Oh man.

Fairway

Tumeric

Chilli

Chestnuts (266g, 0.6lb)

Apricot (100g)

Pistachio (600g)

Streaky bacon (12 rashers)

Turkey (18lb)

Specialty market

Pancetta (0.6lb, 266g)

Merguez (24in)

Goose fat (3.3oz)

New Jersey

Pork mince (1000g, 2.2lb)

Brussel sprouts (1.33kg, 2.93lb)

Yukon gold potatoes (3.33kg, 7.34lb)

Chicken stock (800ml)

Lemons (6)

Onions (3)

Tomatoes (4)

Rosemary springs (4)

Parsley (1 bunch)

Sage leaves (1 large bunch)

Tuesday. Xingese cuisine day. Roy watches a private in the lunch line plop a scoop of fried rice – a mushy mound of gruel specked with bits of red and green something – on to his plate. Some staffer somewhere had the brilliant idea of trying to raise troop morale by introducing themed lunch days in the cafeteria. A quick glance at Wednesday’s menu tells Roy tomorrow is Drachman cuisine day. What a treat, Roy thinks, what a treat.

Meanwhile, a tall blonde sergeant standing in front of Roy in line says expectantly to his shorter, bespectacled friend’s, “Sooo, did you ask Lieutenant Milly out?”

“No,” Glasses responds curtly.

“Oh c’mon, what’s the matter with you Marv?” Blondie makes a face at his friend, “LT is totally into you, man.”

“Do you mind? She’s our commanding officer!” Glasses hisses back.

Roy shuffles mindlessly behind them in line, holding a well-worn brown plastic tray in one hand, his other tucked in his pants pocket. No stranger to the pains of the military’s non-fraternization rule, Roy silently extends his sympathies to Glasses. He and Havoc had been curating a list of potential dates for as long as Roy could remember: Charlotte from Investigations, Gretchen down in library archives, Jenna from the hospital, just to name a few. Her name, though, well, she’s always been different.

“Oh c’mooon, Marv,” Blondie drones on dramatically. “Who is going to know?” Blondie answers his own question, “No one, that’s who! Seriously, man, it is just one date. No one’s going to find out. Just ask her out.” Blondie’s voice rises above the cafeteria humdrum, turning heads and drawing hushed murmurs in the pair’s direction.

Glasses is beet red and growing redder by the minute. “If you don’t keep your damn voice down everyone is going to know!” He hurls a scoop of stir fry on to Blondie’s plate with such force bits of bell pepper and carrot splatter all over the tall sergeant’s uniform.

“Whaddya do that for? You know I hate carrots!”

“Oh yeah? I hate loud mouths!”

“Just one date, huh,” Roy mutters to himself as he scoops some fried rice on to his own place. No one’s going to find out. No one…

Much to Roy’s dismay, a small army of paperwork had invaded his desk by the time he returns from lunch. A tall pile of civilian claims for lost and damaged property from Fullmetal’s latest misadventures nearly touches the ceiling. Next to it looms three more stacks of paperwork: two years’ worth of expense reports, travel logs, and ongoing operations briefs awaited his review and signature.

“And,” Riza drops another heavy box next to Roy’s existing paperwork with a thud, “an urgent delivery from Lieutenant Colonel Hughes.” Without evening opening the box, Roy could already see pictures of Gracia and Elicia’s smiling faces peeking out from under the lid.

“All work and no play makes Roy a dull boy,” he mutters, “Can’t we do something fun for once, Lieutenant?” Roy gives an exasperated sigh as he moves Hughes’ “urgent” delivery aside and begins flipping through the expense reports. He cringes internally as he thumbs past his personal expenses, having accidentally charged three dinners at some of the city’s most expensive restaurants to his military account last Valentine’s Day.

“That is entirely up to you, sir,” Riza replies, resuming work at her own desk, “As long as you finish your paperwork.” A bemused smile crosses her lips when she sees the Colonel is already doodling on his reports. Well, he’s managed to do five minutes of work, she thinks with an internal sigh, that’s a new post-lunch record.

If not for all this damn paperwork and the damn anti-fraternization rule, Roy muses back at his desk, he could be out on a joy ride with Charlotte or at the movies with Gretchen or at the beach with Jenna. Jenna loves the beach. Maybe, Roy starts drawing a hawk on the corner of a report, maybe he could have dinner with Riza. If he remembers correctly from his days as Master Hawkeye’s apprentice, Riza was quite fond of sweets. Maybe they could go to that dessert place that opened up on the corner before going back to his apartment…

When it dawns on him just who he had been daydreaming about and where his train of thought had been going, Roy crumples the report in front of him and hurls it across the office in one sudden, violent gesture. The report bounces off several times on the floor before rolling to a stop at Riza’s feet.

Looking at the ball of paper on the floor and then back at Roy, Riza asks hesitantly, “Is there something wrong, sir?” She picks up ball and straightens out the report. Roy had managed to leave a comically misshapen doodle – an avian creature that looked more like a slug with wings and less like a hawk – in one corner. Perhaps the Colonel was frustrated with his lack of artistic talent, she thinks, choking back a small laugh.

“No! Not at all, Lieutenant!” Roy does his best to feign a hearty laugh, “I was just,” he spots the waste basket in the corner and blurts out, “just practicing my basketball shot! Haha! That’s all!”

Riza returns the paperwork to Roy’s desk with a raised eyebrow. The waste basket is nearly five feet away from her desk. “Please don’t use the rest of your paperwork for sports practice, sir,” she chastises before adding, “Though your shot – and your doodles – both need work, sir.”

Roy shoots his adjutant the widest, most harmless grin he could manage before mentally sighing with relief that she had not somehow read his mind – his cursed, daydreaming mind. The rest of the afternoon, Roy vows, will be devoted solely to finishing his paperwork. No more doodling. No more daydreaming. Just wo–

One date! Just one date, Roy, no one’s going to find out, Blondie’s voice finishes Roy’s train of thought.

“Oh goddamnit,” Roy mutters, one hand slapping his face, “Not this guy.” Determined to rid his mind of Blondie’s annoying voice, Roy begins furiously tearing through the nearest stack of paperwork.

C’mooon Roy! Blondie drones on in Roy’s head, who is going to know? No one! Just ask her out already. You know you want to.

No! Roy shouts back mentally. Working a pace he never thought possible, he tries to mentally stamp out his internal nemesis by attacking an the entire stack of expense reports and travel logs.

Roy, live a little! Who is going to know? I’ll tell you who: no one! Blondie’s voice dips and twirls across Roy’s thoughts, evading the Flame Alchemist’s every attempt to snuff out the annoying sound.

Seriously, man, if you aren’t going to, then maybe I’ll take a pass at the lieutenant, Blondie taunts. I mean, Riza is a sweet piece of –

“Oh for god’s sake, shut up already!” Roy stands up abruptly, slamming both of his palms down on his desk. Shockwaves from his abrupt movement threaten to topple the various stacks of paperwork he had just completed.

Riza jumps at the sound

They had known each other for so long they could practically read each other’s minds

Glasses is silent, his knuckles white and face beet red.

“Marv, learn to live a little, man! Everyone knows the drill: just one date doesn’t break the fraternization rule.” Blondie drops a heap of stir fried vegetables and noodles on Glasses’ plate, having finally reached the food. “One date rule, Marv, one date rule!”

At this point other voices join the fray. “Quit teasing him, Jake!”

“Yeah, one date rule! Ask her out Marv!”

“Milly and Marv, sitting in a tree…K I S S—!”

“Do it, Marv! One date rule!”

By the time Roy digs into his fried rice and stir fry, the entire cafeteria is chanting “One date rule!”

Riza greets him with paperwork as soon as Roy steps back in the office. A small city of paperwork had apparently found its way to his desk during lunch time. A neat stack of civilian claims for lost and damaged property from Fullmetal’s latest misadventures along with expense reports and travel logs waited for his review and signature.

“And,” Riza places one last file in front of him, ”

“By the way, Hawkeye.”

“Yes, Colonel?”

“Have you heard of the one date rule?”

“No, sir, I can’t say I have.”

“I overheard some enlisted men talking about in the cafeteria. It’s probably nothing.”

”

“You’re burning the roux, Boy!” Father’s voice booms from his office. “I can smell it all the way from up here!”

Pots and pans clatter in the kitchen. A small voice calls back, “I’m sorry, sir! I’ll make sure to watch the pot, sir!”

I tiptoe over and peek inside the kitchen from behind a half-open door. The new boy is standing on a step stool and bent over a pot of curry on the stove like a witch over her cauldron. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up to his elbows, sweat dripping down from his furrowed brown to his red cheeks. Around the stool lay a circle of discarded onion peels, carrot tops, apple cores, and potato skins.

Stirring the pot with a wooden spoon, the boy’s jet black eyes are focused intently on the pages of my mother’s old recipe book. The first task Father gives anyone who wants to be his apprentice is to make my mother’s curry from scratch. No one’s come ever come close to Father’s expectations, so Father has never taken an apprentice.

The boy raises the wooden spoon to his mouth for a taste and his lips pucker immediately. He runs both hands through his mop of raven hair several times in frustration before suddenly leaping off the stool and racing across the kitchen. Frantically flinging open cupboards and drawers, he mutters to himself – coffee, yogurt, flour – as he searches for ingredients, completely oblivious to my presence by the door.

As the boy reaches for the flour, Father’s voice rings out again, “Don’t even think about adding more flour, Boy!”

The boy jerks his hand away from the flour bag and shouts back, “Yessir!”

To my surprise, by sunset, the house begins to take on an unexpected aroma. The smell dredges up half-forgotten fragments of a mother I hardly knew. Sometimes I feel her presence in the house calling out to me as if to remind me that she – my mother – had once lived here, but nothing evokes her memory as strongly as the smell of her curry wafting through my room that night.

And, sure enough, later that night, Father takes an apprentice for the first time.

A familiar smell pulls Riza back to the world of the waking. Curry, she thinks as she rubs the sleep from her eyes, this is smell of my mother’s curry. She starts to twist her hair into a bun as she sits up on the couch but suddenly decides against it. No, she thinks, leaving her hair down, not quite her mother’s curry.

Soft amber light filters in through the doorway, throwing long shadows into the darkened living room. She wraps a sweater around her shoulders and heads down to the kitchen. Peeking through the doorway, Riza catches the glimpse of a man hovering over a pot on her stove, the sleeves of his white uniform shirt rolled up past muscled forearms to his elbows. A pair of white gloves rest on the kitchen table, a black overcoat hangs over the back of a chair.

“You’re burning the roux, Boy,” Riza says with a smile. Crossing her arms she rests her weight against the doorway. When they are alone, she calls him whatever she wants. Sir. Colonel. Boy.

“Huummh?” Roy looks up from the stove with a wooden spoon in his mouth, his jet black eyes meeting Riza’s amber ones momentarily before he shouts, “Coffee!” He may have stopped dropping vegetable peels and fruit shavings on the floor, but her commanding officer still stumbles around the kitchen for ingredients the same way he did when he was a kid. The corners of Riza’s mouth could hardly keep from curling into a smile when he triumphantly waves up a can of instant coffee in her direction. “Can’t forget the coffee,” he says.

“You always make my mother’s curry,” Riza muses, giving the pot a stir. The aroma reminds her of lazy childhood afternoons. A Sunday maybe, or a school day after she’s finished her homework, and Father finally lets Roy stop scribbling alchemy circles long enough to cook dinner.

