People are strange, when you're a stranger.

(This entry is a much longer one than usual ... including a short story written by yours truly. Thanks for putting up with the wait everyone! To go directly to the short story, pop this into your ctrl + f: WEIRDSHST)

"The most boring thing in the world is nudity."
-Brandy Alexander, Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

As the summer winds down to its final few hours, I take the time to reminisce about the people I've met. Or rather, have seen. Really, I have no idea who they are, but they might as well be the most interesting people I've ever met. Or ... they're potentially the most interesting people I've yet to meet.

Brandy said that nudity is boring because there is nothing hidden when you are completely exposed like that. There is nothing to conceal, nothing to reveal, no secrets to hold. People are most interesting when you know nothing at all about them. When you meet a person for the first time, they always have something to say--and you can never expect what that will be. For this reason, I sometimes think that making a first impression upon someone is like losing your virginity. Except, this virginity you can use multiple times ...

When I drove up to Cooperstown a few weeks ago, we stopped over at a rest area complete with McDonalds, a bookstore, bathrooms, and a stray dog or two. It was a cheerless day with gray clouds completely blanketing the sky over upstate New York. The ground was soaked thoroughly from the torrential downpour that had only minutes before stopped falling. Although it was only a mildly warm day, the humidity gave the feeling of walking through boiling water wearing a rain coat.

I led the way inside, as my desire to relieve myself was far greater than that of my parents' combined. To tell the truth, I really and truly dislike public bathrooms where there are no slabs of metal that separate your private peeing area from the next. It's not that I'm insecure, it's just that I don't feel very private. I'm used to doing my business behind closed doors--no one has to see what I'm doing. However, this stall-less urinals are practically live Broadway shows. There is a chorus line of the sound of piss hitting the urinal and water, with the occasional solo of a flush. You are free to look at any other person's penis as they pee, but for the most part, every man tries to squeeze as close to the urinal as possible and turn in the direction of the nearest wall to minimize their exposure.

How much time and effort does it take to install a tiny slab of metal in between those urinals?

McDonalds was our next stop. I, personally, rejoice in the fact that I haven't eaten McDonalds in nigh on a year up to that day. Unfortunately, I had to go and spoil it all by ordering a Big Mac. My doctor once told me that to burn off all the calories you eat in a Big Mac, you'd have to run a decathalon. Or have lots and lots of sex, but that's reserved for people whose bodies resemble those of Abercrombie and Fitch models.

It was a long line but it didn't take too long to get to the counter for our order. Now, the cashier there was a girl about 19 years old whose thin body leaned over the register supported by her arms. The first thing I noticed about her was her nail polish. Gray as the clouds that reigned freely over the skies. Her eyes seemed to match her nails as well. I can almost swear they were gray, too.

Her name tag bore the name "Skye." She looked at my father while he made his final decision on what to order before actually placing the order, a cocky smirk on her face as she chewed bubblegum. Her blond hair was streaked with red highlights and was fashioned into a neat pony-tail behind her head, the knot falling over the velcro strap of the visor that encircled her head.

"What'll it be?" she says in between chews. She takes a moment to look at the other customers on line, a golden hoop earring on her left ear flashing faintly as she turns her head.

My dad places the order. Skye seems to be either very skilled with the register or completely and utterly uncaring. My opinion rests on the latter. Her strokes on the keyboard are quick and wholly indiligent. I'm not even sure if she even put in the correct order. As my dad continues the list, I notice an unsatisfied customer return to the counter.

The manager is already standing there as if he expected this.

"Excuse me," the customer says, rather forcefully as he sizes up the manager. I'm sure that he probably wanted to pick a fight with him. The customer israther buff, wearing a gray tank top that showsoff his large muscles. A double-headed blue dragon is tatooed from the length of his elbow to his shoulder.

"I ordered a Quarter Pounder with Cheese," he continues roughly, "and this clearly isn't a Quarter Pounder."

The manager, a skinny guy that stands a few inches shorter than me, sighs in defeat. He looks like one of those easily-broken high school geeks whose closest friend is a Yu-Gi-Oh! battle card of some sort. The type of person that has no self-confidence whatsoever. The reason why he rose to the position of manager evades me.

"Yes, sir," the manager says reservedly, "we'll fix it right away."

