365 Morning and Night

I’ve got a question for you; A girl walks into a supply store asking for ten cans of red paint, six-packs of zip ties, four twelve-foot-long pieces of jute rope, two hammers, a large box of nails, duct tape, and a saw, what would you think? Would you question if you just witnessed a murderer collecting supplies for their next victim? Or maybe a sad housewife who’s ready to end her life and escape her ongoing routine? I bet the last thing you would ponder, is a young woman who is about to plan the best, most intricate, prank of the century. 

You won’t ever know my name. I’ve wiped every trace of me on the planet. From photo albums to selfies, and even some people’s memories, no one knows my name or that I merely exist. I’m not hiding, I’m living under their noses in plain sight and I blend in more than you could ever imagine. It’s simple really, my whole life has been this never-ending loop of consistency that I had no control over. I was never able to settle down considering I have never had the resources to. The reason why I am telling you this is that in case I die, I will have died a legend for what I have prepared 365 days for. Or so I thought.

March 31st, 11:59 pm, 2019, was the day I thought of “it”. “It”, is the idea that would, later on, consume all of my thoughts, my energy, and my humanity. I had no idea how much “it” would consume me. And the funny part about it is, I thought of “it” while I was taking a shit. I had been on the toilet for about seven minutes and counting when I looked down at my feet wishing I had put socks on. I then wondered how many other people were stuck in an inconvenient spot somewhere with cold feet. I laughed at myself loudly due to the fact that I rarely ever ponder these little insignificant, unanswerable, stupid questions about people and the life around me. You see, I live in a city with tens of thousands of people walking up and down the streets each day. I see a new face every centimeter I turn my head. But the ironic thing is, considering I am surrounded by them every day, I never give any of them a single piece of mind. So why now? 

I chose now because I am finally ready to do more than just wake up. I am finally equipped to take a left turn instead of a right. And, of course, as cliche it certainly sounds, I finally have the energy to do something different. Ok… I’ll be honest, I have rambled quite a bit about random ideas and origins you probably couldn’t care less about, but trust me it all matters. You won’t know my plan until the last sentence of this piece of words. And don’t you dare skip to the bottom. It is my duty, my soul purpose, my life goal, to keep every single one of you in the dark for as long as possible. Why? Because it’s fun! You may actually want to take notes ladies and gentlemen, because you may want to continue this legacy. 

Considering it took me a year to finalize this plan, I might as well tell you, in a very broad way, what the steps were and where I am now. First of all, the toilet story is a lie… Oops! Pranked you, HA. The conclusion from it was though, I am ready to do differently. But it’s true, there is no origin, no clever discovery or mishap, I simply just wanted to do this. Sorry I’m so boring. Correction: sorry I WAS so boring. Anyway, the first step was to train my brain to dream of “it” happening. It sounds absolutely ridiculous, I know, but it actually worked. I spent hours, which turned to days, which turned to weeks of envisioning this “prank”. The amount of paper I went through merely writing it down over and over again so it would stick in my brain and turn into a dream was wild. The dream eventually developed, but it crafted itself in snippets. It wasn’t anything too detailed or memorable, it was a failure. One night, I chose to do something completely different. I kept myself awake until the early morning consumed with aggravation and so drained of trying. I ended up crashing around 4:00 am, and not waking until 1:00 pm. I dreamed the whole thing, it worked, I now knew the play by play. I now had the basics figured out. Step two: Three months in, is where it started to go from an idea to a plan. At this point, I had vision boards covering my apartment perfectly illustrating how I was going to pull it off. Seeing those every day gave me the hope and drive to keep going. I felt dangerous and cool, and genuinely genius. After those three months of dreaming flew by, was when I learned how to hack. I won’t go into detail because that is very illegal, but let’s just say I taught myself the in-depth way around the mind of software. I knew this skill would come especially in handy if I had to make my way around mainframes and passcodes. The basics took about two months to learn until I moved on to execution. 

Execution is step three. Step three is the last of the steps. Step three is when it happens. This step makes or breaks. It began with the maps. I had to make sure I would know exactly where I was going at all times, so I re-routed the maps of my city and drew a new one only I would be able to decipher. It was actually a very simple map, but totally foreign to the average person. This took no time at all; I love drawing. Now that I had the vision, the heart, the brains, and the picture, I just needed the supplies. This was the easiest of them all. I lived right down the street from a small hardware shop, and I only needed a few basic items. That night, I walked down the block and finalized my purchases, and made my way back to my place. 

Step four. March 30th, 11:59 pm, 2020. Step three was supposed to be the last step. It was supposed to be the conclusion and the final cherry on top of what I had prepared the last 364 days for. What happened. Everything was going perfectly until that night when I came home to an empty apartment. All of my plans, my journals, my boards, my computers, my stuff, completely gone. It was almost as if I had never existed. It was almost as if I had been watched all these days and nights, only to be swept clean of the biggest part of me. I stood there in the doorway with my wallet and the bag of supplies I had bought shortly before and stared blankly at my vacant studio apartment. 

It was then, when I realized, in the midst of planning a prank, I was a part of one much bigger. Someone's sick idea of a joke. A joke that ruined my life and all of my work. A person who had observed me so closely for almost 365 days planning to take what they knew was so precious to me. It was evil, it was malicious, it was BARBARIC. It was so well thought out and so perfectly executed. As much as it kills me to admit it, this hideous prank was not only genius, it was legendary. This whole time, the prank was on me, and for that, you’ll never know exactly what I spent those 364 days preparing for.