“Hers is the only curry I’ll ever make,” Roy replies, adding with a slight grimace, “even after all that abuse from Master.” Father never said a single good thing about Roy’s curry, always criticizing this or that. Add more pepper, Boy! You’ve ruined the flavor, Boy! And Roy never stopped tinkering with her mother’s recipe, always adding this or that – chocolate or orange peels or anything that would make Father lose his mind.

“But of course, I’ve tweaked a few things here over the years,” Roy comes up behind Riza and wrapping his arms around her waist. Burying his face in her hair, he plants a string of kisses along her jawline and down the crock of her neck, his breath hot against her skin as he whispers, “Though I’m not sure Master would approve.”

Closing her eyes, Riza falls back into Roy’s embrace. If only she had known she would the rest of her life with Father’s only apprentice. “Do you remember,” she asks, reaching back to run her fingers through his hair, “what life was like before we met each other?”

“No,” he hums back against her collarbone, “life without you is not worth remembering.” His answer is so remarkably cheesy that Riza only laughs in response. The world shrinks to a small quiet moment in her apartment, and they stay like this – holding each other, swaying to the tune of a song only they can hear – for a long time.

Then, Riza breaks the silence: “What did you do this time, sir?”

Roy peels away from Riza like a turtle drawing back into its shell – he only makes curry when he knows he’s in trouble. Chuckling, he jabs his index fingers together in front of his face. “Well, you know those operations reports, the ones you told me to finish last week,” he begins meekly before trailing off.

She looks at him expectantly. He steals small glances at her while twiddling his thumbs. Lazy Colonel Mustang must have forgotten to file his monthly operations reports, again. And Lieutenant Hawkeye, his trusty adjutant, is going to have slog through bureaucratic nonsense to get those reports filed properly, again.

For an aspiring Fuhrer-to-be, Roy has a terrible poker face. He knows it is all his fault for slacking off on his work, so Riza squares her shoulders and chastises him with the most solemn sir-must-do-your-work glare she can muster. When Riza finally drops her gaze with a roll of her eyes, the normally imposing Colonel Mustang collapses on his lieutenant’s kitchen floor with a long sigh of relief.

“You really should do more of your work, Roy,” she reprimands again, giving the pot of curry another stir before ladling several scoops of rich curry onto two plates of fluffy white rice.

“Yes, Master Hawkeye,” Roy replies in his apprentice voice as he adds crimson flowers of red pickles to each plate of curry before setting both down on the table. He swears he hears the safety on Riza’s handgun click off as soon as the last syllable leaves his mouth. “Erm, I mean, yes, Riza.”

“Thank you for the meal,” Riza holsters her sidearm before adding, “Boy.”

But she relents and declares: “Apology accepted, sir.” W

Riza’s plate is practically spotless when she finishes the last bite of her food. And before either of them knows it, they fall back old habits by the sink: he washes, she dries. That had been their evening routine back then. Two kids standing next to each other by the sink, elbows and arms bumping into each other, water splashing and sloshing all over the counters and floor as they scrubbed dishes.

“Yessir,” Riza nods.

Decades later, the two of them are not doing much better – she with her injured left hand and he with his broad-shouldered frame too large for her tiny kitchen sink. From one look at the way the colonel is handling the dishes in the sink, Riza could tell Roy hardly does the dishes these days. All that cafeteria food for lunch and takeout for dinner.

A heavy bowl slips through Roy’s clumsy hands and into the sink with a large splashing, throwing soapy dishwater all over the countertop and floor. An stray droplet finds its way to Riza’s eye. “Will you please pass me a towel, sir?” she asks, cradling her head in the crook of her elbow, “I’ve got soap in my eye.”

Roy scrambles to find a clean towel in the kitchen, comes up with nothing, and dashes out into the living room to continue his search. Riza nearly doubles over with laughter when he finally returns and presses a crumpled napkin into her hand. “You’d make a terrible house-husband, sir,” she says, choking back laughter.

“I’m sorry, lieutenant,” Roy says with an exasperated sigh, “Let me finish up with the dishes so I can get out of here and stop ruining what’s left of your day.”

“No, it’s alright, sir,” she replies with another chuckle, dabbing her eyes with the bit of napkin.

For a second time that night, a silence settles between the pair. The only sound in the kitchen comes from hush of water gushing from the faucet and Roy’s sponge scrubbing against pots and plates. He apologizes every time his forearms bump into her hands, every time water rains down on their clothes from the sink.

When the dishes are done, the two find themselves standing in Riza’s apartment doorway. “I’m sorry I made such a mess of things today,” Roy says. He is tugging at the sleeves of his black overcoat, and Riza is failing miserably at trying not to smile. Her normally confident and self-assured commanding officer is standing sheepishly in her doorway, restlessly running his hand through his hair, looking at her expectantly from the corner of his eyes. He wants a sign from her that he has truly been forgiven.

She draws herself up and squares her shoulders, chastising him with the most solemn glare she could muster. You should be glad that no one was hurt today, sir. You should be glad you were not seriously injured yourself, sir, not mention what would happened had there been any civilians on the road.

Roy replies with the most innocent smile he could manage. He turns back towards her as he steps out into the hallway, “Please, just forget tonight ever—”

Before he has a chance to finish his sentence, Riza pulls him close by the lapel of his overcoat with her good hand, planting a kiss firmly on his lips. Their lips touch for the briefest of moments but Roy remains immobile in her hallway, eyes wide in disbelief, even after their bodies separate.

“Thank you for the meal, sir.”

She looks at him. He looks back at her. Silence fills the small space between them at the dinner table. Then, Riza’s brow furrows.

They had been on their way back to the office when a torrential downpour suddenly cascaded over the Amestrian countryside. Roy, with all of his distaste for precipitation, insisted they take the faster route back along a narrow, dirt road where the car sputtered wildly out of control in the rain and mud. Roy’s attempts to realign the steering wheel from the passenger seat only made matters worse, throwing the car off the road entirely where the vehicle threw itself unceremoniously into a tree.

From the looks of it, Roy must have brought her back to her apartment because she remembers nothing else after the car slammed into the tree. Her wrist injury, which Roy had also tended to, must have also been a product of the accident.

Back at the dinner table, Roy’s eyes are anxiously searching his lieutenant’s face for a sign of forgiveness. The colonel has a terrible poker face for a soldier aspiring to be a politician, Riza muses. The accident was all his fault, so maybe she should scowl and frown a little more to keep him on the line before letting him go.

But she relents and declares: “Apology accepted, sir.” When he hears those words, both hands rush to Roy’s face with a resounding smack as he sinks back into his chair with a sigh of relief.

“I’m surprised you still remember how to make this curry after all these years,” Riza remarks between mouthfuls of curry. She could not remember the last time she had curry since Roy’s apprenticeship ended years ago.

“I don’t think I can ever forget your mother’s recipe after all that abuse from Master,” Roy says with a pout. Father never said a single good thing about Roy’s curry, always criticizing this or that. (Add more pepper, Boy! You’ve ruined burned the onions, Boy!) And Roy never stopped tinkering with her mother’s recipe, always adding this or that. (Chocolate or orange peels or something that would make Father lose his mind.) But Father used to demand the dish at least once a week and Father’s only apprentice would oblige all too happily.

“And of course, I’ve tweaked a few things here and there,” Roy says, propping his elbows on the tables and leaning towards Riza with mischievous grin, “Though I’m not sure Master would approve.” Riza responds with a small laugh and a shake of her head. Some things never change.

Riza’s plate is practically spotless when she finishes the last bite of her curry. She starts to take her plate and spoon to the sink with her good hand, but Roy is quicker than she is and plucks them from her. “I wash, you dry,” he says, “Just like old times.”

“Yessir,” Riza nods. That had been their evening routine back then: he washes, she dries. Standing next to each other by the sink, elbows and arms bumping into each other, water splashing and sloshing all over the counters and floor.

“I’m sorry, lieutenant,” Roy says with an exasperated sigh, “Let me finish up with the dishes so I can get out of here and stop ruining what’s left of your day.”

“No, it’s alright, sir,” she replies with another chuckle, dabbing her eyes with the bit of napkin.

Roy replies with the most innocent smile he could manage. He turns back towards her as he steps out into the hallway, “Please, just forget tonight ever—”

“Thank you for the meal, sir.”

“Do you remember Maxwell?” Riza asks suddenly, blinking several times as she pats her eye with the napkin.

“You mean that snotty rich kid from town?”

She nods, “He used to say that to me all the time – that I’d make a terrible housewife. He kept going around telling people no one would want to marry me to make me their housewife in the first place.”

“That kid was a jerk.” The talk of Maxwell irks Roy and he begins attacking the crusty residue of curry inside a pot with a sponge. “That kid was a jerk,” he mutters again.

“Joining the military pretty much killed my marriage prospects, so maybe Maxwell was on to something,” Riza replies with a laugh and a shrug, setting down the napkin and picking up another plate to dry.

“No!” Roy barks, slamming his hands down suddenly against the edge of the sink, kicking up more dishwater. “That little jerk wasn’t on to anything at all! Any man should be happy to have you as their wife!”

Maxwell’s comments had never particularly bothered Riza – boys will always be boys, and they were all kids back then anyway – so Roy’s outburst catches her off guard.

“I-I-I,” Roy’s voice cracks, “I would be happy – more than happy – to have you as my wife!” Crap. The rational part of Roy’s mind gives his subconscious a ringing smack across the face. Crap, crap, crap, I said that out loud.

“Papa! Papa!” Riza Hawkeye bounces into her father’s study

“What is it, Elizabeth?” Berthold Hawkeye barely lifts his eyes from the page of his alchemy manuscript.

“I want to hear a story!” Riza tugs at her father’s trouser leg. A huge, expectant smile spreads across her face as she looks up at Berthold’s towering profile. “I want to hear the one about the alchemist and the lizard!”

Should I write again?

He downloads this program that’s supposed to help him concentrate, eliminate all the distractions from his computer desktop, his Facebook messages and little instant message bleeps and bloops that pop up in the corner every now and then, everything. As he gives the cashier his brand new Bank of America credit card that, much to his girlfriend’s display, he cannot stop talking about and toying with, he wonders why the hell is he buying a second monitor.

I have to stop writing Roy and Riza f

Why is my computer lagging?

I have to stop writing Roy and Riza fanfiction. I write nothing else. Its easy. All the hard work’s been done for you, the character development, the plot line. Everything. All I have to do is channel some of what used to be my pent up sexual frustration, loneliness and neediness into them and they come alive as puppets of my adolescent longings. Now what? I’m not exactly sexually frustrated anymore or lonely or needy. Okay, maybe I’m still needy, but at least I fixed the first two. In fact, now, I’m pummeled with more ‘real life’ stuff. Like, getting into law school. Like, what’s going to happen after I get into law school. How I’m going to survive three years grinding away at dense texts and competing like an animal against my much smarter peers, paying off a seemingly endless amount of debt just to get the damn degree, that maybe, maybe, I won’t even ever get to use because the economy is in a slump, there’s a recession going on and everyone’s getting fired and laid off and no one can find a goddamn job. Why does it have to be like this? I didn’t ask to be put here and I don’t see why I just have to shut up and live with it. Adapting is one thing but accepting this crap is another. I don’t want to master this crap either so don’t give me any of that, oh, just work harder and make something of yourself bullshit. I don’t understand that either. What the hell does it mean to make something of myself? In whose eyes am I something? In what way am I something? What qualifications, what degrees, what talents must I acquire to become this something? A Steve Jobs or Bill Gates? A Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch? An Einstein or Oppenheimer? What? Do I need genius? Talent? Luck? I don’t know why I have to work so hard just to survive. What is surviving anyway? Why do I have this drive, why do we have this need? Why? Questions I’ll viagra have answers to, but doesn’t it mean something that I ask these questions? Does my curiosity not speak to some innate truth? Am I just copping out? Too lazy, too inept to deal with the harsh competition of life so I resort to midly fanciful, useless philosophical panderings in order to have some sense of self left to face the world with? Are these truly meaningless questions that we will never have answers to so we should just stop asking? Why do I feel so empty sometimes when I think about the world I am about to be swallowed by. This behemouth of tragedy, greed and evil, a perverted reflection of human nature that I am thrust upon to face and accept. The daily grind of work, of lethargy, boredome, dealing with people who are equally sickened by their situation, half-assed bullshit lives that no one wants to lead.