We got our order just a few moments after the customer had his meal returned to him. I followed my dad to the dining area, passing by the angered customer along the way. Looks can be quite deceiving, you know. The way he looked when I saw him first complaining about his food, I pictured him as being a biker or trucker of some sort. He definitely fit the part. Large, buff body. Crewcut hair. Square-shaped thick goatee.

Turns out, he's a family man.

He had grabbed one of the double tables and was seated on the booth side of it. Beside him were two children younger than ten years old, eating their Happy Meals and laughing their little heads off at private jokes. On the other side of the table was his daughter, about fifteen or sixteen, that had dark brown hair and tanned skin. She was dressed in a sweater that had the Good Charlotte logo on the back. Her eyes were behind a pair of thick-rimmed black rectangular glasses.

Finally, my own family sat down to eat. The Big Mac my dad ordered with no pickles had pickles in it. I wasn't surprised.

Around a week before this trip I happened to come across another person closer to home, working at the local Wendy's. A meek, comely girl about seventeen years old, I've spotted Traci at Wendy's working something like a 5pm-11pm shift quite a few times already. She's quite small and thin, and has a very passive personality from what I've seen. Her hair is always fashioned neatly into a bun, her eyes usually downcast when she isn't looking at a customer while she takes their order.

The first time I laid my eyes on her, she was in pain.

It was about 7:30 pm when my father and I drove over to Wendy's for dinner. We were on our way to the Centereach shopping area so I could reserve a game over at GameStop. The fast food restaurant was not very busy that night, so we were able to get our order in quickly. Traci was the cashier who took our order.

She seemed very weak that day. Her right arm clutched across her stomach, as if she were trying to comfort some kind of internal pain. Her body was slumped over, her gait unbalanced. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than a mouse's whisper. I immediately knew that something was wrong with her. So did the other customers.

"Are you all right?" the person behind us asked.

Traci nodded her head weakly. "I'm fine ... it's all right," she said. Without a doubt, you could tell that she was lying. None of us wanted to press her for an answer though. There are some things that are better left unsaid.

Since that day, I've seen her several times at Wendy's. While she doesn't seem to be in pain everytime, there is still something I can see in her dark brown eyes. There's some kind of fear there. Something that destroyed her. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly a major problem, and she hasn't yet fully recovered from the blow. Had someone close to her died recently? Did she have an abortion?

That same night, using the bathroom before I left Wendy's, I found a syringe on the floor beside the toilet.

In the closing days of summer, I often mused that somehow, they were all related to one another. Skye, Traci, the manager, the family man. I don't know what first sparked this idea of mine. Even if I never spoke to any of them personally, I know that there's some kind of story that connects them all together. For the sake of my imagination, this is what I've thought up.

WEIRDSHST

Credits:

++[][IAN YOUR NAME IS HERE FOR NO REASON][]++

(_-=Lindsay, thanks for the imput=-_)

(This takes place through Skye's eyes everyone, just so you don't get confused)

Weird

The first time I met Traci, she wanted to die. She wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. She didn't want to think about anything anymore. Too bad for her, she was out of heroin and her body's dependence on it was catching up to her. It reduced her to a child screaming for mommy. And I had the inconvenience of filling in as mommy.

Now, I'm not very good with suicidal people at all. Or maybe I'm the best handler there possibly is? I give them what they want. The way I think of it, I'm a psychiatrist using reverse psychology on her patient. One of the most essential elements of commiting suicide is knowing that there will be people that'll miss you when you're gone. Friends, family, what have you.

Deprive them of that, and they won't do it.

It's strange, really. When you think you're helping them out, you're actually killing them.

"I've got my dad's pistol pointed at my head!" this guy, Richie, called me to say about two years ago. My newest ex-boyfriend, two days running.

At that time, I had just gotten out of the shower and was feeling pretty relaxed. The bed was calling me to it.

"Well, I'm waiting to hear a gunshot," I told him casually.

"Wait! What?"

"Go on. Pull the fucking trigger dipshit."

"Hey ... hey! I'll do it, you know!"

"Yeah. I won't be getting a good night's sleep until I know you're dead."

"Fuck you!"

"You'll like things better when you're dead. Trust me, I know. Change is good."

Click.

In the end, Richie never pulled the trigger. And, damn it all to hell, I couldn't sleep that night.

Fast-forward a few months and Laura's got her head buried in my lap, crying her eyes out on my new light blue prom dress. She just stumbled over her boyfriend making out with another girl outside in the hallway.

