The Shade of Grey Matter

In between songs Emilio can hear his parents arguing, but for only a second or two. He’s lying on my bed, more like sitting, but whatever. Emilio’s blankets are folded in a way that casts shadows of half- circles across my legs. It's awkward to think of taking a picture because when he gets up to get his camera it will be impossible to remake the exact folds so he just stares and try to make the most of it. After a while it turns dark from his window and the mood settles, before he knows it his eyes fuzz out and mind flies off.
His mind reluctantly comes back when the front door opens after his brother comes home. He is almost mechanical, only one thing on his mind: to be perfect. He has no cares or emotions; at least he doesn’t show them. He comes upstairs and says his brother’s name, his brother pretends not to hear him, but can see in his eyes that he cares about him, they grew in the same womb, he sat on top of his brother for nine months, they have a connection that is beyond words. He thinks his brother is sad, but he's not, he's having an artistic moment. Emilio has been grounded for two weeks. He's on a different page then them, has no idea what they’re talking about, so he just sits and pretends to laugh, pretends like he had fun, pretends he knows what he's doing, pretend, pretend, pretend. Emilio would be Ken Barbie, but he’s not picture perfect. Plastic America, get a flamethrower and melt it.
Emilio was reading National Geographic about love, about how people who are madly in love have the same brain patterns, as a person with O.C.D. It's insane to think about love being just a chemical imbalance in your head telling you that you need this person to survive. Then he started to think, what if someone has a chemical imbalance that they need that person, but that person doesn’t have the same feelings. Stalkers have O.C.D. Their head tells them they need this person, like a cigarette or weed. The thing is, that person doesn’t have the same obsession, this disease.
"Check ya later, check ya later." Slater says. "God, chicks don’t want to hear that shit” the hick says. Then Slater says the most intelligent thing Emilio has ever heard in his life. "Chicks don’t wanna hear anything." Slater says it kind of quiet and sad because he never does anything to anybody, but still this prick of a hick makes fun of him. It’s hard to understand this, people who piss on other people who don’t do anything. These people who are so unstable that they need to better themselves by tearing down other people.
Just then Emilio realizes that he's been in bed for way too long, always thinking of the past and pretending to know the future. He slips out of bed, out of his heaven into his hell. Glides down the steps, past the strip of light that brightens the hallway and into the kitchen. His kitchen is surprisingly quiet, but still has the vibe of being used heavily and thrown around a bit. The cleanliness isn’t like the houses people see in movies of spotless, perfect white.
(On the table there is meatloaf and other foods.)
Emilio really likes meatloaf, with salt. But no ketchup, cats up, haha.
The woman figure in the room starts to talk, something about being a nag, but he wasn’t paying that close attention. Why does everyone have to be so fake? Everyone has to impress someone, and of course they feel they aren’t good enough for themselves.
"Red is so confident. Orange, so young and daring, but very unstable in the first couple go arounds. Its amazing Jimi thought of that because red is confident and orange being red’s son, wouldn’t be as experienced, but being a mini red, would be young and daring, although not as prepared. It’s weird how everything has a meaning. Everything.
"And yellow, in this case is not so mellow, in fact is quite frightened like me." Yellow is like a baby red and babies are scared. It’s a family of colors.     
         Emilio gets done eating and cleans off the table, is doing the dishes. On one of the plates he sees a six.
That's weird, there’s an "S" on one of the plates, no, wait... that’s a six. That always happens, Emilio’s brain is so messed up. Why can’t he just see things how they are? Why does his mind always distort things? Emilio always wondered if he saw the world like everyone else. It seems strange, but most things he sees are normal, but what if he saw a tiny fraction of things different than everyone else? Like how his mind registers words or numbers. Even dreams, he reads books in his dreams, words he’s never read before, books with no titles, but still they have had to be in my head at one point. In the middle of the dreams he realizes that he’s in a dream and can do whatever he want. Emilio dreams are so realistic that he can’t tell the difference between real life and dreams. He actually walks around thinking about memories that never happened, his life is a dream world.
Emilio gets done with the dishes and then starts to walk away, but a man, who Emilio doesn’t seem to dislike the vibe coming off him to much, scolds him to wash the stove and counter.
Emilio whispers under his breath, "Yeah, well, you can suck my dick."
What’s even on this, we didn’t even eat that, it’s been two weeks since we've eaten noodles. Emilio gives up and goes to bed.
Emilio walks out of the kitchen, though the hall, past the now dark strip of light, up the stairs, past the bathroom, into his room. Emilio walks towards the bed, but stops, stands there for a few seconds, then takes off his pants and shirt. Leaves his shirt and socks on the ground, but picks up his pants and reaches into his left back pocket and takes out his wallet. Throws it on the desk. Reaches into his front pocket and pulls out random pieces of paper and puts them into a dresser drawer. Then Emilio slips under the covers, puts on a pair of headphones. Out of his hell, into his heaven.
Why can’t he ever think of the right thing to say?
