My So Called Angst

                         By the time she and her mother finished fighting, Henrietta stomped up to her room. With a mixture of pent up rage and utter frustration, she slammed the bedroom door behind her and stormed inside. Her brother, Stan, looked up from his graphic novel and watched his sister transform into the incredible, horrible, hideous, horrendous, gothic, angst driven She-Hulk while adjusting the sleeves on his cocoa colored Snuggie.

                             Upon entering, Henrietta grabbed whatever pillows and plastic skulls she could find and chucked them at whatever pieces of furniture looked sturdy enough. As she did so, tears formed underneath her eyelids, smearing her fresh, morning coat of black eye shadow as they cascaded down onto the dark blue, hard covered floor.

                            "It's not fair!" she cried. "It's so not fair! I'm twenty years old and my mom still won't accept the fact that I'm a Goth!"

                           With the last plastic skull in her hand, she turned her head towards an oaken bookcase her father made in high school workshop and placed one of her legs behind her as if getting ready to pitch a baseball covered with raging fire and boiling lava. She then holds her arms away from her body. Target locked. Ready, aim...

                                "WHY DOES THAT STUPID #$%#@ STILL LOOK AT ME AS IF I WERE HER OWN LITTLE BRITNEY SPEARS WANNABE?!" she shouted.

                                   Fire! The click, followed by the crash of an old-fashioned, metal money box echoing throughout the room. Silence consumed the room. By the time she finished crying, she took in a deep breath and stared at the mess she made. Once she had enough, she got on her knees and covered her eyes shamefully. Meanwhile, Stan put down his graphic novel and walked towards her. Just as he was about to lean down and give her a friendly pat on the shoulder, Henrietta uncovered her eyes, turned her head towards her brother, and whimpered, "Aren't you gonna ask what's bothering me?"

                                     Stan buried his hands inside his pockets and thought carefully about what he was going to say. While doing so, he stared at the wreckage scattered across the room. As soon as he finished doing so, he turned his head towards her.

                                "Trust me, I already know, " he replied monotonously. "After all, you and Mom have been having this fight since you were in eighth grade. By the looks of it, it sure doesn't seem like it'd stop anytime soon."

                             "You're telling me..."

                            Henrietta turned her head towards the room once more and scanned the premise for anything that looked interesting. With her two little eyes, she spotted an opened cream colored metal box that had stuff spewing out of its mouth.

                             "Say, what's that?" she asked.

                              Henrietta got up from the floor and walked towards the box. Her brother followed behind her while he continued to adjust both the sleeves on his Snuggie and the fake purple plumeria hair clip he secretly bought from a local craftswoman in Hawaii while his mother was too busy feeding a couple of dead bodies to a school full of sharks.

                                 Once the two reached the box, Henrietta and Stan keeled down and searched through its contents. During their little "excavation", they uncovered all sorts of vintage odd and ends: a Swiss pocket watch, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes, a pair of bell-bottoms, a stack of Russian rubles. Out of all the items contained in the box, one struck out to Henrietta in particular; a one-eyed purple cat with black cotton patches and a tiny, plastic ruby wrapped around a gold chain sitting on its four, crocked paws.