Imaginary

Inspired by The White Darkness and JC's "The Illusions On The Park Bench," as well as the fact that I had Evanescence's "Imaginary" stuck in my head. Might be making a prose compilation next year about this stuff. Who knows.


We're fighting again.

He sits on the couch watching Pawn Stars in silence, without a word to me on the computer. There's nothing left to be said, I guess.

If I claimed he hated me I'd be lying, because he doesn't. I know that, realize that. But I don't know what it is in me that won't allow me to admit for once that I'm wrong. And so there he sits.

My grandma comes into the house. She seems surprised that I'm here. Well, it is three thirty, on a school day. Normally I'd just be getting out. We got out early and I got a ride home, though. As if I would skip, being who I am.

If I could have said anything I can't now, not with her around. She sits down in the chair and watches the History Channel for only a few seconds before changing it to Giada on the Food Network. I don't understand. She hates Giada.

Spencer would protest, but he knows it wouldn't do any good. So he pulls out a book- from what I can tell with my "discrete" glance at him, it's Firestarter, by Stephen King. But I could be wrong. I could always be wrong.

I mutter a "sorry" under my breath, which I know he hears despite the noise. He can hear me whisper across a room on a bad day, and he's very attuned to my voice. Thankfully my grandmother is not.

"I know," he responds. He sounds exasperated. "You've said it eight times now, I've counted."

I sigh and continue to type, ignoring his annoyance at my need to apologize for something that I know is my own fault. I've been ignoring him and he doesn't like it. This isn't exactly a new problem, either. You'd think I would have figured it out on my own.

I walk around the couch toward the jar of sweets and pick up an orange jawbreaker. The wrapper pops in my hand when I apply pressure to the opposite end rather than just sliding out and tearing the top as it usually would, which makes me jump a little. My grandmother looks up from her crossword puzzle, then shakes her head. Spencer is laughing.

"I didn't know you were afraid of candy wrappers."

"Just startled me, that's all," I breathe, which is completely inaudible to my grandma but clear as day to him. But I already said that, didn't I? I guess this is just me having a tendency to repeat myself again.

"Right. Just like that spider in Heritage just 'startled' you."

I frown. "You know I'm allergic to spider bites. And could you see the legs on that one? It could JUMP."

"Huh?" my grandma asks, apparently confused at my mumblings.

"Just talking to myself," I respond, loud enough for her to hear.

She goes back to the crosswords.

"You know, I really am sorry that I keep ignoring you. It's just that..."

"Other people are easier to see and hear. I get it. It's fine."

"If it were fine, then you wouldn't be so mad about it."

"No, I'm just being bitter. You can ignore me if you'd like."

"But that's what got us into this mess, isn't it?"

He doesn't respond. I type some more, working on my fanfictions.

"What's the Greek god of war?" my grandma asks.

"Ares."

"Ares."

"How do you spell that?"

"A-"

"I can spell it fine on my own, thank you," I mutter before spelling out "A-R-E-S" clearly.

I check Facebook momentarily and share a link featuring my favorite fictional character ever before I glance over at his look-alike.

"What?" Spencer stares at me with ice-blue eyes, looking over the frames of his glasses.

"Just... saw Syndrome again, that's all."

"Oh." His red hair bobs with his head as he looks back down at his book.

My mother comes in the door, her keys clinking in a distinctive way that lets me know it's her, no matter where we are.

"Did you know she was over here?" my grandmother asks. My mom nods. "She called me around one."

"Did you know she was here alone?"

And for a moment, I feel like crying.

Only The Good Die Young

An essay I wrote in ninth grade when I was mad because no one else liked Syndrome.

The Incredibles does not have a happy ending.

The final scene directly contradicts that statement, seeing as how it’s called “Happy Endings.” But I quite frankly find that disturbing. The entire family just killed countless people, and they’re going on BETTER than before? That’s a bit creepy.

Of course, you may be thinking “You’re a Syndrome fangirl, of course you’d say this.” Well, that’s not the only reason, though. I’ve been noticing things. Things that… just don’t work right. I’ve been finding a lot of Broken Aesops, too. Like this one. Here’s a great message that some innocent kid could’ve gotten from The Incredibles:

“If you aren’t special, don’t even try to be, because you never will be and if you try you will fail.” Huh. What a great, family-friendly message there. It also seems to preach that “two wrongs, in fact, DO make a right, but only if you’re on the right side.” Hmm. I love the movie to death but I don’t like some of the implications.

