The City is a place where everything resets after the lights have gone out: relationships, conversations, memories. Everything is inside an irreversible loop and no one knows it. All except for one girl.
˜"°•˜"°•˜"*°•
Jule, a resident of the City...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I sat on the couch, munching on salted popcorn as I forced myself to watch an afternoon talk show about chopping boards. It's probably the fiftieth time I did this and I only do it when I want to forget something so bad.
No, I didn't kill anyone this time.
More like cursing myself for hoping that what happened two days ago would also get reset from my brain. Realizing that the kid in primary school that falls every morning was Rom's sister all along drilled guilt into my brain more than I let it to.
I remember the day I ate breakfast from a bowl while sitting on a vacant lot beside my house, watching pandemonium break out between the parents and the bus drivers just because a kid fell. It was funny how people would fight other people for things that could be resolved without actually fighting.
There was also a day when, while eating breakfast, I decided to add a little spice and threw a pebble at a driver wearing a purple shirt. I decided that a fist fight with a little spice of chair flipping was the best course of drama early in the morning. Even Pastor Frank got out of his dainty chapel to join the fun.
Now, that was a sight to see.
The conclusion was anticlimactic, if you ask me. Pastor Frank got out of the mess with only a slight bump in the forehead which made people believe more in God at that moment. The fight got resolved in, like, thirty minutes with him there. A new record. Huzzah.
If I don't throw that rock and the fist fight didn't happen, people will be screaming at each other for two hours. Yes, I checked. You're welcome.
But, the reason I was eating popcorn in front of the TV as a distraction for my thoughts was because I could have gone earlier and stopped the child from falling altogether. And the fact that she's Rom's sister all along didn't make it any lighter.
Ugh.
I shoveled more popcorn into my mouth, forcing myself to focus and decide whether wood chopping boards were better than nylon ones. The kitchen talk show featured a middle aged man as the interviewer and it's the same four chefs in sparkling toque blanches arguing how glass boards damage knives more.
It's an interesting show but I've seen this show a number of times that I know each and every argument up to the point where the audience laughs on cue.
It's supposed to be an effective remedy for overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame. It wasn't working.
I groaned and plopped sideways, cradling the now empty popcorn bucket to my chest. Hey, I want more popcorn. But to do that, I would have to get up, walk to the Supermarket, and buy. Then I wouldn't have money to buy stuff for dinner.
So no. Just getting up would be a struggle. I even skipped school today because I couldn't bear showing my face to anyone. I bought popcorn like a ninja. I didn't greet Pastor Frank this morning. I just didn't want to deal with anyone, especially Rom.
