It was one of those horribly “perfect” days. Cloudless day, deep blue skies, and an exceedingly soft gentle breeze that seemed to add a whole other dimension of perfection. Indeed, this stereotypical day was only marred by two things. One, a large portion of humans were all wearing black; and two, most were congregating around a rather large wooden rectangular prism. A coffin. At least the weather wasn’t conventionally bad, as some people would be even more depressed, and nothing ruins the presence of a sad funeral than a plethora of old unused (and sometimes even colorful) cobweb ridden umbrellas coming out to play.

One girl, dark hair mopped in her face which contrasted little with the black clothes she was displaying, stood at the front of the mass. Some priest or something was muttering some meaningless bologna about a guy he had never even met. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all that jazz, the dark haired girl, named Mievni, wasn’t paying attention to a word that blubbery man was saying. Instead, she was focusing on the shape of the coffin and the different patterns the swirls in the wood made.

This continued until the man giving his flowery speech and the crowd gradually dispersed to go mingle and graze on the complementary food items. Mievni began to navigate the crowd, always alone and remaining unapproachable. Unfortunately for her, one airheaded bubbly man flounced over to her and said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” through a mouthful of premium brownie. Mievni simply shot him a look of disgust. As she was walking past him (rather briskly too, she wasn’t exactly happy) she quickly poked him in the stomach to watch the soggy contents of his brownie shadowed mouth come spewing out in a cocktail of sugar, chocolate, and spittle. She felt better after that.

Mievni realized there were a lot of people here that she didn’t recognize. She idly wondered how many people here even knew who her dead dad was; to her, it looked like most of these strangers were here for the free food. One guy slipping nearby the enchilada section was wearing sweats. They even went so far as to have a flashy trim. {Well I hope that a**hole enjoys his enchilada}, she spitefully thought.

Mievni had never really had the most friends in the world. In fact, she had none at all. Luckily, she was blessed with a couple family members, but they seemed to all be kicking the bucket pretty fast. Grandparents gone, dad gone; no cousins or siblings, aunts nor uncles, to speak of. She began wandering aimlessly about the cemetery. That’s when she started feeling a little funky.

At first it was nearly imperceptible. She felt a little less balanced on her feet, fumbled with smaller objects; nothing to be alarmed about. Then she began to feel much more dizzy, stumbling around the grassy graves. She fuzzily heard a, “She doesn’t look alright,” from some nameless person in the crowd. {The sky is blue}, she thought, assuming the person was having a state the obvious contest. Next, her vision grew blurry and the depressing world around her began spinning faster and faster and faster until she finally collapsed. The last thing she could hear were the shocked and surprised ooohs and aaahs from the crowd.

Mievni woke up the next day tucked in her own bed. How she got there, she didn’t know and, quite frankly, it weirded her out. She had figured her own mother was too grief stricken to be a mother and was probably still huddled over the grave stone. Mievni’s next thought was that she should go seek professional attention. She groggily got out of bed and through on some normal (for her) clothes. Which clothes didn’t really matter as her wardrobe consisted of the same item for everything, no variety whatsoever. Just black black black.

Mievni stumbled out her front door, looking like a drunken sailor (but in truth it was more akin to seasickness), and peered out into her driveway. Spotting her car, she tripped her way to the door and attempted to pull on the door handle. It didn’t open the door as it was locked on the inside. She looked through the sedan’s skuzzy window and saw what she thought were the car keys—inside the car. {Well son of a b****}…, she thought colorfully. A moment later the gravity of the situation really sunk in. As if in retaliation, Mievni pounded the window with the flat of her hand, then quickly withdrew for fear that she might break something important either on the car {or} in her hand. As she was turning away from the car, one last little detail caught her eye. On the passenger side door, she saw the orange tape, signaling that the door was (hopefully) open. Using the car as a balance facilitator, she craftily maneuvered to the other side of the car and just to her luck, the door was indeed open. Mievni gave a sigh of relief.

Not wanting to go back around to the other side of the car, Mievni elected to crawl from the passenger seat to the driver seat – not something her infirm body agreed with. After the feeling of retching subsided, she was ready to drive. Mievni backed the car out of the driveway and got off to a bumpy start – no pun intended. Her lack of focus, worsened by malaise, caused her to swerve on numerous occasions. To her great happiness (and surprise), she was never noticed by law enforcement.

Finally, she reached her fabled destination, the doctor’s office. Mievni noted the irony that most people dreaded the doctor, and yet here she was, parking her car in the parking lot, all of her own veritable volition. She walked into the office, taking care to close the door quietly, she never was a person who appreciated the loud crashing of doors. She walked up to a rather bored looking receptionist who was chewing gum or tobacco or whatever those crazy receptionists like the chew these days.

“I’m here to see Doctor Tlihg,” Mievni started.

The receptionist lazily rolled her eyes up to the depressed girl and said, “I’ll be sure to make a note of that. In the meantime, take one of our fine comfortable seats.”

She walked over to a corner seat and looked around. To her right, there was a book which didn’t look too bad, it went by the title of Queen of the Damned; sounded like just her style. She dug in.

A brief while later, a man walked in who looked friendly enough, but was received by the receptionist in the same rude way Mievni had. He sat down in the corner opposite of her and twiddled his thumbs…