Maybe this is too depressing. A little too depressing. It used to be like this when I had no one and nothing in my, and I mean nothing, seemed good. I’d pine for days and weeks and months for boys who would never like me because I am fat. I would despair for days and weeks and months at my falling grades and lack of initiative in classes that will determine my future. But when you get past it all, looking back at it, how much of any of this really mattered? Very little, I guess. When white people had their social ups and downs in high school, I think most of us suffered from some kind of mental trauma of going to Stuy. Exhaustion is perhaps the best way of putting it and those with the drive and the fuel to make it past that succeed? Do they? Then again, what does it mean to succeed in the first place.

Say what you will about anime, but I’ll defend it to death. Honestly, there’s something about a good series that just stays with you and I mean, really stays with you. You hear the theme song, you think back to a certain a scene, a certain moment and it just gets you, deep down somwhere. Its like thinking about middle school and all of the days that you spent doing something meaningless and stupid with your friends but it was the best thing you could have ever done and maybe its generic, trashy and not as amazing as something more legitimate like science or whatever, and maybe it is a little bit creepy and the fandom is generally populated by fat people who like to dress up and fail at being their favorite characters, but deep down in there somewhere, there’s this feeling, this feeling that’s irreplaceable and doesn’t come from anything, anything else. It makes me want to run and keep running till I can’t run anymore and leap from a cliff into the invite world and embrace everything and hug everything and welcome anything and everything. I just had an ephiphany. Perhaps, this is joy. This very feeling. But its amazing and I can’t put it into words no matter how hard I try. It just makes me want to through myself from something large and tall and epic and feel the wind in my hair and ground fall away from me and let it all go.

There’s something about summer and the way the sky looks, the crisp blue with smidges of hazy white clouds flowing above a sea of green grass. Holding your friend’s hand and walking home in the half empty streets. Summers in anime are different from what they are here. You don’t feel the humid heat, you only see the colors and it looks amazing.

I can’t think of anything to write. I babbled a lot yesterday. Mm, we’ll see. Sometimes I’m inspired and sometimes I’m not.
I am jealous of people who draw better than I do and who study science, because it feels like I will never be that talented and I will never have what it takes to be a pre-med student. I wonder if they are good at any of the things I am or, at least that I feel I am good at. Like, Jeffrey. That last conversation about my switching majors and how I didn’t have what it takes to be in science? It pisses me that he so easily wrote off all the things I’m good at by taking one class. One class? Are you kidding me? I’m not daunted by the sciences, I simply don’t want to try anymore. I’d rather spend my mental energy on something I like and want to spend it on.
I feel like I’m going to spend the rest of my life justifying my choice to someone and I’m always going to be laughed at and looked down upon by scientists or mathematicians for what major I am, or what I study or studied. Hey, philosophy is the fucking foundation of your modern sciences. Without this shit, there isn’t any of your shit. Don’t forget it. It is as if they owe their superiority to what I am studying, yet they so easily forget this. And, it’s also kind of fun. I actually like logic.

The story of Kingston’s aunt is passed down to her out of her mother’s practical necessity, as a warning as for Kingston to heed, but Kingston’s own retelling of the story is written out of a different necessity. Kingston writes this story so her aunt can be remembered. “You must not tell anyone” (308), her mother warns her. For her betrayal and adultery, Kingston’s aunt is forsaken by everyone, her husband’s family, her own family and her village. She no longer has a name, a voice, she no longer exists. In her aunt’s native village, as envisioned by Kingston, everyone is related, connected by 115 relationship titles as brother or sister. One cannot both be family and an outsider at the same time.
“‘You must not tell anyone,’ my mother said, ‘what I am about to tell you’” (308). No Name Woman begins with a secret, a secret now made public by Kingston’s story. It is passed down to her out of her mother’s practical necessity, as a warning for the teenage Kingston, not a story for her to repeat. The silence that surrounds her aunt
It is easy to keep quiet about the little things: eating the last piece of cake in the fridge, stealing a handful of those tiny pencils from a mini golf course, even a harmless lie about why you were late to work – was it really another train delay? But, it’s hard to keep quiet about the big things, the things that keep you up at night: the things you keep turning over and over again in your mind until its jagged confusions become smooth and understandable, maybe even acceptable. No Name Woman, a dark family secret finally made public, belongs in the latter kind of thing. The story is passed down to Kingston by her mother, who breaks the oath of malicious silence that surrounds the story of her husband’s forgotten sister. In her mother’s mind, the story, told out of necessity, is a warning to her daughter: do not shame your family by becoming your aunt. Once told and its purpose served, the story and her aunt are again forgotten. Where the story ends is not as clear to her as it is to her mother. Not only is her aunt shunned through silence, but she herself keeps silent, never accusing the man who wronged her, drowning herself in the well so that her ghost “waits silently by the water” (315), she never speaks up to vindicate herself. Guessing at the details of what kind of a woman her aunt was, Kingston looks to her for “ancestral help” (311) in reaching her own self-identity, trying to bridge the gap between what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be Chinese-American. The immigrants Kingston describes are loud, shouting to each other in America as they would back in their village fields, still connected through their kinship. Ironically, it is in America, where Kingston is embarrassed by her mother’s loudness and tries to emulate low, inaudible “American tones” (312), that her voice speaks the loudest. Often the things that one tries to bury the deepest are the things that most rises to the surface.
The characters in The Most Dangerous Beauty as real and so are the events that it details. David William, enamored with the beautiful pictures in Pernkopf’s Anatomy, goes in search of the last remaining artist of the book. Generally denounced for the heinous Nazi crimes that aided in the creation of the book, many do not deny the beauty of the 800 or so pictures spread throughout four volumes. The central theme in Paterniti’s piece is a sense of shame, forgetting, reconciliation with the events that took place during the creation of book. At the same, Williams is willing to seemingly forgiven all the past behind the book for the sake of its beauty that so captivated him in his youth. Similarly, Kingston is also fascinated by the story of her aunt and though she is unable to actively track down her past like Williams is able to do, she also gives life to something forgotten.

P: David Williams is a man who is confused and conflicted about his love for the Book. He is trying to remember something that most people condemn by its association with Nazi atrocities and crimes.
K: I am trying to remember a shameful aspect of my family’s history that I was told to never speak about.
P: In this way, you and David Williams are similar, trying to talk about, if not vindicate, those who can no longer speak for themselves.
K: And, we are also not similar because Williams is drawn to the Book because of its beauty, not because of a lack of self-identity.
P: Then again, the persons that fascinate you both are, in ways, what made you who you are today. The Book dramatically shaped Williams’ life and so did the story of your aunt. When Williams means Batke, he truly believes him to be a kind, old man.
K: Unlike, Williams, I will never be able to know the truth about my aunt. I can only guess.
P: Williams also encountered something like the silence your family keeps about your aunt in his research about the book. People are quick to forget the shameful and bury what they do not wish to remember.
K: But, no one curses the dead like my family does. Even though Pernkopf is condemned as a Nazi and his book the source of controversy, David Williams and others who admire the book will remember him, in a way.
P: That can also be true of your aunt. Your story is her vindication and though she may not be able to rest in peace, you have given her some measure of conclusion.
K: By chasing the ghosts of the dead, both of us may do more to harass them than console them.

Through this story, Kingston tries to “name the unspeakable” (309), filling in bits and pieces of the story that were left ou
The silence that surrounds her aunt, the forgetfulness of her Kingston’s family is deliberate and incriminating, even in death her aunt continues to be branded as a traitor.

Recovery III: Can I be a top-selling, multi-platinum rap artist like Eminem?

Murder Mystery

Detective Roy Mustang arrives on the scene in his black sedan, a half finished burger dripping grease and ketchup between his teeth. He pulls over by the side of the street and steps out into the damp night air. Sirens glare, reflecting blue and red off the wet cobblestone. Swarms of men piling in and out of a quaint two story house guarded by a black iron gate and fresh, yellow police tape screaming “Do Not Cross.” He slams the car door shut and tosses away his burger. Ducking up the police tape, he approaches the house.

“What’s the story, Hughes?” He follows a blinding camera flash to a pool of blood and a mutilated, headless body covered by a white sheet on the floor.

“Double homicide,” Hughes rests his hands on his hips, joining Roy.

Roy grabs a glove and kneels by the body, lifting a corner of the sheet to examine the corpse. “You think it’s him?”

“Has to be,” Hughes kneels as well, “Everything fits. Tucker was state police and an alchemist. And that bloody mess over there that used to Tucker’s head is typical deconstruction alchemy. No doubt about it.”

“You said double homicide. Where’s the other body?” Peeling off his single glove, Roy drops the sheet and looks up at Hughes.

Hughes pauses for a moment and the jerks his thumb towards the staircase, “Upstairs.”

“Is that thing human?” Roy asks, standing in the upstairs study, staring at a bloody corpse in confusion and disgust. Another camera flash goes off near his head, briefly illuminating the corpse in hideous clarity.

“Half human. Shou Tucker, the life binding alchemist, was up for evaluation next Monday. It was either getting his license revoked and losing his funding or—”

Roy finishes the sentence, “turning his daughter into another talking chimera.” He stands up abruptly, a look of malice in his face. “Do the Elrics know yet?”

“Can’t say, but Ed pulled out the file on Tucker’s missing wife last night.” Hughes wipes his glasses with the corner of his shirt.

“Smart kid. I heard he was pretty close with,” Roy tips his head towards the corpse, “with the girl.”

“It’s going to be hard,” Hughes says, following Roy down the stairs.

“They made their choice.” Roy states flatly, exiting the house. Momentarily, he feels trapped in the humidity, the kind that comes right before rain. “We’d better find them anyway. They’re still kids and there’s a murderer on the loose.”

“Yeah,” Hughes agrees grimly. Opening his car door, he is about to step when static crackles on his radio.

“Suspect heading east on 25^th street. I repeat, heading east on 25^th street. Officer is in pursuit requesting back up. Officer in pursuit. Suspect is male, dark skinned with distinguishing scar on his forehead.”

“Roy-!”

“Yeah, I know. I know.” Roy hops into his own car and slams the door shut. Light drops of rain materialize on his windshield and he groans. Hoping to reach Fullmetal and Scar in time, he speeds down the wet street after Hughes. Quietly, he mutters, “And I had a date with Riza tonight.”

Riza Hawkeye is getting married.

The news spreads like wildfire across the ranks and even faster when word gets out that Roy Mustang is not the groom. For the first time since he took the desk job, Roy is glad that he has so much paperwork to hide behind, so much paperwork to keep his mind occupied. The moment he leaves his office he is assaulted by prying eyes and curious glances, even a flirtatious wink here or there. Gossip and whispers follow his every step, down every hallway, around every corner, chasing him even into the urinals.