“But the Incredibles were clearly the protagonists!” you say. “They were the heroes and they prevailed and yay!” Well, they did prevail. But they weren’t heroes.

Do you want me to prove it? Go to the chapter on the DVD entitled “100 Mile Dash” and watch it. Watch how many of Syndrome’s minions die. That’s quite a few… and that’s just Dash. But What Measure Is A Mook anyhow?

Well, think. If you were related to someone who worked for Syndrome, don’t you think it would be really ironic to be told that your relative was killed by someone that’s supposed to save people?

Meanwhile the families of Supers were probably mourning, but it also comes with the territory. Supers die at the hands of villains. It happens. If you didn’t expect it to happen, you really shouldn’t be doing the work, should you? It’s like being a cop. Don’t do it if you don’t expect to get shot at your career.

And, we never actually see anyone dead except Gazerbeam that Syndrome killed. There’s some more food for thought. We see the mooks die onscreen. It happens repeatedly and then they go on like nothing ever happened. Well, something probably just happened to the family. Maybe the poor guy was working for Syndrome because his wife was sick and he needed the money. Huh. Nice going, Incredibles.

Plus, they never look back on the mooks. They don’t even care about the grief they just caused. That’s a pretty villainous trait right there. And, my guess is that even Syndrome’s at least had an Ignored Epiphany… but it’s still an epiphany all the same.

And it’s not like killing Supers is any worse than killing mooks, either. Supers were supposed to be treated like normal people. Mooks are normal people. It’s really the same thing at the end of the day. And in all truth, it was the Supers’ own fault for answering the call. It makes you wonder why they didn’t think twice about it and think that maybe there was some danger in doing something, oh I don’t know, illegal.

And to top it all off, what the Incredibles were doing to the Omnidroid WAS illegal at the time. Supers weren’t supposed to do anything. Someone could’ve sued and then they’d have been going through the entire mess all over again.

I’m not saying what Syndrome did was right, because it wasn’t. I’m just saying that what the Incredibles did was just as bad.

And then there’s the topic of Syndrome himself.

So. Imagine you’re some smart little kid who has this awesome hero, and you want to help the hero… and then he blatantly turns you down, crushing your dreams. I think that’d make anyone at least a little angry. Now, going homicidal is a bit far but it’s also been said by the creators that he probably has something wrong with him. That may have been where he got his Super name from as well. Oh, by the way, his real name, Buddy Pine? It basically means “I cry because I can’t be your friend.”

So, fast-forward fifteen years. He has everything going for him, money, power, and he’s probably the smartest person you’ll ever meet. He’s dead-set on getting revenge for being wronged fifteen years ago. And then he’s about to get it… when it all comes crashing down around him, just like his dreams did fifteen years prior.

The first thing to go is his girlfriend.

This part especially confuses me. Apparently Mirage has never seen Mr. Incredible’s violent mook slaughtering, since she says that Syndrome doesn’t value her life. Mr. Incredible didn’t kill her because she was hot and skinny. Because honestly, where DID that white hair on his clothes come from? Unless Mirage is shedding, I think something’s going on there.

But Mirage doesn’t know that Mr. Incredible only values life if it’s a pretty girl. So she leaves Syndrome anyway. Well, there goes her unlimited credit card money anyway, and there goes Syndrome’s girlfriend.

And then there’s the Omnidroid.

Now, he doesn’t even know yet that his girlfriend’s just completely betrayed him. He’s too busy being knocked out by his own robot. I admit that was bad foresight on his part, but everybody makes mistakes… sometimes of gigantic proportions.

And then the Incredibles come and beat up the Omnidroid, effectively crushing his dream of becoming a hero. But he could always reform and come back as an actual good guy, right? Wrong, apparently. Because even though Syndrome wanted everyone to be equal (possibly because then no one would have to suffer the way he did at the hands of a Super) and only wanted to be a hero, they still squashed his dreams like someone stamping purposely on a defenseless butterfly with its wings torn off.

Now they’ve taken away his girlfriend and crushed his dreams. What could go wrong next in the man’s rapidly worsening life? Well, they could take away everything he’s worked for. And that is exactly what they do.

The chapter entitled “Past vs. Future” begins with six words. “We’ve frozen all of Syndrome’s assets.” That basically means that they’ve taken everything he owns. His money, his island, EVERYTHING is gone. He has nowhere to go. I know that most people would have a complete and utter breakdown if they were in that situation. But he may not have known it yet, either.

