The Shattered Genesis (Eternity)

The Shattered Genesis

Part One: The Exodus

Brynna

             
I pretended not to notice the two unabashedly obnoxious college jocks in the corner of the room talking about me. Despite the differences in our
chromosomes that some would say result in me, a woman, neve
r being able to understand them, little boys, I could imagine their inane, sexually charged babble as clearly as I could see the untouched drink on the table in front of me. I could feel their horm
ones raging and their egos inflating vividly, as if they were actually drilling said babble painfully into my ears. I had never had much respect for younger men. I had been around too long to be swayed by what they believed to be smooth-talking.

             
I was twe
nty-two physically.
Only
physically.

             
I began to contemplate the true meaning of age and time, only to be baffled a mere minute into my mental debate. Normally, I could sit and stew over the topic for hours, attempting to make sense of it all. But that nig
ht, I just wanted my brain to shut down, to submerge itself in silence. I was sick of raging thoughts.

             
Instead of trying to understand the deeper meaning of things, I switched my concentration over to the bar I was in and the patrons that surrounded me. A
group of girls around my physical age were sitting directly behind me having an enthusiastic debate about something that was obviously of dire importance. I allowed myself to listen in as one of these girls allowed her spirited indignation to reach its ma
ximum point of intensity; she raised her voice suddenly, shouting about an 'idol' and something called a jay-low. I wondered if perhaps idolatry had become a new college trend. It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

             
I honed in on a conversation that was occur
ring between a man and a woman who were also of my physical age. Every now and then, they would smile at something the other said. They looked boringly normal, like every other couple I had seen throughout my many years of existence. They were talking abou
t so many different things I decided it would eventually become frustrating trying to keep up. I shut them out and moved on to a group of particularly average looking people in the back of the room.

             
“I am sorry but there is no way that Tolstoy is better t
han Dickens!” One of them exclaimed as he slammed his hand on the table. His friends laughed at his show of spirit.

             
Well, at least they knew who Tolstoy and Dickens were. However, I found their frequent hand-gesturing and the very discreet way they were l
ooking around to make sure people were listening to their conversation to be brash and quite frankly, aggravating.
“Look at how smart we are, world. You can only wish you knew what we were talking about!”
Oh, Lord, spare me from such ludicrous
shows of art
ificiality...

             
Now one might wonder what a condescending non-human would be doing in a place like that. Was I so miserable that I had to sit smack in the middle of a rerun of some ridiculous 90's prime-time drama or some wannabe smartly written sitcom and
denounce their players in my mind? The short answer: Yes. It made me feel superior.

             
My thoughts were rudely interrupted when one of the aforementioned obnoxious jocks approached my lonely table by the window. I know how cliché it must sound but the smell
of alcohol that wafted over me as soon as he opened his crooked mouth forced images of unshaven homeless men buried under piles of filthy rags to pop into my mind in unwelcome clarity.

             
“
His future
...” I thought to myself before having to fight off a smirk
as the next thought tumbled to the forefront of my mind. “
Okay, that was awful...
”

             
“I don't recognize you.” He told me loudly over the sea of voices as he plopped his remarkably
sizable posterior into the seat across from me. The chair creaked under his
weight.

             
Was chivalry really
that
dead?

             
“I don't recognize you and I know everyone.”
             
Now, I had two different courses of action plotted and ready to go in my head. I could humor him and allow him to think he had a shot only so I could turn him down flat
after he made his sloppy, drunken pitch. Or I could turn him away and be a humanitarian about the whole damn thing.

             
“Everyone?” I responded as I turned my head and looked at the television propped up on the wall behind the bar. The news was on; on the scr
een there was some diagram of the solar system with an arrow pointing far away from the reaches of our sun. I turned my head to look at him. In the dim light his features contorted, taking away his boyish good looks and replacing them with the features of
a quizzical spider monkey; his arms were elongated and drooping at his sides and his uncommonly dark eyes were studying me with more curiosity than I expected. After blinking once, his appearance shifted again and that time, I was startled by the change; h
is nose had flattened and his nostrils grew taller and thinner. In his black eyes, I saw a dangerous lust. I had just taken a sip of my watered down margarita and wondered if perhaps it was stronger than I realized.

             
“Everyone.” He replied and I was tempte
d to say, “Everyone?” back again to see how long I could keep him repeating himself. “And I have
definitely
never seen you before.”

             
“You wouldn't. I don't go to school here.”

             
“You don't?” He asked, his voice rising as he prepared to give an impassioned
monologue on why his overpriced Ivy League school was the best in the world. “It's only the greatest...”
             
Well, that was enough human contact for one evening...

             
“Hey, I am sure that is going to be one rousing speech but I'm actually on my way out. It was
so
...” I rolled my eyes to the sky, “nice talking to you.”

             
Anyone with half a brain would be able to tell that I was being sarcastic. But this young man did not have half a brain.