"I'm not good enough for anyone," she's sobbing pathetically. Meanwhile, I've got my eyes out toward the dance floor, looking at Richie, who's dancing with this ugly fat chick trying to make me jealous.

Laura says more things, but whatever her words, they were drowned out by the sound of the techno beat the DJ had going. I'm able to make out the words "failure" and "suicide," but I could be mistaken. Hell, she could have said "mailer" and "loser's side." But that's stretching it, isn't it?
"Right, right," I say. "No one likes you, you're pathetic. You should end it all now." I don't even know what the hell I'm saying. My favorite song just started playing. "Go kill yourself. You'll feel better in the morning. Trust me on that. A change of pace is good."

She looks at me with these big brown puppy-dog eyes and bawls even harder, burying her head so far into my lap I thought she was trying to climb into my womb.

"You're so right!" she says emphatically. She pulls herself up and cups my head in her hands. Her eyes stare into mine with a look of determination. A drunken look of determination. Rheumy as her eyes were, I didn't need to look at them to notice she had been drinking heavily that night. Her breath smelled like a hobo's.

"Know wh..what I'm gonna DO??" Laura continues. I tune out her speech of new beginnings and newfound strength and concentrate on wondering who had the beer at this prom and where I could get it.

The next year, our senior year, Laura never really changed much. Hell, she went straight back to being the old, emotional, slutty girl I always knew. And, damn it all, she didn't kill herself either.

And now this.

Traci was the younger sister of one of my friends. Turns out, I've seen her before once or twice, but her sister never bothered to introduce us to each other. And that really saddened me, because it looked like she had useful connections to drugs as far as I could see from the tell-tale syringe in her hand.

We were both at the same house party, after the homecoming crap at school. Richie was hanging around downstairs playing beer pong with the other football players. Laura was upstairs in a room moaning and groaning with her date-for-the-day. I'd have been much happier if she commited suicide that night of the junior prom. More boys for me.

I was leaning against a wall, my eyes forward feasting on the drunken antics of the half-naked Russel when Traci fell into my arms, clutching her syringe, and looking up at me with these eyes so bloodshot I thought they would burst in a crimson explosion. Actually, that would've been pretty cool.

"Help ... me," she struggles to say.

"Aw shit," I curse under my breath as I watch Russel walk away with a few other guys. I turn my eyes to Traci.

"What the fuck do you want?" I say, "Damn it, Russel just--"

"Please, help me!" Traci screams, dropping her syringe and grabbing my sleeves with an intense grip.

By now, we've attracted a scene. The homecoming queen's laughing her perfect laugh over by the sofa with her perfect friends. Football players are fantasizing a lesbian sex scene. But for the most part, everyone else was either too drunk or too high to even notice something was happening beyond their little world.

What to do? I ask my brain.

Ditch the bitch. You need sex with Russel.

But how do I do it?

Give her your drugs! That should shut her up.

I didn't bring my drugs to the party. Richie was announcing he'd supply everyone.

Give her your money and go have sex!

I reach into my pocket and dig through the nickels and pennies to grab a twenty dollar bill I had stashed in there. I shove the bill into her face.

"Help yourself," I say.

She says, "No, I need you!" The twenty falls to the floor unclaimed, so I bend down to pick it up.

There was a sudden thud across the room, which thankfully drew attention away from our scene and onto Russel. He had passed out in his drunken indulgence and was now snoring peacefully on the carpet, half-empty beer bottle spilling the rest of its contents on the floor.

Fuck, I tell my brain. He's unconscious.

That's not necessarily a bad thing ....

Next thing I know, Traci's got a firm grip on my hand and she's leading me upstairs. Past the cheerleading squad. Past the football players. Past the homecoming queen. Past my opportunity for sex tonight.

She takes me into the bathroom and closes and locks the door. The fluorescent light burns brightly above us, emiting a dull hum that's too quiet to distract us from the sound of Laura's twenty-third consecutive orgasm three rooms down the hall.

Traci's still clutching her syringe like a teddy bear. Without warning, she drops the syringe on the tiled floor and lunges for me and hugs me with all her strength. I stand there not knowing what to do. Should I say something? Comfort her? Push her away from me? Instead, my hand reaches up and pats her half-heartedly on the back.

"I need your help again," she says.

"Again?"

Pause. Rewind.

Last time we met, she says, I gave her the best advice she'd ever heard. She says, it was just after her boyfriend broke up with her. He called her a slut. Accused her of cheating on him. Said she betrayed his trust. Didn't want anything to do with her anymore. The usual teenage drama stuff.

