Urges

 Sometimes there are moments when you just feel like doing a particular thing. Like when you get home after a hard day at work and you really crave a cup of tea or when you wake up first thing in the morning and experience a burning desire to have a nice refreshing shower. In my case, I have recently been feeling incessant urges to water board someone.
 To those who think water boarding sounds like a form of leisure activity to be performed on some sunny remote island by tanned men and women in swimming suits, I would say that they are half right. It is a form of torture consisting of covering the victim's face with a piece of soaked cloth and pouring water onto it, thus giving the victim a perfect sensation of drowning, arguably the ultimate in sensory illusions (which makes it sound like some sort of Disney Land attraction). It has most recently made the news when it came to light that interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, a remote sunny island used to imprison a lot of tanned people, regularly used water boarding on the detainees. Whether the interrogators counted it as a leisure activity and whether the detainees were wearing swimsuits when it happened is yet an undisclosed mystery.
 I wake up in the morning, sunlight crawling lazily into my window through the half open blinds (which I still treat with a mixture of suspicion and fear as I'm not entirely sure how to operate its complicated system of strings and thinly cut plastic boards yet) and walk somewhat unsteadily to my kitchen, sleep still blurring my vision. Upon arriving in the open plan culinary hub of our household, I lumber up to the sink and with a twist of the gleaming silver tap, fill a cup with cool water. As I lift the cup to drink, I ponder for a moment, looking at the glass container filled to the rim in potentially suffocating liquid, the evolution of technology from the simple well to the grand network of pipes and tunnels that now reside, spread like some aquatic web, beneath the metropolis.
 Finishing my drink, I wipe my cup on the tea towel that, if soaked and placed over someone's horizontal face, could cause considerable discomfort and I briefly wonder about the intricate layers of fabric that have gone into making this simple every day tool. Scratching my itching head, I return to my bedroom whereupon my eyes fall on my school bag, within which, I know, resides a timetable that dictates that I should be arriving in my school within the next thirty minutes or be facing the consequences within the next thirty five. My mind then, bored of scuttling up this particular branch of thought, leaps nimbly onto an adjacent cognitive branch concerning the people I will surely meet through the school day. This branch then spreads out into several different twigs that can all collectively be labeled under the title, "people I know".
 It is then that I feel a strong urge to water board. I really could not say why. Perhaps the cause is in some undetectable stress or irritation but I am no psychiatrist and if ordinary people like myself could easily detect the causes of irrational thoughts or desires then I'm sure that particular job would have been abolished as obsolete a long time ago. However, if I were to make a complete and random guess, a total stab in the pitch black darkness, a wild baseless assumption then it would be the fact that I hate at least sixty percent of the people I am associated with.
 Acting as further cause of stress, presently at school there is a certain social reshuffle occurring. With the introduction of forty or so new, most of them female, students into what used to be an all boys school, what had been a concrete social hierarchy is currently shifting and merging. The injection of fresh blood into what was previously a stable system has acted as a catalyst for school politics, causing a chemical reaction as the result of which alliances and treaties are being written, unwritten and rewritten at the speed of light. A decisive moment of school history, when being considered a generally attractive human being or not is crucial in cementing ones social status for the next two years. In essence, whether you are subject of mockery or the mocker is as malleable as molten metal at present. However like molten metal, though it may be flexible now, it will harden and set in no time. Allowing those at the top to stay at the top and causing  those trapped within the lower social echelons to be imprisoned there forever.
 Therefore, taking this as a revolutionary opportunity, many of those I have long since despised and mocked have begun their ascent. With it they have altered their attitude, perhaps in an attempt to alter the past as well, where before some may not have talked to me (knowing full well I found them dull detestable individuals and had no reservations about articulating these thoughts) for fear of being verbally humiliated, they now act as if we have been the best of friends for the past few years. Irritatingly, I myself have to then bite back harsh words of hatred, that I would have happily spewed over them a few months back, because the present state of affairs dictates that all previous social levels have been flattened to create a soft even playground and any careless public display of needlessly malicious wrath could result in rapid sinking.
 Therefore, at present I must content myself with hidden malignant machinations and bide my time. However just they wait, once alliances and positions have been set in stone, once this quagmire becomes solid ground yet again, I'll ensure they're back to wearing bright orange onzies on their own remote social island where I'll be waiting for them, a wet towel in one hand and a bucket full of water in the other.

