Like
an elephant or the sex offenders list, I don't forget. I also have a deep set
resentment for those who touch my hair. As a result,
for a full year I harboured a great deal of resentment directed mainly at Joq
and Zooz, but mostly Joq because he's more of a dick. As a result of this I
inwardly concocted some sort of weird revanchist plan to shave Joq's eyebrows.
As it happened, through some weird twist of fate I ended up going on a school
trip with Joq and Zooz, and Joq's roommate was a good friend of mine. Somehow
the offhand desire to leave Joq eyebrowless suddenly became attainable and I took the opportunity.
Let
me take a moment to explain why exactly this plan was directed at Joq specifically (other than the fact that he's more of an asshole than Zooz). It all has to do with Joq's personality. Joq is one of those
people who maintain themselves within stringent criteria and see themselves as a
temple to be worked on and worshipped. He also has an ego the size of most
major landmasses. This ego contributes to him inherently seeing others as
beneath him. Add to this the fact that he's the kind of militant atheist
convinced that all religious people are misguided sheep (and loudly voices this
opinion) and you'll probably get what kind of person Joq is. His level of
arrogance and inherent condescending nature drove me to want to make it so that
the stringent criteria which he so prides himself on should no longer contain
eyebrows. I understood that I would probably be beat up beyond recognition and
that getting close enough would be nigh impossible but the thought of Joq crying insanely while looking at his eyebrowless
reflection in a mirror while the song "I Am Beautiful" by Christina
Aguilera plays in the background was just too good to pass on, so presented with the chance to make
this a reality, I put plan into action.
 |
| I AM BEAUTIFUUUL NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAAAY |
Joq's
roommate, Darwaz, is a longtime friend of mine and a fellow enthusiast for
seeing Joq without the ability to properly express surprise. Joq had brought an
electrical razor with him to the trip and I'd agreed with Darwaz that I would
shave Joq's eyebrows if he left the back door of the hotel room open at night
and put the razor in the bathroom. The plan was for me to
sneak in at a random late hour through the back door, get out the razor from
the bathroom and shave off Joq's eyebrows while he was asleep.
Darwaz
fell asleep early the night of the de-eyebrowification and forgot to put the
razor in the bathroom so I could find it. I snuck into the room in the dead of
night, looking for a razor in a hotel bathroom in the dark (which isn't even
there) and, I shit you not, the bathroom light just randomly turns on. I'm
thinking, fuck, I'm totally finished.
Imagine
my surprise the next morning when Darwaz comes up to me and says "Yo, Joq
is really shaken up and afraid and he's telling this sorta horror story to
everyone about his night and ... you've just gotta hear it".
At the end of each day of the trip, the 19
of us would gather around a bonfire and tell scary stories. Although the scary
stories usually didn't affect anyone, they usually ended with our scepticism
being slightly more malleable. This was especially true for Joq who returned
that night to a roommate who was sleeping with his eyes wide open. Darwaz is a
bit of a shitty sleeper. A lot of the time he sleepwalks or sleeptalks or does
some weird shit and this time was no exception. Darwaz had fallen asleep with
his eyes wide open and was staring at Joq. Darwaz continued to actively follow
Joq with his pupils for a while before going over to his side and shutting his
eyelids.
A bit freaked out but mostly unfazed, Joq
laid in bed and tried to sleep before the bathroom light randomly turned on and
off again. This, combined with the incident of Darwaz’s red eyed staring and the scary stories
started to get to Joq and, unable to get to sleep, he came to the conclusion that if the
light turned on again, something was up. The light not only turned on again, but
this time it also projected a shadow onto the wall, a shadow which strongly
resembled Darwaz's with an average build and huge hair. Joq looked over to his
roomate's bed but Darwaz was still sleeping. Joq watched in horror as what appeared to be Darwaz's shadow silently crawled across the wall, noiselessly walked in his
direction, somehow gained tangibility, opened the door and left. This prompted Joq to soon jump out of his bed, run out through the back door and scream “WHO’S THERE”
to the world at large in terror. Later he went back inside and began to seriously reflect on his beliefs.