That night Emilio tosses and turns, it seems that he can’t find a comfortable spot, after a while he just gives up and stares at the ceiling. At night Emilio goes through memory after memory, as if reviewing his life, none of them relating to anything.
Dead quiet, only morning birds finishing their songs, but he doesn’t hear the silence, he hears the loud voices in my head trying to sort things out. He feels like he has a set of headphones on and, can only hear the loud music, but no one else does, so he yells and screams to overpower the silence everyone else hears.
Two different sides of a spectrum, night and day, snow and rain. Black and white, that is the difference between Jared and Emilio, him and me. We... Why do Emilio always give up?
When Emilio was little, he remembers a weird period of time, when he would feel kind of nervous, or more like scared out of my mind. He would freak because he didn’t know what he was, like who is this? What is going on here? What’s the purpose of my living? He still doesn’t know.
Emilio being very cautious falls into nervous sleep, but being crazy has night terrors and screams in his sleep. At one point even jumps out of bed screaming of a spider in his bed.
In the morning Emilio wakes up at 7:10 a.m. that’s 20 minutes later then he is supposed to. He sighs and gets up, goes down the stairs, into the hall, past the dimly lit strip of light. Goes to the cupboard and gets a bowl and pours some cereal.
Good Morning, Asshole! How was your night? Us at K105 would like to wish your condom broke and you impregnated your whore of a girlfriend. Its 7:15, coming up we got nothing, so fuck off.
Radio stations are so cool. It leaves so much to the imagination. Like no one knows what the people look like. If you like a radio announcer, you’re going to paint a picture of her as an attractive person, when really radio announcers are TV’s ugly rejects. I’m really stereotyping, but the world is based on first impressions, stereotypes, and sex. No one wants to get to know you; they just want to know your stats. They don’t want to know how you got them, just if you’ll screw over their company.
"Its 7:20," Jared’s voice bursts and fills the room with superiority and confidence. His voice sticks to the walls as if a man had smoked five packs of cigarettes a day and it filtered into the walls and left an undying reminder of cancer to anyone who happened to come into the room. "Alright, I’ll shower, but only this time I want part of the money when you sell the video." Emilio says in a half joking voice. "Who said I was going to sell the video?" Jared says, "Personal collection."
The mirror was fogged with steam; all the hot water was used. The best part of Emilio's day is the ten-minute shower he gets to take, it’s the best time to think. Probably because the sound of the water blocks out the world and in the small area there’s nothing to distract him.
When someone says, "You could be a great." It motivates them to use their great potential and become a great. Emilio? He’s satisfied with that he could be great, and he really has no intention of finding out. He likes the feeling that he could be something; He’d rather just let the world know he’s a failure. Emilio might have been someone to look up to, someone whom parents could say, "Well, that Emilio Brono, he’s really something. The young people can really look up to him for support." But he’s comfortable with potential. He’s stupidly okay with the fact that he’s too afraid to try his hardest and fail, that he just fails in the first place, and its a lot less work. Some people try as hard as possible their whole lives and end up as cashiers or fast- fast workers. They tried their hardest. Emilio? He will probably end in the same position, excerpt in his mind he will feel that he is much better then his less intelligent co- workers because he applied half as much energy and ended up at the same place. When really Emilio was the dumbass, he is lazy and is wrecking his own life.
It is my fault.
Emilio satisfied with the amount of shrinkage decides its time to get out of the shower, buts stands in the shower for a little while, he stands there, hugging himself tightly. He quite plainly is in discomfort, but shows nothing on his face. Emilio's face wasn’t made to move. Really it’s a face that doesn’t know love or despair, only learned to fake. If one would really want to know his true feeling, they would have to look at his eyes. Eyes can’t lie, but it’s hard to explain how they look, to learn what they show.
Emilio finally gets out of the shower and towels off. In the back of his mind, every hour or so he remembers he has to work, the shift is a week off and is only two hours. Two-hour shifts, the biggest waste of time in the world, two hours, but still haunts him everyday.
Emilio hates telling people what’s wrong with them, which means he wants them to change for him, to please me. Emilio has learned something about life; never change for anyone, if you’re not being yourself then you’re lying to everyone. If you change for someone then they don’t like you for you being you, they like you for who you pretend to be.
By this time Emilio was sitting in a chair in school, not knowing how he got there. The bell had rung and he had study hall next, but after that he knew nothing. "I gotta stop smoking pot." Emilio says not to himself and not to the people around him, but more like to Casper the Friendly Ghost. Emilio walks slowly to his next class. Not really walking straight, but really a slight swagger, not because he is drunk or tried, but because he really just can’t walk in a straight line.
