Category: writings

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.”

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.”

 

 

 

 

“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!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oof.

Having offered arguments against the Evidence-Cost’s views competitors, I will now offer some considerations in favor of the Evidence-Cost view.
First, the Evidence-Cost view seems to avoid the major pitfalls of both the Fact-Cost view and the Belief-Cost view. On the Fact-Cost view, the facts of S’s cost context do not, on their own, make any comments about what are the kind of stakes S is faced with in any given case. Facts about S’s cost context might specify exactly what amount of impact getting it right or wrong about believing P has on S’s practical situation. For instance, going back to the Takeshi-Date example, Takeshi’s practical situation might be effected in ABC way, whatever ABC way might actually be in the given case, by his getting it right or wrong about MOSS. This would be a fact of Takeshi’s cost context in this example. However, it is not the case that this fact about Takeshi’s cost context says anything about whether or not Takeshi is in a high-stakes context or a low-stakes context. Thus, what kind of cost context S is in depends on – not only what is objective the case about S’s cost context – but, as mentioned earlier, factors such as how it compares to other cases and third-party interpretation. Even though I take for granted, in the examples used throughout this paper, that there is some objective fact about what kind of cost context S is in, I do believe that facts about S’s cost context are always neutral. Pay another way, facts about S’s cost context do not specifically say either, it is the case that S is in a high-stakes context or, it is the case that S is in a low-stakes context. With that said, it seems difficult for the Fact-Cost view to make any recommendations about when it is reasonable or not reasonable for S to believe P. The Evidence-Cost view, however, does not seem to suffer from this pitfall. Whereas facts about S’s cost context might be neutral, what evidence S has about his cost context can speak either in favor of his being in a high-stakes cost context or a low-stakes cost context. The Evidence-Cost view, then, can readily make recommendations about when it is reasonable for S to believe P.
In fact, as I mentioned in the previous section, facts about S’s cost context, as they are neutral with regard to what kind of cost context S is in, can constitute a form of evidence that S can have about his cost context. These neutral facts about S’s cost context can serve as evidence which speaks in favor of S’s being in a high-stakes context or as evidence which speaks in favor of S’s being in a low-stakes context. For example, in the Takeshi-Date example, suppose the facts of Takeshi’s cost context are the following: If Takeshi gets it wrong about believing that he wrote down “Moss” on the napkin (call this belief MOSS), he will stand Mary up and Mary will be angry with him for doing this and so on. Should Takeshi be aware of these facts about his cost context, these facts can then serve as evidence which speaks in favor of his being in a high-stakes context in the Takeshi-Date example.
The Evidence-Cost view also avoid the pitfalls of the Belief-Cost view. My main objection against the Belief-Cost is that, on this view, even if S has unjustified or poorly justified beliefs about what kind of cost context he is in, it is reasonable for him to believe P as long as he holds certain beliefs about his cost context. So, in the Takeshi-Job example, if Takeshi believes, in his mind, that he is in a low-stakes context, then the Belief-Cost view holds that it is reasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS regardless of what his evidence about P says, regardless of what the facts of his cost context are. The Belief-Cost view, then, seems to lead to intuitively erroneous conclusion in cases like the Takeshi-Job example. On the Evidence-Cost view, however, S’s evidence about his cost context do not seem as arbitrary as S’s beliefs about his cost context.
Also, I believe that Evidence-Cost view has the advantage of being able to combine the Fact-Cost view, the Belief-Cost view, and itself together into more cohesive and satisfactory intermediate Evidence-Cost view. As mentioned in section 6, aside from the three basic intermediate Evidence-Cost views I have been talking about so far, there are other ways that we might treat S’s cost context. There could be a view which says that S’s reasonableness to believe P depends on facts about S’s evidence in favor of P, and some general attitude about S’s cost context. This “general attitude” about S’s cost context refers to some combination of facts, beliefs, and evidence about S’s cost context which might be used to determine what kind of cost context S is in, in a given case. While I try to articulate or address the “General Attitude”-Cost view in this paper, it is easy to see how the Evidence-Cost view acts as a natural starting point for trying articulate such a view. Under the Evidence-Cost view, facts about S’s cost context – which are neutral on their own – can serve as evidence about S’s cost context. And, S’s evidence about his cost context can speak in favor or against S’s beliefs about his cost context.
Second, I believe that the Evidence-Cost view is the most plausible of the three intermediate Evidence-Cost views I address in this paper because it allows for the possibility that S may neither be reasonable nor unreasonable in holding a belief. In other words, on the Evidence-Cost view, “reasonable” and “unreasonable” are not the only two ways S might be with regard to belief P. A third possibilities exists for how S might be with regards to belief P: S maintain no relationship to belief P on the Evidence-Cost view. For example, let’s look back at the Takeshi-Date example. Recall that Takeshi had some fishy evidence about where is supposed to meet Mary. After running through the rain, the name of the fast food chain he had written down on a piece of napkin becomes smudged. He can only make out the letters “Mc—”. Given the letter fragment on the napkin, Takeshi could have originally written down “McDonald’s” but he has a gut feeling of remembering that he actually wrote down “Moss” for Moss Burger. Neither piece of Takeshi’s evidence in favor of P is extremely convincing. Now, also suppose that Takeshi’s evidence about his cost context is not extremely convincing as well. Perhaps this is Takeshi does not know Mary, whom he found through an online dating site, very well. He has little evidence, aside from her dating website profile and the one or two dates that have gone on, about how she might respond to being stood up by him. One can imagine a version of Takeshi-Date where Takeshi has only a little evidence in favor of his being in a high-stakes context. It seems plausible, then, to say that, in this version of the Takeshi-Date example, it could be the case that it is neither reasonable nor unreasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS. According to the Evidence-Cost view which takes into account only Takeshi’s evidence about his cost context in the Takeshi-Date example, perhaps Takeshi needs to withhold judgment about MOSS until he has more evidence about his cost context.
This possibility of withholding judgment from MOSS does not seem available to Takeshi under the Fact-Cost view. Again, the Fact-Cost view holds that what is objectively the case about Takeshi’s cost context is relevant in determining if it is reasonable or not reasonable for him to believe MOSS. As I state in an early section, in the first place, I do not believe that facts about Takeshi’s cost context can make any recommendations about what kind of stakes are present in his cost context. But, even if we grant that facts about Takeshi’s cost context do in fact tell us if he is in a high-stakes context or a low-stakes context, I do not believe it is possible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from believing MOSS under the Fact-Cost view. Suppose we grant that, in the Takeshi-Date example on the Fact-Cost view, that the facts of Takeshi’s cost context is such that he is in a high-stakes context. Given what little evidence Takeshi has in favor of MOSS, it is unreasonable for him to believe MOSS in this example. Or, suppose that we grant that Takeshi is actually in a low-stakes context such that, even if he has a small amount of unconvincing evidence in favor of MOSS, it is reasonable for Takeshi to believe MOSS. Because there are always facts about Takeshi’s cost context which specifies which kind of cost context he is in for any given case, there are also always facts about whether or not it is reasonable or not reasonable for Takeshi to hold a belief in any given case. Thus, there does not appear to be any room for Takeshi to be neither unreasonable nor reasonable in believing MOSS on the Fact-Cost view. There is no way for Takeshi to withhold judgment about MOSS.
Moreover, for Takeshi, the possibility of withholding judgment about MOSS also seems closed under the Belief-Cost view. According to the Belief-Cost view, Takeshi’s beliefs, in his mind, about what kind of cost context he is in is relevant to determining if it reasonable or not reasonable for him to believe MOSS. One might raise the point that it is possible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from MOSS – he can simply not have any beliefs whatsoever about his cost context. But, Takeshi’s not holding any beliefs at all about his cost context, on the Belief-Cost view, leads to a strange conclusion. For example, in the Takeshi-Date example, on the Evidence-Cost view, it seems plausible for Takeshi to withhold judgment from MOSS. It seems plausible for Takeshi to wait until he acquire more evidence about his cost context before passing judgment on MOSS. However, in the same example, now under the Belief-Cost view, it seems to make very little sense for Takeshi to not hold any beliefs about his cost context and to wait until he acquires more beliefs about his cost context to pass judgment on MOSS. One might object further that, on the Belief-Cost view, it is not a matter of how many beliefs Takeshi has about his cost context but rather if Takeshi’s beliefs are justified. Whereas on the Evidence-Cost view, Takeshi withholds judgment from MOSS to wait to acquire more pieces of evidence about his cost context, on the Belief-Cost view, Takeshi waits to acquire justified beliefs about his cost context. However, as seen in the preceding section, even if we modify the Belief-Cost view to talk about only justified beliefs about Takeshi’s cost context, the view still leads to intuitively erroneous conclusions.
Thus, for these reasons, I believe Evidence-Cost is the most plausible intermediate Evidence-Cost view of the three I examine in this paper.

