I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK
Hey! After a long hituas, I've returned to the South Park fandom with something I've been meaning to write for a few months now. I have an awful habit of not finishing my chapter stories, so I'm not going to write anything else until this is finished. I probably just lied right there.
Anyhow- I realized that my writing skills have improved. I have also realized that it's rather counterproductive to keep my old, poorly written works on my profile. So with that in mind, I'm going to delete a lot of them.
Mostly, I'll be ridding myself of my chapter fics. They'll probably be up until the end of the week, then cease to exist. On the search engine, at least.
Reviews are greatly appreciated! Remember, a review a day keeps the looming threat of an unfinished fic away!
-.-.-.-
Some people call me a dreamer. This is because I like to invent stories that don't exist, and lie about the ones that do. But I promise, nothing I write on this college-rule notebook paper will be a lie. At least, nothing that needs to be.
-.-.-
Around my senior year, I was hit with the tremendous realization that I was dying. Given, I was dying at a painstakingly slow pace, (I figured I still had a good 60 years of dying left before I was actually dead) I was still dying nonetheless. I had grown up in a rather conservative family- the kind that goes to church every Sunday and votes against Pro-choice laws- but I wasn't convinced. I knew, and I think my whole family knew in a much more passive manner, that after this life, we would be matched up against an infinite sheet of nothingness and nothing more. I suppose It wasn't the most fantastical idea of the afterlife, but it was the truth.
The horrible, gross truth.
This realization hit me like a train careening down the railroad tracks at speeds fast enough to send Marty McFly back to 1980. It left the sour taste of bile on my tongue, and a gaping cavity in my chest. I decided that this was because I was afraid.
Afraid that, when I died, I would've never done any significant thing for myself. That I would always remain the product of someone else's decisions, and that when I passed, my family would have no choice but to plagiarize a eulogy from the Internet because there was nothing I owned unique to myself.
Let me explain.
Since I was born into the Tucker family, my dad had already formed a 1080-pixel photo of who I was going to be. I was going to be a hardworking man who earned myself a respectable job, and I would fall in love with a beautiful woman, and we would be the first to watch our children take their first breath of the sterile hospital air. I would put the Tucker name in good hands.
When I was born, my father was alone. He must've had the same fear of dying that I do now, because he married straight out of high school to a lady named Thelma. He was all set to go to a prestigious college to major in psychology, but Thelma dropped a bombshell: she was pregnant. Being the faithful Catholic man he was, Dad refused to let her abort the baby, so fast-forward nine months and four visits to the state court over custody, and I was born.
Since then, I've dealt with the tragic afterthought that I inadvertently ruined my father's life. I crushed his chance at becoming a brilliant psychologist, and ruined his marriage with his high school sweetheart. I probably contributed to his balding issue, too.
I presume you're wondering why I'm wasting page space and graphite prattling on about the woes of my father. Hang on, I'm getting there. Because, you see, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fully comprehend my father's actions without having a grasp of his motives.
So, because he was a failure at his own life, he decided that the only flimsy redemption he could ever achieve would be to make mine in his image. From the start, I had my road mapped out for me. Danger and Caution signs blocked off any path that would lead me astray from my father's goal. Not that I cared much.
I have always been happy to comply, and at times downright thankful to do so. Letting my dad arrange my life for me proved monumentally easier than doing it myself. It meant I had more time to spend writing stories and less time worrying about my own.
Unfortunately, the funny thing about life is that it's hardly ever smooth and predictable.
And this, I suppose, is where the real story begins.
-.-.-
I'm not sure exactly where to start- from the moment I realized I was falling head over heels for a boy who slept with his dead mother's urn most every night, or from the exact second I watched the last stroke of his mechanical pencil grace paper. But I think the right place to start would be the beginning.
The beginning, as referring to the first time I laid eyes on the teenager more difficult to figure out than a Rubix cube.
I was in honors English, Mrs. Crawson's class, 11:34, when I first met Tweek.
