Chapter 1| Return to Sender

Last winter when my sister brought her friend Bernard over for break, I really wish she hadn't attempted suicide in the back yard. I mean yes, I do understand Bernie was a sad soul who'd probably lost her will to live, which I can understand wholeheartedly , but her little wrist slaughtering fiasco in our tool shed was a bit ill- thought out.

In tune with the winter, the process was awkwardly drawn out, sirens here and there all over the Winterbourne streets and cloudy weather. Children caged inside their homes without sufficient sun to play in the grim looking park or sufficient snow to cause any sort of riotous trouble and white hairs for their middle age life crisis mothers and fathers, well they had stopped all they're inside toying about to watch a 22 year old, Bernie clumsily be strolled out of our rickety burnt umber tool shed.

Due to her heavy handles one of the wheels broke and shattering one of mum's collectible garden gnomes, in his perpetual happiness I had felt a sort of sadness for him all these years, the gnome I mean, imagine that, being forced to stand out in this god awful weather with a goddamn smile attempting to dig a non-existent hole, at this rate it might as well be his grave, imagine that.

Any way it absolutely crushed her, of course yes Bernie's sudden act of self-maiming was overwhelmingly troubling but mum had been working on the collection for well over 2 decades, she spent half the day in Richard's study attempting to re-order a new one online. Besides, the whole matter really screwed me over, emotionally. It isn't as though Bernie and I were close, we had just met, but now with her theatrics I've become insanely awakened by powers of human thinking. I know it seems a little absurd but that's the whole point, so I've come to appreciate.

This entire whirlwind of failed attempts of man to find the meaning of life and rationality of perpetual happiness is futile and stupid. The incident really had me going though. Yes, there is the true unnatural lingering of superiority in us little beings but every now and again we are cognizant of our truly, truly insignificant diminutive lives and it is quite unsettling but completely expected. You could wonder around pretending that there is this constant life of utterly psychotic comfortableness resting at our feet

....or you could glide right out of that gooey mess of repetitive living and slit your wrists in someone else's tool shed on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon.

But you see, the real problem isn't Bernie and her wrists or mum and her gnomes it really is the events that followed that have myself and probably the rest of the world seriously fucked.

Without a doubt this winter has been a four headed red scaled, a*s tearing dragon ride and for certain has left me with some major battle scars which wasn't expected in this bantam of a town we've got ourselves in here. I mean the totally over played ideal of "futuristic future" with the flying cars and all that jazz ( all of which I blame on Back to the Future) seemed pretty cool but the reality of 4089 is pretty much a spin-off for The Matrix.

Like, that seriously horrific "humanity ruining" catastrophe was really centred around 2024 and 3624. I won't say things have totally cleared up now (the sky is still tinted green) but we kind of circled back to 23rd century. Things are mellow, prepubescent humans are still attempting to become internet famous, the nano droids still become sentient once in a while and every so often try to take over a neighbourhood or two but the citadel Bayesians always manage to reprogrammed them if you get them at the call centre or loitering outside the citadel Glassdoor, most people still have a weird obsession with overpriced artisanal coffee and most high schools remain as a long standing realms of systematic slavery for the soft minded teenagers.

Despite it all, I could all but taste the sense of lingering dissatisfaction with life and also a light buzz of excess Meitnerium in the atmosphere.

...

When Hiromi dropped her brand new off shore suitcase at the foot of my single bed I sincerely underestimated the severity of the situation, of letting her be so close even if we were (fortunately)separated by the blow up mattress. Alas we can't always have what we want, she was an easy feat but her 1.5 metre silver studded, demon headed twin, Ichiro, is the true cruel demonstration of female omniscience.

As I obviously noted , I was not swooning at the hands of these lovely ladies. Their presence was something low and behold in the underworld of service men and investment traders of impractical lucrative-ish business deals and shiny tie pins ( which is saying something considering the cooperate hay storm we got ourselves into in these past few weeks).

Their stay had only been product of mum's universal travels that this time wound up in the swampy channels of Berlin.T he years of living with strangers from mum's interdimensional  excursions for months at a time wasn't new to me but these two were difficult pair. This notion of having commoners in my glorious palace of water colored caricatures and misused Kleenex, put a dampener on the mood. Nonetheless here we are in this eerily dingy setting of my clumsily furnished bedroom on this bitter noon in November.

Call me a eunuch because I wouldn't be getting any sexual action any time soon, although even in my previous conditions I didn't necessarily have any people queuing at the foot of my door or swaying at the ledge of my window. Now I'm stuck thinking of sex crazed monkeys swinging at my window, although I suppose that would be animal brutality. I do this a lot, loose train of thought, I mean.

Anyway where were we- ah right this little house guest dilemma, these house guests who practically brought with them the pinnacle wedge in the plan for the end of the universe. Oh and their pet mouse, Sylvester, whom I actually quite liked.

...

"Fluff it, then tilt it to the left... more, now put it the other way... Not like upside down."