“I can’t even take a piss in peace!” Roy exclaims, almost screaming into the telephone receiver. “I’m not even the one getting married! Why the hell am I getting all the attention?”

“Word has it you’re pretty popular with the ladies,” Hughes, on the other end of the line, replies, “now that a certain first lieutenant is getting married.” Roy can almost see the smirk on his friend’s face.

“Yeah, well, this ‘pretty popular’ thing is making my life miserable.” Roy continues his rant, “It’s a nightmare up here. My subordinates have turned into my personal paparazzi. I think Fuery even tapped my phone.”

“Are you sure it’s not the ‘she’s getting married but to not you’ thing that’s making your life miserable?”

The line falls silent. Knowing that he just stepped on a touchy subject and trying to change the topic, Hughes brings up the first and only thing on his mind. “Isn’t my daughter just oh, so cute? She’s so adorable! Have I shown you my newest photo of her and Gracia baking together? Gracia’s pies are just so delicious!” Before he elaborates further about just exactly how delicious Gracia’s pies are, Roy hangs up on him. Hughes gives the silent receiver a helpless grin before placing it back in the cradle.

Roy gives his own receiver an exasperated sigh. Without her, his paperwork is a mess and starting to pile up on his desk, around his desk and even on the floor. Somehow, he finds it difficult to picture Hawkeye planning a wedding, trying on dresses, ordering flowers, sending out invitations, being with another man. He kills that train of thought abruptly and turns his attention to an overdue report, something about a sheep herder demanding compensation for losses incurred during a training exercise. Scratching his signature on the bottom of the document, he tosses it in the corner and moves on to another report. One down, ten million more to go.

“I need to request a leave of absence, sir.” She had said.

“I know, I know, lieutenant. I’ll get back to work. I’ll get back to—Wait? A leave of absence? What for?” He remembers looking up at her for an explanation only to see a hint of sadness and hesitation in her eyes.

“I’m getting married.”

He receives a wedding invitation from her in the mail a month later. By then, she is already away on leave, finalizing the details of her wedding and planning her honeymoon, leaving the office in a state of complete chaos, packed from floor to ceiling with papers and reports. He put Breda and Falman on paperwork duty so he can spend his time trying to fashion some sort of a paper fort to protect him from female officers. He has not seen Hawkeye in weeks.

It is not until he opens the invitation and reads the groom’s name for the first time, printed in simple yet striking black typeface on the cream colored card, that he realizes just much he has been avoiding the subject of her wedding.

“Stewart Wulf?” He mutters, tipping back a shot of whiskey. “What kind of name is that?”

“What kind of name is Stewart Wulf?” He asks his empty house, pouring himself another shot of liquor.

“What the hell kind of name is Stewart Wulf?” He asks suddenly, slamming his fist down against his office desk. The small tremor sends a minor earthquake across the stacks of and stacks of precariously placed paperwork in the office and sends Breda leaping out of his chair trying to catch a pile of falling folders. His voice reverberates in his silent office followed by a thump as Breda hits the floor.

“The name of Lieutenant Hawkeye’s fiancé?” Falman offers, stabilizing his own stack of folders.

Roy’s left hand makes contact with his face with a resounding smack. Pulling at the skin of his face, he mutters, “Yes, I know. I know it’s the name of Lieutenant Hawkeye’s fiancé.” He sinks into his seat with a sigh, “Believe me, Falman, I know.”

The thought of his relationship with Hawkeye as anything more than purely professional crossed his mind only recently, right before the sudden announcement of her wedding that morning. As he headed home for the night, a diamond engagement ring, glimmering in the light of a dim jewelry store’s window display, caught his eye. It was the kind of ring that he would want to give a woman to make her his, a ring that bore a sense of austerity and elegance, a ring that screamed Riza Hawkeye at him. He stood staring at it for a long time. He went back the next night and the night after and then the night after that. For weeks after her marriage announcement, he returned to that jewelry store because he couldn’t bear to stop looking at that ring.

After hearing from Havoc, who saw the Roy standing in front of the store on more than one occasion, that the colonel spends his evening staring at wedding rings, Breda, Falman and eventually Fuery and Black Hayate along with Havoc decide to follow the colonel out on his nightly excursion. Mustang’s personal paparazzi set out to work.

The night before Hawkeye’s wedding, they are sitting in Falman’s car, half eating Chinese take out and half watching the colonel from across the street when Fuery lets out a loud shriek. Havoc immediately clamps his hand over Fuery’s mouth. A dog barks outside.

Raising a finger to his lips, Havoc slowly releases Fuery and whispers, “What happened?”

Fuery, eyes are wide with excitement, whispers back, “The colonel!” He jabs a finger at now empty store front where Roy used to be standing. The store door chime jingles as the tail of a black overcoat disappears inside.

“I was wondering when you’d come in for this ring.” The jeweler, an elderly woman, says to Roy. She gingerly fishes the ring from the display and places it in a square, velvet box. “You spent a lot of time looking at it.”

“Yes, it’s a very lovely ring.” Roy smiles back courteously. A ring that reminds him too much of his lieutenant who is getting married to some guy named Stewart Wulf tomorrow. The very thought makes him clench his fists.

“Just remember, Mr. Mustang, she hasn’t said no to you yet.”

His mouth moves, forming the beginning of a question, but she interrupts him, sliding the box across the counter to him, her fingers resting on the package, “Have a nice day.”

Instead, he swallows his question and places the ring box in his coat pocket. “Thank you,” he starts, a surprised and perplexed expression on his face, “Thank you very much.”

Turning to leave, Roy catches a glimpse of an all too familiar outline hovering outside the window. He raises an eyebrow. Mustang’s paparazzi: hard at work. As he turns the door knob, he hears a ruckus of voices and bodies scrambling outside.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

“The colonel–!”

Opening the door casually, Roy is greeted by his subordinates and Black Hayate trying to inconspicuously slip out from their listening post under the window of the jewelry store. They stop, frozen in their tracks when they hear his voice.

“What do we have here?” Roy says, slipping on his gloves.

Riza Hawkeye wakes thinking the same thing she thinks every morning: I have to go to work. Over the years, she’s grown to enjoy her morning routine, putting on her blue uniform, pinning her hair back up into a bun, feeding Black Hayate and finally, holstering her sidearm before heading to the office.

For the past month and a half, her routine has been a little different. Steward does not like seeing her in uniform all the time and he likes her hair down, maybe even a little shorter. He says it makes her look younger. He is also allergic to dogs, so they sent Black Hayate away to live with Fuery for the time being until his allergist can figure something out. And, the most striking difference of all, she is on leave. She has not seen the colonel once during this month and a half. Steward isn’t exactly found of Mustang and much to Hawkeye’s silent

Comic strip artist and novelist, suicidal to a fault but too scared to kill himself meets high school waitress in diner. Run away?

People tell him that he’s talented, but, he doesn’t know what that means. He has a talent for drawing, so

Christmas Eve

He wanders into the diner at half past eleven. The door chimes gives prelude to his entrance. Dusting off the snow that had gathered on his jacket, he follows the stout waiter to a booth in the back. He lays the coat down in the empty seats across him.

“Merry Christmas.” The waiter places a fork and knife on a napkin on the table.

“Aren’t you working hard tonight, Lieutenant.” She jumps at his touch, his arms curling around her waist and pulling her body towards his. He plants small, teasing kisses down her neck, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand.

“I should really be more careful down here,” she closes the book she was reading and slides it back onto the shelf, raising a thin layer of dust. “There are some bad, bad men perusing these selves.” She grinds her hips into his.

“Preying on weak and defenseless female lieutenants,” his hand slides to her holstered pistol, the other one traveling along the curves of her muscles as she continues to move her hips.

“Or, is it the other way around?” Grabbing his wrists, she spins around and pins him to a nearby bookshelf. The single light bulb illuminating the area sways like a pendulum from their sudden movement, shedding uneven patches of amber light on the amused grin on his face.

reimbursed

The glass of water tips over the edge of the table and explodes, like a landmine, on the trouser leg of a passing waiter. It shatters on the floor, a million pieces of broken glass floating in water.

He doesn’t know why he is doing this. Half awake, half asleep, sipping coffee from 7-11 out of a paper cup, he hates drinking through those plastic lids that you can peel back and lock but he does it anyway. The coffee burns the roof of his mouth as warmth, branching out like roots of a tree across his chest, grounds him firmly against the winter air.

The paper cup is empty by the time he turns down her street. He travels from streetlight to streetlight, wearing cones of amber light like armor as he shuffles towards her apartment building. Cold nips at his feet through the fabric of his sneakers. Jogging the last few steps to the lobby door, he disappears into the mouth of the building and welcomes the stagnant air of its belly. He pushes nine in the elevator.

Fluorescent lights line the ceiling of every hallway, but only those on her floor flicker. He feels like he is being followed, shadows of unseen things lurking in his own shadow that come and go with every flicker. He is being slowly enveloped by the building, a lumbering beast chasing at his heels as he picks up his pace down the winding hallway to outrun, possibly, his own paranoia. The hallway turns into taffy and her door at the end of the hall stretches away from him, farther and faster the harder he tries to reach it. His feet sink into the floor below him, like standing in marshmallow or glue or quicksand.

The sound of her door unlocking, the swift click and pound of metal against metal, jolts him from the nightmare. She is wearing an oversized t-shirt, draped over her shoulders and her breasts like tablecloth. Her hair falls past her shoulders, uncombed and messy; her usual look if he remembers correctly. His eyes are fixated on her lips, the way they glisten even in the dim light of her hallway. He watches them as they form the single syllable she utters.

“Hey.”

He doesn’t know why he is doing this. She pulls him into the dark cavern of her apartment. He doesn’t know why he is here. Her warmth is infectious as it presses against him, like a virus. He doesn’t know why he keeps coming back. Her urgency is amplified by the collision of their bodies and her fingertips trace electricity down his spine. He just knows that he wants it. Anything else is probably a lie.

He gets this call at half past twelve. She sounds urgent, needy. He’s forgotten how to say no to her so when her voice pulls him out of bed and tells him to dress in the frigid air of his apartment, he dresses. He is like a reanimated corpse, pulling his feet across the tiled floor of his bathroom, half expecting to croak like a zombie, half expecting to see one when he looks in the mirror. He leaves the house in a paper-thin windbreaker he finds dangling on the lone wire hanger in his closet. She probably bought this for him. So, he wears it.

He doesn’t know why he is doing this. Half awake, half asleep, sipping coffee from 7-11 out of a paper cup, trying to stimulate his senses. He hates drinking through those plastic lids that you can peel back and lock but he does it anyway. The coffee burns the roof of his mouth as warmth, branching out like roots of a tree across his chest, grounds him firmly against the wind. A thin layer of snow coats the streets, allowing him to stamp the rubber pattern on the soles of his shoes in the cement with each step. An occasional car passes by, sloshing through the thin film of snow coating the asphalt, shining their headlights on him as if he were on stage or singled out as the suspect for some crime.

The paper cup is empty by the time he turns down her street. He travels from streetlight to streetlight, wearing cones of amber like armor as he shuffles towards her apartment building. His hair is damp with melting snow and there are tiny snowflakes, dandruff, accumulating on his shoulders. Cold nips at his feet through the fabric of his sneakers. Jogging the last few steps to the lobby door, he disappears into the mouth of the building and welcomes the stagnant air of its belly. He pushes nine in the elevator.

“Hey.”

His best friend dies on a Tuesday. A mortar round, maybe even a tank shell, falls through the thick snow covered tree tops and lands precisely where Warner is crouching. As if someone took the nub of an eraser on the back of their pencil and erased him from existence, Warner disappears in a mist of blood.

