Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. "One shade - Grey matters", By: WriterNoone -------------------------------------- You sit in the courtyard, backpack full of research papers and books to study for classes. Alone, with the tree as your reading partner, you sit. Something you find ironic and twisted in a way. The thought of the tree, reading words strewn across pages made from chopped-up trees. Almost as ironic as the flyers it is forced to display, stapled to its bark. Your mind wanders to everything except your work, which you actually love doing. Instead, eyes scan the courtyard, the scenery suddenly invoking a twisted hatred, stemming from envy of your surroundings. Bleached-blond bimbos are hanging off of equally moronic meat-bag jocks. They cling to one another like puppies in heat. Activists are out pushing lost causes, poisoning the minds of innocent people damned to pass by them. Even the grass seems to piss you off, getting under your skin. Overly manicured like a French whore. Made to please people who could actually care less about it. Then there are the hippies, tossing e-bay treasures, relics from an era long gone. They are trying to rekindle a waterlogged fire back into a flame. Only they are making the air more toxic as the smoldering past fills the world with their thick black smog. [BAM] - A fucking Frisbee razors past your face, knocking your glasses off, snapping them into two. The shock of it flying right past your eyes, causing your head to bash back, in reflex, against the tree. The vindicated bark snaps your headband, forcing the spikes into your unprotected flesh. You stand in the aftermath, infuriated, ready to rip someone's head off. But you can not see who threw it. The offenders don't even come to take credit for their action. This makes it seem as if the damn thing came out of nowhere, thrown by no one, pissing you off even more. You feel a trail of blood drip through your hair, down the back of your neck, onto your shirt-collar. Your hand reaches up, feeling around through your fallen hair. Only a little blood covers your fingertips, but it is apparent that your shirt is now bloody and ruined. You remove it, using it as a rag to stop the bleeding, before it drips further down your back, onto your tank-top. Luckily, you decided to wear this tank-top instead of a bra, under your shirt. With blurry eyes, you glance repeatedly at your blood-rag, tapping away thin trickles of blood. Your hair becomes more messy, as it falls out of the previously tight grip of your headband. Small gusts of wind randomly blow it back and forth, against your face and neck, which is why you normally tie your hair up. You hate that feeling. You get more perturbed as you stand there, feeling like a fool. Even through blurry eyes, you can tell that everyone is looking at you. Your discomfort builds, the longer you stand there. Suddenly, a startling voice comes from behind you, behind the tree. "Hey, sorry about that...", the mans voice says, but you turn and interrupt before he can finish his talking. "What the hell! You threw that?! I seriously want to kick your...", you say, but he now interrupts you. "Me, no... I was going to say, before you stopped me, that I saw who did it." "Then why are you apologizing?" "Because I just got done chewing them out. I thought you may have heard me, and so I came to apologize, for doing what you clearly wanted to do." "I... Well... Thanks, I think... Yes, I was going to go give them a piece of my mind...", you look to your side, but he turns you the other way. "They were over there. The wind caught it, hooking it back at you. Still, they shouldn't have been throwing it this way, into the wind.", he says. You reply, "I... Yea... Them...", pointing over to a blurry pile of standing people. He lowers your hand, "That isn't them, they left. Those are different people there now." His hand lingers a moment, releasing to discover blood on his fingers and yours. "You are bleeding...", he looks at your face, trying to discover where you are bleeding from. Only the blood on both of your fingers can be seen. "My head... My headband cut into me, when I jerked back and hit the tree." You pull the blood-spackled rag, your shirt, out from behind your head. "I didn't strip for fun.", you say, as you see he is now checking-out your chest, through your, slightly thin, tank-top. "Sorry again... I didn't mean to.. Um... It looks like you have the bleeding under control.", he says, trying to divert the fact that he was just caught checking you out. ---- More coming...