She says, she followed her sister that night to be with her friends. People she didn't know. But she felt miserable the whole night, because she had no one to talk to, no one to confide in. She was thinking bad thoughts. Murder. Suicide.

That's when I turned to her, she says, and offered the first sample heroin she'd ever try. I said to her, "Never had it before?"

She shook her head.

"It's good for you," I said. "Trust me, I know. Change is good."

Fast-forward back to the present.

"You're saying the best advice someone ever gave you was on what drug to take?" I say.

"No, it's the message behind it. Open new doors ... change direction."

I cock an eyebrow and stare at her. "Honey, I was fucking stoned when I said that. If I wasn't high I would've told you, 'Go kill yourself.'"

"Well, are you high now?"

"No."

"Can you help me?"

I say, "Go kill yourself. It'll feel good. Trust me, I know."

She smiles and chuckles, ignoring me. Right now, I'm cursing on the inside because I don't have anything to help me escape from this. I don't have a phone to hang up, drugs or beer to offer, and apparently, money won't buy me out of this either.

"Look," Traci starts, "I get these weird dreams every night. I see people I know OD'ing, or getting hit by cars, or falling out of windows..."

I already stopped listening to her after she said "weird."

The bathroom door swings wide open and Jeremy walks in. Jeremy's this big doofus whose face is a pepperoni pizza of pimples. Oh yeah, he works at McDonald's, and the grease is making his skin's condition worse. As if it could get better.

"Oh, um ... occu--" he starts, but before he can finish, I put my arms around him and smother his face with kisses. There are worse ways to get out of bad situations.

"Just follow my lead and I'll give you what you want," I tell him. The dorkus nods his head slowly. He's overpowered by my sexiness. I love being in a position of such power. You can get practically anything you want this way.

I turn my head from the pimply pimp and stare at Traci. "Look," I say. "I kinda agreed to give Jerry here a favor...."

"I knew you were going to say that," Traci says nonchalantly. "You're about to say that you owe him a sexual favor just so you don't have to deal with me ... then you're going to end up giving him a quick fuck. You'll run out the door and head home because there's nothing else to do here, and you're already pretty weirded out."

Son of a bitch!

I look at her with my eyebrow cocked. "Okay, am I that predictable?" I ask.

"Not even. I know exactly what's going to happen tonight. Saw it in my dream. And if I were you, I'd listen to me ... because giving Jeremy a quick fuck will land you with an STD. I swear."

Meanwhile, Jeremy backed out of the room slowly, a nervous grin on his face. At the mention of the STD, he bolted away from the bathroom door and back downstairs. If you want to know the truth, I have no idea what Jeremy was doing here in the first place. I don't recall anyone at this party being friends with him.

"Yeah, he's already received sexual favors for helping people cheat on tests at school," Traci said. "That includes your friend Laura, who gave him the disease. Jeremy's here because he wanted to warn Laura not to do anything stupid ... too bad for whoever she's with now."

As if on cue, we hear Laura moan in orgasm again.

I shake my head. What the hell's going on? I ask myself.

"What do you want? You said I can help you, so tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do," I say. I'm totally defeated here.

"I need you to kill me."

It took a moment for that to register. In the meantime, I stood motionless, my mouth gaping wide open. A million thoughts ran through my head at the same time, but I couldn't make sense out of any of them. They all seemed to say something with the word "psycho" in it.

"....kill you?" I say incredulously.

"Yup."

Yeah, she definitely was psychotic. She's even happy about this.

"Uh ... hey, I don't do murders ..."

"No, but you do assisted suicides. Laura and Richie, for instance. You wanted them to go kill themselves."

"Well, yeah, maybe. But I didn't care about them--"

"And in the 5 minutes you've known me here, I'm suddenly the world to you?"

"N-no .. but why?"

"Because those weird dreams I'm getting are too damn depressing. I mean, every night I see some girl get run over by a car, or some guy jump off the roof of a building. It's too much, and I don't want to deal with it anymore."

"Then kill yourself, yourself! I don't want your blood on my hands."

"Well ... the thing is, I can't do it. My dream last night ... well ... it was that I would kill myself. I'd slit my wrist over the sink right here. But I want one more surprise in my life. I want to prove my dream wrong for once."