For a moment, he stands there, unmoving, trapped in the viscous amber of denial and confusion. The shell had clipped a neighboring tree and now it stood bent, the pale wooden pulp sharp, exposed, painted red with blood, like a broken bone protruding from flesh. There is a piece of Warner dangling from the splintered remains of that tree. There is a piece of Warner burning a pale, red hole through the snow. There are pieces of Warner, like sprinkles on ice cream, every where. His fingers lose feeling, numb not from the cold but the dread and revulsion pushing past the surface of his denial. Motionless and solitary, he is unable to move, to find cover, to fire his weapon at an enemy he cannot see, to feel. Discombobulated threads of emotion knot in the pit of his stomach. He is the perfect victim for a sniper’s well placed bullet.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” These were not the words Aaron Walker thought that he would hear when he opened his apartment door Tuesday night.

He runs his tongue across the back of his teeth and tastes toothpaste. Neither of them speaks. Marion is fidgeting with her scarf, avoiding his gaze. He feels like a deer in headlights, caught in a strange molasses of limbo right before he is pummel by a Mac truck.

“Are you,” his brow furrows as he forces the words out of his mouth, “leaving me?”

“No,” she looks up at him for the first time. Her red poncho-shaped coat reminds him of a mushroom. “I mean yes. I mean, I just don’t think this is working out.”

“Did I do something wrong?” She shakes her head.

“Are you not happy with me?” Her chocolate curls bounce from side to side. “Then what is it? What is it?” He clamps his hand over his mouth and waits for her answer.

There is snow clinging to her hair, melting on her jacket, dripping onto the floor outside his apartment. Anxiety mushrooms from her silence. “Marion,” his voice is muffled by his hand, “Please say something.”

Her knuckles are pale as she clenches her scarf. Brow furrowing, she opens her mouth, “I don’t know. I just, I just…I just can’t be with you anymore.”

He doesn’t move his hand, trying to literally hold himself together, face distorting in strange ways to keep from crying. He draws

“Are you breaking up with me?” A bewildered Aaron Walker greets Marion by the door of his apartment.

“No,” she starts slowly but is already trailing off, eyes glued to the ground, trying to avoid his startled gaze. He looks like a deer in headlights that she is about to pummel with a Mac truck. “I mean yes…”

She looks at him, the way he’s standing in the middle of his doorway in an aging wool sweater and pink slippers, arms outstretched and extending a half-filled champagne flute in her direction. The smile of an exasperated mother forms across her face. Everyone has to grow up sometime. “I’m sorry, Aaron. I really am.”

“I don’t get it.” As if sensing his own awkward stance, Aaron sets the champagne flute down on a nearby table. A flood of questions come pouring out of his mouth, each one more ridiculous and irrelevant than the next. “Does your mother hate me? Was it because I kicked your cat that one time?” He stops, eyes wide, and grabs her by the shoulders, melting the tiny snowflakes that had gathered on her coat, “Is there another man?”

She pushes him away with her forearm and squirms out from under his grasp. “It’s not that. It’s not any of that. It’s just…Please, I have to go.”

The apartment is quiet, cold and still in the gray winter morning. His breath fogs like pale cigarette smoke as he rolls over to silence his alarm clock before it even rings. He lies in bed for a moment and stares at the note, among other things, plastered to his ceiling. Printed landscape on cheap computer paper in size 42, Times New Roman font: “I love my job.”

“I love my job.” He repeats, “I love being a substitute teacher.”

When he was small, Aaron Walker had wanted to be an actor. But it soon became apparent that despite all of his best efforts, even the best acting coaches could not provide Aaron with the necessary talent to pursue his dream. So, he decided to become a teacher. That’s not to say he had much talent or skill in the way of teaching, but his parents convinced themselves otherwise and supported their only son in the second profession of his choosing.

His phone rings at 5:30, just as he is stepping out of the shower. Dripping water all over his hardwood floor and almost slipping, he reaches the phone shortly after the first ring. Ripping it from the grips of the charging dock, he answers, “Hi!”

“I have an opening at Fairfield High School. You’ll be substituting for Mr. Chan. He teaches pre-calc, calculus and coaches the fencing team.” The voice on the other end of the line drones backs.

“That sounds perfect!” His voice is overflowing with enthusiasm that most others in his profession have learned to fake, but his is very much genuine.

A few strokes of the keyboard later, “Okay. I’ll have you at Fairfield High. Have a nice day, Mr. Walker.”

Gingerly, he places the phone back in the cradle, as if any small tremor or misstep could potentially strip him of his day’s work.

“Yes!” He shrieks, almost leaping out of his towel. Pushing open the only window in his small apartment, he shouts, “I love my job!”

His voice sets off the alarm on a parked Buick downstairs, causing a chain reaction of barking dogs and hissing cats. Someone shouts from a distant window, “Shut the fuck up, asshole!”

He leaves his house in the same jacket he does every day, a navy pea coat that dwarves his slight frame. His first and only girlfriend, Julia, had given it to him as a birthday present. The jacket serves as reminder, for him, of their relationship, a week that rests in his memories as the happiest week of his life and in hers as a week of torturous hell and another reason to stop drinking.

The more he tries escape his fate of being a perpetual virgin, the more inevitable it becomes. His 30th birthday, looming in the near future, serves only as another occasion for his friends to give him shit about his life. It also doesn’t help that he has no alcohol tolerance and the smallest amount of alcohol reduces him to a blathering idiot that divulges any and all of his embarrassing secrets.

He drives his father’s old Toyota, parked a couple blocks from his apartment because he can never find a decent parking place anywhere closer. Clutching Google map instructions in one bare hand, exposed to the razor sharp blades of wind, he fiddles with car keys, elusive and cold like icicles, in the other. The car smells like aging leather and there is a small stain on the passenger seat from when he accidentally sat on the lunch he had made from himself, crushing the carton of apple juice in the brown paper bag.

He lets the car warm up, listening to weather and traffic on the radio, before pulling out of the spot and traveling 0.6 miles and taking a left on 59th street.

Fairfield High School, an unsuspecting four story building with large windows, is situated between two towering apartment complexes, a corner deli and a pizzeria proudly displaying autographed photos of celebrities and past mayors. Students swarm in front of the building, loitering on the wide steps leading up to the entrance, waiting for school to start. The occasional sedan drops off more children that disappear into the building.
Aaron pulls up across the street and scans the crowd. Heavy winter jackets, backpacks, those silly rubber band bracelet things that they’re all going crazy about – high school.

He tries not to reminisce about his own high school years, not because they were particularly unpleasant but because his failed romantic aspirations have all but killed any need to dwell on them.

“Mr. Walker?” The school secretary, a plump woman dressed in an ill-fitting pant suit, the buttons of her jacket and blouse straining to contain her form, hands him a folder,

“These are Mr. Chan’s lesson plans, his schedule and today’s memos.”

“Thank you.” He receives the packet of papers and leafs through the lesson plan. Mr. Chan’s handwriting is small, boxy, each letter a perfect copy of another like a typewriter. His instructions are terse and the sharpness and clarity of his penmanship seems to punctuate each line. Make ninety photocopies of this worksheet. Collect homework #34. Review Chapter 12.5. Each line screaming, Do Not Fuck Up.

As he leaves the principal’s office, he is stopped by the lingering scent of heavy perfume. The hallway is empty, but he looks left and right anyway. Cheap, sweet, like cotton candy or fruit, laced with sugar and flowers, the scent is overwhelming, intoxicating. Yet, he is unable to move from the floor tile that he’s stopped on, like a deer in headlights.

“Mr. Walker?”

The secretary’s voice jolts him from his momentary reverie. “Yes?”

“The bell rang. You’re late for class.”

As it turns out Fairfield High, aside from being an unsuspecting building tucked between two towering apartment complexes, is also a perfect square. Each hallway identical to the next, with identical doors and exit signs and staircases

He arrives at room 314 and hears the kids before he sees them. Pausing before the door, he rests his hand on the doorknob and inhales, almost too sharply and enters the room. The noise dies down almost instantly. The one inattentive kid still laughing in the back is silence by a punch from a friend.
The first words that come out of his mouth are perhaps the most important. He has but a couple minutes to leave an impression that will either make the next forty minutes a breeze or a living hell that usually makes him wish he had higher alcohol tolerance.
Every once in a while, he tries to use some of his childhood acting training, the voice, the posture, the gestures, trying to exude confidence even when he has none. The kids shuffling in their seats are expectant, curious, watching his next move, waiting to judge him. He had traded the stage for the classroom but his hands are still clammy, his heart still pounding, his mouth still dry. What’s that Shakespeare quote? All the world’s a stage? This world is his stage.
“Hi,” his voice drops like a stone in water without the splash, “My name is Mr. Walker. I’m your substitute teacher for today.”

“Okay, so the other day I was walking down the street,” Harry says. This is how all of his stories start. He’s walking down the street somewhere. “Then wham! I see this crazy hot girl.” And it’s always a crazy hot girl. “With tits like this and an ass like this and I just couldn’t help myself, I just had to stop and,” he pauses, “and ummph.”

Jules just nods in response, taking a sip of his coffee. Over the years, he’s gotten used to getting too much information from his best friend. They are standing in the rear half of the uptown six train station at Twenty-Third Street. People packed like sardines crowd the thin platform. Coats and umbrellas wet from the snow drip water that form murky puddles by boots and sneakers. Typical Monday morning.

“She was a good one.”

“Yeah?” Jules leans over the yellow studded tiles, blatantly disregarding the dangers of drawing too close to the platform edge and peaks into the dark tunnel for the headlights of an approaching train. An express whistles by on a neighboring track.

“Yeah.” A satisfied nod accompanies Harry’s response. “Should’ve gotten her number. What a fine piece of ass.”

“Spoken like a true misogynist.”

“Hey,” Harry chuckles at his friend’s insult, “don’t get me wrong, I love women. I mean, what else do you do on weekends?”

“Read.” Jules replies flatly.

Harry raises an eyebrow at Jules. Biting his lower lip, he ponders, “The last time I read book I think,” He pauses, drawing mental calculations on the ceiling of the station, “I think I was seventeen. Senior year, high school, we read Shakespeare’s something for class.”

“Spoken like a true scholar.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

A sudden gust of stagnant wind blows across the platform, followed shortly by the wailing and screech of the Six train pulling into station. A flood of people get off and a second wave of people get one. Sandwiched between a burly woman in dress pants and a mother with three children in tow, Jules and Harry board the morning train to work.

“So, I took her to an oyster bar after I fucked her.” Harry says, a little too loudly, his head peaking over someone’s arm. “Turns out, she’s allergic to seafood and she got this really bad rash all over her thighs.”

“Pleasant.” Another sip of his coffee as he half listens to Harry’s sex life and half reads an overhead advertisement; rather, it was a poem.

“It looked like she grew an extra nipple on her knee.” The mother gives Harry a disgusted scowl and tries to shield her children from his story.

“That’s great, Harry.” Jules feigns an impressed grin. “By the way,” he pulls out his Blackberry, “Did you get that memo about the new water cooler they installed last week?”

“No, what about it?”

Jules pulls up the email on his Blackberry screen and hands it to Harry. “Some genius drilled a hole into the filter and the entire kitchen’s flooded.”