Emilio staggers to the classroom door, five minutes late and silently goes to his desk. "Late again, Emilio?" his teacher says in a disgusted, I don’t want to deal with “scum like you” manner. "Maybe we should try to be on time for once?" The teacher says condescendingly. As if him being late infected her with an incurable STD. Emilio just sits there, staring at his paper. If you were to look at his paper you would see,                             



To show you rather then tell you. "Well, small things are what make people, you see." Emilio starts out quiet, but gains momentum like a boulder falling down a mountain. "Small things, for example whether someone showers or not. This affects their appearance, people say, 'Oh, that person doesn’t shower, they are bad person.' Small things make people because people do small things without thinking, without thinking means that they would have done it whether someone was watching or not. People don’t judge that person by small things though. They judge them by the big things they do because people don’t watch small things. People just want something exciting, something worth talking about around the gossip table. When really small things are meaningful and true. Big things are fake because people watch them and the person knows people are watching, so they put on a mask and cape and lie to themselves and lie to the world. That is why I am quiet and boring and small because I don’t lie to the world and more importantly I..." Emilio stops and looks around the room, and sees the dead fish eyes stare blankly like a legion of brain- washed government workers. From the door, a young woman’s small laughter could be heard. She walks in with the confidence Emilio had just lost and lifts his head. She stares him in the eyes and whispers, “fabulous” and kisses him.    

Part II
“I was going to call you, but I kept falling deeper into a hole. I sure there were landings that I could have stopped at, but at that point the pain was hurt so well. After so time pain envelopes around this body and blocks out the reality of life.” Explained the stupid fucking kid. The kid, apparent to everyone but the legals, had a self- inflicting torture addiction. Emilio walked away from the group, not caring to listen to such self- disrespect. The spacious mall he was walking in was crowded with people; it would be easy to just disappear there. He had more important things to do, like dealing with the brick of candy that lumped up together into his stomach. Trying very hard not to throw up, every morsel of food needed to kept down. Emilio was very skinny and was trying to beef up (mostly for the ladies). His stomach turned, everywhere he looked bitch- tits bounced in his face, and these people would mostly want to lose the beef for the ladies. Having a forearm the size of my thigh really wasn’t what Jesus would have done, if he went with the motto on his obese arm. Religious people piss Emilio off, always clinging to the some random man in the past. Might as well worship Donald Duck, but then this random man would smite us commoners down for worshipping a false idol. “I find it hard to believe that such a powerful and awesome man would be so selfish and controlling.” Emilio unfortunately muttered that under his breath, but no one this time looked at him weird. As if they or he really gave a shit. Most people shit out interest and find only themselves amusing.
Anyway, Emilio was pretty close to were he was meeting his person, he couldn’t remember the exact spot they were meeting, though it wasn’t very important. The store near him was an adult book/ video store, with a specialty of Iraqi War anime. Who knows, what that is, life is strange until curiosity leads to a dead hooker on the bathroom of a sleazily motel room, after that life seems too short to screw around anymore. No matter how crazy or painful it is after, some part of him always wanted more. He sat down on a fountain ledge, and tried to look as invisible as he felt, which is a good thing because he didn’t want people to notice him. Emilio’s hood was up over his head and covered his face; he was hunched over resting his forearms on his knees with his hands over his mouth. He watched the people that wonder past his seated spot. None of them truly interested him, but his eyes kept wondering around the area out of habit. Looking around, Emilio realized the reason for the unorganized gathering of overweight, middle aged men- the porn shop. Everything about that realization disgusted Emilio. The thought of these fat men sweating to hurry home to jerk off to some film that satisfies their sick fancy blew Emilio’s effect past the line, luckily or not it was blown into the fountain. The hot, thick sick coated his throat and mouth, “Fucking Christ,” was choked out as he spit out the coating. By some miracle Emilio spotted her walking towards him, her peaceful face was tense with concern, maybe a little curiosity also. She was afraid of nothing.
Emilio’s voice bubbled with sick, “Awesome, lets get the fuck out of here.”
Nico, the most understanding person in the world was a little confused, but mostly just curious, “Are you sure? I kinda wanted to get a porn.”
“No. No we need to go right now.” Emilio said quickly.
   “Yeah, I saw you get sick in the fountain, how many times have I told you to lay off the…”
“Can we please go? Emilio pleaded. “I’ll explain it later, can we?”
Nico’s eyes went from Emilio’s to his arm to his hand pointing to the door. Nico shrugged and started walking towards the door.
“Thank you, is it that difficult? Really, I’ll just throw up in a fountain again.” Emilio was saying, but Nico was already walking and Emilio trailed off and waved his arms around in a haphazard way. Emilio exhaled after realizing he held his breath way to long.
Emilio started walking towards the door, after Nico if it has to be said that way. He doesn’t like the way people look at a person that is whipped by a significant other. They look at him like he is what’s wrong with the country, but these people don’t know is that they are whipped by society for caring.
Nico was waiting outside the door; she sat wondering on a ledge, “Let me guess, materialism makes you physically sick, it churns you stomach every time you see a person compulsion buy some worthless shit item they don’t need.”  
Nico lips formed into a sarcastic way as she walked up from behind on Emilio.  He turned around and gave her the same look back, but his with a fake surprised, wide-eyed look. He opened his mouth to explain, but really honestly she didn’t care why he threw up. Emilio read her mind and he knew all she cared about was getting him mouthwash. Nico is all about the solution, not the reason or whose fault it was.
“Materialism is the root of all evil.” He humored her.