He stumbled in just as the late bell rung, tripping over his untied converse and smiling brightly. Mrs. Crawson offered him a sympathetic, albeit confused look. His blond hair was a wild mop of fritz and static, and it was long, cupping his strong, broad, jawline and small elf-like nose. His arms and face was marked up by sharpies, depicting several birds. A large chunk of the cartilage of his left ear was missing.
"Excuse me, sir? Are you in the right classroom?" she asked in her mousy, polite voice. One would not expect such a sound ever coming from a woman of her magnitude. By which, I mean she was fat.
"I- I think so!" he yelled, gesturing with his hands and sending his stack of books tumbling down to the tile floor. They made a monstrous booming noise, and echoed across the room. He cursed under his breath and knelt down to pick them up.
By now, the entire class had stopped whatever meaningless chatter they had been participating in to watch the spectacle of a boy trying to balance books that were probably heavier than he was on his arms. He blushed in embarrassment, biting his lower lip.
"I'm Tweek. I just moved here. I mean, not to South Park- to this class. I used to be in Mr. Dob's English class but I got moved up to honors," he said this all in one breath, speaking so quickly that I'm surprised anyone had any clue of what he was spitting on about. He shifted his weight anxiously between two freakishly thin legs, and his bright blue eyes kept darting about as if he feared a serial killer lay just hidden within his blind side.
"Oh yes! I remember now," the teacher exclaimed with a look on her face that said, 'duh!'. "Congratulations on getting into honors! Take a seat, and I'll pass you the syllabus. We're doing free writing right now, so take out your notebook and pen and get going."
Tweek nodded, grinning from ear to ear, and heaved his pile of books to the seat behind me. They plopped down on his desk, and he sifted through his things before finding a yellow notebook that was rather worse for wear. I shrugged and looked down at my paper, which was alarmingly empty. I jotted a few words in the upper right corner, smudging the blue ink with my left hand as I wrote.
'SPACE LOG, MONDAY, JULY 7
'My findings on this strange planet are very odd. Not only are the inhabitants, dubbed the Red Bellies, oddly civilized. They seem to have a whole government and social hierarchy unlike any I've seen before. Most amazing of all, however i-'
I felt a soft tap on my shoulder. I blew out a short puff of air through my nose and whipped around, meeting eyes with Tweek.
"Can I help you?" I muttered, eyebrows scrunched together, and fingers tapping restlessly at the back of my chair.
"Why do we write in pen? We can't erase stuff. What if we write something wrong? What if we're penalized?" he asked, a slightly concerned edge to his voice.
"It's so we don't worry about messing up. We can edit later, if we'd like, but right now we're just trying to get words on the paper," I explained, gesturing to my page of neatly printed writing.
"Oh."
I groaned and continued to transcribe my imagination into the page.
'-is the grandeur of the city itself. Modern architecture holds no flame to these works of meticulously crafted beauty. While marveling at a structure roughly ten stories tall and two football fields wide in size, I was approached by-'
The tapping returned. I again blew a puff of air from my nose and turned around. A low growling sound only audible to me rumbled in the back of my throat.
"You should add a monster! An alien monster!" he whispered, bouncing in his seat. His intelligent blue eyes glimmered with life.
"Haven't you heard of privacy?" I snapped, covering my writing with my arms and my cheeks tinged an embarrassed pink.
"Privacy is a luxury no good writer can afford," Tweek laughed softly. His nose scrunching up as he snickered.
"Then I'll just write when nobody's watching," I shot back, scowling.
"Oh they'll be watching," Tweek hissed ominously, his cheerful demeanor washed away. It was replaced with a stone cold grimace. "They're always watching. Just waiting, yearning, for you to fuck up so they can find something to laugh at."
"Jesus," I breathed, my face twisted in confusion and a bit of fear. Around this time, the only coherent thought in my brain was, 'man, this guy's a piece of work alright,'. I was silent for a few moments, and that's when he spoke up.
"Yep! So that's why I like using pencil! It's a ton easier to fix your mistakes, don't you think?" He quipped, his bright and bouncing expression plastered back on his face.
I turned around and scribbled a few more words, staring blankly into the fake wood of my desk.
'-a very big monster. An alien monster.'
