Anarchy

Day 1 - Anarchy  

Awake  

“Charlie, if you are not ready in the next sixty seconds, I will be leaving without you!” My mother literally screeched upstairs to me. I was frantic, and quickly threw some clothes onto my body, some old, and tatty baseball shirt was what my hand found first and so I guess, that is what it would appear that I was to be wearing for the day. I fumbled around at my dresser, clawing at various hair scrunchies and make up items and piling them onto my face in whatever order I picked them up. I am pretty sure that I put lipstick on as eye shadow, but oh well - I am never one for first impressions anyway! I bolted towards the mirror, and as soon as I laid eyes upon my ‘half-medusa like’ state, I knew that my mother wasn’t going to be impressed.   

I slowly ambled down the staircase desperately snatching at any dying hope of dignity that I could have left. After reaching the last stair, I jeered, and jostled, back and forth, and then my ultimate clumsiness beat me in the battle to retain posture as I stumbled down the cliff as it know seemed to be and was met by the unrelenting tile floor that lay beneath my lump of a body. Skidding a few feet, I somehow ended up at the feet of my mother who didn’t bare to mutter even a single breath and just walked over my stagnant body, making sure just to clip the end of my stomach as she did so. She strutted out of the cold, dark house of mine in her uptight breaches, slender high - heeled boots and with her glazing hair stretched back to form a bun that fell on her scalp with a sense of importance. I am careful to use the word house, because to me a house is somewhere to sleep, a home is somewhere that you can love and be comfortable in ; and this building that I have learned to acquaint myself in, is most definitely not…  

Just as I had managed to force my arms to listen to my brain, and gained enough mental strength to bother to try getting up, the frightful roar of the car engine sliced through my determined aura and then when the tires screeched along the main road, assuring me she had left for sure, this entire atmosphere had diminished and I slumped straight back onto the hard floor. Well, at least it was more comfortable than the ‘posture-mending’ chairs my mother had invested in and the wafer thin mattress that I was lucky to have been allowed. I actually managed to grab a couple more minutes sleep that my mother had put an end to with her piercing scream. Every cloud, eh?  

My dozed state was short lived though, as the radio sprang to life, as normal on the 8 ‘o’clock chime to give us lovely people an ounce of the news. Did I really care? No. Did I wan’t to listen? No. Did I have to listen? Well, my mother informs me that it is compulsory to listen to the broadcast and so… of course, we abide by these rules and tune in our ears every car journey to the ‘Throcidites’ bus station in the morning. I peel myself off of the tiles and prize my way to the radio, turning it odd in a silent act of defiance. You may ask why she drops me at the bus station, not at my school like most others, and where I should be going - well, the answer to that is quite simple, my mother is so uptight about these things, she doesn’t wan’t to mix with any other families from a lower class than us. I don’t believe it either. I would much prefer to be just a normal family, and lead a normal life, but mine is far from it. The complete opposite in fact.   School starts at half past eight, you are to be there on time, and registered by quarter to nine. First lesson starts at ten to nine, second at eleven ‘o’clock and then a further two until lunch at two thirty. You get a half an hour break and lessons commence again at three lasting until school ends at five. I wish the hours weren’t so long, I wish there was more of a break for such a full day, I wish that we didn’t half it at all, and I can be home - schooled like the Actanides and the Cruggers. But I can’t and so each day for me is literally a chore to complete, a race to crawl through and a journey to live on. 

  My brain suddenly flickers back alight and I remember where I should be. It is ten past and I haven’t even left yet. School takes twenty minutes to reach by car and bus, and so I have thirty five minutes to walk. I am never going to make that. I am going to have to run. I am going to have to get all hot and sweaty through my mother’s own selfishness. I am going to be late. I quickly snatch my satchel from the glass coffee table that has been precariously placed in the exact centre of the room, not too far to the left, nor to the right, exactly in the centre - just as my mother requested.