...kept playing. It was chaos. Green lights splashed out over the stage and washed out the purple that was there before. Then the green was replaced by white, which sprayed out over the audience, illuminating the pit before shutting off and starting all over again. The drummers (there were two of them) sat at opposite sides of the performance, each beating uncontrollably, but somehow synched by the heart of the music. In on either side from them stood a guitarist and a bassist, clad in black leather. Distorted rhythms assaulted the crowd from the large overdriven speakers overhead. At the center of attention slouched the lead singer/frontman, drenched with sweat and stench, shouting obscenities out over the audience in a lyrically charged outrage. He threw the microphone down, and as a frightened stagehand scurried out from nowhere to replace it, he grabbed at a bottled water, opened it with his mouth, spit out over the crowd, emptied the rest out over his head, and threw the nearly empty bottle angrily out to the hoard of fans, who feverishly devoured it. They were full of emotion. The harsh music and strobing lights filled them with an undirected energy that was released as pure violence. Freaks were everywhere with nose rings, tattoos, black, chains, spiked rings, and steel toed boots clashing in an unruly rampage of misplaced hate. People pulled irate fury from being beat up at school, getting abused as a child, or from other psychological atrocities and took it out on each other in a pool of loathing that fed on itself and grew with each beat. Everyone accepted it in a sick masochistic exchange: my hate for your pain. And there I am in the middle of all of it. How did I get here, timid, overheated, and scared. This wasn't any part of me. I could be at home, but instead I paid to be here, in the middle of this pit of wrath and bloodlust. What would happen if I was pulled under and stomped to death by this mindless mob? No one knew me; they wouldn't regret killing some nameless nobody. They could just blame it on the music, and get away without a scratch. No one would even notice. These are probably the last moments I'll be alive. I feel someone grabbing my shoulder. This is it. I look, and see someone pulling my coat back onto me as it was being pulled off slowly by the crowd. I looked at the face. She looked up and smiled a smile that felt like a hug, and the band... ...until lunch. Fourth grade history is nothing to write home about. It's all basically geography, a couple big names and some generalizations made lies that often contradict each other on a daily basis. I don't think anyone's paying attention. The teacher, maybe, but she doesn't count. People are dazed, bored and stupid looking. They aren't stupid, they just look like it because that's what people look like when they're bored. "Students" sit leaning their chairs back, crusin' for a brusin', blowing bubbles with their spit, sticking their fingers in their eyes, then silently complaining when it hurts, attempting to catch insects with their hands, inconspicuously, and shooting wet wads of paper and makeshift planes at unwitting individuals across the room. Kids are blowing their hair out of their eyes just to let it fall back in again, rolling pencils across the desk, watching them roll back, pushing them again, and letting them roll back and fall off the desk. I'm a bit too big for these desks. My legs keep hitting the inner top sides of them. They're the kind of desks with one solid piece of lumber making the platform, and a metal cubby-type thing on the side that stretched down to the floor to hold your books and stuff. The floor's disgusting. It's all generic gray imitation marble tile, covered by a goo composed of spit, gum, dirt, rust, food, and hair, all stuck together and congealed by the residue left when an overworked janitor over-waxed and under-buffed it. Then there was a carpet lining the outside, which was a mix of brown and red. I have no idea what color it started out as. It led... see how interesting 4th grade history is?? It led to a little offset reading area, complete with couch and bookcase. Even books. But we never use that place. The teacher's desk is there, too, but there's nothing of interest there except candy. She has candy?!? Well, it's not for me to worry about. Let's look at the clock. 11:47. Only eighteen minutes until lunch. You know, I've never really looked forward to lunch itself. Believe it or not, I don't really even like eating all that much. I just look forward to lunch being over. Then I'm that much closer to going home, which is where I like to be. I've always been a bit homesick whenever I'm not there. I wonder how my brother's doing. He's in 2nd grade now. I don't remember much about 2nd grade, other than my teacher. She was pretty good. I remember that was the one time I got reprimanded in class. Usually-Actually, I never get in trouble in school. Often if they tell me not to do something, it's either something that I wouldn't want to do anyway, or something stupid that I'd get hurt doing. And with the threat of punishment, well, I just stayed out of that whole mess. That's why I'm always afraid of some new teacher who doesn't know me telling me to go to the office or something. I don't know where to go, so I'd have to ask, and that looks like sarcasm, so really I'm just asking for trouble, which is what I didn't want in the first pla- "Look!" someone shouted. They obviously thought it was important enough to interrupt the class with, so I looked, and saw him. So? "She's peeing in her desk!!" and he pointed. So I looked. She was! No joke, she was peeing in her desk! On her books and eventually onto the floor. The class is much more alive now, roaring with laughter, filling the room with joyous sound. The teacher was faced with the task of shutting everyone up, as to not hurt the girls feelings, as well as struggling with oncoming laughter of her own, while all the while worrying about the condition of the desk and books. Soon the commotion died down and out, and the class resumed as usual, save for that girl. Well, I guess that's my excitement for the day. Hmph. Only fourteen minutes... ...night, and everything seemed a shade of gray, except the television stand, which had a tint of brown, like an artificially colored photograph. Wind hummed through the one open window, and spiders and moths danced across the other, which was missing a screen. The blinds laid half open, and occasionally a car or truck would coast by, putting a dull, yellow glow over everything. The shadows cast were sharp and dynamic, swaying smoothly with the passing traffic. The room had an aura of clutter, but it was all homely clutter, and no cleaning solution made itself immediately apparent. It seemed to breathe, content with itself, and completely consumed by itself, with no sense of lust for anything. The closet was left partly ajar, and bed sheets and a quilt rest gently on the top shelf, unused. It was too hot for a quilt. It was well into the summer, and the nights didn't cool off, but the gray ambiance of the room made the quilt look somewhat appealing. But it was all the way over there, and I was... asleep. Fire, green, violet, red, grass, pink... I was falling. Or flying. And my friends all were there, not that I recognized any of them. One motioned me toward a pond, and I met him there, although he was now a she, but no matter. Green, now with blue. Such an appealing falsity. Pink, then black. Maybe in the form of a shirt, or covering. Empty. Everything gathers in on point, piling in over itself. Something emerges. A god, or a sun. Red veins on the inside of my eyelids show through. I awoke again, in the middle of the...

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