The Country from Hell
Boys often tell you that you frown too much, even by Iadian standards. Your blue eyes peer melancholically over high cheekbones and your light brown hair is pulled messily into a ponytail. You've looked a whole lot better. You haven't gained any weight, but the summer has not been kind to you. Almost all your friends have gone on vacation to the seaside, leaving you in this dusty, stinky hellhole of a city where your job is to look after your demented grandma and make sure your mother doesn't get so drunk that she gets hit by another streetcar. She was lucky to be merely scraped when one sideswiped her last month. At the hospital, she commented that her Iadian bad luck was what saved her. If she'd been truly lucky, it'd have killed her instantly. Instead, she is dying a slow death along with everybody else.
There is also the nagging thought of your rich American cousin. Through the grace of some sleight of hand that you still don't completely understand, she and her brother and her parents managed to fuck off to the West back when The Pig was still in power. She barely remembers her childhood in Iad and she makes a point of always saying, in English, how disgusting the streets are or how stupid the people are or how depressing the country is. She asks you why you stay here. Why don't you come live with her? She could take you shopping in a real American mall, buy you expensive American clothes... Don't you want to leave? You do, you suppose. You hate Iad as much as the next Iadian. You just lack the energy to do anything about it.
An American laptop sits in the corner, a constant, unsettling reminder of your cousin's last visit. She bestowed "that old piece of shit" upon you as a sort of hand-me-down charity. Since the electrical currents aren't the same in the two countries, you had to go out and buy an expensive adapter. However, you didn't read the instructions closely enough. The thing ran for a glorious two seconds before there was a loud pop, plunging the screen into blackness and filling the room with electrical smoke. You tried to hold back the tears of embarrassment as you called your cousin, asking her what the hell you were supposed to do with the stupid thing. She said the pop was a good sign, that you'd merely blown the surge protector and that you needed to get a replacement. Then in the background you heard a seductive male voice cooing to her. Giggling orgasmically, she hung up on you. Fixing that burdensome piece of shit is now your rainy day project. You want to just throw it out the window.
You breathe sharply in, your lungs seeming to fill only halfway before giving up in deflated defeat. Feeling weak on your feet, you lie back down on your little bed, which is right next to your grandmother's. Lately she has been snoring like a freight train. The doctor said it was something called sleep apnea, but your family didn't have enough money to pay for the right sort of medicine, something fancy and imported and in direly short supply. Instead, the old hag has been self-medicating with custia, which "calms" her, and has subsequently made her snoring much worse.
Sinking down through thick layers of humidity onto your clammy bed, you stare unblinking at the ceiling. Cracked, with spiders running through the crevices, it looks like it will simply turn to dust at any second. You wish it would.
The phone rings.
You vaguely remember hearing your father leave the house a few minutes ago. Grandma is too oblivious to notice it.
It continues ringing. Four times, five times
Who could possibly want to talk to any of you that badly? You know you don't really want to talk to anyone.
Eight times, nine times.
Maybe, just maybe it's your American cousin calling to tell you that she'll send you that expensive computer part or, better yet, that she found you a handsome American man
Stupid girl, why would you think something so good could happen to you?
Why won't they hang up? You feel incredibly annoyed and agitated as the phone rings on and on.
What should you do?