Some days you write a lot because you want the words to sing. You want them to fly off the page like birds, fluttering wings and feathers lifting to the sky in a gust of wind, taking each and every single letter, the f’s black curls, the bend corners on the N’s and the crosses on the t’s, the b’s pot bellied bottom lifting, lifting, lifting to a place you wanted them to be, arranged in the shape you wanted them to be in. All of these things you wanted to say to someone somewhere, someone that would understand, or at least try, because what else is there really in this world besides you, you, you and you alone, here, alone. Trying, trying to be heard, to express the small things, not even the big ideas or anything, just the small things that grip your heart and twist and twist the muscles until the blood stops flowing and you stop thinking about anything else. Is there more to this? Where all you want to do is weep because you feel like you’ve lost the time you once had to do the things you loved. Because you’re not fourteen or fifteen or eighteen anymore and you want those days back even though you have so many more ahead of you and yet you already want those days back because you used to be freer even when you didn’t know back it then, you used to be freer. You were untethered and open and possible. You, the you that you are today, was only possible back in the dim hallways with the pale yellow lockers and the broken escalators and everything else that you once hated. What you would give to tramp up and down those halls in that jacket you still wear but do not feel the same in anymore. Some days you want back you cannot have back and all you have are the days yet to come and that is exactly what terrifies you. They do not know the meaning of stop or how to stop or want to stop and they roll forward, on and on, without you but taking you. Do you want to see those days again? When everyone was still together, in that big group, you had a group, and nothing was done except for the sake of doing. You paid attention in classes you cared about when the teachers got your attention and taught and held on to your attention somehow. Not because you are terrified of failing, terrified of not being able to make, but it was just something that had to be done and you did what you did. To live in the bliss of ignorance is something you want back so badly, so undeniably that you end up writing in the second person. Maybe, to avoid knowing that you don’t want the future and you just want the past because at least hindsight is settled and certain and there is no guesswork involved no frightening possibilities unresolved because the you back then, the you in the past is definite, delineated in memories and murmurs and resentment that has long vanished and feelings that don’t ring out anymore but you still want to make the words sing because maybe words can take you back to that place, those hallways, those people, the September sky from the ninth floor bathroom, the way the seventh floor smelled like science and chemicals and how you used to do physics experiments in the hallways and linger in the staircases until way after dark trying to compete and do things with your life while people went off to the ivy league and you chose to stay here and never leave and you are still here So in some ways maybe nothing has changed at all but that might just a cognitive defect. There are things you want back. Time to just sit with a book or a show or a manga and read and watch and enjoy and be with it for a while and live away from here, disappear into the night of this world and out in the brilliance of another, distant, somewhere else where you are not you the agent the actor the free will illusion taken from you by another mind dictating the characters and words and actions and you are free to just enjoy. Is there such disdain for those who simply watch, voyeurs trying to escape choice. Choice, choice, choice. All I want is the lack of choice. To be, mindlessly, be. If that is at all possible. To misplace my commas, to split my infinitives, leave the periods, forget subjects and clauses and everything. I want my words to sing but really just to sing to me because some days I have no one else to say these things to, no one who would listen because it is hard to listen, even for me, to words you do not understand but that is all there is in this world, the sound of keys struck over and over again, my attempts to say something to someone that no one would hear. It has always been this way and back then I used to want to say things to other people but the older I get, the farther I move forward into, onto, towards other possibilities, the more I realize I’ve always wanted to just say things to myself. And even I don’t have time anymore to listen to that.

Some days you just sit at home and be not really okay with yourself. And just freak out about nothing. Nothing at all. Just freaking out about stuff. Like law school. Like Japanese. LIKE YOUR THESIS WHICH YOU ARE NOT WRITING AND YOU DON”T KNOW WHY YOU CAN”T BRING YOURSELF TO WRITE THE GODDAMN THING BUT YOU JUST ARE NOT WRITING ANYTHING WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH RICHARDSON TO TALK ABOUT ADVISING AND REGISTRATION AND GRDUATIOANDASDS.

I AM SERIOUSLY NOT VERY OKAY. I AM NOT OKAY. OMG.

Some days you just sit at home and be not really okay with yourself. And just freak out about nothing. Nothing at all. Just freaking out about stuff. Like law school. Like Japanese. LIKE YOUR THESIS WHICH YOU ARE NOT WRITING AND YOU DON”T KNOW WHY YOU CAN”T BRING YOURSELF TO WRITE THE GODDAMN THING BUT YOU JUST ARE NOT WRITING ANYTHING WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT WITH RICHARDSON TO TALK ABOUT ADVISING AND REGISTRATION AND GRDUATIOANDASDS.

I AM SERIOUSLY NOT VERY OKAY. I AM NOT OKAY. OMG.
What am I doing with my life. I have so much work to do and all I’m doing now is watching this movie while waiting to watch another movie. While not really doing the important work that I have to do while not doing anything that I have to do. I have to understand and finish reading these papers so I can write something moderately cohesive to give to Jim next week. I have to write this cript. I gotta get my ceramics projects together, literlaly and start working on the wheel throwing thing. I am so screwed right now. So screwed. I don’t even know. I feel really bad because well shit. I don’t know how I did on that Japanese test. How could Ihave spelled Jeans wrong. Jeans man. Of all the things I had to get wrong. And maybe that’s the tip of the ice berg. I would have caught that last time. I totally would have caught that last time. I didn’t have nearly enough time as I did last time to sit and think about things. I feel like I also got something on the listening wrong. My listening isn’t strong at all. I just don’t know. I don’t want to think about it but I also keep thinking about it. My stanrads. I just want to be okay at this so I don’t fail and be upset with myself but I’m flailing anyways. Just some sad fish without fins even worse than a magikarp. I am so sasd. So sad.
I feel like crap somedays. I’ve been feeling like crap for a long time. Confused. Sad. Something like that. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I knew I what I was doing. I wish I knew. But I do not. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I am so sad. So sad. What am doing. What am I doing. What am I doing. Everything is falling apart around me like a cookie that was baked too long. That’s a horrible metaphor. Like, snow crumbling, or sand, or salt, like something dying slowly, like brow sugar I tried to pack but it didn’t work or something. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. What am I doing next semester. I want to write again. I wish I had ideas and was creative or something to that effect. I wish I knew.
My GPA, my thesis. Everything. What am I doing. The semester is almost over. I don’t want to know at all. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I wish they would tell me and I still don’t want to know. I wish I knew.
It’s a Friday night, Saturday morning and all I’m doing is watching these movies. I wish I knew.
I wish the world made more sense to me. I wish things worked out better. I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now. Well at least I don’t have it as bad as she has it. I wouldn’t know what to do. But then my problems would be a totally different set of problems if I were in his shoes. I wish I had different problems just to try them on for size. Myabe I’d be able to handle different problems better.
I wish I could trade away my problems for a day, like slippoing out of some old clothes, into some fresh ones. A new suit, or something. Like a snake, a shapeshifter. Just to see. What is that like. Just to see. And then maybe I’ll come right back to my old problems, maybe. And they’d be familiar, like home. Maybe I’d know how to deal with it better. Maybe I’d never come back. I don’t want to come back. I just want to let go/ Forever. Of here. I don’t want to stay here.

Progression One

Angela, my boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend, is from Taiwan. When we go out to eat with my boyfriend’s family, she chats with his parents, even his grandparents, in Chinese. She is imbued with knowledge of Chinese culture and dining etiquette. She eats tiny portions and correctly refuses gifts the Chinese way before actually accepting them. Sometimes, I worry that my boyfriend’s parents approve of her more than they do me because she is more Chinese. She’s the one that pours tea for everyone else before refilling her own cup and I’m the one that doesn’t even drink tea because hot beverages burn my tongue.

Here’s a secret: If you ever want to eat at a Chinese restaurant, bring a Chinese friend and have them order for you. Make it abundantly clear that your companion is Chinese. If you’re feeling adventurous, have your friend order an item off the menu that’s handwritten and taped to the walls of the restaurant. It’s probably better than anything listed on the English menu. If you go to the right places, they will even serve you free soup – all because your friend is Chinese.

