Lethal Ways Not To Kill Yourself

Checkmate 5: Elikai

I refuse to believe that this human being has no will left to live.

I presume he has forgotten how it feels like to live.

He needs to be reminded. I will remind him.

I knew it. I... I just knew it. One cannot smile and laugh and scream on top of his lungs and crook his eyes into two smiley faces because his own smile couldn’t contain the joy. No, it wasn’t a mundane smile you pass every day to strangers. It was a treasured smile, the one which only existed if you had enough joy and happiness left in you to appreciate things missed by the dynamic lives. That was the one which crept when you smelt the old books or poured strawberry syrup on freshly prepared cheesecake. He poured graciously for this stupid cheering game.

What was wrong though? Had he equated all his happiness with winning something, so much so that he forgot that there is a world beyond getting a good college and a good job? Sure, everyone wants the best for them, but what about people who don’t get good grades and good jobs? Is there a sub-par existence?

Does he think he’ll become sub-par?

The blast from the speaker pulled me out when I heard the answer to all the questions I got, just the right amount.

Hawks to Gilberts 5:3. The Golden Boot goes to Abay Padilla

^^^

Alex and I decided to hit the diner near the stadium. Abay always asks for a treat whenever he wins. It was his way to do away with his accomplishments and move on without dwelling upon. He is too wise beyond his years. This always makes me wonder if Alex is adopted or not.

Aunt and Uncle were busy clicking pictures of Abay with his golden boot, so we decided to enter the diner first and book a table. Given the fact that it was match season and weekend, the cramped-up diner was suffocating.

I don’t get how people mixed up old with retro. Just add a Marilyn Monroe poster with a neon lighting as name and boom, a retro retreat. We all knew the diner way too well. The “Matitark Diner'' was known to have high school kids remove the plug of ‘ma’ and ‘ark’ from the name and giggle like a 12-year-old kid. The ‘a’ had already burnt out.  It anyway had Jessica Rabbit leaning on the neon sign, with her hair underlining the name so it definitely made sense. The new owner wasn’t much pleased about the name though, so he asked the local electrician to fix it up. The person told him that the signs are obsolete and the company has shut down. This would require a custom repair to fix this up. Realising that the restoration would cost him more than the diner’s interiors itself, he found me crossing the street one day and asked to climb up and remove the plug of ‘tit’ and plugin ‘ma’ and ‘rk’ again. I told him his name wasn’t Mark and he said the customers didn’t know it.

The ‘not Mark’ had made the stools line up the wall, which seemed out of place. It made sense only when you imagine a window that used to be there before the wall was filled up for security reasons or maybe someone was buried. God knows.

The diner was practically a cramped high school hallway with stools and tabletops as hurdle race marks. The table for two would be make-out spot and the family table would just mean that Earlene would sit on my lap with Cleo on her lap.

There was an old school vending machine that only made the ‘cha-ching’ sound and did nothing, the fans were so low and so slow that I could stand up and make them spin and the chimney pipelines were the local bougie-on-budget girls tan spray.