a lame excuse for a decent homepage about stuffage<title> </head> <body bgcolor="#000000" basefont size="1"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://hb.lycos.com/hb.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ratings.lycos.com/ratings/lycosRating.js.php"></script> <script type="text/javascript"><![CDATA[//><!]]></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://scripts.lycos.com/catman/init.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.angelfire.com/sys/ad/code-start.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.angelfire.com/sys/ad/code-middle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.angelfire.com/sys/ad/code-end.js"></script> <noscript> <img src="http://www.angelfire.com/doc/images/track/ot_noscript.gif?rand=267440" alt="" width="1" height="1" />  <iframe frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="728" height="90" src="http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?ad_type=iframe&ad_size=728x90§ion=280303"></iframe>  </noscript> <div align="center"> <font color="white"> <font face="Andy"><h2 align="center">Lifeage</h2> <font size="5"></font> <ul> <li>OK! OK! Here it is... "The Mirror" ...: He leaned forward on his palms and examined the contours stretching and winding around the features on his face. You weren’t supposed to have wrinkles when you were sixteen. It was just another imperfection, another flaw in himself. He closed his eyes and frowned. The light glared off the mirror, and he could even see it through his eyelids. Tommy didn’t like the bathroom; it was damp and stuffy and made him want to throw up. The tiles were white, shiny and uniformly endless. He opened his eyes and examined his paling skin and touched his fingers to his cracking lips. It hurt. Tommy slid his tongue across the bottom one and touched it to the other. He felt a little better once the saliva had moistened the dry skin, offering a pseudo-relief to his current affliction. Everyone had always told him licking your lips just made it worse in the long run, but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Everything else got worse and worse didn’t it? So he didn’t really care about the long run because the only way someone made it there was by running the race, the race that was uniform and infinite. The funny thing was that nobody ever won, or maybe it was more depressing than funny. Tommy knew that he would never make it, not that he wanted to anyway. It made him want to puke. He had no solution; he had no dreams. Tommy wasn’t about to build something that would just be crushed. He turned his head. The mirror suddenly seemed too ugly and rippled to stare into. He didn’t want to have to look at himself anymore. There must be something, though. Maybe he could just finish high school and go to college and get a good job that he enjoyed and he wouldn’t be too bad off and maybe he’d meet a girl that would hold his hand and… Maybe. The tears ran long streams down his face, and he looked up to meet himself in the mirror. He sniffed, and Tommy cracked his head downwards and lifted his thumb up to wipe away the tears. It didn’t help being different and all; he could still feel the world through his word-proof skin. No, he didn’t think it would work out. Things didn’t just bounce off, and in reality, it was just another series of chances to fail; life had been like that so far. The long metal cylinder felt cold against his tongue. It wasn’t too hard to find his dad’s .22 hidden in the closet. The closet was always open, facing into the over-lit bedroom that was almost shiny, and the black instrument wasn’t really difficult to miss sitting on the top shelf. The room was so damn bright it almost hurt his eyes. No, he didn’t need any of that stuff anymore. It wasn’t like anybody loved him anyways, he told himself. He closed his eyes and the tears rolled down his cheeks onto the barrel, sliding into his open mouth. You’re so lost, the voice said, nobody could ever save you from your own grave. Your dreams are worth nothing, and you’ve already failed. Trembling, his finger pulled the trigger and the bullet crushed through the roof of his mouth into his skull. It crashed out the back of his head, leaving a red mist and the smell of gunpowder in the air. The recoil of the blast threw the gun from his lifeless fingers, cracking the mirror as his body started to collapse to the marble floor. Frozen in time, the blood spilled out of his jaw, running past where his heart had once been beating and rushing into the mix of glass and flesh now in the sink under the mirror. They found him before his tears had dried, and forgot him before theirs had. </ul> <p> <font size="5">Links to places on this site:</font> <p> <a <a href="http://angelfire.com/ma3/aabf/shows.html">Upcoming Shows</a><br> <a href="http://angelfire.com/ma3/aabf/sreview.html">Show Review</a><br> <a href="http://angelfire.com/ma3/aabf/links.html">Links</a><br> <p> <HTML> <BODY>    <script language=javascript>var Loaded=false;var Flag=false;</script> <SCRIPT SRC="http://files.cometsystems.com/javascript/af1_0default.js" LANGUAGE=javascript></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE=javascript>if(Loaded&&Flag)TheCometCursor('ebass01','ebass01.cur','ebass01h.cur',0);</SCRIPT>  </body> </HTML><p> <center><img src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi"></center> <p> <center><a href="mailto:BFoss61@aol.com"> <img src="http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/doc/images/icons/mailbox.gif" border=0> </a> </a></center> </div> </body> </html>