The Chinese came to America for the money, not a new way of life. Even as they start new lives overseas, the Chinese are still trying to occupy an exclusive society instead of assimilating. Chinese communities are most often described as tight-knit communities where the ins and outs, like ordering the right dishes, are unknown to foreigners who don’t speak and don’t understand the language. To the rest of the world, Chinatown must seem like a gathering of souvenir knick knacks and restaurants that serve orange chicken.

I don’t really speak Chinese and that’s the way my mother intends for it to be. When people ask if I speak Chinese, I say, with a grin and a nervous chuckle, “I speak a little.” That might even be a stretch, I can handle just enough Chinese to get around.

I never understood why a divorce or a separation should be so psychologically traumatizing to a child. Whenever people find out that I only live with my mother and that my dad lives out somewhere in Elmhurst, they give me that look of pity and mutter, “Oh, I’m sorry” as if there’s something to be sorry about. Maybe I wasn’t as perceptive a child as my mentally scarred counterparts. When my dad moved out,

My family is pretty normal. I was brought up by my grandparents who overfed me. My mother was getting her second, or third, PhD and my dad travelled a lot. I didn’t see a lot of my parent

For what it’s worth, my family is pretty normal. Granted, I’m not really being clear with what I mean by ‘normal’. I was brought up by my grandparents because my mother was busy getting a PhD and my dad was busy travelling. I don’t remember seeing much of them as a child. Then my grandfather died and my mother decided to move to America.

Why would I want a complete family anyway? There are more than eight million people in the world and I am a collector, gathering pieces from each culture with which to slowly build the mosaic of my cultural understanding
Whenever someone asks me if I speak Chinese, I say, with a nervous grin, “I speak a little.” I’m secretly trying to vindicate my mother’s decisions and how she wears my inability to speak Chinese as a source of pride when most Chinese parents shake their heads in dismay at how little their offspring speak of their native language. I’m always secretly trying to vindicate some aspect of my life to someone, especially the Chinese, because they find something wrong with every aspect of my life that I reveal to them. No, I can’t read or write Chinese. No, I haven’t been back to China since I moved here. No, we don’t really cook at home. No, we’re not really like you. And no, we don’t have a problem.

After a year’s worth of family gatherings, parties and dinner banquets, I’m still where I have always been, on the outside looking in, but I’ve become an expected guest – Allen’s girlfriend.

I’m still not comfortable saying anything to anyone in Chinese, but I’m not as frightened of the occasional conversation with his aunt or uncle or poking fun at the struggles between his younger cousins.

I’m not too broken up about it, though, not having eight million relatives. Sometimes I’m actually relieved. After a year’s worth of family gatherings, parties and dinner banquet, I’m starting to miss a Sunday morning at home, without half a dozen screaming children playing a video game somewhere or the shouts and yells of the adults gambling in the living room. Or, about being that odd half-family when tradition demands that it be a whole. All the roundness that Kingston observes in her life, “the round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of graduated size that fit one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls” (313) are absent from mine, allowing me to fill my life with shapes of my choosing.

Even after a year’s worth of family gatherings and banquet dinners, getting to know almost all of Allen’s relatives by name, I’m still where I have always been, on the outside looking in.
After a year’s worth of family gatherings and banquet dinner, it’s almost as if I’ve been inducted into their family. His dad traded his Honda for a Nissan Pathfinder so there’s room for Angela and I when we go to one of this ubiquitous gatherings.

The piglet lies face down on the oblong serving tray, the crispy skin and meat of its back exposed and sliced into rectangular portions.

The piglet rests on a tall, oblong serving tray that dominates the glass Lazy Susan at the center of the table. Face down, the meat along it’s is exposed and sliced into rectangular portions. The snout, a hard knob of skin the color of mahogany, is pointed at the elderly who are served first.

The exterior of a Chinese banquet hall may be misleading.

I don’t really speak Chinese. When people ask if I do, I say, “I speak a little.” I give a

My dad wants me to help him do some work at his office on Sunday, but it’s late Saturday night and I’m hurtling down the New Jersey Turnpike in the backseat of my boyfriend’s parents’ Honda. I’m on the phone, trying, in my broken Chinese

The car zips along the highway, past closed shopping malls and empty parking lots, towards their house, one of many newly built houses that, along with a man-made lake, comprised the town of Sayreville. A water tower with the town’s name emblazoned across the tank looms over the highway exit we get off at.

It’s late Saturday night and I’m hurtling down the New Jersey Turnpike in the backseat of my boyfriend’s parents’ silver Honda. I’m on the phone with my dad, trying to tell him one thing or another in my broken Chinese. Something about helping out with his work, something about the plans my mother and I made with him to go away for the weekend. Every once in a while, I give up completely and just use English, hoping he understands. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t, a strange sort of language barrier.

Later, Allen’s dad tells me that he is surprised by how good my Chinese is. He doesn’t exp

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 25th street. I repeat, heading east on 25th 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.

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.

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

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.

It’s been a while…

He waits for her on the bridge, listening to the wet slosh of cars pviagrasing on the highway below, watching the hooded traffic guard in their gaudy neon raincoats direct the flow of traffic and children leaving the neighborhood preschool. He has packed her lunch in a round, plastic container, the kind that restaurants send take-out in. Wrapped twice in aluminum foil, it sits at the bottom of his black, fabric messenger bag.  

The wall, the bridge: they refer to these things as if there’s only one of each in existence and it’s their bridge straddling the highway snaking down the west side of Manhattan and it’s their painted and faded mural wall outside BMCC and only theirs, a certain mentality that grows from the school’s stifling prestige that allows for this sense of ownership. Their wall, their bridge, as if no one else ever crossed the Tribeca bridge, as if no one else ever sat on the wall and ate lunch, as if the occasional morning runner, dog walker or lone Wall Street banker making their way across the aging wood panels were just anomalies, visitors, trespassers, as if the college students that join the steady outpouring of high schoolers from the 1,2,3 station and that eventually diverge at the community college were lesser beings. But, it’s just a bridge, a wall, a school, a collective being petty and insignificant, like ants hurdling against tidal waves of rain, not quite knowing that there’s something bigger out there but fearing that there is. Four years and they walk away knowing that they survived one wave, one day, one flippant act of nature, one flippant summer thunderstorm. Four years of not quite knowing but knowing it all along, four years and Four years and they can say they lived it, they owned it.

What is it like to lose yourself in something so much bigger? When your senior year dwindles down to nothing, to goodbyes and pictures and those long afternoons playing pointless card games in Chinatown, the inside jokes and harmless insults, all that wasted time but to you, it means so much more. Is it fear or nostalgia, or both, that makes you wish this year would never end, that maybe it would loop and rewind and tape over itself. Stepping on the thin line between when life starts to matter and when it used to be good, wishing you never needed to cross it. The pasty insides of this school, as if someone will poor color coordination threw up on everything, you’ll eventually miss that too. Long for voices the echo in the corridors, the faces that fade in and out of rooms, wishing you can take a piece of it with you but knowing there aren’t many pieces left to take.

God, I hate being so damn sentimental. Why is it going by so fast when all I want is for it to last, last just a little bit longer so I can sink my teeth into this feeling, into this moment and hold on to it and remember it, remember them. God, I wish I spent more time on the more important things.

Random Recovery

And that one thought, brought on by a word or two, a sentiment or two, drives me crazy. Crazy. Completely fucking crazy. Every little inch of my mind is filled with just him.

Every once in a while, I miss him like crazy; I’d hear a song on the radio and listen to the lyrics and hear him in every word. And, every once in a while, even though I don’t need it anymore, I long for him arms, for his face, for him, for him, him, him, to be right here.

Every once in a while…

And that one thought, brought on by a word or two, a sentiment or two, drives me crazy. Crazy. Completely fucking crazy. Every little inch of my mind is filled with just him.

Some days I wish things were different, not that I don’t appreciate what I have now. Some days, I just regret not doing a few things that I should’ve gathered the courage to do. Words come to me so easily. Across a sea of letters, I stand on my lonesome island and wait for your ship. Never, not once, will I call out for your attention to come and rescue me.

I’ve gone crazy from the moment I met you.

And I need you so much.

Truer words have never been said.

I’m crazy. I miss him.

I shouldn’t.

Goddamn, I should’ve, I should’ve. I didn’t. I’m going to regret that one little thing for the rest of my goddamn life.

Christ, Meyer. Lol

If only you knew this shit, you’d get a good laugh out of it.

