It’s the beginning of yet another school year and Pepito walks up the stairs two to three steps at a time, almost skipping like a giddy school girl, with a smile for ear to ear, all while whistling The Super Mario theme song and holding his new house keys (dorm keys) in one hand and a ghetto suitcase (a black trash-bag) in the other. I can’t wait to finally sleep on a bed. My bed. Finally… I’m home. No more house-crashing sofa hopping for me. After a summer of being an unwanted house guest who over stayed his welcome, a stairway was all that stood in his way. Pepito ascended up the stairway, passing the first floor and then the second but with every step the air grew stale like old garbage in the sun but ironically the sunlight began to die out as well. But Pepito climbs on unhindered by his surroundings and continues to skip and whistle his ass away.
Pepito reaches the top of the staircase, but there isn’t a welcome barge or even a RA with a smile to say welcome only a long eerie dark hallway with flickering lights, which seemed deserted like an old ghost town.
Dang! All that’s missing is a Dustdevil and a giant tumbleweed. Pepito’s imagination runs wild as it always does but today at that moment it was subdue by the sight of his key with the room number 3316 engraved on it. As he walks down the hall scanning left and right for room 3316, he glances but doesn’t notice the hole in the wall, the cracked fire extinguisher, and a bulletin broad with its papers withering away. His imagination remains subdue. There where no thoughts of horror film monster or a horde of zombie spewing from the dorm room just the thought of room 3316. Just the thought of home. The lights continue to flicker eerily as he continued to venture down the hall searching for home. 3312…no… 3313…no…3314…no… 3315…no…
And then there it was, room 3316. He rushes toward the door that only two steps away, but he couldn’t find the keyhole like a drunk scratching the door panel trying to get into his car.
One war of wits later and a couple failed attempts, the door gives in and Pepito is victorious. Even after three trips up and down the staircase and three ghetto suitcases, one clear plastic drawer, and a Frankenstein desktop composed of Dell, EMachines, and Alaska later, the room is empty and narrow. Pepito recreates his monster of a computer one piece at a time in an attempt to communicate to the outside world, but it is as if he is the last man alive. No one was online on MSN Messenger, Myspace, or even Facebook. He just sits there for what might have been hours. Pepito never noticed the stale air, the dying sunlight as he acceded up the stairway, nor the hole in the wall, the cracked fire extinguisher, or the bulletin broad with its papers weltering away but the stale off white color of the walls began to breathe contracting in and out attempting to suffocate him. He notices how the two door-size mirrors add to the ambience and reflected nothing but the emptiness. He notices the sound of the silence and how it grows louder and louder like an undying ring. He notices the old gray unsatin bed, the broken mini-fridge where he can’t put the food he doesn’t have, the microwave he can’t use cause the mini-fridge is broken and has no where to put his Hot-Pockets if he had any, and the hole in the wall where the TV isn’t at and should be if he had one. He even notices the couple of unfinished books he never read passed page 14 and how tempting they seem but yet he doesn’t open them. For the past three years, Pepito has lived with three of his fraternity brother and someone would be up no matter what time of day, night, or wee-hours of the morning. Up until this point in Pepito’s life, he has never truly lived alone. So Pepito sits. He waits. He even sleeps until its time to go to class and, then, he sits some more. He listens. He writes, but never utters a word except when he says “Here” when the professor calls role and when he said “No, no one is sitting there” when a pair of girls where looking for sits. This routine continues for seven school days throughout all his class. He sits. He listens and writes without utters a word and leaves unnoticed.
II
The clock strikes lunch, and his belly rumbles just as any other college student who has endured the suffrage of Raman Noodle Soup over the years, but this year is different because Pepito is living at the freshmen dorm where a meal plan is included.
This meal plan is AWESOME! I can’t even afford toilet paper but yet I eat like a KING. Shit I can’t even remember when was the last time I had three meals in a day.