Alone in the Mansion

 The once crowded mansion stands empty, its heavy oak doors, which once shone with a refined polish, now sit in slow lusterless decay. Those poorly maintained gates have been motionless for a few hours now, no one has entered or left since the rusty creak of the last departure which echoed forlornly through the dusty corridor. The fading gray rooms are filled with the desolate silence of an abandoned building, gone are the days when the sound of snide and mocking but nonetheless happy laughter had bounced through its sparkling structure. All have left to pursue a vast and varied life outside its thick impenetrable walls, all but one. This is the Bachelor Mansion.
 The lone figure sits hunched malignantly by a fireplace black with soot, a cold empty fire place in the shape of a heart. In the figures twisted malicious hands is clutched a once fine china mug, its pristine white surface now stained to a dull yellow. The mug contains a deep dark brown fluid, tar like both in appearance and texture, very strong tea without milk or sugar. Very bitter tea. Very very bitter tea.
 How did it come to this? There used to be others here with me. All snidely talking about the foolishness of love and the stupidity of relationships, mockingly discussing romantic ideals or viciously insulting those clueless fools roaming outside the mansion. Now there is only me, me and my thoughts which provide no comfort at all.
 I'm certain everyone has experienced that one long distance race at school where the five or so non athletic friends line up at the starting line, smiling humorously at each other. After a brief minute of amicable discussions its decided that all of them will take it slow, go at a nice jogging pace, take it easy, cruise it, chill. The starting pistol is fired into the air and one secretly competitive supposed comrade suddenly breaks rank, running with all his strength so as to get as far ahead as possible before the others realize they have been deceived. In that instance, everyone shakes their heads and roundly agrees that the one former comrade dashing aggressively ahead is, to put it mildly, a complete dick and should be excommunicated from the alliance of the non athletic.
 However this time round, we all agreed to take it easy but all except one, at the sound of the starting pistol, revealed themselves to be secretly competitive dicks charging headlong down the path of romantic success. By the time I realize what's happened and decide to quicken my jogging pace, that is at present infinitely close to a walk, it's all too late and my former comrades have crossed the finishing line, cheering as they do so. I watch them celebrate, teeth gritted and all I want to do is take the starting pistol and take careful aim at those distant , now coupled, figures.
  I thought we were all on the same boat, all proudly sailing under the fluttering banner of "Awkward", the academic cynical types whose only knowledge of love came through a study of biochemistry, a bunch of social outcasts united by our ability to insult romantics in Latin. Now "Amicus" has turned "Hostis", "Callidus" has turned "Stultus", they have all recently dived into the surrounding oceans to leave me bobbing up and down on the unstable raft, feeling more than a little bit nauseous.
 Riding the wave of a drunken kiss or holding onto the helpful dolphin of previously hidden charisma, my former fellow sailors swiftly move across the ocean to reach their own idyllic islands, overgrown with convenient coconut trees and pretty flowers as I watch on from a distance. My last fellow bachelor sailor dived from the raft a few hours ago, or rather was gently pulled into the waves by an enticing mermaid (I sincerely hope that this is a mermaid of slightly older, more brutal, less Disney type myths which will go on to ravenously shred and devour the ex-comrade turned turn coat). Now I stand alone, realizing suddenly that my raft has developed a hole and is sinking fast. It's either swim or drown from here and I haven't done much swimming since I received my Kellogg's Frosties 200meter swimmer badge seven years ago.