             
“I have a scholarship there. Football.”

             
“Yes, that is one big deal. Reall
y, it is.” I started to gather up my bag and stand. He rose to his feet. “I'm sure you are just thrilled about it.”
             
“Oh, I get it.” He pointed at me, nodding slightly as something dawned on him that escaped me, strangely enough. “You like girls, right?”

             
“No.” I replied, unable to keep a small, disdainful smile from my face. “I just don't like boys.”

             
The girls who had been gabbing about the idols exclaimed in what I assumed to be shock but as it turns out, was a thrilled cry of feminine unity. One of them
held their hand up to me as I passed and for the hell of it, I slapped it, allowing her to believe that we had formed an estrogen-charged bond, however short-lived it may have been. At the very least, I gifted those girls with a line to use when dribbling
morons in a bar came up to them looking to, as the young people call it, “score.”

             
Once I walked outside, the wonderfully harsh winter wind filled my lungs and cut at my exposed skin. I walked to the curb and dug into my purse, looking for my ever-present
pack of Camels. I found them and pulled one from the pack, crushing the filter and putting the cigarette between my lips. Now, for the real challenge: the lighter search.

             
It was while I was rooting around in my bag that I became aware of someone standing
next to me. I looked to see a middle-aged man leaning against the street-light's post and outstretching his lit lighter to me. I know it sounds girlish and stupid, but I had always wanted someone to light my cigarette for me. I couldn't fight the strange
glow I felt well up inside of my chest as I leaned forward and lit my cigarette in the flame he was holding.

             
“Thank you.” I said and after that, I was lost as to what to say, so in staying true to my social awkwardness, I studied him closely for a moment.
He was at least forty, perhaps even a little older. I was never very skilled at pinning down someone's age by mere guessing. He was in need of a shave, but not desperately; his stylish goatee was starting to spread out across his face like an army of
insu
rgent troops waging war on an untouched plain. His hair was gelled and styled in that perfectly calculated mess that men seemed to favor in those days.

             
“You're welcome.” He replied politely. He seemed to take no notice of me analyzing every detail of his
appearance. “So, not to sound strange, but I was watching you.”
             
“That sounds very strange.” I told him as I exhaled smoke.

             
“I know it does. In the bar, I was watching you. You seemed awfully disdainful.”
             
“That's my general state of being, I suppose. I d
idn't think that it was so obvious.”

             
“Well, I can assure you that it is.”
             
“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.” I looked out at the street as the cars flew past, letting the noises of the evening fill my ears in hopes of drowning out any more of his observ
ations on my character. But it isn't easy to drown out someone who is standing right next to you and even the horns blaring and the rushing whir of the traffic couldn't suppress his voice.

             
“Do you often shoot down the advances of young men?”

             
“Who are you
, the official spokesperson for the conversational and social rights of horny, drunken, college frat boys?” I asked, knowing that I was being prickly and as he suggested, disdainful. But as
I
said, disdain was constantly flowing from my lips and mind. It w
as my dominant status.

             
“No. Just an interested observer.”

             
“If you're trying to avoid sounding strange, please be aware that your attempt is not even close to believable, let alone totally convincing. You are failing miserably.”

             
“So are you.”

             
“I don't t
ry to sound normal anymore.” I informed him somewhat more defensively than I had intended. “It just makes me look as pathetically stupid as those young twits in that bar.”

             
“Aren't you their same age?”

             
“I am. But I'm not a twit.”

             
“I like your use of the
word 'twit.' One rarely hears that in conversation these days.”

             
“I like to keep a wide variety of insults handy, even if I am not insulting a person or a group of people to their face or faces, respectively.”

             
“Are you an English major?”
             
I chuckled to my
self for a moment, thinking about how odd the conversation was becoming. Was he trying to pick me up or was he trying to annoy me? Neither option seemed particularly befitting of him.

             
“I would have been, I guess.” I told him. “At least you went with 'Engl
ish major.' Generally, when people hear me talk, they assume I must have a mental deficiency. One young man, who must have thought he was God's gift to the mental health profession, told me once that he felt, in his not-so-professional opinion that I was s
uffering from Asperger's Syndrome.”

             
“And what did you say?” The man asked me. “May I?” He indicated the pack of cigarettes that I had started to put back into my bag.

             
I handed one to him and watched closely as he lit it up. I couldn't help noticing that
it was quite attractive the way he expertly inhaled and exhaled the smoke.

             
Snapping out of my own observance, I answered his question.

“I said that was an insult to people with Asperger's Syndrome.”

             
He was the one that laughed softly now.

             
“I read a lot
as a child and still read a lot today. That might be the reason for my advanced sentence structure, I suppose. I did take a test while I was in school to determine my IQ. Apparently, it was quite high. But I've never put much stock into that. I find tests
that are meant to define one's intelligence to be, in most cases, horribly misleading.”