I hate things for a reason, you know. A fucking reason. I hate people, I hate school, fucking working…my teeth, my life….there’s just so much shit and I don’t want to deal with any of it. Why can’t it just be alright sometimes…why can’t you just run away with me? Do you see why I hate this so much…what is the point of staying if people hate you….

I’m tired. Really, really tired.

Yeah, pretty much, I hate everything. I hate my mother. I hate my boyfriend. I hate pieces of myself. I hate my fat, it’s terrible. I bet you it hates me too. I hate my teeth. I know they hate me because half of them aren’t even there anymore. I hate just living, breathing, fucking cellular respiration and all that crap. It’s all just crap. Names, dates, people, crap, crap, crap. I can’t spend two seconds of my life re-evaluating my own crappy existence without some blaring through my non-existent French doors that barely close, ever (I live in a fucking closet), “Are you gonna go?” I’ll go on my own time, when I’d done with being sad and weeping and hating, I’ll go when I feel inclined to go, I’ll go when I’m already considerably late, but no, I will not go because you’ve asked me to go. I will not do what is good for me because only you know what’s good for me. And, if you tell me I’m old enough to know what’s good for me, I will tell you no. No one knows what is good for them. You are all in denial. And, I hate every single fucking one of you and if I had the chance, I’d a) kill myself so I will no longer have to spend my life looking at you, or b) kill every single one of you and feel quite satisfied with my accomplishments and document the extinct of the human race in a shitty history textbook, c) shit in everyone’s face.

I like that last one.

She’s always, like, how much she isn’t like grandma. She’s the same, and she’s worse. She nags, at least grandma gets the idea and leaves.

Klondike Summer

He sells ice cream, she knows that much, at the street corner by the park. The sun is strong, so he wears a red baseball cap. He is a Mets fan, how will they ever get along? Children, big and small, crowd around him, dollar bills clutched in their hands like their own personal fortunes. He passes a rainbow colored cone to one of the kids.

During the school year, he sits in the back corner of her history class. He doesn’t talk much, but he knows all the answers when Mr. Rubbel calls on him. Who was the first king of England? How long was the Hundred Years War? Explain Wilson’s fourteen points. He knows everything.

So, what does she do? She sits, in her blue summer dress-the one with daisies on it-and

I’m never naming my weird ass stories ever again. I’m really, really, really fucking hungry-but not! Not, at the same time. I’m consumed by and lacking hunger, at the same time.

My heart is about to explode. The little sounds you make over the microphone. I know you but I do. I don’t know what I’m doing with you, but I know. Security, love, contention, peace, I don’t want drama. I want apple pie with a dollop of whipped on top and your hand on my shoulder.

I want to feel your lips, warm and wet, greeting mine. Your big, calloused, scarred hands, your fingers, curling around mine, I want to feel just for a moment used and loved. I want to feel your awkwardly cut hair, the scrape and sound of black, straw like strands, against my forehead in the morning. I want…warmth.

I’m tired. Old. Shrively? Is that a word? Shrivelly?

More member activities!

STOP WITH THE WORM, STOP WITH THE WORM. STOOOOP ITT WITH THE VELVET WORM.

Life hates me, god hates me, god laughs at me, my sports teams never win. No, really, life hates me. I’m too tired to even curse and yell and SCREMA AND FUCK IT WAS FOUR FUCKING POINTS YYOU FUCKIGTN SONS OF BITCHES! POFIUOIR!! FOUR!!!! FUCKING POINTS!!!!!! You let me win Monopoly, but you can’t like Kurt Warner win the damn Super Bowl? YOU FUCKING PIECE OF NEGRO SHIT YOU!

I’m racist. And, I’m angry. Larry Fitzgerald you have my sympathies and my love. I’ll add the Cardinals to my small, growing, list of sports teams that never win. I’ll start watching hockey. I will. And they won’t win either.

Ketchup Mustard
Salt Pepper
Sour Cream Onion
Fish Chips
Peanut Butter Jelly
Mac Cheese
Cereal Milk
Cookies Cream
Mint Chocolate Chip
Tortilla Chips Dip
Nachos Cheese
Peas Carrots
Cheeseburgers Fries
Pancakes Syrup
Meat Potato
Sushi Wasabi
Noodles Soup
Gin Tonic
Spaghetti Meatballs
Martini Olives
Sandwich Pickles
Chickpeas Lentil
Cumin Coriander
Ice Cream Soda
Hotdog Bun
Buffalo Wings Blue Cheese
Vinegar Olive Oil
Lemon Chicken
Beef Broccoli
Bacon Egg
Mashed Potatoes Gravy
Popcorn Butter
Crepes Nutella
Turkey Cranberry
Bread Butter
Rice Beans
Apples Oranges
Pasta Sauce
Lettuce Tomato
Aeronautics

I’m over the Cardinals. There’s always next year. I really hope I don’t fail English. I hope it’ll be okay. I’m no longer going to think about it. Alright. Shut up. STOP. STOP. OKAY. SHHHH.

O-o;

I wonder what it says about music when Pandora plops Nickelback next to Avril Lavigne.

Swallowing hurts.

I’m sick at heart, as always. Hormones suck.
You know, when I was little, I wanted to be an astronaut. Generically childish, but, hell, it seemed wonderful at the time. It gave me a strange sort of thrill, a shiver down my spine, to think about reaching out and feeling the cool, black marble of space against my palm. A strange sort of thrill to imagine nebulae, dressed in wispy, diaphanous robes of stars, a strange sort of thrill to realize that space is empty, that space is big, that space is a never-ending void where the light of my tiny planet Earth goes to die, where the light of my tiny planet Earth is reborn anew, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, in the colors of another world. I’d cut the cable anchoring me and drift and drift and drift, past the valleys and mountains of the cosmos, past the milky lakes of galaxy, past the dying dwarfs and the supernovas. Space would be my grave and silence, my requiem.

It’s nice to be a kid because you’re allowed these kinds of dreams. You’re allowed to sit with your mouth half open, staring at something. You’re allowed a canvas and some paint, your creativity and your imagination, you’re allowed all of these things like you’re allowed toy trucks and Barbie’s. But, once you get to that age, that age when people start thinking you’re retarded because you sit with your mouth open (and draw with crayons), the dreams stop. And, also because there are no stars in Manhattan, there are only helicopters. Dreams are little kid stuff, when you grow up, you have to deal with grown up stuff, like doing the dishes, taking out the garbage, learning how to drive, learning how to cook, learning how to do your own taxes (someone forgot learning how to learn, a small task most people seem desperately incapable of understanding), but most importantly, learning how to run the rat race. There are no dreams in Manhattan, only Lexington Avenue stretching south to the tip of the island. Concrete would be my grave and the closing bell, well, it’d be the closing bell.

On yet another childish note, dark chocolate is only dark, according to the Europeans, if the chocolate contains 35% cacao solids. According to the Americans, who have no real standard for such things, dark chocolate needs only to contain 15% chocolate liquor to maintain sufficient darkness. The real question: Is my American Dream…dark? When you stop running the race, what do you taste? White chocolate-a misnomer if I ever saw one because the thing contains no cacao whatsoever? Or, just pure cacao powder, bitter and raw-the kind of stuff that smacks you a couple times to make sure you’re tuned in to the proper episode of Life? Or, am I just talking about something completely pointless?

I mean, when you’re reading something like Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, its like life just handed you lemons and insisted, if not pleaded, for you to make lemonade. All right, I make the lemonade. The little voice inside my head can’t help but quip every two or three seconds, “Look! Look! He wrote Moby Dick! He’s gotta have a point! Something real deep and philosophical! Look! Look!” So, I look. The thing about classics (and, by default, the people who write those things) is they’re expected to have a point. They’re supposed to teach you something nice and important and warm, to fuel the intense flames of your imagination, to keep you going at night when you’re down and out (though, really, ice cream does the same thing). Why else would you have them? Entertainment? A thousand page tome on the finicky details of Victorian courtship? Say hello to my trash can. And, when you read a classic, you’re expected to get something out of it. You’re expected to take away with you this wonderful understanding of something new. You’re expected to enlightened! But, what if I’m confused? Or, bored? Or, just plain don’t care. Am I any dumber than someone who enjoyed Pride and Prejudice? Am I any less worthy than someone who loved The Great Gatsby? Am I just a kid, sitting my mouth open, if I couldn’t even get through The Great Gatsby because life demanded my attention elsewhere? Well, Life, thank you for the lemons. I’m going to enjoy my lemonade, without the added sugar.