"How do you even know it's upside down, it covered in this rogue tattered baroque pattern?"

" It's not tattered its adding to the feng shui, this and the yellow lap really tie the room together. If I could just figure out where to put the mini pond."

Tuesdays begun this way often, the vacation as suspected had reached the state in which it turned rancid and repetitive. the only things making it really enjoyable being the bike rides to the Underbelly Gynie Lounge and Mijahj's miniature ukulele performances only because she had somehow managed to unlock my phone and find all my Sufjan Stevens albums.

I seem to always come across these potty emissaries that discover my mini riddles that are barely worth the hassle. She now knows my phone pass word, when I had my first kiss, the embarrassing first sexual encounter with Megan Rose Harkee, and the crater bait incident (which myself and all such parties involved vowed never to speak of)

Besides all that noise, my mum had a timely taking to interior design, the floor model of our house had been roughly re-modeled, beds resized and color plans recoded. The newer ordeal of her hopping over tables to reposition cushions was hilarious, I could've suffered less if hadn't made myself a rebel without a cause for the remainder of the break, James Dean had me shaking in my Tuscany Whip brown boots. The Scandinavian veteran mum had met in the crooks of the scattered second-hand furniture store had lectured her on the principles of furniture not just as living functional pieces but as "functional art", I personally thought the whole thing was daft but mum will be mum.

On this particular afternoon after work, she had found a new way to salvage our beetroot hummus stained couch, it bothered her, I mean it bothered me too, I was the one who spent 2 hours scrubbing at it with Gentle Mosh All-purpose cleaner but as it so happens beetroot hummus just doesn't come out of baby blue Cheshire couches, and that just sucks.

"Maybe we could get a throw blanket, a grey one to match."

"We could always get a new couch."

"I think the blanket could work... With the pillows? Hmm?"

"I'm going to get a juice."

"Don't drink it in your room, you know how I feel about that."

I walked to get some grapefruit juice from the fridge, the fridge, like most things in our house was pretty but not necessarily for functional use any more, it was yellow and too small to really fit enough food for a house of 6. The general landscape of the house was round and strange and persistently unfitting and gawky which personally I never understood {but I didn't understand most things despite what people thought} When I walked into the kitchen Mav was sitting on a bar stool, clothed in another funky jumper, munching on another one of Ingrid's gourmet concoctions.

"Noon, Mav"

"Coconut lemon ginger strain hake and saffron stir-fry eggnoodles""

he didn't look at me

"Sounds good."

I sipped the juice

"Giddy sent some, I left a plate in the warmer for you"

He waved his fork in my general direction. Maverick, was my step-dad's brother. He was quite the hot head, it was said in the name really. Mav's real name was Ederhaart Arelson Evangeline, he was the eldest and least functional brother of my step-dad's family, he was and still is the cleverest of us all. I suppose in all madness there is genius, that's what I've heard anyway. Mav moved in last year after his 3 month hiatus from his neutrino oscillation evidencing in the MINOS programme at the University of Cambridge, a real mouthful.

As fancy as all that was he still dressed in these crazy jumpers that he got from god knows where. His ingenious general amazingness was clearly indefatigable, I thought he was such hot s**t, I'd never tell him that though.

"This obsession you have with grapefruit juice is unhealthy, it can weaken the lower esophageal sphincter, contributing to heartburn and symptoms such as burning, chest pain and a bitter taste at the back of your mouth. I know you're the madcap, Marz but I don't condone this sort of masochism in fact I don't condone any nonscientific related masochism"

"Masochism is my most frequented activities, I live in a house with 6 other people. And volunteered to share my room, what is not particularly spacious as you know, with two demons"

My relationship with Mav was....healthy but some what toxic, my hopeless need for validation from him loomed over like hot gravy and Mav didn't bother himself too much with the dynamics of any relationship really.

"there's like, a bunch of Ingrid's mail here, is she here? "

Some calculated chewing...

"No, she will be arriving later on this evening to be escorted by the Axionic intergrated security Android from base. I believe Your mum's afraid to mention it, she knows as well as I that you and giddy have some untouched tiffs"

"you know you can just say AISA, you don't have to say the full thing everytime. And Ingrid and I had one small row last year, time has passed things have changed, it's not some great pathos over my adolescence. We'll be good"

Ingrid, my oldest sister and I had, had a falling out last year before she left for base. And I was absolutely certain we would not be good.

"Right well, I'm going to my room"

More calculated chewing.

"I wouldn't recommend taking that with you. " he waves with his fork in the general direction of my grapefruit juice ,"You know how your mother feels about it. "

Intense mastication ensues yet again.

"Yeah well mum is crippled by the greatest hamartia"

"Humanness?"

"Unrealistic expectations."

I know it doesn't really seem like it in this particular moment but May was reckless, talented, shudder-inducingly clever but reckless.

I mean the worst part is that he's a real stand up guy, so his reckless antics are never anticipated. Which totally sucks for the third parties involved and sucks bong water for me, as I most of the time I'm saddled with cleaning up the mess.

