charlie! Get back on the phone, you bitch- oh, fucking hell." I angrily hang up and just begin throwing my fists at the window again. Vaggie is just slumped in the corner. "Great going, Left Eye. You got me fucking stuck in here." I say. "I got you stuck in here? Yeah, right. And don't call me that." Vaggie replies. "Yeah, you're right. Lisa Lopes earned that nickname and you'd tarnish her legacy in 5 damn seconds." I retort. "I'm surprised you even listen to TLC, you fucking emo." she says. "The only band that I listen to that's 'emo' is My Chemical Romance, you uneducated fuck. It's not my fault all these whiny 14-year olds can't just be sad to those fucking British pricks for once." I say. "And that's just how you talk to everybody. You are a sorry excuse for a human being. You know, maybe if you thought about anyone else other than yourself for a fucking second, we wouldn't be in this mess." Vaggie begins shouting. "If I thought about anyone else other than myself, I would be dead by now." I reply. "Well, I'd rather be dead than have everyone else hate me." She says. "Everyone already does hate you, so I'd appreciate it if you could piss off back to Mexico, or Venezuela, or wherever the fuck you came from." I reply. "Seriously, what the fuck did I ever do to you?" Vaggie asks in anger. "I could name a million fucking things." I reply.

It's like that for a long while. Me and Vaggie spitting venom at each other. Charlie was right to put that wall up. I would have beat her ass, the shit she was saying to me. And she probably would have attempted to do the same. By the time we've run out of slurs and insults, we've both exhausted our voices. Vaggie returns to her position, crawled up in the corner. I lay stretched out with The Weeknd playing in my ears.

It's when the song ends when Vaggie finally speaks up. "We're never gonna get along, are we?" She says. "No. If Charlie had her way, we'd be in here forever. Even if we did get along, the truth is we'll be right back to square one by tomorrow." I reply. "Is that what you think?" She asks me. "That's what I know." I say. "I don't even think we could play pretend." Vaggie says. "I would rather fuck a dude than pretend you and me are good buddies." I say. "Same here." Vaggie agrees. We sit in silence for a good minute. "Do you think that... if we didn't want to fucking kill each other, that we would get along?" I ask Vaggie. She takes a minute to think about that. "Maybe." is all she says. With my question answered, I resume listening to my music. When I go to play Warning again, I come across Platypus. When I think about Platypus, I think about things I hate. One of those things is Vaggie. The Platypus lyrics definitely fit what I think about her.

"You rise and fall, back up against the wall, what goes around is coming back around to you. It's time to quit, cause you're not worth the shit under my shoes or the piss on the ground..."

But now, I don't think of Vaggie when I hear Platypus. Which is weird, because like I said, Platypus is a song that makes you think about how much you hate someone, and I don't see my worst enemy. It's almost like my brain is telling me, I don't wanna fight her anymore. But that's stupid, right? I still hate her. I still just wanna kick her ass every time she thinks she can boss me around like some pet. We all got our nemesis- Batman has the Joker and Spider-Man has the Green Goblin. I got Vaggie. We're enemies. Destined to hate each other till our afterlife demise, and nothing will change that- but I have been wrong about these people before. If you had asked me a couple months ago if I would actually hang out with Angel Dust I would have smacked you across the head and told you to stop taking that LSD shit. But things have changed, and maybe people can change too.

It's just whether that change is good or bad is what's gonna drive me nuts.