Then in a last-ditch effort at revenge, he attempts to steal the Parrs’ son. Never mind that he said he’d “be a good mentor… supportive, encouraging”… although most parents wouldn’t be too thrilled if someone was stealing their kid either, let alone a supervillain. Of course, then the baby catches on fire. There goes his revenge.

During that part, Jack-Jack does several very, VERY insane and scary things that babies generally should NOT do, and he screams as most of us would. Of course, most of us were probably laughing because he screams like an eight-year-old girl but that’s another thing the Incredibles took from him… his dignity.

So, in total, what all has Syndrome lost in the timespan of about a day? He’s lost his girlfriend, everything he owns, his revenge, his dignity, and his dreams are crushed. What more can they take from him?

Well, the Incredibles knew what they had left to take, and that was his life. They took that, too. Now that’s an unnecessary death if I ever saw one.

Now, granted he was at least a little crazy, but I’m pretty sure that if given proper direction, he could’ve gone about being a hero… the right way this time. Or at least he could’ve done something more productive. He was a genius, the likes of which the world had more than likely never seen before. And Mr. Incredible threw a car at him.

After losing everything, he lost his life in the most painful way that most people can imagine: by jet turbine.

Syndrome died alone and unloved. He’d lost everything to these so-called “heroes” who put him through living hell before finally killing him in an excruciatingly painful way.

And that’s what they call a happy ending.

Fine Lines (The Value Of Life)

A sestina I wrote back in ninth grade. I still like it. Syndrome/Mirage breakup.

Fine Lines

(The Value of Life)

“You still don’t know what this is about,

do you?!” she screamed,

feeling as though she were about to explode with anger.

The last thing she wanted to do was cry, but the tears

slid down her face anyway. She couldn’t decide

whether she hated him, or whether this was another aspect of love.

This was most definitely not love,

thought Mirage. It couldn’t be. “No, I don’t,” he replied. “What are you talking about?”

She sighed. “I can’t decide

whether you’re worth it or not.” Her mind was screaming,

telling her to get a grip, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the tear

in their romance wouldn’t last long. But she was still angry.

Releasing her anger,

she began to shout. “You sacrificed my life, why should I love

you? Do my emotions, these tears,

mean anything to you? You don’t get what the concept of life is about!”

She stopped screaming

and glared at him. It looked like neither could decide

what to say, since Mirage had been decidedly

angry.

“Why are you screaming?”

he asked, eyes downcast. “I thought…” “This has got nothing to do with love,

Buddy,” she replied. “This is about

your disregard for my life. She stopped when she saw a spot on the tile become wet- it was a tear.

That single tear

summed up everything they’d just done, when he decided

to call a bluff and she’d responded with an about

face. Her anger

started to drain away involuntarily, as the love

between them did as well. This, she decided, was not the time to scream.

But scream

she did, about tears

and bluffs and life and death and love

and hate and how he’d decided

to cross the fine line between the latter two. Her anger

returned, because he still didn’t understand what this- everything she’d done- was about.

Her scream died off and she decided

to pack her bags. The single tear hadn’t been enough to quell her anger.

Their love was gone, because Buddy-or Syndrome, the heartless murderer- hadn’t understood what the value of life was all about.

Intro Outro Uptro Downtro Toptro Bottomtro Charmtro Strangetro

(Intro is short for introduction. Outro is a term used in Guitar Hero for the end riffs of a song. Up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange are the six flavors of quarks.)

So I thought I'd start this out with Synlet since that's what really got my writing going/refined (other than Dark Calamity but you can find that on FanFiction dot net) so here goes some otherwise unseen Synlet schiz. Well, unseen if you haven't heard this year's Lit Program. The last two pieces aren't mine, will not claim they are, they belong to one of my friends and crzysheelf, respectively. Transitions and first two are mine, though.

Lit Program

The Hero And The Villain

Sometimes, things happen. People get sucked into things they’re not entirely sure of and before they know it, they’re swept off their feet. Such is the tale of two star-crossed lovers, known here only as the hero and the villain.

We begin our story with a reflection on the past following our leading lady, the hero. It dabbles in her first thoughts about the villain’s reappearance on her personal radar after his supposed death, and also describes him in vivid albeit biased detail. It’s clear from the start that she hates everything about him. The unclear part is, how long will her hatred remain?

The Hero and Her Thesaurus

If she was going to be completely honest with everyone, mostly with herself, at first she had hated him.

No, hated wasn’t the right term. Detested was much better. Despised, loathed, oh, thesauruses were fun little things. Abhorred.