I mean honestly the man's multiple experiences on Other Earth where brutal. He was there for 5 months and totally shattered the CRF (Circular Resonance Fields) several times. Ginormous concentric circular machines that practically hold what's left of O.G. Earth together (most of it being half the planet plus some rather large pieces of debris)

To be frank, most of what would have been a mind-numbingly dull half term ended up being the dead bent icy corporate worm hole that essentially ravaged the planet, spiking the damage of the millennia. I could've sworn, it started with a video game but my Indian soulmate, Mowgli says it was probably thanks to Swarm that things started getting shaky. The Swarm was basically the equivalent to technology based Ebola, spreading like wildfire, and seamlessly wireless and it was easily stemming from our high school. Not that, that was much of a shocker, the majority of our technology was based off of Temporal Crystalite and I'm sure 3 of the teachers kept huffing the shavings from the top of the distribution tank in cooler room. So clearly surveillance was lacking.

I remember walking down the hall, students littered awkwardly, almost wandering about when I walking into the gaming room. Mowgli sat on the floor with a huge chess board in front of him, wearing a yellow raincoat and completely barefoot.

"Dude, did you see that like, no body's here. What's up with that?"

Mowgli does not turn from his solo game but does make a 1.2 metre black knight move to E5

" I don't know, I've been here since three am this morning. I kinda got hooked on this battle in sky on FTLS Freedom with this other guy. Super slow, and kept stuffing rocks into his magazine when he ran out of ammo. "

"If he was so slow, why did you stay"

Mowgli was also reckless, and often made decisions that where completely unnecessary .

"I got locked in and I accidentally stepped on my UV powerbank in all the excitement. But it felt good to beat the guy, he was a total bellend and obviously stupid"

"Well come on then let's get to learning. I may not support the education system but I am a member of it, and I do prefer to be on a bike with functional cogs if you know what I mean. "

He takes off his rain coat and I continue to stare at the intensity of the game.

" I do not. Look man, we can't, there's like, 4 teachers here today and they all teach 8 years"

" That's got to be, a rupture in the hierarchy. You don't think that's weird. My mum didn't even get a call or a text or email or something. You don't think something is wrong? "

" We go to a private school in the centre of the poorest districts in our region, and pretty much wipe our asses with Mac book airs, and 68% of the school is Korean despite the fact that we're in Essex. Me thinks the problems are endless. I could say it however you'd like to hear it, don't dwell on the semantics mate"

" Okay well we should at least check before we just bail out. Then you can come over and we can get the last of the Shelby show"

I get that watching the Shelby show makes Mowgli feel gay, so he'll never ask to watch it but honestly we only watch it because he adores it so much. I can just tell.

" Cool." He gives up running back and forth having to use two hands to lift up the pieces. He clumsily attempts to push all of the white pieces down which ends in a pretty sub-par gash on his elbow.

As we stepped out of what was basically a supply closet, the worse case scenario slapped, sicker punched, us in the face. I mean, it wasn't like walking in your parents doing it but it was a close second, plus this scenario had end of the world written all over it (and not because someone had spray painted "end of the world" on the lockers in lumo pink spray paint)

This was clearly the beginning of some loosehanded fuckery, probably the "world ending" kind.

....

I mean to be totally and one hundred percent honest, I wasn't all that surprised when the whole alien invasion thing seemed around the corner. Its pretty much been the focal point of human existence, you know wondering whether or not were alone in the universe. We have literally dedicated what will probably be eons into the idea. Pop culture is banking on it ( the capitalists of the world turning an easy profit on the hype of space and people who hyper fixate on the alignment of stars and otherworldly beings and the idea of big headed genii travelling to deep space like war heroes).

But when the time rolled around, I was disappointed. Years and years of research, and scientific imaging, what I, and most of the world came to expect was the horrific-sentient- demagogue �" type, like Prometheus type s**t (you know, that film where Micheal Fassbender is oozing the fine intellect of a well-crafted robot and also sex appeal and Charlize Theron is going through some major daddy issues) and all we got was long faced Cronenberg rip offs.

Having aliens on your radar that don't want Hitler it up with mass genocide was, cool and all but I really was looking forward to a real blood bath here, like, real gruesome, iron maiden or like a Scaphisitic version of the Spanish inquisition.

But, they seemed like cool guys, they weren't the best conversationalists ( with the whole intake orifices located on their what-would-be-elbows-if-they-were-human thing) but they stayed uber chill as long as there was a decent supply of soy milk being sent their way through the exosphere conduits. The guys we really had to watch out for where the robots, and we should have seen it coming, I mean everything and anything on science-fiction is orientated by the downright elimination of humanity by all sorts automata and the fact that it totally blimped us is ironic. Like seriously the metaphorical resonance was hilarious.

But it was still something we should've taken with more than just a grain of salt (or less so, considering, like, a third of the global population was dying of cholesterol) 

Author's Note

Is it overly descriptive or is it just me?