Reading a classic like Bartleby the Scrivener, for example, is just like living the American dream. Examine, for a moment, the conditions under which I found my copy of Bartleby the Scrivener. It was Halloween, of the year Two Thousand and Eight and people down the hall were singing the Village People. I’m late as usual, hardly unexpected. In an attempt to get into the Halloween spirit, I’ve somehow bothered to waste my time and squeeze myself into a costume. Upon arriving on the sixth floor of the pasty colored building that is my high school (high school really ought to be a synonym for hell) and waddled down the hall to the last room before the Hudson Staircase, I was greeted by Mr. Murray (whose name I’m quite sure I’m spelling wrong)! What a vision he was indeed, a number 2 pencil in hand and the attendance sheet in the other, in the place of my usual English teacher. Dressed, as usual, in non-descript sweater and pants, Mr. Murray beckoned me towards a seat, with what curiosity I took my seat. Immediately I was told to grab a hideously red book off a cart. What I’ve never truly understood about books in the public school system is that they all come in this awful, smelly, deteriorating form. The actual cover design of the book is shrunken about an inch on all sides and printed in the middle, with bright and often disagreeably colored border. And, on the back, in large, black Serif print exists a blurb of, usually, irrelevant information. The pages are brown and smelly and awful to the touch. In my copy of the book, all some thirty odd pages of Bartleby the Scrivener were happily detached from the actual binding, making for a handy portal addition of larger, already portable object. I thought it was quite charming. Then, I proceeded not to read it until class the next week.

If a classic is classic and should be taken seriously, why in the name of god did it arrive in my hands in such conditions? If the American dream is a dream of striking it rich, a dream of rising from the quagmire and cesspool of anonymous oblivion, a dream shared by men like Gatsy, shared by men like Bartleby, why is it nothing more than just a nightmare? Examine, for a moment, the conditions under which I found that my life had no meaning, in possibly all too metaphysical sense. I was sitting at a computer, some years ago, though not that many years ago because I haven’t lived many years to begin with. It suddenly occurred to me, as I ogled at why it was that computers worked, that I’ll never be able to find an answer. And, yes, I know, there are people out there who know how computers work. But, rather, the question is, why computers work? Why do I work? Why does my heart beat? Why do I write essays? Why do I even fit in the proper scope of the world? Why can’t I say, “I prefer not to,” and just not do something? The simple answer, and the short answer, is that I’ll end up like Bartleby, I’ll end up dead.

The amount of trouble I’m having with an English essay really just makes me wonder where the hell authors get their inspiration. Do they just plop down next to their typewriters and word processors and let their fingers run wild? And Melville said, “Let there be Moby Dick!” And, born was another classic, one to toss into the flames of high school English curriculums, one to fuel centuries of imaginations. Christ, Moby Dick was about a whale and Bartleby the Scrivener was about a scrivener.

The world isn’t a patient place. It rushes people, rushes people into things they don’t like and never wanted to do. It makes people write essays for class at four in the morning. No one likes that.

This essay isn’t fun. The American dream isn’t fun. It’s a relic of the past.

The back of my head is itchy, it’s persistent and annoying and I’ve been scratching at it for a while.

Bartleby, the Scrivener, quit life. Slowly but surely, he steps out of the world of the living and into the world of the dead. However, the world is an impatient and rather pragmatic creature, eventually leaving Bartleby behind in his resignation. Only on an act of charity, and possible nuisance, does his employer, an unnamed lawyer, come to retrieve him, to attempt to coax him out of his grave. In his simple minded ignorance, the lawyer fails to provide Bartleby with the simplest of all charities, understanding and sympathy. Instead, he showers upon Bartleby more values of the material world Bartleby so aptly abandons, illustrating the fatal flaw of the American dream. Thus, Bartleby succumbs to life and is granted the ultimate sanctuary of death.

In one of the last exchanges between Bartleby and the lawyer, Bartleby declares that the job of a sales clerk is too confining. To which the lawyer replies, “‘Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!'” To these two different men, the word ‘confinement’ held different meanings. To Bartleby, perhaps the word takes on a much deeper, more metaphysical sense. He speaks not of the physical confinement that the lawyer remarks of, but to the inner confinement of a sales clerk, the repetition and the boredom of doing the same thing over and over again. What for Bartleby is an essential freedom is but a trivial absurdity to the lawyer.

The exchange continues: Bartleby remains adamant to stay as he currently is, preferably stationary. This enrages the lawyer, “‘Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound-indeed I am bound-to-to-to quit the premises myself!'” The world, obviously, being such that it is, has no place for a useless man. The lawyer attempts to either grant Bartleby a form of obsolete charity to console himself, or attempts to bypass this obstacle in the course of his life, like a stream bending around a huge bolder. What he does not understand, a fact that Bartleby never articulates, is the intense monotony of what he is rushing forward to greet. Bartleby’s strangeness is but a tired and weary defiance, a quiet anger, at the world that had neither shown him mercy, nor patience, but has only instead robbed him of his will to live. No form of charity will mend this hopelessness.

The last paragraph of the short story adds one essential piece to the Bartleby mystery: Bartleby’s previous station of work as a Dead Letters clerk. Dead letters, aside from having a potent connotation, as Melville writes, are “on errands of life, these letters speed to death.” Humanity, in an attempt to escape death, only rushes towards it, only rushes head first in the furnace of an unending hell. Bartleby realizes the futility of this American nightmare and simply kicks his own bucket. He did not quit his job at the Dead Letters Office, rather, he was removed. Adding to his place more despair and hopelessness that eventually drove him over the edge. The American dream is not a dream, it is a nightmare, a nightmare sugar coated for the unsuspecting that flock century after century to that golden door. What waits beyond those sacred doors save for a Bartleby ending? Perhaps not everyone is prone to “pallid hopelessness”, but everyone is prone to the relentless grind of life. The American dream is a poison for the world, opium for the capitalist masses. There is no cure, for “he whom it would relieve, nor eats nor hungers any more; pardon for those who died despairing; hope for those who died unhoping; good tidings for those who died stifled by unrelieved calamities.”

Though I am not prone to any sort of hopelessness, I often wonder whether or not it’d be worth it to join Bartleby in his preferential resignation. Shall I not prefer to write this essay? Shall I prefer not to live? Shall I quit life? How tempting an idea it is to drop everything, to stop typing, to cease to care about everything, and just sit silently upon a banister. Sadly, I’m kept running this rat race by a pesky instinct called survive. Against my own volition, I’m kept swimming against the tide by nothing but a preference to live. Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

I want to cry sometimes, but I can’t. And, there’s a feeling, a little latch of feeling that comes up, creeps up and fills your entire body. It hurts and it’s strange. It’s like loneliness mixed in with sadness, with anxiety, like a cocktail of feelings without the alcohol, just raw bitterness. It’s sharp and tangy and wet and it tastes a little like a piece of me dying on the inside. No one knows, no one cares. Everyone’s too caught up with there crap. Garfinkel stuffing his face with a plate of food coming up from the fifth floor. Katerina and her weird vaginal cramping during SING practice. Jeffrey, how much I love Jeffrey, and his non-descript grunts over the phone…

If feels like the world’s abandoned me, or, in another sense, I’ve abandoned it.

I want to make up. But I don’t.

I’m scared. But I’m not.

What am I then?

Hurt? No, not even. Apathetically depressed about everything.

Is being content really that bad, so I need drama? Do I need happiness, do I need anything but you? I want to cry, to grab you, turn you around, bury my face in your chest and hide. But, you don’t love me anymore. Not the same, anymore, you’re distracted, distant, elsewhere. You need to sleep, you need to work. You need your life and you don’t have time for me anymore. Go, please. Go. Don’t worry about me. I’m sure you don’t worry about me. Forget about me. Forget about it. I want to end it, but I can’t because I’m still clinging to some sort of hope that it won’t end. Please. Don’t go.

He hasn’t called back. He hasn’t messaged me. It’s quiet and the quiet is eating away at me.

There’s a hole in my sock. I’m in my winter jacket, the periwinkle one that made Ehtesh look like a woman from the back. The periwinkle one with the dirty sleeves that’ll never wash out, browned and oil stained. The hole is strangling my big toe, I can feel where the edge of the fabric digs into flesh each time I move. There’s a hole in my pink sock, stained black and blue by my trousers, my shoes, the dirt on my floor, in the gym, perfumed by the pungent smell of my feet.

I can’t help it. Shut up.

I enjoy being tormented like this, all the time, all the time. I miss the pain, gathered up like a little ball, a rubber band ball of my problems, in the center of my chest. Like Iron Man’s heart reactor. If someone said that three years from now, you’d be long gone, I’d stand up and punch them out.

