Three Minutes.

Three minutes.

There are five days in a school week.
Eight hours each afternoon (after school) before sleep.
And I get three minutes.

It's true what they say about summer love:
that its fleeting, uncertain and over in a heart beat.
But while it lasts, it's pefection.
The strike of midnight nowhere near.

Well, summer's ended.
Perfection's gone.
It's three minutes to twelve.
It's all I've got.

Three minutes.

Is it even worth my time?

Sometimes, you need a break from life.
The weekend was that.
I will go back to posting, I promise.
I will. I will. I will.

Stealing on Halloween

Halloween.

On Halloween there are certain two things you can expect:

Candy

and

Costumes.

One thing you don't expect on Halloween:

A barbie doll.

The fork, the magic 8 ball, the crayon, the jean genie and the sleepwalker are walking down the hall. Not the most likely bunch, I will admit, but oh well, stranger things have happened, I thought. My mind went straight to the jolly rancher candies in my trick-or-treat bag, a combination of grape and orange. The person who thought of that idea was insane, I thought, laughing inside. The two worst flavors, together. How fitting, I thought.

As the five of us are walking down the hall, I see a bright pink thing near one of the doorways.

As I get closer, I get a better look. It's a barbie doll, a pink, short skirted, big boobed, barbie.

The others scramble, afraid of the beast. Me, I'm a rebel. I steal the damn thing.

It's only my first steal of the night. Later, I have accomplices.

We're on the final floors of the building. Our bags are light, and our tummies desperate for some sugar. Candy controls our conscience.

I'm the first one who spots it.

I run, and the others follow, curious.

They see it too.

A red bowl, filled to the top with candy. All sorts of candy. Lollipops, Smarties, Hershey's Kisses, everything you could imagine.

A stare down ensues...first the bowl, then each other, then the bowl.

We remember all the empty bowls we've found in the last hour.

We remember our empty stomachs, begging for candy.

We feel our bags, much too light for our walk down over 30 flights.

We throw caution to the wind...

Our hands dig into the bowl, again, and again, and again. I feel my hand start to scrape the bottom. I see others hands, candy slipping between their fingers. We tell ourselves to slow down, but soon, too soon, there's nothing left.

We run from the scene of the crime, maniacs, laughing hysterically.

What a rush, we think. Criminal acts, even minor ones are not our style.

Then again, there's a certain happiness, a certain high that comes with doing something, even something minor such as this, and getting away with it.

Despite it all, watching her sitting there, laughing down the stairs, unable to move, my mind is elsewhere as I look down into my bag and my eye catches something pink.

The barbie doll.

Suddenly, one voice stands out above the others.

Its a voice I know all too well. Its voice is often the manifestation of my conscience. It's a voice which tonight is missing from the crowd.

The voice has betrayed me, so tonight, I betray it.

I ignore the voice, and laugh, menacingly.

Even so, bitterness still remains.

If only the barbie was to blame.

Halloween just isn't the same, and I hate to think of why.