The Country from Hell
You are a boy. No, not a boy. You're a man. You flex your arms in the mirror. Not bad. The pushups are really beginning to show. You have slightly curly dark brown hair and even darker brown eyes. You're a little annoyed by the tan you've acquired this summer because it makes you look like a gypsy. Still, you know you're handsome. Summer will be over soon, but you've had no luck finding a girlfriend. You imagine her standing before you, a Iadian beauty from the old times with a sly smile and long hair splayed over a pure white blouse fluttering softly like a sail in the wind. Your heart had jumped for a moment when you thought you spotted her one day, lying on the grass by the public pool, disguised in a bikini. She lost interest in you quickly enough when she found out you couldn't even afford to buy her a Bear Beer. Iadian bitches, they're all the same. Money is all that matters to them. Still, you daydream.
Reaching in your pants pocket, you find a couple of cheese crumbs and a new tear along the seams. "Fool, don't you know you'll always be poor with holes in your pockets?" you say to yourself, frowning in the mirror.
" And in Klo, the temperatures are at record highs. This will probably continue throughout the week and into next week " you hear the television weatherwoman announce smugly from the other room. Yes, the bitch is in fact smiling because the temperatures in the capital are not nearly so bad today.
"Look at that dog of a woman!" your father bellows, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Look at her all cool there in her studio, strutting around with her cunt in the air!"
"You donkey!" your grandma snaps at him, smacking him across the head. "I didn't raise my son to talk like that. Leave the little slut alone. She may be in bed with half of Happytown, but she knows her weather!"
Your father sits in a daze for a moment, then plucks a dirty work shirt off the floor and throws it on backwards. You would tell him, but it's more amusing to let him leave the apartment that way.
"You, lazyass," he mumbles, glaring at you with eyes half closed. "Why don't you do something useful for a change? Find a job and get out of my house. The Pig was a pig, but at least he made people work."
"What for? I'm going to the University in the fall."
"You don't know that, stupid. If you take after me, you'll be hitting the custia before you ever hit the books. Fuck, I'm late," he says, glancing haphazardly at his watch, which is also on backwards. "I don't want to see you here when I come home for lunch. Goodbye, mama." He bends unsteadily over the chair to plant a sweaty kiss on Grandma's head. She smiles her big toothless smile.
"You always were a good boy."
As he slams the apartment door behind him, you pick up the empty bottle of custia. The trashcan is full, so you throw it out the window. It shatters on the ground with all the other bottles thrown out by you and your neighbors. At least Iadian waste disposal is easy.
In Iad, money matters most of all. An education might also matter. However, it's been well proven that being smart doesn't mean you'll be successful here. Being rich means you can buy your success. It's really an easy system when you come right down to it. You're just not sure if you would be better off applying your talents to being rich or to being smart. There are only a couple of ways to get rich in Iad if you're not born that way or aren't lucky enough to have some relative who fucked off to the West. On the other hand, you actually applied to Klo University this year and the results of the application tests are supposed to be posted today. In Iad, most things boil down to a whim. It was always on arbitrary whim that the Pig decided how severely someone would be punished. He might have you shot in the head for stealing a piece of bread or invite you to one of the lavish banquets he and his pig wife often attended if you killed a man he didn't like. So, on pure whim, are you feeling more like a pragmatist or an idealist today?