Pepito swims through the crowd like a defensive tackle swims through an offensive of line, something he had never done on campus. Upon entering the dinner, he’s bombarded by chit-and-chatter radiating from all corners as he’s engulfed by a giant school of fishes pushing him to the outer edge like an old sea turtle who is too slow to adapt. A feeling which he has not felt since 1999 when Pepito was only 11 years old in the 6th Grade. Pepito scans the room fulfilled with squirming faceless-face trying to find a familiar soul but only finds a sea divided by species: There are the Athletics divided among themselves by sport and sex, the Foreigners divided among themselves by nationality, the Mean Girls, the Book Worms, the Small Towners like those of Zapata and Carrizo Springs, the Big City Slickes like those of San Antonio and Houston, and finally the Locals who still where their high school’s colors. Pepito reaches into his backpack unable to find his ID card as a line of hungry freshmen build up behind him.
Pepito feels their eyes piercing his neck and hears theirs whispers echoes across the room as he desperately pulls out his ID but once again he saying nothing but “Hello” and “Have a good day” to the clerk but goes unnoticed. Pepito walks in line with a tray in hand and slowly moves to gets his meal. Just as how Pepito goes unnoticed he can’t help but notice that something is staring at him for the corner of his eye. He turns slightly but the image can’t escape his peripheral vision so he embraces his curiosity and turns. It’s a cow.
It’s nothing more than a poster of a cow from California.
Great cheese comes from happy cows and happy cows come from California. I wonder how Cali would be.
And just like always his train of thought was gone to who know where. One thing leads to another, which leads to another just as they always do until he heard the sound. Mooooooooooooo…
…
The grass the once grew here dyed a yellowish-orange death and the soil that once was full of nurturance has become brittle clay from over exposure to the blazing sun that nearly touches the Earth. The heat is over bearing as he beginning to drench sweat from every pore in his body and even sweat drains for his tear duct. Pepito looks around to find someone, anyone but this is no one. There is nothing but the dying Earth and blazing sun that grows eerily closer except from afar he sees something, a white picket fence on top of a hill. Pepito runs up the hill but the hill grows steeper and steeper. Pepito falls to all four to make the ascend but the hill continues to grow steeper becoming a wall. Pepito grabs and pulls the dying grass for extra leverage but the Earth fights back and the Sun burns even brighter. But Pepito didn’t fear the dirt or sunlight year of 4-H made sure of that. One step, one hand at a time, Pepito made his ascend up what once was a hill and now is a behemoth of a wall until he reached the edge of the white picket fence. Over the horizon of the picket fences laid a green pasture greener than green. Then he heard the sound again. Mooooooooooooo…. And there were all his friends. He saw Albert, Danny, Nicky, Bob, John, Ashley, Kathy, Luke, and Georgy all in their business attire. Danny had his black suit and tie while holding his leather briefcase. Luke was covered in grease from head to toe in his Diesel Mechanic uniform while rubbing his hands on his dirty rag and then there was Nicky frolicking in around in her pink toe-toe.
Everyone’s so happy. This must be like California. Everyone he had ever known was there mooing and chewing. It’s been six years since he graduated high school. Faces have come and gone while others simply fade away but the core has always remained the same in some way or another, but today, Pepito sits alone amongst a crowd eating food that’s not great but not horrible but good enough of and plenty of. Once he finished his meal he walks home, but Pepito still feels the stares as he walks pass them. Pepito does what he did all those years ago in the 6th Grade. He looks down towards the floor and entertains himself by not stepping on the cracks. Once within the walls of his room, the mental institution hotel rental without padding, he attempts to reconnect with the outside world but to no avail. There are no sign of the life that he once knew. So he sits and waits and sits and waits desiring that human contact, a connection. But his only connection to the outside world is that of an unflushed toilet he shares with a stranger. Pepito is separated from the outside world by 9feet (his knows cause he has paced the room countless of times) and two half foot paper thin wall but he remains confined within the contracting walls to reflect within the emptiness as the sounds of nothing grow louder and louder. So Pepito sits. He waits and waits so more. Pepito then reaches towards his bookshelf to get one of his many unfinished books and turns to page 13 and begins to reads as he waits for the world to sign on.
FIN