This entire freaky situation was
in no way aided by the fact that shortly after, while Joq was in a state of inner reflection, Darwaz got up, took off his clothes, screamed “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR MOTHER”
at Joq in Arabic and went back to sleep.
After that incident, Joq took to telling
the story to everyone who would listen, stating how it shook his beliefs to the
core and how, as a militant atheist, he was taken to the brim of his scepticism, very nearly revaluated his core beliefs
and thought of changing everything, and I mean everything, about his life and
the way he thought about things. He then took to giving people his
rationalizations, his "logical explanation" which basically said
"the generator was dysfunctional and that caused the bathroom light to turn on and off. I assume
that the shadow part was half dream. I dreamed the shadow but somehow when I
woke up the bathroom light was on in real life".
He told this story (along with his "logical explanation") to people
not knowing that I had already told them the actual progression of events and
that 18 of the 19 people on the trip already knew that the shadow spirit on the
wall that almost turned a militant atheist into a believer in ghosts was actually me
slinking off into my room, having failed to shave his eyebrows. The expected
result of this is that everyone, when faced with Joq's version of events and
his dreams-leaking-into reality explanation tended to giggle.
What happens when you giggle at a person
who's telling you about an experience that nearly altered them at a fundamental
level? To give you a comparison, imagine giggling at a person telling you how
they survived cancer or witnessed a miracle and you'll get an estimate of how
insulted Joq got. The poor fuck got really worked up and what's even worse is
that people kept dropping him hints. Unsubtle hints. Hints so direct they no
longer actually qualify as hints but the thing about people like Joq is that they're
convinced that they're right and everyone else is wrong by default; this
was no exception.
The
next creepy bonfire was entertained by a tale of, unsurprisingly, Joq's moving
experience with the spirit world. Halfway through Joq’s testament, around the
shadow-spirit bit, Zooz piped up with a "maybe it was a person" and
Joq freaked the fuck out. He stood up and started screaming at Zooz,
telling him shit like "it's impossible for me to be wrong" and
"you're an idiot, how can that possibly be right" but the best was
"You are a retard and I am correct. I am always correct and you are never correct, that's just how things are".
This meltdown was in front of 18 people who all knew the real
version of events. That's like walking into a room of scientists, screaming
at the top of your lungs that the minotaur is the real cause of global warming
and that they are all morons for suggesting otherwise. Unlike that example
however, Joq's meltdown provoked not a round of giggling, but shocked silence. Zooz got
pissed, really pissed so he gave me a look as though to check for my approval
to reveal to Joq the true nature of his one-on-one rub in with the supernatural
and then said "I have a story for the bonfire"
"Once upon a time there was a boy
called Joq and a boy called Sanad. Joq was often an asshole to Sanad and once
shaved Sanad's head so Sanad decided to shave Joq's eyebrows in retaliation. In the
dead of night Sanad crept into Joq's room, turned on the bathroom light to
search for the razor, couldn't find it and left through the back door. Joq was
awake but he thought Sanad leaving was a tangible shadow crawling across
the wall because he's a complete fucking idiot. The moral
of the story is that Joq can be wrong."
I've never seen so many emotions run
through one person in 12 seconds: confusion, disbelief, anger, disbelief again,
complete shock and, at the end, wide-eyed amazement, all to the background of
the hooting laughter of 18 people. By the end Joq had the hollow eyed look of
someone destroyed from the inside, he then looked at me and asked “Is this
true?” I nodded. At that point Joq surprised me. Instead of sulking or going nuts, as I would've expected him to do, he instantly regained his composure,
stood up straight, laughed and said “good one”.
Damn straight it was a good one. Even if it
was totally accidental, I still got your ass.
