15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

The worst part isn't the loneliness, the incessant chirping of the birds, or even the infernal blandness of every day being seventy-degrees and sunny. For me it has to be that sneaky feeling in the back of my brain that I get every morning as I walk under that perfectly azure sky through that seemingly never-ending golden sea of grain. It shouts to me 'You've been snookered' over and over in time with the swaying grain. I imagine it's the same feeling a Ponzi scheme victim gets after they've bought the snake oil and it finally gives them diarrhea.

How else am I supposed to feel? I thought I was doing it right. When I was young I went to bed when my parents told me. I always did my homework on time. I prayed, ate my vitamins and went to church. I saved myself for marriage and in college while my friends went out drinking and caroused with loose women I steeled my resolve and stayed home, and what did it get me?

I never got the cushie office job they did. I never cheated so didn't get graduate top of my class like they did. I never took out an ARM like they did but still lost my house while their loans got bailed out and the worst part is all those gluttons and sinners went ahead and raised kids who became actresses and professional athletes and wildly successful corporate raiders just like them, while mine just became miniature versions of me struggling to get by.

It wasn't fair, not in the least, but I sucked it up because I knew in my heart of hearts that one day I'd get my reward in heaven that all my earthly troubles and suffering were for something and they'd all burn in hell...Yah right.

My ah-ha moment came this morning, I guess you could say (it's hard to tell, time's funny here.) I was walking along through those empty grain-filled fields, again. Just like I had done a thousand or a million times before when I finally came up on a great black stone wall that seemed to go on forever. Every hundred feet or so there was an ominous guard tower guarded by a huge evil looking demon straight out of Dante's Inferno. I was ecstatic. I could only imagine it separated me from the rest of humanity-- those wicked gluttonous bastards I had always tried so hard to be separated from. Finally, I thought, knowing I'd get a bit of vindication and a chance to compare my just reward with their tortured existence.

I eased up close to the wall to listen to the suffering I was sure I'd here and you know what? I heard club music and the sounds of a party. Not only that but only moments after the worst possible thing happened, a sun-glasses wearing guy who looked vaguely like Charlie Sheen popped up over the wall. He had confetti in his hair, a beer in his hand and two amazing blondes on each arm, as soon as he saw me he yelled down, " Hey brother, you got any blow?" before catching himself and finishing up with, " Oh, wait your one of them, of course you don't..." He then turned and looked back down his side of the wall and said, "Tell the rest of the girls no dice, This guys a complete square..."

So that's it. That's the final straw. That's why I've pried this halo off and bent it into a grappling hook, that's why I've torn my white vestment into strips and improvised a rope. I'm finally getting what I've earned, what I deserve. The hell with Heaven and its Elysian fields. I'm going over the wall and I'm going to have a hell of a good time at that party.