The Purge: Corrupted

Number One

As life goes on you begin to realise that some things just aren't meant to be.

Take my geography assignment for example. I'd spent weeks trying to get the perfect angle to represent the new  tradition in America but despite my best efforts, my teacher glanced down at the carefully decorated paper and discarded it onto a heap of essays.

You see, people don't appreciate each other. Nobody will congratulate you genuinely for they're too busy thinking about their own pathetic lives. It doesn't matter if they're your best friend or your superior. At the end of the day, we're all looking out for number one.

In the end, I received a mediocre C- for that project. I took it home to my parents with the intention to just throw it onto the kitchen table and hurry on upstairs.

My house was on the very end of a row of eighteenth century cottages.  Each one stood out as the supporting beams weren't done in any particular pattern, just thrown in like the builders hadn't given a damn about whether they collapsed or not. Of course, the estate agents had said the beams gave the different cottages character. Why would someone need character in a house? It was just an empty shell to rest your head when the working day had finally let you go. 

There weren't many buildings on our stretch of road but there were fields on three sides of the street, perfect for all sorts of things. For example: getting lost. 

It took twenty minutes in the car to get to anywhere really. We were very much segregated from the main residential areas as well as the large town a couple hours away. Thankfully one of my neighbours had converted their downstairs into a small convenience store so the rest of us didn't waste petrol getting milk in the morning.

Still, providing a service for your neighbours isn't exactly the bravest thing in the world. If anything, by opening the store, they began to earn a large, hefty profit. They'd taken advantage of us. All of us.

They were looking out for number one.