Aaron has the usual sexual fantasies of a male twenty something. Between threesomes and sex in public places, occasionally, as he does now waiting on line in the teacher’s section of the cafeteria, he finds himself thinking about Erin, the petite Japanese girl from this morning’s calculus class. How her sweat would smear her heavy makeup, running rivers of black down her face, how her lipstick would leave the outline of crinkles kisses on the collar of his white shirt, how the smell of her sweet and fruity shampoo would embed itself in the knits and weaves of his clothes. And, how he would grab fistfuls of her uniform top and snap off the buttons, fling her on top of a graffitied desk and just fuck her.

He becomes increasingly aware of a

She slips into his room in the dead of the night. The wooden floor creaks beneath her naked feet and she finds her way across his room, lit only by patches of moonlight spilling in from a square window. The room is sparse, furnished with a bed, a nightstand and a solitary wooden chair in the corner. A candle rests unused on the nightstand.

Her soft form, lithe and slender under her night gown, slinks towards him in the pale darkness. His arm finds the curve of her back and he draws her body closer to his. Like a lioness cornering her victim, she pushes him onto the bed.

There are things that bother her. Small things, so small and so trivial that she never gives them enough room to blossom in full anxieties or worries, forever virulent pests gnawing away at the edges of her mind. But, then again, unattended, these things coagulate overtime and now, in the darkness of her bedroom and the stillness of the night air, they are

Sunday morning, he wakes from the sunlight warm and distracting on his face. He rolls over, stretching onto the other side of the bed; he can feel her warmth still lingering in the sheets and smell her shampoo, like a perfume, in her pillow. For a moment, he wonders if he is still dreaming, their house, their life, all of it, just one beautiful, breathtaking dream. His imagination deserves no such credit. The smell of bacon, wafting in from the kitchen, pulls him out of bed.

For political reasons, his advisors told him to marry, but that’s not why he did it. Before the news broke, not the even closest of his associates or his immediate subordinates had any inkling that he had wanted to marry. After the news broke, all of them swore, to various gods and objects, that they had seen the marriage coming from a mile away, as if it were the most blatantly obvious piece of news to ever grace the front pages.

Hold me.

His reflection stares up at him from the surface of his coffee, dark, brooding and as bitter as the expression he is wearing. He longs for the murky and opaque consistency of his usual morning coffee, but he can not hide behind milk and sugar forever.

The café is bustling with noise, the low

He had given her, for their first Christmas together, a giant stuffed bear with soft brown fur. It was more than half her height and almost as wide as her with twinkling eyes and a little red bow around its neck. She named it Beary.

And she’s trying to stay awake, trying not to fall asleep because every minute she spends asleep is a minute she could’ve spent with him, a minute wasted on some biological process needed to fuel her body when the only thing keeping her alive is him, just him. And she loves him so much she can barely stand it. Every breath she takes, every time her heart beats, her entire body aches, yearning, longing for his touch, his kiss, his gaze. She’s been in love with him for a long time, from a distance, watching his back because she knows that if she ever saw him, truly, fully, like she does now, there’s no going back. She’s burned her bridges to the past and she is trapped in the present, the only way forward is with him. She wants to keep looking at him, the calm of his face while he sleeps, his stomach exposed and his hair mashed up against his pillow, the way his mouth is parted slightly and how gentle everything about him is right now, like a pool of still water, vulnerable to the smallest movement, rippling at any and all disturbances. His vulnerability in his sleep, she wants to protect him, to keep him like this, in her arms, in her bed, safe and innocent.

The apartment is quiet, bathed in pale blue light. A chilly breeze sweeps in through the half open window, gently strumming the translucent curtains as it enters the room. He is sitting upright by the edge of the bed, looking past the midnight moon, gazing indefinitely into the night sky. A sea of stars blinks back at him but he is unfazed by the enormity behind their gaze.

He finds it hard to sleep at night. The night offers him no solace, just the insomnia of thought, his never-ending, frantic and nightmarish anxieties pulling him in and out of consciousness. Even with her lying in bed next to him, he is unable to sleep. And, on night such as this, the quiet ones, the silent and still ones, the ones where the air is stale and stagnant, that his mind feels like it is slowly suffocating, a sluggish, lugubrious death march into permanent wakefulness.

Sheets stir behind him. “Can’t sleep?”

He shakes his head in responses. Her arms outstretched, she pats some pillows next to her and beckons, “Come over here.”

He obeys, falling into bed with his back toward her, eyes still fixated on the night sky looming outside their bedroom window. Propping her head up with one hand, her other reaches around his waist to play with the buttons of his pajamas. “What’s the matter?” she asks, dipping her lips into the crook of his neck and kissing his tender flesh.

She closes her eyes and waits for a response. It is not an easy question for him to answer. She is almost asleep again when his voice wakes her, “When I close my eyes,” a pause followed by a restless sigh, “it feels like I’m spiraling into an abyss. I can hear my own thoughts so clearly, so loudly. There is still so much left to be done. It’s been two years and I have barely made any progress. I have the entirely military at my disposal, practically under my thumb and yet, yet I still—”

“Shh, shh, shh,” she softly interrupts him, gently stroking his forehead. Anticipating what he is going to say, she adds, “You’re a good man, Roy.” She pulls her body closer to his, resting her forehead against the back of his head, she hugs him from behind. “You’re a good man.”

“I hope that you are right, somehow.” She can feel his heart, a strained and thunderous muscle beating inside his ribcage, a flame burning with the same kindness and hope that she had felt all those years ago. His goals, his dreams, his demons are different from what they were then, but he is still the same. His restless and confident eyes, seeing everything and past everything, always trying to carry so much by all by himself; tonight, his eyes are weary, burdened and troubled.

“I paid for my vision with their lives,” His body tenses, “and I swore by their lives that I would right all of these wrongs.” His voice cracks, “and I’m afraid that I’m going to wake up alone in that helpless darkness and their lives would have meant nothing.”

Slowly, gently, she brings her hand to his and intertwines her fingers between his. “You won’t be helpless. You won’t be helpless at all. I’ll watch your back and your front. I’ll be your eyes and your guide.” Bring their clasped hands to his heart, she whispers in his ear, “And, I’ll be here. Right here with you. And you’ll never be alone.”

His fingers tighten painfully around hers. He turns around to face her, to hold her, to see her. His eyes studying, memorizing the contours of her face, every wrinkle, every freckle, every hair, he wants to remember it all. He wants to see everything. He wants to see his guilt washed away like blood in the rain, he wants to see his naïve dreams blossom into reality, he wants to see this country take on a new shape, and most of all, most selfishly of all, he wants to see her. He wants to see her years from now, decades from now, lifetimes from now. He wants to see her forever as he does now, lying next to him, veiled in the silence of night, a soft breeze whispering through her loose locks of golden hair.

He moves to kiss her but hesitates and instead leaves a soft, almost furtive kiss on her lips, as if any sudden movement might jolt him from this fantasy. And he does it again and again, leaving tentative and hesitant kisses on her lips. She pulls him close and responds with her own kiss, bold and reassuring. I’ll be right here with you.

“Riza,” he breathes.

“Roy,” she replies. She clasps her hand in his and rests her forehead against his. Then, she begins to sing.

The song starts out low, barely audible as she hums the tune. The wind carries her voice across the empty space above their bed, across their wooden floor checkered with moonlight, lifting the notes from her lips across the non-existent space between their bodies to his ears. Each note peels back layer upon layer of his incessant, rambling worries, like ice cubes dissolving in hot water. His breath mingles with her voice as she sings and without realizing it, he is already drifting off to sleep, his mind pulled towards the oasis of her voice, her song, her comfort, her lullaby.

“This thing,” he pauses, a disgusted scowl across his face, gesturing to no avail at his clothes, “is hideous.”

“I thought these occasions were right up your alley, sir.” She straightens his bowtie and with a satisfied nod, moves on to attaching his ribbons to his jacket.

“And they make us wear all of these damn ribbons!” Exasperation heavy in is voice, he buries his face in one gloves hand, pulling at his skin as he sighs. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a war hero.” Another pause, “for more reasons that one.”

“Don’t fret so much, sir.” She ignores his complaints, deft fingers pinning on ribbon after ribbon, “Or, I might hurt you.”

“Ow!”

“I warned you.” She gives him a look, half ‘I told you so’, half smirk.

His lips part in silent protest, but unable to produce a witty retort, he shuts his mouth and relaxes, leaning against the edge of the table as his subordinate continues with her work. They are alone in the Meeting

Blackout

Roy Mustang likes his showers the way he likes his sex, hot and steamy and on the occasion, incredibly long. After a grueling day in office, receiving special attention from a certain slave driver disguised as his adjutant, there is nothing he wants more than to melt under a waterfall of piping hot water. And, he also likes to sing to the bathroom radio. He thinks the radio disguises his total lack of musical talent but his next door neighbor can attest otherwise.

He stands in the shower for hours at a time, leaving the door open just a crack to ventilate the bathroom. After Hawkeye moved in with him, sometimes he leaves the door open just a little bit wider, a subtle invitation that she’s noticed but never accepted. All he wants is to just pull her into a hot shower, peel her clothes off like the skin of a ripe fruit to reveal her naked body and make love to her against the cold, wet tiles, letting their sweat and kisses mingle with the soap and water dripping down their skin. But, her showers are always cold and their brevity disappoints him. Thus, their love making is usually relegated to the dryer realm of their bedroom.

Coming home from a straining day at the office, his shoulders and arms pulsing with dull pain, there is only one thing on his mind. “Must. Shower. Hot. Now.” He discards his black overcoat by the door, shedding clothes as he makes his way to the bathroom. His uniform jacket and shirt are deposited on the living room sofa, his pants and boxers in the hallway and finally, his socks land with a silent thump in the half-full laundry hamper by the bathroom.

The water is a liquid masseur, thousands of tiny hands kneading his back, sending jolts of electricity down his spin, untying the knots festering in his neck, dissolving the strain and tension he’s accumulated from a day of press conferences, speeches and bickering with military brass and politicians. Who knew running a country could be so hard?

“Long day?” Riza calls from the kitchen, stirring a pot of macaroni and cheese.

“You bet.” He calls back over the sound of water. This must be what heaven feels like – a never-ending hot shower and the woman you love cooking dinner in the next room, he muses. “Hughes, you lucky bastard.”

Switching on the radio, he begins to lather his hair. Crooning at the top of his lungs to his favorite love song, he grabs a wooden brush from the wire shower caddy and uses it as a microphone. As last chorus lauches into the climax, he squeezes his eyes shut tightly and holds the high note long enough to miss the electricity in the house dieing with a beleaguered moan.

The bathroom falls silent save for the rushing of hot water against the bathtub. Sticking one arm outside the shower curtain to explore for the radio, he rinses the shampoo out of his hair with the other. Upon making contact with the plastic device, he flicks the power back and forth several times to no effect. Perplexed, he wipes the soap suds from his eyes to examine the malfunctioning radio but is greeted by complete darkness.

“Riza! I’m blind!”

In the kitchen, Riza is well aware of the fact that the power has gone out. Carefully searching for the flashlight in each drawer and cabinent, she shouts, “Colonel, you are not blind! The power’s out!”

“I can’t see a thing! I can’t even see my own hands!”

“Light a candle! There are plenty in the bathroom. I’m still looking for the flashlight.”

“I’m wet!” He shouts back, hurt and angered.

“I found it!” Her hands touch the cold metal handle of the flashlight. She gives it a good thwack before it comes to life, illuminating the dark kitchen. “I’m going to check the fuse box, sir.”

“Riza,” His voice calls out meekly, “please come and get me.”

“Useless.” Picking up his discarded clothes as she ventures into the bathroom, a beam of golden light leading the way, she finds him standing dumbly in the bathtub, water running and shampoo clinging to his hair.