I finished my paper, closing my notebook promptly, and frowning.
At the end of the free write, Mrs. Crawson called the class back together and asked if there were any volunteers to read their writing. A few people raised their hands and rattled off some amateur poetry, or a bullet-point list what they had done over the weekend. And then, a very thin and bony wrist shot into the air like a spring-loaded trap. Mrs. Crawson smiled warmly and gestured for Tweek to share.
"Right. I wrote a poem," Tweek announced. His voice, loud and clear- much akin to those of practiced politicians- caught the attention of just about everyone in class. "It's title: Number 47."
Mrs. Crawson raised her eyebrows in interest and leaned forward.
Tweek, obviously pleased with her reaction, began to read.
A little boy/
Who looks at the stars/
And deems himself a worthy spaceman/
Even though he is small/
Smaller than the boot of Neil Armstrong/
Smaller than the research papers cluttering an astrologer's desk/
A little boy/
Who dreams of space/
What a fucking dork.
Tweek showcased a proud, shit-eating grin as recited his poem, his eyes never straying from my face. I'm not sure if the urge to punch somebody in the face had ever burnt so strongly in me. You see, until this point in time, I had never once been challenged so bluntly, nor so viciously. I was very sensitive of my writing ability- sentimental, even. If anyone proved a better author, I would make sure to read all their works, analyze their style, and create something more powerful and thought provoking than they could ever care to imagine.
Call me obsessed, call me stuck-up- I don't care. Because that's the truth, and the truth was that I could not lose my only redeemable talent to someone who thought they had the skill to outdo me.
But Tweek- he didn't try to outdo my writing. He didn't try to form sentences that left an impact. He didn't ponder over extensive vocabularies or meaningful uses of figurative language. He didn't try to beat me at my own game- he created a new one altogether. And I suppose I felt mad because I believed that he had cheated.
Mrs. Crawson then turned to me.
"Craig? You always share. Why don't you read what you have? I'm sure the class would enjoy knowing what happens next," she smiled encouragingly. I swallowed a pit of doubt that had solidified in my saliva.
"Sure," I responded, voice as taut as a pulled wire. I stood, my eyes scanning the eager faces of my classmates. I had earned something of a reputation reading off my free writes, which compared much to a chapter story with daily updates.
"I mean- I would. But I think Tweek's poem sort of summarized it," I ended awkwardly, sinking back into my chair.
As I planted my butt firmly into the plastic seat, I was greeted yet again by the tap-tapping of Tweek's bony finger.
"Why didn't you share?" he asked curiously.
"Like your poem said- it was a stupid," I snapped back, my chest still aching from the humiliation he had just inflicted upon my frail ego.
"My p- you were bothered that much by it?" Tweek questioned, his head cocked slightly to the left.
"Gee, I wonder."
"Hey man, it was a crackpot poem. It's not supposed to mean anything- least of all your story. I like your story. I want to catch up on it, if you'd let me read the entire thing," he offered me a nervous smile. I accepted it.
"Sure," I replied, handing him my notebook. Our fingers brushed up against each other.
I found that his hands lingered for a few more moments, eyes directed to our point of connection. Or perhaps it had been nothing more than a foggy memory altered by my imagination. Either way, I retracted my hands as if they had been washed with holy water and stared at them curiously.
I couldn't focus all class- not with Tweek behind me, possibly reading my journal. I couldn't look behind me, either, or he'd think I was creepy. So instead, I just stared at my splotchy red palms. The teacher had to call me to attention more than a few times when I was zoning out, and each time I returned to the lesson more scatterbrained than the last.
About five minutes before class ended, Tweek was dismissed to leave. I shot him a bewildered look, to which he simply passed me a ripped piece of notebook paper. Tweek collected his things and shuffled out the door. Seconds later, we heard a loud crash as his things presumably crashed to the ground once again. While the teacher was busy rushing out of the classroom to make sure Tweek was alright, I looked down at the crumpled paper. On it, a set of seven numbers: 855-4657, and a footnote underneath, that read, 'Text me'.
I decided right then that I would do just that.