Chapter 3: 2100 October 6th, Wednesday

So today I was walking to one of my later classes. Nyrle was with me cause she’s in the same one. Anyways, I’m a few dozen feet away from the building it’s in and I hear:

“Red-eyes! Freaks!”

It was a man’s voice, said all hasty. Now, there were a lot of students going in and out of the building at the time, which this guy was probably betting on to not get caught. But, I have pretty darn good hearing, and it wasn’t that hard to figure out it was the black-haired pasty guy with his head down trying to look away.

Now naturally I glared right at him and started walking over to confront him. I shouldered two startled students aside and to the ground before the others walking to and fro figured it out and gave me space to get to him.

But, I felt a tug on my shoulder and a strong one at that. I turned around and it was Nyrle, of course, giving me ‘that’ look, of course.

So I said.

“Are you just gonna let him call us that?”

And she goes.

“C’mon it’s not worth the hassle.”

And I go.

“You’re just saying that cause of your big dumb heart.”

She kind of smirked like ‘yeah I know’, but then said.

“Look class starts in 2 minutes we don’t wanna be late.”

I grunted and grumbled cause, yeah, that convinced me. Being late to a class was more of a pain than dealing with some random bigot then and there.

Anyways we go to class, Nyrle pays attention and I don’t--more by choice than anything else (Astronomy is pretty boring at times). Class finishes and we’re on the way out.

Now, on the way out, back to our dorm building, who do I see on the paved path coming the other way? That same guy! Now, I can tell he didn’t know that I knew it was him who insulted me earlier. At the time his head was down and he was walking fast. But I knew and so did Nyrle.

Nyrle starts whispering to me

“Don’t do it.”, she says. “It’s not worth the fine.”

‘Please, the fuck it isn’t!’, I thought and shot her my own look. She knew she didn’t have an argument to sway me this time and mostly shut up.

So the guy walks by, hands in pocket making himself small (he was taller than me when he didn’t hunch forward, about 2 or 3 inches I’d say)

I let him walk right by my side. His gaze is averting as eh gets closer and closer. I play it cool, pretend to ignore him till he’s right next to me then I stomp right atop his right shoe, hard enough to hold his foot to the ground.

So he gasps, tries to lift his sneaker out from under my yellow flip-flop but quickly learns he can’t. He starts to panic a bit. Says “watch it” and I can’t help but go “pfft” with a scoff. Then, I lean in real close to him, eyes wide open. He averts his gaze.

“W-what are you doing? Get off me.”

“Just taking a look with my red-eyes” I said.

Wew, that line was cheesy, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time and frankly he would’ve been intimated by anything once I put a bit more pressure on that shoe of his.

“W-what I don’t know what you are talking abou-”, he said, but he was cut short by his own yelp once I pressed down more, enough to hear a crack.

Then he’s all “Ah fuck fuck fuck I’m sorry.”

“What’s your name?”, I asked.

“Melvin.”

I laughed.

“Melvin? Really? You don’t look like a Melvin.” I said.

He didn’t, he was more of a jock type. Like, yeah his pasty skin was as greasy as any human nerd’s, but I guess you can’t expect jock types to use skin care lotions or whatever either.

Anyways he insisted that was his name (as if I really cared), so then I went.

“Well I’m Zlee and my friend here is Nyrle, so you wanna tell me why you’re throwing slurs at two young ladies?”

“Fuck fuck I’m sorry I’m sor-”

Then he yelped again as I put just a bit more force upon his foot.

“My grandpa!”, he shouted.

“What?!?”

“My grandpa died in the war.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Nyrle was about to say something but I beat her to it.

“Yeah well I bet he was a fragile twerp like you. Now act your fucking age and take your fate like a man.”

Now he started sniveling a bit, yelping a bunch. I think he thought I was gonna kill him, which I might’ve on accident I guessed.

Nyrle chimed in though with her ‘blah blah don’t kill him stuff’ just in case I was going to. So I looked at Melvin and he looked at me and her and did some begging motions with his hands and head and I just rolled my eyes again and went.

‘Fine’

I pressed with my right foot till his stopped cracking. The entire front half of that shoe was crushed, his foot with it. It was just a red mass underneath my flip-flops. Yuck.

I told him how gross that was, and that he should apologize for getting a mess on my flip-flops, which he did. I also said if I ever caught him insulting anyone like that again, I’d do to his head what I did to his foot.

Oh I did the whole ‘don’t tell anyone or else’ blah blah spiel too. I suggested he could say he stuck his foot out in front of a passing car by mistake. Then I picked him up by his neck and chucked him the bushes.

Now, whether or not he tattled on me didn’t matter cause the fine for grievous injury to a human was pretty cheap. I mean, it would matter to him, cause I’d have to stomp his head on principle if I saw him again if he did, but you know what I mean.

Wow I’m really into this conversational style of writing a diary. It’s like I’m talking to someone. Maybe my writing professor was on to something.

Anyways, yeah we just left him there and went back to our dorm floor. Campus health services picked him up, probably.

Nyrle gave me a little bit of flack for it. She’s such a hypocrite, well, kind of. I mean I know she cares for humans, but when she’s buzzed and/or the mood is right she’s worse than ANY of us with them by far.

Also, I can tell she’s not a fan of the term either: red-eyes.

Now, by itself ‘red-eyes’ can be fine. It’s more the way the guy said it that gets on your nerves. It’s kind of a dumb phrase to try and make cruel, but it’s hard to pin down any other characteristics of a Zenith. Like, yeah we have different skin and hair colors to humans, but those can change on a whim. I like a light-brown skin and dark pinkish-red hair for instance while Nyrle is usually a light purple complexion with dark purple locks.

Our hair is a bit thicker too, but not nearly enough for the decidedly uncatchy ‘thick-hairs’ to catch on. Our hair glows a bit, and according to history “glow-hairs” was something thrown about more often before my time. Red-eyes was too but it actually stuck around. See, we can’t change the red-irises of our eyes, so that’s what they latched onto.

The rest of us just looks like humans. Legs hands feet whatever... well I guess some difference in ‘internals’, ha. But, what, are they gonna make fun of our flawless skin or something? They can’t make fun of anything of ours that is better than or the same as theirs.

So, they go with ‘red-eyes’ just cause it’s different. Pretty petty if you ask me, but whatever. Some people have chips on their shoulder about politics, old and current. Others--actually more than most will admit--I think are just a bit jealous. I probably would be to. I have to admit it’s pretty fun being vastly better than the humans.

Wow long entry today. Also I really hate this editor. It keeps trying to turn every “--” into an em-dash, but I can’t let it do that. I know it’s the turn of the 22nd century but there are still websites that don’t support that symbol. Now this a private diary of course but, well, you never know. It’s a good habit to be compatible.

I guess I could disable the auto-correct option, but what if I want it later and forget how to get it back? Life can be tough sometimes!

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