Come back. I love you. You bought me all these things, all the little Pooh’s, everything, come back. STOP UNDERLINING SHIT IN RED. FUCK OFF WORD. Damn everything. And the fucking capitalization.

I can’t get my toe out of that hole if I don’t use my hand. Damn. He’s not responding. I’m worried? Or, just lonely?

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.

Recovery II

7.09

I have a picture of James McAvoy as my Twitter profile pic. He’s just looking back at me, with his arms crossed and that grin across his gorgeous face and I can’t stop looking back at him.

I should leave. I don’t really feel like. I actually read my New York Times article today, suicide bombing in Afghanistan, the most interesting thing in the world.

After these four songs, I leave.

Every time I hear Just Communication, or like Catch You Catch Me, I feel like crying and weeping. I’m going to write a blog post about it. Maybe, or at least start it.

It’s hot. The sun’s hot. The bench is hot. The asphalt is hot. The only cold thing is the can of soda in his hand, slowly fizzing in the summer heat. Sprinklers from a nearby playground shower him in mist, the screams and shrills of laughing children, the wet plops of their little feet in flip flops, a girl in a flowery bathing suit and dropping pigtails, her mother in her bug-eyed designer sunglasses watching from across the park.

He bought a set of German polyhedral die yesterday, bright blue/silver color as the box read, for no good reason from a comic book store. He feels them clanking in his pocket and pats them, almost asking them why they are there.

He checks his watch, half past noon, perhaps he should leave. He’ll be late. He is already late. When is he not late? Punctuality is a crime.

He fetches the die set from his pocket, opens the packaging and searches for a d20. He’ll roll for it, odds he leaves, evens he stays.

Okay, okay, I leave, I leave!

Leaving!

So, moments come and pass, moments come and go. I cried for the first time in a really long time and the thought, that passing though that indeed people I love, people I like, things I’ve enjoyed doing, will be gone next year, it was scary, it was just scary.

I don’t want to let go of anything.

This song is as catchy as fuck and it sounds incredibly badass, like I’m going to go out and shoot the living hell out of everyone and love every second of it. I like this song.

I like you.

7.10

The real question is: should I invite him? How do I invite him, if yes be the answer to that question? Will he say yes? How will I feel if he says no? Why do I feel like my own personal psychiatrist, and why won’t I stop smelling like garlic?

I think you come up with good ideas when you’re young only because you’re dumb enough to think they’re going to work. Most of the time, they do.

I hate everything. Hi, Ricky. I can’t even manage a greeting. I can’t click on his name, I can’t click, I can’t type, I can’t greet. Fuck this.

And here I am, my own little mental dilemma that makes my arms go numb. Sometimes I think it’s the fan, but I know it’s just the thought of speaking to him.

I freak myself out sometimes. I don’t like it. If I don’t talk to him at some point, I think I’m going to combust, just implode, or die. It’s awful? It’s weird.

Have you heard the news? Bad things come in twos?

7.29

I have nothing else left to do, and honestly, Old Spice can get annoying after a while.

So, realistically, I’m not really thinking about him anymore. Truthfully, I miss my days of being an obsessive lover, on the verge of tears at the mere thought of this…idea, this person, whatever you, which is really me, want to call it. Nowadays, I’m just in denial about it. Or, maybe I’ve become numb to my fits of emotional insurrection, but I still can’t bring myself to IM him when he’s online, despite my need to ask him, “So, how’s that phone line of yours holding up?” Maybe it’s the fear that he won’t answer that keeps my keyboard happy fingers at bay, but then again, it works against me that he’s been idle for the last eleven hours and counting.

Then, on the other hand, you have the other kid. Of course, even in retrospect, none of this will make sense to anyone, not even me. My feelings for him are a mess, a stew of lovely, incoherent feelings and whatevers, and god, the spell of Old Spice is really, really strong. You know, the other other one, meaning the one above, had a particular smell too. No shit Sherlock, of course I know, I was there the entire time, you flipping moron. Shut up, this really isn’t a time to be schiz. No? Really, now, you’re telling me after some ten odd years you hate me? No, fucking Sherlock Holmes, I’m telling you to fuck off.

Right, anyways, there’s no real purpose, his screen name on AIM just makes me giddy. I really shouldn’t be, because I swear I’ve gotten over it, though I feel I will never actually get over it, but, really, we ought to move along. He’s still idle and he’s still there.

I just hate…being almost there.

I really hate just being almost there.

So much, so much, so much…that it hurts as bad, if not worse, than a headache, than a stomach ache, than anything else…

Well, there, I did it, my wireless just hates me, so much…

So much…

I’ll wait, I’ll wait. I’ll sit it out. This is actually legitimately annoying. I’d like my internet back and functioning.

So, wait, what was that page loading then? Some godforsaken tease my wireless network has become? What in the name of god is this?!

Judgement

I am, now, very satisfied.

Among other things…

Light reading turned out to be very boring, so I’m gonna just go for it when the torrent’s done and hopefully my one point something gigs of a cracked game is going to work. If not, I cry. For now, I suffer the throes of a dying love, unfinished homework and a stomach ache.

The search function is inherently useless.

I’m satisfied, today, with almost everything that’s happened. Jeffrey, Ricky, moomoo, food, movies, TCGs, games, everything today feels exceptional. A very good day, in the fine words of my friend, a very good day. And by god, I hope it stays that way. Maybe it’s because I’m recovering from a week of feeling deeply unwell and sick on the inside. Maybe it’s because I cut prep and stayed home the entire day, rolling around and doing nothing. Maybe it’s because I shared a moment with Ricky Meyer and nothing awkward happened. Maybe it’s because I’m accepting the fact that I’m going to miss him and he’s going to stay a friend. Maybe it’s because YOU ARE AN INANIMATE FUCKING OBJECT! Maybe it’s because that all my college bound senior buddies aren’t going to forget about me. Maybe it’s because I scored a 21-something on that practice SAT and there’s hope for me yet. Maybe it’s because, today, for the briefest of all moments, the world, the whole world, life itself, seems to be going my way, walking right down my block, up my alley, heading my way.

And now, I’m going to sleep to some good ol’ Yoko Kanno. Or, maybe Nine Inch Nails, though I don’t know how that’s going to help me sleep at all.

8.07

“Lobe, where the fuck is the bus?”

When my breath stops hitching when I see you, when talking to you becomes daily, when you aren’t the tingling sensation down the side of my, I think I’m through.

That song, this song, gets me, it’s catchy. I’m afraid? Annoyed? Can I say both? This feeling, that feeling, down there is bugging me, I hope it goes away. Most prevailing feeling of the moment, dread, annoyance, constipation.

If I go crazy will you still call me Superman?

It needs to go away.

The night is quiet the night is lonely

He walks, morose, through life silently

Lights a cigarette, the flame flickers

He has given me so many things, I’ve given him nothing. Is my company good enough?

If not for me, then you’d be dead.

That song makes a lot of sense to me, a lot, a lot of sense. Lately, I haven’t been feeling anything, none of my usual roller coaster rides into hell, none of my usual ups and downs and rants. Instead, a newfound complacency, have I found a home? Have I found peace, or am I simply at rest, at rest in his arms?

Do I keep him chained? Need I set him free? Is this reluctances love, or greed?

It’s odd, to share? Isn’t it? Because what’s mine is mine and to share with someone, him, this piece of me is like opening a book to the world that is solely mine. What is it now? He hasn’t even read the blurb, calm down.

It’s like holding your breath, for a really long time, until he responds and you get to see what he thinks of you.

Has he any idea how odd it is to have someone tell you they love you and not know what to say back? Like, being caught (without a Twix) and not knowing where to turn, to smile? Grin? Laugh? Reject? What am I to do?

Okay, it’s really distracting, there’s a violent surge, if you will, of emotion that is the completely opposite of emotion. Am I numb, or am I just missing something? Or, is this feeling entirely new?

Mostly, I tell you it’s just THAT, down THERE, that’s bothering me.

I left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time.

No wonder this song was such a hit, good fucking lyrics.

Night, kid.

I feel like crying. Awfully, into the night

Answer all of his questions (?) with laughter (lol).

She’s not sure where she stands anymore, which side of the road she’s standing on. Whether she’s the reflection or the one looking in, whether she’s living or whether she’s dead, whether she’s just a wraith floating mindlessly through the world, passing in and out of memories.

Remember me, when you’re gone.

I didn’t do homework. It’s an odd feeling. I forgot to ask.

