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I awoke on a bed in the middle of the road, cars blaring and beeping at me.
“Fine, fine! I’ll move.” I yelled as I stretched myself, my bones ached as I moved off the bed, slowly walking onto the side of the road where a bar called the “GATO ZONE” was in front of me.
I looked back to see the impatient drivers ram into my bed, planks of wood flew and bed sheets destroyed like an explosion, it wasn’t pretty.
I walked into this “GATO ZONE” It seemed to be an old bar, but it was still bustling and rumbling. I looked around me like the self-conscious person I am, seeing that it was mostly filled with primates screaming at each other, splashing beers into each other’s faces like it was the funniest thing they’d seen all day.
I soon sat on a bar stool, my face slammed into the bar counter as I groaned. As if on cue two monkeys, a macaque, and a baboon started making out right next to me, my face contorted with disgust as I stood up and walked to another part of the bar. This isn’t a strip club, you animals. I thought as I walked towards a corridor, claustrophobic yet calming.
The corridor was filled with paintings from my childhood, from the time I fell down the stairs, to my embarrassing braces in 6th grade, and me alongside my old friends. As I kept walking the last photo was hanging off of the door, a picture of me holding my artwork that I made for a painting competition in 8th grade.
I placed second. I wasn’t proud of that day. Out of spite, I smashed the painting, my hand started to bleed slowly, and the glass shards on my fingers contorted into blood… it wasn’t red, it was colorful, with sparks of lime green to electrifying yellow and other bright colors traced my skin like paint as I slowly opened the door. “What the hell.”
As I looked around my eyes landed on a calico cat, a fat one to say the least. It was cleaning itself, it’s not like it has anything to do anyway, there weren’t many people here, hell there wasn’t anyone here.
As I walked my foot seemed to trigger a wooden plank, it creaked, startling the cat. It hissed at the impact but quickly recovered as it saw me… the cat coughed almost releasing a fur ball.
“Welcome!” It meowed, its tail swayed as it sat on the bar counter, eagerly waiting for me to walk over.
I sighed as I sat on the bar stool. “Whaddya have?” My fingers tapped the bar counter as I looked at the cat, soon enough, it slid over a glass of cocktail, the liquid in it was exquisite, sparkly blue like the shining gaze of the ocean.
“I hope you don’t mind a classic blue lagoon. It was the only thing I managed to brew up that doesn’t taste remotely to fish.”
My hands wrapped around the glass, I sipped it down… damn! It feels like the time I went on a date, the warm sizzle feeling when we touched hands, interlocked as he watched the movie. To be fair, I was never one for romantics, but at the time… I felt seen.
“From your face, I can tell you liked it.” The cat purred as a mirror slid over, making me look at my relaxed face… it was like the stress from today was gone in a flash. I touched my face, and as I looked at my hand what was once a shard stricken was gone.
“It’s amazing how alcohol can make you lose who you were before, right?” The cat curled, its tail swayed. “Now, what seems to be the problem? When you came in your eyes popped out like a fish.”
And that's when everything started to blur… I lost myself to the alcohol as I started talking to this cat, my body speaking on its own, everything pouring out of me like a soft-served cream.
I blacked out, letting the alcohol take over, my eyes closing like a kaleidoscope.
“Aha! That’s so funny! Who knew we had so much in common?” That was what I heard when I woke up. The cat still seemed to be talking to me, the alcohol took over everything. I groaned, my hands slowly started to shake as tears of paint slowly formed, and the smell of chemicals slowly filled the air like a daze.
“Why am I so stupid… I can’t believe I let myself mess up like that...” My breathing slowly dissolved into hapless breaths. “Why, why, why, why, why-” I repeated over, over and over… until the cat slapped my face with its paws. Damn. That was soft as hell.
“Ah-” The cat meowed, “I'm sorry!”
“It’s fine.” I slumped down onto the counter, my cheek hit the bar counter as paint slowly formed into one big pile of colors, mixing and swirling. I sniffled, my eyes red, as if they were about to pop out and roll away from me.
“Maybe I should just stop everything.” I sighed. “There’s no point in trying if nobody’s ever gonna notice you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ve tried so hard to achieve something in my life. And all I did was get nothing but crap loaded onto me because someone else did better.” I slowly raised myself.
The paint slowly dissolved into disgusting colors of puke green. “I gave it my all and I failed…”
“Don’t say that.” The cat suddenly said.
“You say you’ve tried, that nobody’s going to notice you. You just haven’t opened your eyes.” Behind the cat, the shelves of drinks and plants turned into a wall filled with hung photos.
“Everything you did. Everything you’ve done. You’ve always done it for others, for praise, when did you ever do it for yourself?” A framed photo of a little me holding a drawing slides in. That was my first ever drawing, a representation of me. A drawing my 1st grade teacher told us to draw. All I did was splash in colors and I got the color of the sea and everyone was impressed.
The cat soon walked across the bar counter and I followed suit, the walls slowly turned into different shades of blue with different versions of me holding it, young and old.
“You’ve always thought of others. Never yourself, that’s what makes you doubt and run about.” The cat chuckled… as it slowly walked across the bar counter, it turned bright… it slowly formed into a younger version of me. “You were so focused on getting attention from others that you destroyed yourself in the process.”
The child grabbed a glass of blue lagoon out of nowhere, and spilled it on the ground, forming a swirl. “Acknowledge and accept is what I say. Let doubts about others go and you can be yourself.”
As I slowly followed… me. A flash enveloped my vision.
I was awake in my room. The rays of the sun hit my eyes as I slowly stirred. My body felt fresh, and bubbly.