Yeah, she was totally insane. No doubt about it. This is one-flew-over-the-cuckoo's-nest insane. Charles Manson insane. Wearing-purple-in-public insane. I dont't want a part of this ...

But fuck it! If it'll make her happy, it'll make me happy. I figure, if I could tell people to kill themselves, why not take it into my own hands? Hell, it's not like I'm murdering anyone. She's asking me to do it. The law wouldn't have anything on me, either. I'm not even (completely) drunk yet.

I turned my back to her and let out a heavy sigh. Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to help her kill herself?

Fuck yes.

"Well?" I say. "What do I do?"

"I've always wanted to die through an OD ..."

Okay, this is what happens when you inject heroin into your system. I got this information off a science website intended for 8 year olds. No kidding. Injecting it into a vein gets you high in under ten seconds, and is therefore the preferred way to do it. This drug works a hell of a lot faster than its sister morphine. The user feels analgesia and euphoria. If you don't know what those mean, you've probably never experienced them. User feels less anxiety, sedated and drowsy, blah blah blah. Anyway, overdosing on the stuff can land you into a coma and even death. It was death that we were looking for, so I was looking to blow about $800's worth of heroin into Traci's body.

I wouldn't mind dying like this either.

The thing is, we never got past $40.

I went downstairs and secured Traci's syringe. It had been sitting there this whole time, unmoved, unused, and collecting germs and bacteria. But who cares about AIDS when you want to die anyway? Richie brought supplies, for lack of a better, for chemistry. I got the heroin ready and administered this first dosage into Traci's bloodstream. Her eyes lit up the moment I did it. Her entire body seemed to go limp with pleasure, her mind taking her high in the sky.

Successful with that first dose, I started getting another one ready. Making injectable heroin is a very complicated process that's described in pretty much full detail on the DEA site. If you really want to know, check out how to make Heroin No. 4. Or you could just pop in Pulp Fiction and watch John Travolta. That's probably the more fun way to do your research.

Anyway, second dose is going into Traci when the bathroom door swings open. Standing there's Richie and Laura.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" Richie screams at the top of his lungs.

The dose is halfway into Traci's bloodstream when Laura comes and rips me away from her.

"God damn it!" Richie's yelling. "I didn't think either of you would go through with this all the way!"

I stand upright and compose myself. Traci's on the floor in her euphoric reverie, with Laura right beside her stroking her hair. Richie's shaking his head.

"Christ," he says. "You really are a psycho bitch."

He's looking straight at me.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I say.

Laura clutches Traci's hair and whispers something about being stupid and why.

"This was all just set up to get back at you for telling us to kill ourselves," Richie says. "This was just to teach you a lesson. That you should value other peoples' lives, not try to take them!"

Yeah, I'm the best handler of suicidal people there is.

"I can't believe you were seriously going to OD her!"

I give them what they want.

"Don't you have a conscience?"

When you think you're helping them out ...

"Christ! Is she even responding?"

... you're really killing them.

It was about a week later when I ran into Traci again. She didn't overdose that night. She wasn't having dreams about people dying. She wasn't on the verge of suicide. But she did want to get the hell out of town.

I was walking out of the mall when I bumped into her.

"I knew you'd be here," she said.

"Fuck, don't start with that again."

"Sorry. Look, I just wanted to let you know that I'm skipping town today. I need to go somewhere new ... to tell the truth, I can't stand the fact that I let myself be used by the likes of Richie and Laura."

She jerked her thumb in the direction of a burly man on a motorcycle. He had this awesome double-headed blue dragon tatooed on his arm. I'd kill for something like that.

"He's on his way out to Long Island," she continues, "and said he'll drop me off in some real out-of-the-way place. I've got a friend out there who'll probably let me live with her."

I shrug. "Why're you telling me?"

"Because I really need your advice this time. I mean ... I don't know what I'm going to do once I get out there."

Scratching my head, I search for an answer. "Get yourself a job. That's all. Work at Burger King or something till you can do something better for yourself. You'll feel better, trust me on that."

I think that's the first time I ever actually gave sincere advice.

Traci nodded her head. "Yeah ... yeah! I'll do it. Thanks."

She hugged me tight and hurried off to the motorcycle.

"And lay off the freaking heroin!" I called after her.

She waved goodbye and the bike went off. I suppose that in a Hollywood, fairy tale ending, we all would be living happily ever after. The damn thing is, our lives aren't over yet.

Get a job. I considered those words. And for the first time I thought, maybe I should trust my own advice?