Life seems to be so full of shit. All of the days I have lived, I have done nothing worthwhile. Perhaps he is the key to the rest of my life, to the rest of me, the me that’s been sleeping, waiting to rise.

With a summer like this, how can I look forward to September, to school?

With a life like this, have I any other horrors to seek? Have another life to lead?

I lied to my mother today, for the first time in a while, a lie of such a magnitude. I had done neither of the two things I so blatantly told her I did, but I promise to do so tomorrow.

He had, of course, left something here, a pen that wasn’t exactly his lying on my table.

Miles, maybe, had left already. Ricky leaves on the 15th. Harrison leaves on the 20th. Jeffrey leaves the night of the 21st, driven by his parents to Williamsburg, Virginia. I think I’m living a dream, a beautiful, ephemeral dream and the moment he leaves, the moment reality starts seeping in between the cracks of my beautiful, beautiful mirage, everything is going to crash. Life, the fire, Rabbit and Jill, life is but an illusion and all of this curious activity is a break from the monotony, the viscous tar of my life, the untimely reality.

SATs, looming like a knife above my head, in October, life waits.

Still listening to the same song. I like that song. Honest.

Maybe it’s the snare drum. I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind. I left my body somewhere in the sands of time.

Beautiful.

Lately, save for Winnie’s party, which was infected by his presence anyway (I’m stuck using words like reek and infect, which carry damn negative connotations, but fit the situation, don’t take it harshly)

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

(Did you know that I look forward to you coming over?)

8.13

I’ve never came before thinking of a man. It’s a vile thought, dirty, but I couldn’t help myself as I edged closer to the zenith of my affection.

Alright, so what am I now? Content? I guess heartbreak is somewhere down this line, but right now, the moment, the molasses of life, as it ambles along, day to day, existence to existence, conversation to conversation, second to second is ample enough for my contentment.

I think I’m in love with. I know I’m in love with him. There’s a nagging sense of incomprehensibility. There’s more that I want than just a kiss, there’s more that I want to do than just a kiss, there’s more, there’s more, there’s a lot more, so much that I want to strangle him in the arms of my abstract ideals.

Yes, yes, I fucking love him. Now, you shut the fuck up. GODDAMNIT. You’re such an annoying bastard, even when we’re happy. Oh, you sick fuck. Yes, fine, go touch yourself. God…

And, don’t forget to shower…at like….four. lol

Death grew up a funny kid. He didn’t have any friends and spent most of his time playing by himself in the corner. He was nearly forgotten when the Immortals

One of these I’m going to run around screaming, “He loves me! He loves me!” in pure joy and still be embarrassed about it.

Egotistical

Death grew up a funny kid. For the most part, he was completely forgotten by the rest of the Immortals and had spent most of Creation sulking in the corner. They’ve always considered him, more or less, to be an accident, an afterthought, the child of a trifle conversation between mortals and immortals, back when they used to speak to each other.

“How are we any different from you?” the mortals had asked.

“Because we cannot die,” the immortals replied.

And thus, Death became his name, and Hell the land he walked.

The worst of part love is the expectation of something in return. The moment I fell for that trap was the moment I became a blind woman, grappling in the darkness for something to hold my hand and walk me through. Loosing control is never something I volunteer for.

Life would be a lot easier if I didn’t feel so useless, so condemned by my physical form, so beleaguered by my existence. Life would be a lot easier if I were dead.

My temperament is not one of action, my temperament in one of laziness, of tired laziness.

Guns N’ Roses, holy fucking shit. NIGHT TRAIN, I can’t do anything but just LOL!!

Azrael never really considered himself a servant

42nd and Broadway, he’s got his headphones, the fancy sound canceling kind, cranked up so high he doesn’t hear the taxi blaring at him. He cuts across the street, through sluggish, busy Manhattan traffic at midday, the sky is a luminescent shade of gray above him, as if it were about to rain.

Yeah, hush up about it. Please, just pretend it is not there.

The funniest thing: getting off on being shot during sex.

8.24

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[inhales deeply, exhales satisfied]

Ah, America. Land of the free, home of the brave.

8.27

She slips a finger between her wet folds. She whimpers softly at her own touch, shocked by her actions, by her own response. She runs her middle up and down lightly, almost gliding over her moist, tender lips. She spreads her legs further. She is propped up by one hand on her bed, head thrown back, in ecstasy from her soft touches. Her legs tremble. Her collar bones peek from under pale, white skin, moonlight dips in the shadows of her stomach, the sockets of her eyes, the valley of breasts, a traveler in the land of flesh. She teases herself and feels her tunnels contract. Her eyes closed, she whimpers again, drops her arm and lies back on soft satin sheets. The free hand immediately reaches for a nipple, thumb and index finger twisting the bundle of nerves, eliciting more moans from her mouth, lips glistening with moisture. She dreams of a man to love her. She spreads, when she is unable to resist the heat and tension building in her core, the wet lips of my womanhood and circles her erect clitoris. Her breathing turns to pants as middle finger works the small button of flesh, as her index and ring finger props open her lips. Her mind is blank with the hot fire of pleasure, she is beyond redemption, steeped in sin. Her clitoris takes her past the point of return, shoots her like a cannonball from the mouth of hell into cold, calm waters. Her moans were loud, groans guttural, every once in a while, when she hits a spot to sensitive, turns to a girlish squeal. Her eyes are squeezed shut, skin dripping with sweat, hair is caught between her head and the pillow, the friction she generates as she works only her clitoris. Suddenly, she comes, with a shriek of absolute pleasure, eyes bursting open, shooting up to a sitting position, she parts her legs further, slipping two of her fingers into her wet, dripping canal, two knuckles deep before she gives into the satisfaction of being filling. She pumps, starting over, she grinds against her over hand. She is now on all fours, all threes, one hand working herself to her second orgasm. Her fingers, she finds them inadequate in girth and length. Ripping own her nightstand drawer, she reaches, first, for her egg vibrator. The tiny pink colored ball slips in easily and she shudders, violently, as it begins to do its job. With a shaky hand she reaches for a dildo, purple and large. In her almost sedated state, she inserts the toy into herself after the egg. She shrieks again, high-pitched, like a banshee, her sheets were stained with her own juices. She works the dildo in and out of herself without stop, without pause, rapidly as possible. Her voice is hoarse, but she is unable to keep herself from moaning, the egg vibrates against her g-spot. A spare hand, almost absent-mindedly relative to the frenzy of activity between her legs, pulls at her nipples, another octave to her scream. She is certain that she will die, the pleasure so great and so intense, she cannot go any faster, the zenith of her own abilities. She pumps hard, fast, hard, fast, hard, fast, faster, faster, faster, faster…until her arm, her body, her mind, her very core is overcome with a feeling of numbness, blinding release, as if she’s found god. She screams, loud. She does hear her doorknob turn and does not see the masked man, armed with a knife, until it is too late. His rough callous hand presses the handle of the knife to her face, the cold metal rubs at her cheek. Her raises one index finger, but she screams regardless. Her shrill is muffled by an expert kiss, one, that after her episode, she finds herself unable to resist. He pins her wrists over her head. Shame overcomes her, disgust, but she longs so much for a man, so desperate, in the most vulgar of terms, for a cock, that she returns the intruder’s advance. He is surprised, the kiss becomes, almost, gentle. He lifts his mouth slowly. She does not scream. He is pleased. He drops the knife by her head, examines her face, a beautiful, innocent sort of face, undeserving of this violation, this desecration of her purity, but he is unable to control himself. He grinds his growing erection against her pelvis. She grinds back, a faint tear rolls down her cheeks, her own actions, is she but a simple whore. The rapist extends his tongue and licks the tear off her cheeks and claims his newfound prize with another kiss. The kiss trails down her neck, her collarbone, her breasts. His hands leave her wrists now that she is docile and subdued, like warm butter under his ministrations. He is in disbelief, how lucky he was to walk in on such a horny soul. His hands are rough, but she likes it, as it draws circles over her skin, briefly teasing her nipples, rousing them to attention, perky and upright, he flicks one and sucks the other. She grabs his head, tears off his mask in search of his hair. This takes him by surprise and his head jolts up, green eyes meet her confused-and lustful-brown. He is momentarily angered, then, as she raises her chests to brush at this chin, he continues his work. They have reached an understanding. She subdues the thought that he is strangely handsome. What would rouse such a handsome face to such depravity? She forgoes that train of thought and zooms in on the pleasure of his tongue and fingers. His hand trails down her body, tickling her, she moans, squeals, squirms much to his delight. This is less rape and more love making. He looks up at her, straddles her waist, his boots tracking dirt on her satin sheets. She does not mind. He grins as he hoists her legs over his shoulders and gently eases himself to a low, prone position on the bed. She watches as he extends his tongue, the tongue that had so passionately opened, despite the contradicting situation, her sexual floodgates, to take in this stranger, to allow him to touch her, to reveal to him her innermost desires, the tongue that now enters her womanhood. Her entire body arches, as if touched by fire, as if a jolt of electricity is sent through her body. Hot tears stream down her face, there is a sickness, coupled with love and hatred and lust and desire and a need to implode brewing in her stomach. She presses his head down further. The man sucks, with deceptive skill, at her clitoris. She bucks wildly as he inserts his larger, more adept fingers into her, once again, wet tunnel. One, then two, then, slowly, as if he does not wish to hurt her, he plunges in a third. A moan, a deep moan emanating from chest gives him permission to continue. He plays wilding with her clit and thrusts hard and fasts his three fingers. Her mind races, better than a toy, better than plastic, she is bucking, bucking, bucking as his hand, against his face, juices, fluids, everywhere. In a slow, deliberate motion, he stops. She looks up, confused, horny, needy, ready to explode, but before she is addressed, she feels his tongue, that beautiful tongue, crawling up her tunnel. She explodes, without restraint, and gushes into his mouth. He listens to the sound of himself eating her. His member strains against his pants and is pained by neglect. He drops his pants, his boxers, all in one fluid motion. She is momentarily captivated by his large member before all of it disappears in her. Her eyes widen, pupil constrict, mind blank and for the first time that night, is completely numb. Gone, over the edge, she is an animal, he is an animal, they mate. She reaches for his shoulders and humps his stiff piece rhythmically to his movements. He clutches her by her ass, slapping them at interval, the sound of skin on skin, flesh, urges them on. He spreads her cheeks and devilishly inserts the egg vibrator, though to some resistance, into her second hole. He mutes her ecstatic moan with a kiss. Their love making, what began as masturbation turned rape, is frenzied. The noises are almost incomprehensible, grunts, moans, pants, mouth open, eyes closed, she is taken, intoxicated. He is nearing the edge of his abilities, he finds, in his heart, a strange place for this woman. He fucks her, without regret. He finds that she is shaking, clinging to him, despite herself, she brings her lips to his ears in an almost painful motion and whispers, gives him permission. With this, he fucks harder, thrusting hard, she is almost bouncing on his pulsating member, tunnel squeezing the flesh as she nears another climax. He feels the egg, sometimes, and moves faster. From their upright position, he slams her down on the bed, against her sheets, pushes her legs over her head, caging her, pinning her down and plows into her. Without notice, except for a loud, groan, he comes in her. She feels fulfilled, coming shortly after, her tunnels clenching his cock. She is filled by his semen. He stays in her and does not move, collapses on top of her, pulls out the egg and kisses her. He no longer remembers why he broke into the house, and she no longer remembers that he had intended to rape her. They fall asleep, together.

