Short Story Gone Wrong

Most of this evening, I've been trying to drum out some kind of beginning for a short story that's due next week. In the end, two attempts came out of it. And before you ask, yes, these are fictional accounts.
This first one isn't much, but I felt it was worth mentioning:

Groggily, I roll out of bed until I tumble onto the floor, tangled in an elaborate noose composed of my own appendages. Part of me knows this is my little, drowsy way of forcing myself awake; the other part doesn’t give a shit.

                Pushing myself up off the somewhat grimy carpet, I scramble around for my phone in hopes of discovering what ungodly hour it is. I’m surprised my phone even made it back here in one piece; sure, I never lost it, but I sure as hell considered breaking it in half on several occasions. Not that it would have been a big deal anyways; I’ve been needing an upgrade for a few years now.

                See, my mother refuses to buy into the whole smart phone craze. Sees it as a waste of money, or so she says. I just think she doesn’t know how to use them and doesn’t want to admit it. I’ve caught her glancing over how-to’s online about that sort of thing, puzzling over the interworking’s of Microsoft Word. How she even got online at all is telling of just how far along she’s come. But whenever I bring it up, it always comes down to me having to pay for my own 3G, and on a college kid’s budget, that’s just not going to happen.

The second one is a bit lengthier:

College is the best place to fuck someone over.

                Everyone’s so damn fragile, little china dolls with all their dreams and hopes and morals and ideas lined up at the compound. Those wide blue eyes almost seem to widen in the brief moments before they’re crushed, when they realize just how unprepared their little sidewinder suburbs have made them.

                I’ve been traipsing through life for a while now without too many cares or worries. All I look for these days is a good drink, a good fucking, and some misery to share with the world. And I have plenty of the last one, enough to share with the whole goddamned class.

                My closest friends are the folks who I’ve screwed the worst; funny how that works, really. Sometimes I just wait off in some distant corner of the universe, wondering whether or not anyone will ever find me, or even bother looking for me. But they always come running; they always know where I am, like I give off some unique scent of woe and depravity, as if my pain leaves markings in the sand to trudge after out of desperation and uncertainty of what else to do.

                I see Brian as my greatest achievement in life. He was a pretty cool kid once, a down to Earth sorta guy who went through life loving everyone and everything. He hadn’t a care in the world and wanted for nothing. It was only when I pumped his girl fullah drugs and she went and died on him that he began to lose focus, began to question why, began to see just how fucked everything really was. It’s funny; I was giving her the pills, but he was the one who was awakened by it all. In a way, I was his Morphius. I tried at calling myself Morphine Morphius for a while after that, but no one really gave a fuck what I was called, as long as I had their stuff. But I kind of enjoy that too in its own sick way, me being a nameless bringer of doom, a wraith that haunts the doors of those who come knocking on mine.

                Brian took it a step further; he lives with me these days. The closest he could get to me without strapping an umbilical cord to my chest like some kind of eerie harness, not that I would mind that much. This life gets kind of lonely sometimes, hence number two on my shit-to-get-done-daily list. I don’t really have a type; I don’t think any guy really does. I mean, a hot chick is hot, no matter what color hair she has or how big her tits are or how wide she can spread her legs. Attractiveness can’t really be categorized or measured, it just is. Kind of like my dick. But you don’t wanna hear about that; even I get tired of hearing about it pretty quickly these days.

                I consider that the price I pay for sticking it in more places than I should. I can’t stop myself; it’s like an addiction all its own, a rush I get from putting myself literally out there for someone else. And, try as I have before, I can’t stop wanting after it, needing it, craving it constantly, an appetite that can never be satisfied.

People say that I’m sick, that I should go see someone. I tell them I do; I see a lot of people every day, and none of them have ever been able to help me. That’s when they usually call me an asshole and walk away. I’d be bothered if I thought they wouldn’t be back.

See, that’s the one good thing about all of this, the twisted life I supposedly live; I may always be alone, but I’m never without company. It’s like misery has its own radio wave that calls out, a wailing beacon that can only be heard by the ears of those nearly deafened by the benign bullshit that fills their unfulfilling lives. We’re constantly meeting under the most obscure and unprecedented circumstances, like we really give a fuck where and how we find each other, just as long as there’s someone else to help carry the burden.

Why do you think Brian’s stuck around as long as he has? I mean, besides the fact that he doesn’t really know my role in the whole his-girlfriend-being-dead thing. Yeah, yeah, so I haven’t told him; call it my sick fascination with life-or-death scenarios, but I almost want him to figure it out sometimes. Almost.

He sure as hell doesn’t stay for the fucking décor, for the shit stains that crawl across the walls, consuming our wallpaper like a hungry caterpillar, growing more pudgy and pungent every day. Not for the beds, the wretched, molding mattresses that haven’t had the ability to support anyone’s back for a few years now. He might stay for the rent; we don’t have any, just about the only good thing about the dilapidated mess. But what he really waits for is an end.

I mean, how can you not after seeing the shit he has? It would have been enough seeing his lover kick the bucket, but his parents, his career, his dignity? Only so much around you can die before you become obsessed with it; just ask Emily Dickinson. That bitch was messed up.

I was an English major once, way back when I thought it majorly mattered, back when I thought I’d actually do something with it. You know, a diploma. That’s when I thought that letters scrawled on a piece of paper meant whether or not I was gonna do well in life, when I figured I’d go work in some swanky-ass company and live in some not-so-swanky place and maybe sleep with some girl I actually loved.

Love. What the hell is that shit anyways? Everyone’s always trying to define it, apply it, study it under some little fucking microscope, waiting for it to squirm or reveal all its secrets. Well, let me rip away that mystery right now; love is a figment of our imaginations. It’s what we think we want for an uncaring, unhelpful, cruel, suicidal, violent, violating world. We want to think it’s not all that, that someone out there really gives a care about someone outside of themselves. Except that at the end of the day we’re all very, very alone. I would know.

People stay with Brian and I for days, weeks, years at a time without so much as a “please” or “thank you.” I hardly notice that they’re even there, because they don’t seem to care that anyone else is here. It’s like we’re all already dead, spiriting through our lives like they were never there to begin with. Everyone’s seen it at some point; I’m just the only one who’s accepted it.

Curious to hear what you guys have to say about either, so feel free to leave a comment or text me and let me know what you think. Any and all feedback is appreciated, even if these are just random ideas and not fully fleshed out yet. Also, I haven't edited any of this yet, so let me know if you notice anything that doesn't make much sense.