He turns to her hesitantly, eyes closed, “Is that you Riza?”

“Colonel, open you eyes.” She commands, punctuating each word with a wave of the flashlight.

“I’m blind!” His voice is on the verge of breaking. “Again!”

“Sir,” she tries again, “you can’t see because your eyes are closed. Please, open your eyes.”

“I’m afraid.” Sometimes, she is baffled by his childishness.

“Soap in your eyes isn’t the end of the world.”

“Yes it is!” He whines, whimpering like a puppy. “Riza, please wash the soap from my eyes. Please?”

“Useless.” Caving into his request, she puts the flashlight down by the sink and starts rolling up her sleeves. She gives him an exasperated smile, even though he cannot see it, the kind of smile that a mother gives to an especially troublesome child. “Come over here, Roy.”

I feel like such a failure. I want to crawl up into a small ball and hide from the world. I don’t usually write this to you anymore, but he’s not awake and I feel so lonely. I feel like such a fuck up. I am a fuck up. And, I do absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening. In fact, I just let it happen, knowing the consequences, knowing, knowing. I feel like I should do something else with my life. Something different, that I’m better at, so I don’t have to feel like such a damn failure all the time. But, I’m not really good at anything and I want a job that provides stable income and consistency in my life. I don’t know what I want, at all. I haven’t taken a single interesting class.

“I had a dream last night,” he says, a bit too nonchalantly, with his back to the morning sun coming in through their bedroom window, his chin resting on a pillow. He makes a face, as if trying to decide whether or not the dream is worth telling her about.

“What was it about?” She shuffles next to him in the bed, her breasts softly brushing against one of his old button-downs that she wore to sleep. It is too large for her and sleeves end well past her arms, but he enjoys seeing her in his clothes.

“It was about you,” he begins, rolling on to his back, “and me.” He looks at her for a moment, how rich and delicate her face is, made fuller and more radiant by the sun’s warmth. Her hair like tendrils of sugar, soft and sweet, glistens in the light. “We were alone, completely alone. And, there was no one else, like the world was empty and all of it belonged to us.”

His arm reaches toward the ceiling and grabs the imaginary world in a tight fist only to let it go a few seconds later. “We did whatever we wanted.” Turning to look at her, he adds, “You even wore a mini skirt.”

Meeting his gaze, she responds with a raised eyebrow, “Oh? Did I volunteer for self-torture or did you force me?”

“A little bit of both,” he chuckles, “but you looked stunning. And, that’s not even the best part of the dream.” He flips back over onto his stomach and whispers, bringing his lips so close to her ears that his breath tickles the hairs on her earlobes, “The best part was that we spent every day,” an arm wraps around her waist as he beginnings to nibble on her earlobe, “like this.”

“And, I got to do this,” his lips move down her jaw line, leaving kisses and nibbling at her skin, pausing just as he reaches her lips, “every day.” He kisses her gently at first, prying at her parted lips, and then passionately, invading her mouth with his tongue. She responds by snaking her own arm around his waist, giving her leverage to press her own body closer to his.

When he breaks away from their kiss and pulls back to see her face, a soft moan escapes from her lips, a sound that tastes like honey trickling down his throat. “And this,” he attacks her collarbone with such ferocity that she lets out a sharp gasp. She is sure that he is going to leave a mark. “And this,” bringing his mouth further down her body, he is already unbuttoning her shirt.

“I didn’t want to wake up at first.” He pins her arms above her head, holding her captive as his eyes scour every inch of her exposed flesh, devouring her. His button-down is parted on either side of her body to reveal her soft breasts and toned stomach. “But, now I remember why waking up is so much better.”

“Roy,” she says quietly, lovingly. Her cheeks flushed red under his hungry gaze and the intense heat of his naked body hovering so close to her own. She is afraid that if he touches her, his skin will sear her flesh. “Roy,” she repeats, closing her eyes as his lips make contact with her skin again, this time sucking on one of her already erect nipples.

“There was a lot of this.” He says, shifting his attention to the other breast.

“I’m sure,” she breathes between moans, her back arching off the bed, “I’m sure there was.” His tongue trails down her body, licking, sucking at her hot flesh. Occasionally, he traces patterns on her stomach and blows gently on his handiwork, sending a shiver down her spine and pushing her closer and closer to the edge.

“Some of this, too.” His tongue laps at the inside of her firm thighs dangerously close to her womanhood. One of his fingers flicks teasingly at the elastic band of her panties, pulling and them letting snap against her waist. “And, maybe, a little bit of this,” his breath making contact with her damp core.

“Roy,” she moans, low and lustful, almost a growl, her hands clenching fistfuls of the bedspread.

“Riza,” he returns her call, “God, I love hearing you say my name.” He pulls her panties down to her ankles, removing the last barrier between him and her completely submission. She is his subordinate outside of the bedroom, but there is something that gets him about dominating her here, where no one else knows, as if the world is empty and all of it belonged to them. He dips his tongue into her lips, causing her body to jerk violently. She screams his name for the first time this morning.

“Are you ready?” He does not need to ask verbally because he knows the answer already, but he wants to hear her say yes, see her lips form the syllable. Yes.

“Yes, Roy,” her arms wrapping around his torso, clinging to his back, she says again, “Yes.”

They move in unison, sweat mingling with each thrust, rocking back and force, slowly grinding against each other. The world is silent save for their moans, whispered words and the rustle of sheets moving beneath their bodies. It is not long before their actions gain a sense of urgency. He brings her to climax first before he comes, burying his face in her chest as waves of euphoria surges through his body.

They exchange a momentary glance, a conversation without words. She smiles at his touch, placing her hand over his own as he cups her face. They have known each other too long and too well for words to be necessary. He kisses her again and slips his hand in hers, locking their fingers together.

The bedroom is still enough for him to feel her heartbeat with each rise and fall of her chest. After a moment, she asks him, “So, how did this dream end?”

“Just like this,” he replies, “Just you and me and just like this.”

“How are you sure you aren’t dreaming right now?” She looks at him, waiting for an answer.

“I know, because in my dream I forgot to do one thing.” The metal is cold against her warm skin as he slides the ring on her to finger. “Marry me.” His words are neither questioning nor commanding, they are simply stating an absolute and unwavering truth.

Marry me. The words echo through her mind. And, like water breaking over a dam, she is filled with a single, unexplainable and beautiful emotion. She pulls him close, resting their held hands over her heart, she whispers to only him, the only other person that exists in the world, “I love you.”

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just fuck.”

They are sitting on his roof, sipping warm beer from glass bottles, watching the sun, like the yoke of a cracked egg, spill across the horizon, a brilliant swirl of crimson slowly seeping into blue and white sky.

“You think we’ll ever make it out of here?” Downing a swig of beer, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Holes are slowly beginning to emerge on the rubber soles of his sneakers.

She looks at him with a raised eyebrow. “There are so many ways I can answer, and not answer, that question.”

“Don’t play your word games, just answer.”

A pause as she considers the possibilities, which words to put together to form an answer just plausible enough to be discouraging. She looks him and turns, squinting, to face the sunset coloring rows and rows of similar rooftops seemingly stretching from one end of the world to the other. Her eyes meet his, “Maybe,” she says and the word drops like a stone in word, final, unerring and cold.

He makes a noise that sounds like a snort. “You really make a guy want to keep living.”

“Hey, it’s what I do.” With a shrug, she extends her legs across the roof tiles and rests her weight on her hands. “Do you really want to leave that badly?” A crystal of light hangs on the lip of her empty beer bottle.

His face contorts momentarily as he considers the question the answer to which is so blatantly obvious to him but, now, feels alien and strange as it rolls of his tongue. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t thought about it since he first voiced his desire to leave, because he hasn’t considered the possibility of staying for anyone or anything, because there’s nothing and no one to stay for. “Yeah.”

“Where are you gonna go?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere. Just away from here.”

“Just away from here,” she muses. Running the words through the pores of her mental filter she arrives at the same inevitable conclusion. She never agrees or disagrees with his budding aspirations to leave the inexhaustible landscape of suburbia, trade it for the skyline of a big city, or where ever he wants to go. Perhaps he takes for granted she wants what he wants, what he thinks is best for him and the subject ends there. And, for a while, this was true.

He wonders what she is thinking and wonders if he should ask what he wants to ask. Trying to calculate his chances, his risks, his exposure, whatever that means. It just makes it worse, trying to piece together her reaction. He has never heard a sincere word or emotion come from her, especially not for him, so how should he know what she’s actually thinking.

He sighs, resolved and prepared, like a tea kettle blowing off steam and chugs the rest of his beer in one gulp. Abruptly, he stands and flings the bottle as far as he can off the roof. It shatters in the far distance. Maybe it broke a window, or struck a passerby, frankly, he doesn’t give a shit.

“What the hell, Mark?” Her voice sounds carries genuine exasperation but there’s enough amusement in her voice.

“Go with me.”

“What?”

“Go with me. Leave here,” he pauses, “with me.”

“What?” She gives a bit of a chuckle. She thinks he’s kidding, or just drunk, but she doubt it’s the latter.

“I’m serious.”

“Don’t turn this into some cheesy romantic confession of your love for me. I’ve known you for,” she counts the years in her head and finally settles for, “too long.” A chuckle punctuates her statement.

“Just answer.” There is seriousness in his voice that she’s never heard before, the childishness of his request juxtaposed with his sudden maturity surprises her. She wets her lips and grapples for an answer.

“I hate being put on the spot like this.”

“I hate how you never give a straightforward answer.”

“I don’t know! I don’t think about this shit twenty-four seven.” She wonders if that came out a little too harsh. He doesn’t respond and stands, looming over her, facing the sunset, now barely a sliver of light peeking over the horizon.

In all honesty, she doesn’t know how to answer that question and she doesn’t want some cheesy romantic confession, but to her own confusion, it feels as if a black hole suddenly erupted in her chest and is pulling everything, her heart, her lungs, her skin and bones, everything, into it.

“Fuck.”

“What?”

“Just fuck.”

“What are we doing this weekend?”

“Dunno. Watch a movie maybe.”

“Is there anything out that’s good?”

“No idea.”

“All right. I wonder what you hit with that bottle.”

“Oh, the possibilities…”

“What if you hit Mrs. Palsey’s cat?”

“Oh god, she’s going to kill me.”

“Honeybuns! Oh, Honeybuns!”

“What the fuck names their cat Honeybuns?”

“Mrs. Palsey, the one and the only.”

“God, I have an essay due on Monday.”

“I think I do, too.”

“For Warner?”

“Yeah, I’m starting to really hate that class.”

“Talk about it.”

“You wanna get something to eat.”

“Sure.”

It’s three thirty. I’ve got work to do, things to do, some sort of a life to live, the rest of it still waiting to be hashed out and figured out. Am I supposed to know what to do with it? Just sit around and wait for the year to end, wait for the next one to start, so I can start the same shit over again and hope next time its better. Scared. Yeah, that’s the word. Scared. Censored by my own mind. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. I’m going to drop everything and pick up something else. Regret. Regret it later. Thirty something years down the line, when my life winds up on the shores of somewhere else entirely. A coin toss, flip, flip. Gamble. I’m a terribly gambler, I’m always all in. I lose a lot, but sometimes I get lucky and I break even. I just want to break even. Fuck glory, fuck it. What’s it good for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just…want to be okay, at the end of it all. Just okay. Okay. Okay. And maybe, thirty years from now, or even ten, I won’t remember any of this shit and it wouldn’t matter at all. I’d be doing something I’d never imagined myself to be doing and I’m going to love it, or hate it, and make my living peddling whatever it is I’ve wound up doing. Something. I don’t even know what. How much do history professors get paid again?