Well, regardless of what the right word was, she loathed, abhorred, despised… whatever words there were for it, they were the feeling she felt when she first saw the “new” version of him on television.

One glance at the redhead she’d seen with his short hair and his probably far-too-expensive coat and she knew that she detested him, not even knowing his name. Of course, then it flashed across the bottom of the screen and she knew why.

He was getting away with murder, literally, just by getting a haircut and saying he was supposedly sorry. That was just wrong. Inaccurate, unfitting, improper, just plain not right. The hero would flip the channel, and she’d see him again. It’s as though, magically, he had taken over every single TV station in the country. So she turned it off, not wanting to see his smug grin anymore. It’s like he was saying to their entire family, ‘Hey. Look at me. I’m not dead and the public loves me. You fail at being superheroes forever.’ Cue the evil laugh.

Yes, the hero had loathed the villain with every single bone in her thin little body. She hated his “playful” blue eyes which looked like a pair of ice cubes, the “cute” concentrations of melanin across his face called freckles, and worst of all, that “charming” smile that made her want to punch him right in his smirking mouth.

A small part of her wondered if he actually had changed, but most of her didn’t care. The businessman was the villain, and the villain was the businessman. The two were synonymous with one another, inseparable personalities forever intertwined. This was just an act. Underneath the way he presented himself on television was a genocidal maniac, and nothing could change that.

Or so she thought.

The hero and the villain don’t waste any time meeting each other, and their encounter is like the collision of two trains speeding down the tracks toward one another- inevitable and explosive. The villain, ever the intelligent one, devises a plan to capture our hero, one that succeeds in ways he never would have hoped for and yet fails in others. In the next piece, the hero tells us of her brief time around him.

Familiar Taste

“Drink the wine, my darling,” you said. “Take your time and consume all of it.”

I stared you down from across the table, watching every expression on your masked face. I should have known who you were.

But I didn’t, and I drank. From sips to swallows, there was a tang in the liquid that I recognized. You were trying to knock me out again.

The glass flew into the wall and shattered, guided by my hand. I wasn’t doing this. Not tonight.

I didn’t see it when you walked toward me. You were just there as I looked up. I felt a sting, and your expression was not unlike a self-satisfied cat. You had put the chemicals into my system anyway. As your face grew distant, I realized that we were destined to do this again, and again, and again.

For even though I didn’t like this familiar taste of poison, I would just keep coming back. I was in love.

And then you took off your mask, revealing who you really are.

The face that had haunted my nightmares was burned into my retinas as I sank down into the blackness.

The hero has figured everything out. Or, at least she thinks she does. What she doesn’t know is that the villain has finally come to terms with his feelings for her. Despite her attempts to escape, she never truly succeeds. The next poem displays the conflicting feelings of the hero and the villain, and their true outlook on this tainted love.

If This Is Love (this was written by the friend, not me, do not give me credit for this)

You're the worst choice I could make.

You're the best promise I could break.

You're the closest thing to hell I can find in this icebox of hearts.

You're the coldest shadow in this inferno of fury and pain.

You pull me back every time I escape.

And you know we both secretly like it best that way.

If this is hate, what is love?

If this is love, what is hate?

Who are you, to think you matter to me?

Who am I to pretend otherwise?

Why aren't I lying?

Why are you trying?

You're nothing good.

But you're better than perfect.

I keep saying no.

But we know we're thinking yes.

The hero and the villain finally meet on her terms, away from the plans and all the drama of the hero’s family life. They find a way to make it work, as all great love stories do, and even the bad guy gets a happy ending. So ends their saga with a poem from the villain’s point of view, telling his side of the story, the tale less told from the wrong side of the tracks.

The Hero and the Villain (this was written by crzysheelf, not me, do not give me credit for this)

You play the hero,

And I play the villain.

Maybe someday we can meet in the middle,

Someday when we realize that the lies

Our parents taught us,

And the lines they drew are nothing more than a ruse.

As children in our innocence

And naïveté

Forever color blind, but never seeing gray,

The color of the truth,

The color where to meet we go,

And love, the only place where we can show,

Our feelings, the abomination that they are,

If only your valiant father knew,

The level I have taken his daughter to.

Everything we worked for, the sides we fought on,

The battle I can't throw aside,

I promised I'd give you up, but I lied.

Letting you go takes strength that I am lacking.

I used to hate, to detest,

You and your famous family for creating my inner unrest.

But you took me in by your power,

I tossed away my plan, my goal, my revenge, for you,

My flower.