[--------------------------------------------------------------------------] ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #512 `888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8 888 888 888 888 888 "Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well" 888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8 888 888 888 888 888 " by Kreid 888 888 `88b d88' 888 o 3/16/99 o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] Alone in a very large bed, flat on his belly, thinking, sweating, there lay Ivan. The sheets were satin but they had become sticky with his own filth and sweat, since he had been spending the majority of his hours in bed for several days now. There in bed, Ivan was accompanied by nothing. There were many items around his room which he had been living with for the past few days: several books, a couple bags of potato chips, and a bunch of empty bottles of hard liquor. His room was definitely very full, but he made sure his bed was completely empty. Ivan was definitely alone in that very large bed, his old and new sweat gradually sinking deeper into the satin sheets. The television was on, but Ivan could no longer bear to watch it. But it had a certain presence in the room, unlike anything else there. It was alive. Ivan had placed it on MUTE instead of turning it off, so it hissed and shot bright, happy images into the dark room. The television was the only light, and it caused very rapid color changes in the room as the happy people on the screen moved around in their nice city apartments and made jokes for the audience to laugh at. Ivan did not notice this spectacle, of course, because he was on his belly, facing away from the television. His eyes were closed; vision seemed irrelevant to him at this point. He focused on the warm, damp, smooth satin pillow and how it cradled his face as he drooled into it. The windows shook a little from the wind outside trying to get in. There was a heavy storm outside, but Ivan's room did not seem affected much by it. The television shone with defiance; it ruled the room. Ivan ignored the whole scene. No storm outside, and no stale room inside with television wasting energy and vodka spilled on the hardwood floor. Just wet satin and warm drool and Ivan. Outside that large room of Ivan's was an even larger house, where windows were open to let the rainwater spill in onto the walls and furniture. Doors were unlocked, valuables were unprotected. Ivan, the man of the house, was not concerned. The door to his room was locked, so he was safe enough. About a month ago, Ivan's father would have made sure all the doors were locked and windows were closed, and his mother would have been in the kitchen paying the bills. But that wasn't an option anymore. Tonight, Ivan's mother and father were together, locked in a small closet, dead. Ivan had killed his parents exactly thirty days before that stormy night. He had drugged their food before dinner. They were eating Mahi-mahi (dolphin) that night and Ivan had emptied out an assortment of the family's pills into the food while it was cooking. Pain medicines and sleeping medicines from his parents' medicine cabinet, Zoloft from his own; a good handful of pills, popped open and spilled into a frying pan in which his parents' dinner-dolphin was cooking. Ivan ate only hot dogs that night. That was a whopping thirty days ago. It had been a long month for lonely Ivan, lying in bed and sweating. Now his parents were long since dead, and they smelled horribly, and remarkably, nobody knew yet. Fortunately for Ivan, nobody actually cared about his parents. They had plenty of friends who they invited over at night and had cocktails with, but none of these people seemed too concerned about a thirty-day absence for Ivan's parents. Ivan was not surprised that his parents were not missed; nobody at those cocktail parties cared for anyone, anyway. No one in that class had ever really known friendship; it was all just a matter of each "friend" gaining personal security and having "friends" to brag to when their kids got into Stanford. Nonchalantly, they would say it: "Oh, Peter and I just got back from a college visit. Oh, Princeton, yes, that's all. Oh, yes, lots of driving, heh heh heh. Oh, yes, they said they would love to have him there. Oh, how are your kids doing, heh heh heh." Ivan heard them every night, talking, talking, talking, and then asking questions to which they did not care what the answers were. Sipping drinks made with rum, laughing at each others' jokes, all at once. Heh, heh, heh. Every night, but not since Ivan's parents had been locked away in the closet. Now there were cocktail parties going on at the neighbors' houses, and people momentarily pretended to wonder where Ivan's parents had been for the past month. "Oh, yes, I called them the other day. Oh, I left a message. Oh, I bet they're off on vacation somewhere and they forgot to tell us, heh heh heh." Sooner or later people would just forget to talk about Ivan's parents. The only memory of them would be a stink in Ivan's closet. I guess I'll have to bury them tomorrow, thought Ivan, and he drooled a little more. He didn't really care, either. Heh, heh, heh. Ivan kept his eyes sealed shut and buried in his pillow. Water splashed up against his windows and tried desperately to get into his room. Outside, there was a very busy and confused world, and their televisions were not on mute, and their rooms were not hot, and their front doors were all locked. Ivan rolled over on his side, tiredly licked his lips, and fell asleep. [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #512 - WRITTEN BY: KREID - 3/16/99 ]