Can’t sleep. Won’t be awake tomorrow. It’s going to hurt getting out of bed. It’s going to hurt pulling the plug on my dying science career. Here goes nothing. Here’s to the rest of my life. Doing something. Being something. Undecided. Life skills useless, albeit plenty.

The power button on the mic is so symbolic, like I’m signing off for food. The light goes off, the little click, symbolism aplenty. Deteriorates

We all live our sad little lives. Mine just happens to involve listening to random ‘stoner music’ in the early morning, getting ready for bed and to fail some finals I’m going to try to study for. When I come to my senses, I might’ve liked it better as a failing science major than a successful something else, but come finals and grades time I’m going to wish I did more to earn a better mark, so maybe, for my own sanity and safety, I should really try to do better – in whatever field I chose to go into in the end. Writing random crap to a beat, a good one at that, is really easy. No wonder people produce good shit when they’re high, it’s fantastic.

Sometimes people say gay shit. I don’t usually call things ‘gay’ because I don’t believe in throwing around words like that in a detrimental manner, but seriously, sometimes people just say gay shit. Like: “Every time I eat a bagel, I feel like a boss.” What the holy fuck does that shit mean? I feel like a boss? Fuck man, it’s a goddamn motherfucking bagel. Eat the fucking bagel. Go the fuck home. End. What’s this shit about ‘feeling like a boss’? What IS that shit.

If I can’t give you the moon, can you make do with just a star?

I am so scared. My head hurts. I shouldn’t have eaten. I need to study and my head hurts and I’m scared.

I moved my desk.

Do you love someone or are you in love with someone? Which is it? He doesn’t know. He’s never used that particular word to describe that particular emotion, an emotion he has never understood. He rationalizes that it’s not because he’s incapable of understanding it, it’s because he does

Where have you been all this?

I don’t know. Somewhere, I guess.

I want to thank my parents, but I’m never going to say it to them. I’m at that awkward age.

He is a little drunk and she is letting him get away with small touches an

Life is such a mess sometimes. He’s tangled up in her sheets, her limbs, her hair. He is such a mess sometimes.

He’s scared, a little too far gone to be called back but he’s holding the door open just a crack for someone to reach a hand through and wedge it open. He wants to be saved. That is his only truth and he knows it. He runs from it because it terrifies him that he needs to saved, wants to be saved and might never be. A sliver of light slips in from the outside, leaking into his abyss, a needle penetrating the skin of his nightmare.

She recognizes the sound instantly and instinctively as if she’s heard it a thousand times before. She is cradled in his trembling arms and hugged tightly to his heaving chest. He says something, an apology maybe, but all she hears as she slowly regains consciousness is the overwhelming sound of his heartbeat, the burning of a violent flame.

Time before they knew each other, time neither wants or needs to remember, like fading colors on a palette of broken memories: the estranged child of a brilliant but obsessive alchemist and the foster child adopted into a makeshift family.

When he was young, the first time he put on his uniform as an officer, the first time he buttoned up the jacket all the way, he thought that this blue -the blue of his uniform- was the most perfect shade of blue. It was a blue that matched the color of the sky, a blue on which he would build his dreams.

The little girl’s father had left her on the steps of the First Branch of the Central Library, disappearing into the labyrinthine bookshelves to research his sacred alchemy, things too difficult and too complicated for her to understand. The little boy was running an errand for his mother, the soles of his loafers pounding against cobblestone streets as he raced through the city, hands clutching a grocery list and pocket jingling with money.

This was before their beginning, a time in the distant past when nothing truly mattered and they were still young, childish even, unformed shapes waiting to be filled. And, a girl caught the attention of a boy with a charmingly disarming smile.

He tricked her, she realizes later, plain and simple. Back then, he had tricked her.

Perfect blue.

The first time he puts on his uniform as an officer, the first time he buttons up his jacket all the way, the first time he blouses his trousers over his black combat boots, he thinks to himself that this blue – the blue of his uniform – must be the most perfect shade of blue. The shade of blue that fishermen see in the ocean, the shade of blue that astronauts see in the sky, the shade of blue on which he would to build his dreams and the shade of blue that only an idealist and optimist would see in this country.

Then, he goes to war. And on the Ishvallan battlefield, the carcass of a land laid to waste by his very hands, he mourns. His uniform is covered in ash, sand and blood, it reeks of smoke and death and no matter how he tries after the war, he cannot walk away from the nightmare and he cannot see, every time he puts on his uniform, every time he buttons up his jacket all the way, every time he blouses his trousers over his black combat boots, the same shade of perfect blue.

A World for Two People.

She is already done with her work for the day, so she sorts through tomorrow’s pile of papers. He is rushing to catch up with yesterday’s work, frustrated and tired of the relentless amount of banal bureaucracy that is his daily existence. Occasionally he sneaks glances at his adjutant, but his eyes do not dare linger a moment too long; her senses and her eyes are much sharper than his.

“My God! It’s already dark out, Lieutenant.” He attempts to start a conversation, try to fish his way out of work. He swivels around in his chair to face the city nightscape and stretches, letting out a yawn.

“Focus on your work, sir. Or, we’ll be here even later.”

Trying to make his unhappiness as visible as possible, he sulkily refocuses his attention on first battalion’s planned night exercises at 0100 tomorrow. He begins to draw a small dog in the corner of the page. First, he draws the face and snout, punctuated by a small round nose and two eyes. Then, adding the characteristic arch of black fur over the eyes, he moves on to the body, the paws and finally the tail. For a few minutes, he is wholly absorbed in his doodle. He struggles, for several long hours and through several more dog doodles, before he is finished with even a half of his work and she finally relents.

“Yes!” He makes a noise that is half groan and half yawn, collapsing on top of his desk.

She lingers by the door, her black coat folded neatly over one arm, waiting for him to finish packing up for the night. The hallways are dark save for squares of moonlight cut by window panes. He throws on his own coat with a flourish and literally bounces out of the office. At first, she wants to remind him that there is still more work left to be done but she can only respond to the childish joy on his face with a beleaguered grin of her own.

Fetching keys from her uniform pocket, she locks the office door. As she turns to leave, suddenly, she feels his arms wrap around her waist, his arms coming to rest in the curve of her back. The moonlight casts a mysterious glow over her face, reflecting deliciously off her lips and amber eyes wide with surprise. In a smooth, almost trained, motion, he releases her hair clip, letting her hair fall to her shoulders and into his hand. He presses his forehead to hers, never breaking their steady gaze. She understands the look in his eyes, a look that too easily betrays what he really wants to say. So, she responds, reaffirming his unspoken feelings.

Finally, she closes her eyes, a gesture of submission and acceptance and mostly, of need and of want. He draws her close, her hair tickling his face and kisses her, gently, passionately, quietly, the sort of kiss that speaks volumes and nothing at the same time, the sort of kiss that lovers exchange when both are consumed by the entirety of the each other’s being, the sort of kiss that leaves no room for anyone else but them.

Quietly, he slips his ungloved hand into hers and as they leave headquarters for the evening, as the building dwindles to silence save for the sound of their receding footsteps, it feels as if this night, this world exists only for the two of them.

Look Over Here

He doesn’t remember what made him do it. He doesn’t believe in fate or destiny, or anything of that sort, but at that moment he felt the pull of something much greater than himself, a divine and magnetic attraction toward her.

“Hey,” he says, “look over here.”

As she turns to look, he gives her a light peck on the lips, catching her completely off guard. Her face is red and her lips gently parted. “What—”

And then, he does it again.

Welcome to the Renaissance.

Obessess

Portfolio

My brain, simply put, aches. It feels like I’ve been away from everything for such a long time. I made a paper flower today. The whole paper ball-kusudama thing didn’t go as planned. I bought a binder today.

So tired, my brain feels like it’s going to explode. Touching it hurts. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Welcome to the Renaissance.

The sniper makes his home in the last remaining tower of a crumbling church. The church sits, as the architects had intended, above the town, the landscape dominated by its remaining spire. There is a hole in its arched and painted ceiling, letting in a small drizzle. Shallow pools of rainwater gather between the pews as the rain drums against the masonry.

The sniper sits in a damp corner of the tower, back against damp stone, eyes lingering on the damp sky. In one limp hand, he holds a half eaten piece of bread. His canteen lay open and almost empty by his side. His rifle, a scoped Karabiner, rests in the crook of his arm as he is in no rush to shoot. Consuming the rest of his bread, the sniper falls into a reverie.

The smell of freshly baked bread, warm and sensuous, fills his nostrils. Involuntarily, the sniper closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall. He sees his young wife by the oven. Her apron catches in a knot at her waist, her long lashes lower as she slices the loaf.

Artillery. Instantly, the sniper jolts up, knocking over his canteen as he raises the scope to his eyes, the rifle pointing out of the tower window. The reticle zooms from street to street, house to house. Another shell demolishes a bakery. The scope moves east. He spots a Sherman, emerging like a lumbering beast, from beyond a hill. Its treads raises the dust and sand of the road, the turret pointing upwards uselessly as it flattens out at the apex of the hill. Friendly artillery returns the greeting.

Enemy infantry snakes it way into the town, under the cover of tanks. A solitary Panzer fire at the advancing column, its shell sets the lead Sherman ablaze. A beacon, almost, of fire in the gray drizzle on the outskirts of town, a flaming symbol of hope no one has for the dying Reich. It simmers. The remaining ammunition in the tank explodes at interval.

He is a good sniper, not an excellent sniper, simply one that knows his M.O. If he lives to see the end of this war, they will not talk about him. They will not remember his name and his kill count. They will not remember his face. The sniper knows this; he is not in it for the glory. There is no glory. Glory dies in the face of reality, repelled by the gray, the smoke, the prickly August drizzle.

The tip of the black needle finds the helmet of an enemy; the sniper leads the target a little. He pulls in the trigger, the stock drives into his shoulder as he pulls back the bolt. The casing spins and clatters to the floor of the tower. He does not need to see the corpse of the man to know that he is dead. He is not arrogant, but he never misses. Ribbons of red mix with rainwater in the cobblestone streets below.

Shells whiz by with stark accuracy. The screams of men, of artillery, of dying vehicles, of rifles, of battle fill his ears. He listens carefully. It is a sound he forces himself to remember. It is a sound that keeps him awake at night, but he is not frightened of it. He will learn to embrace it. The bolt ejects another case.

When the sounds of battle dim and the gray sky gives way to darkness, when the smoldering wreckage of the Sherman ceases to burn, when death perfumes the town and rainwater in gutters are tinted pink, when the world is still—a moment of silence, when the sniper makes his home in the last remaining tower of a church, he does so with regret, he does so with remorse, he does so, regardless. How he loves wars.

CUTE

A Darker Than Black Snippet

According to episode 20, the only real difference between contractors and humans are their mental makeups. Contractors, their powers aside, are just people with a better grasp of reality, an emotional rationality that enables them to advance in life. They’re a tier above humans on the evolutionary ladder, better tailored to exploit the nature of life. Is life just about rationality and getting ahead, or are the mistakes and regrets we make as humans the reason why life is worth living? Maybe things like atonement, forgiveness, despair, love and dreams exist because we’re human. I said somewhere before, I think, that contractors and dolls and the Gate were like punishments, maybe they’re more like gifts.

Because it’s too short for a good post on my anime blog and I haven’t the mind to make it longer….