Day 15 - Competition

I know exactly what I'm doing!!

I sent the beginning of this story to the graveyard (my folder of abandoned writing projects) last year, and I felt so bad because I loved my plan for it, expecially since I based the main character off me(minus zesty theatre kid then plus lethargic, cold-hearted attitude and more feminine characteristics), but I just couldn't find the motivation to extend it, and now I have it!!

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Written in late 2023:

Snapping her compact mirror shut, Crimson checked her outfit for the last traces of blood. Peeling off her gloves, she wrapped it in a handkerchief before stuffing it in a separate pocket of her messenger bag. Redoing the clasps, she pushed her compact into an outer pocket. Carefully avoiding the slowly forming pools of blood, the albino stepped out of the bathroom, leaving the bloody, mutilated corpse behind. Cautiously but not too suspiciously, Crimson peered from side to side for signs of any oncoming girls headed to the ladies' room. Spotting nobody, she walked to her next class with four minutes to spare, keeping up the false pretense of normalcy as she moved forward at a brisk but constant, composed pace. Crimson had mastered the art of class at a young age, and applied the learnings to every minute, every second of daily life. Neat, classy, and demure. Exactly how she had been raised to behave.

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Written from September 2024:

Straightening her hair on the way, she marched through the hallway, dress shoes clicking against the floor in a rhythmic pattern she had grown to associate with comfort and familiarity. Everything in her life was perfect, organised; She had a set goal and a step-by-step plan to achieve it, which she was executing one stage at a time along with her classmates that posed a threat to her position as top student. Scornfully, she looked at her less neat peers, Crimson readjusted the collar of her red blazer and dusted off her black skirt. They wouldn't be any threat to her just yet, not like the others were, and now they were gone.

Most would describe the girl as pretentious or supercilious. Snobbish, almost. They would say she tried to present things she knew when it was uncalled for, showed off to the point of being annoying, and was a tryhard. All that didn't bother her, or at least she pretended it didn't. Behind all of it hid an insecure, frightened girl who was terrified of losing her reputation for the one thing she was good at, academics. Crimson wanted to be more likeable, of course, she cried and wrote poetry about her misery. "Crimson's Lament," she called them.

She had wrote another series of poems in the format of a letter titled "Your Dearest Friend," written to her closest friend, the only one she didn't doubt she retained even whilst she felt the others slipping away. After writing them all, putting them into an envelope, even, she had stuffed them in the back of a closet. Crimson refused to accept that she might need help, or show just how much she cared about people around her. Refused to let anyone except her closest friends know that she was dying inside, and even then, just how bad it was. She felt weak, and she hated it.

There was a little mosnter gnawing at her insides, and each day it consumed a little more. Slowly, it caused her to slip away. Made her hate her body, hate herself for not achieving enough, hate her emotions. It had caused her to lose all of her confidence, make her desperate enough to kill. Academic competition, worse of all, did crazy things to her.

Whereas she had never been concerned with grades when she was younger, since her fourth year, she had been obsessed with her report cards, awards, academic acheivements. Crimson signed up for leadership roles, extracurriculars, competitions... and each time, every time she wasn't the best, she had to swallow the urge to scream and cry until she was alone. She was in the best school in the area, but that wasn't enough. She had to get top grades that semester, go to an elite boarding school, and from there, attend a presitigious university. But sometimes, while she went over her plan, Crimson couldn't help but wonder why she was doing all this.

Sometimes she wondered if it was all even worth it.

The bell rang, interrupting her thoughts. Class was waiting. Besides, she knew it was too late from the first kill anyways.

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The two poem serieses mentioned here are actually ones written by me ("[My name]'s Lament" and "Your Dearest Friend"). I really like this story because it's just so relatable.

I want to go to boarding school

But I'm scared of leaving

I want to graduate as valedictorian

But I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I graduate

I want to go to a good university

But I don't know what I want to achieve in life

"I'm kinda scared of graduation, 'cause who am I when this is done?" - Next Up Forever by AJR