What Is Love?

Personal challenges, they are the worst, and the ones that can get you in more trouble than you are willing to get into. You're not really doing it for yourself—well I guess you are, but I don't really want to get into that at this point. All you need to know is that I was setting out to do a personal challenge. You know that SNL skit where there are three guys in a car jamming out to “What is Love?” Sure you do, who doesn't? Well someone made it into a ten hour long video on YouTube, so I sat out to listen to all ten hours of it. The cool part is you don't really know when the song starts or when it ends because the maker of the video hid it. See after some time, the CD skips in the video and they freak out about it and Jim Carrey blows on it, and they put it back in the player and start dancing again. It's like this all the way through the video. At least I guess, you get pulled into the music after about twenty minutes; so much so that when the CD stops, you feel like you are being pulled back to reality.

What's wrong with the CD?”

It was about five hours in when the CD stopped in the video, pulling me back to reality. I was in pain for some reason. In fact, it hadn't even seemed like I was online for over five hours. It was weird. It felt like I had been in a fight of some sort. As far as I could tell at the time, I had been just sitting in front of my computer reading stupid shit on Facebook. I really hate how most of the people on my Facebook seem so fucking stupid.

"What the hell is going on? Just...”

The next time I heard the CD stop in the video, I was pulled from my trance. Still on Facebook, video running in the background, but even more sore than I was before. It was unnerving. I thought that maybe it was the way I was sitting so I moved around for a bit until I was once again lost in the music.

"What is love?”

By the third time I came out of the trance, I knew something was wrong. I had blood on my hands and keyboard. I thought it was my own; seeing that my nose had been bleeding from the looks of it. I had blood running from my nose all over my shirt. Then, just as before, I was lost in the music.

"... Don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more...”

I came to crying this time. I don't know what I was crying about, but I am almost certain it was the fact that I couldn't seem to escape the music. Even as my bloody fingers slid across the mouse pad of my computer to close out Facebook I could feel the music, that damn song just taking over.

"... I give you my love but you don't care...”

I was back once more just sitting there looking at Facebook. It was still just stupid people posting stupid things. Lies, lies about their lives, lies about politics, lies about the meaning of life—everything on there was lies. Why did that matter at that time? I had more blood on me and it couldn't have all been from my nose. I felt more beat up and I looked at my hands. My knuckles were split open and bleeding. I went to toss my laptop in the floor to go check myself in the mirror, but then—

"... what is right, what is wrong, give me a sign...”

This time I came to in the bathroom, my laptop sitting on the toilet, the shower running behind me and I was leaning over the sink that was stained with blood. The air was thick with the smell of blood. I was able to get a glance of myself in the mirror before being pulled back in by the song. My face was beaten, eyes black, my lip busted—I've never had a broken nose before or seen one—but I was certain by the looks of it, mine was. My shirt was ripped in places, showing cuts and my hair was a mess with a small patch missing from it just above my right ear. It looked like my neck was scratched to bits.

"... I don't know what can I do, what else can I say, it's up to you...”

This time I was sitting on the toilet using the sink to hold the laptop. Still on Facebook, still reading stupid shit that I didn't want to read—but it felt like something was pulling me harder into the words on the screen. Words of hate coming from people who claimed to be all about peace and love. A few people talking about an accident, I just didn't have time to read it, I heard a low moan coming from the bathtub. The shower was still going. There was blood everywhere, now that I got to looking at it. Not just in the bathroom, no, leading out and into the living room. Then the moan came again, as I stood the music took me over.

“Don't hurt me, don't hurt me...”

The woman's voice pulled me from my trance. I was looking down in the tub. Water raining down on the armless and legless nude woman in the tub. Her face beaten beyond recognition. There were others in the tub with her—well not really others, just other torsos. At least seven of them, three men and four women. Where were their arms and legs? Where the hell were their heads? I slowly looked around, ignoring the moaning woman's pleas. The video had finished on my laptop, so the house was at an eerie silence. As I walked down the hall it sounded like walking on the sticky floor of a movie theater, blood was everywhere and on everything. Handprints lined the walls from almost top to bottom. In the living room sat six heads on the sofa. Each one's face beaten badly, hair at different lengths. Judging by the hair alone, they matched at least six of the bodies in the tub—where was the other head?

I slowly made my way into the kitchen, honestly not even sure why I wasn't more shocked by all this. To the left of me was a stack of arms and legs, and to the right was the other head—dotting the “I” in “lies”. A leg and an arm folded at a 90 degree level made the “L”, the “I” was a leg with the head over it. The “E” was made of two arms also folded at 90 degrees and a third resting in the middle straight out. The “S" was just two arms and it looked more like a backwards “Z”.

That's when the woman in the bathroom cried out. I ran back in there, this time seeing the long steak-knife that was sitting in the floor. I must have done it all with this knife, I turned back to the woman in the tub. She was dead now, the scream must have been her last breath. I'm shocked, really, that she lived that long. I looked at my laptop, Facebook didn't have as many updates as it did before. That was nice, it seemed people had gone missing also. That was nice as well. I then went back to the YouTube page, it was funny the person that did the first ten hour video also did a part two. I guess I'll start playing it after I post this to my wall. I need a little music to finish cleaning up this mess on Facebook.

"What's wrong with the CD?”