I keep on having these dreams, dreams about people who love me, or almost.

I mean, listening to really happy, almost unheard of pop makes me happy sometimes. Fuck it, who cares if I’m listening to Good Charlotte or something, I like it right now, I’m good right now.

Okay, goals in life:

Fly to outer space and therefore, loose weight, make a shitload of money, maybe win the lottery

Stuff

I don’t do anything important at night. Read some fanfics, drink some water, feel thirstier afterwards, think about Ricky, move along. I’ve stopped thinking about him lately, it’s not as bad as it used to be. I guess I’m over that hormonal bump of lustful wishes and rampant desires, and undying regret and sorrow. I’m over it, for the time being.

I think its James McAvoy. James McAvoy cured me of Ricky Meyer. Both are good names. Heh.

I’m crazy, because I when I think back to all of it now, I sort of miss him, or just having a body next to me. He needs to wash those sheets. He does, or, I’m not going to forgive myself. And I have to take my stuff and burn a disk for Miles before he leaves.

James McAvoy: My Anti-Drug

James McAvoy is really hot. James McaAvoy needs his own category. James, James, James….ah, it’s such a wonderful name…

James McAvoy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, at least I’m normal, now, or not.

Life was never a book I wanted to read. None of the chapters are good, some of them are boring. The characters are detestable, drab, boring, cliché, just like any other book and there is no end in sight. The author relishes in mundane detail and cursory observations. Too much drama, there’s no connection with the reader despite the obvious effort. I could care less about what happens next, every page, every word, every letter is exactly the same. Sometimes I wish I’d just flip to a blank page and it would be the end, or write, starting on that blank, the singular question that remains unanswered despite my struggle, Why am I reading?

Teenage angst, I tell you, hurts like a mother. Not only is most of it completely irrational, but it’s painfully irrational.

Summer of ’69 makes sort of sad.

If you listen to rock music, it makes you feel like you’re the shit, like you own the whole fucking world. Long enough that is…

Bicycle Boy

He had always imagined that he would die in the rain, die to a screeching guitar solo (he’s thinking Bon Jovi, Shot Through the Heart), lying in the arms of his lover with a bullet in his heart, gun in his hand, his last words ready to roll off his lips, but they would never materialize. The streetlight above them would flicker as he draws his last gasp, hand reaching for the tear streaked face of his lover one last time before falling limp. And then, as he had always imagined it, she would cry, weep uncontrollably as the guitar solo thumps out his eulogy, her screams of anguish drowned out by the crescendo of rain, as the camera lifts up from the scene and pans across the cityscape at night.

So, where the hell does that leave him now?

He’s staring down the barrel of a gun, trying to focus on the silver barrel of the weapon makes him cross-eyed. He cannot see who is holding the gun, but feels every bit of their presence, an overwhelming sense of death, of decay and of rotting flesh.

He closes his eyes, where have you been lately? I’ve been right here all along. He feels the street slip from underneath him, feels gravity pulling him and hears the shot being fired.

He wakes, abruptly, from his dream to a malignant knock at his door. A hasty glance at his nightstand clock, a blaring 0:11 it reads, he pulls on a pair of pants and navigates, in the dark, to the source of the noise. The harsh rapping continues until he twists the lock and wrenches the door open.

“Delivery for James Finley,” he raises an eyebrow at the delivery man, dressed in a familiar yellow and red uniform. The man smiles a very plastic, very fake, his mind adds, smile and hands him the clipboard.

James feels uncomfortable in his presence, but takes the clipboard and plastic ballpoint anyway, “Do you guys,” he gesticulates with the blue pen, “usually deliver this late?” The question stifles a yawn as he scribbles, in a lucid and flowing handwriting, his signature on the line and dots his ‘i’ with a responding tap on the board.

He is handed a small cardboard box. “We deliver twenty-four seven, sir, every single day of the year. Thank you and have a pleasant day, sir,” another plastic smile in his direction, with a tip of the red and yellow cap.

“Thank–”, when he looks back up, after examining briefly the package, the delivery man is gone. He tells his pasty, dimly light, graffiti scrawled hallway, “—you.” And slams the door shit.

He retreats into his dark cavern, the safety of his cocoon like inhabitance, weighing the package in his hands, shaking it as he flicks on his desk lamp and sits down.

In wide strokes, he clears his table of clutter, brushing loose change, crumpled napkins, yesterday’s Chinese take-out to one side and pens, unopened letters, house keys and a can of empty Pepsi to the other. He places the carton before him gently. He yawns, wondering what to do with the box.

The knife cuts through the tape easily. He slices open the package with the tipped blade of an exact-o knife he finds in a drawer somewhere. He, almost unconsciously, decides to open it. Bending back the cardboard tab, he shakes the contents of the relatively empty package out onto the table. A slick, defiantly thin, black cellphone slips out in front of him and clacks onto his much, much to his surprise.

Empty Hallways

James Finley moved out of his second floor studio

James, as she remembers him, had the bluest eyes of anyone she’s ever seen. Such a vivid shade of blue they were that first summer evening, such a vivid shade of blue they would remain for the next dozen summer evenings that James Finley lived across the way. The great gaping asphalt abyss of Maple Lane separating her, in her knee-length summer dresses, and him, in his

His eyes were such a remarkable shade of blue, as she remembered them, the bluest eyes of anyone she had ever seen. A blue so vivid, as if hot, liquid flames licked the veneer of his irises and threw shadows on the inner caverns of his gaze. A blue so vivid that she found it unbearable to looks away, even for a moment, for she fancied herself drowning in the ocean of his furtive glances, an ocean of soft, calm blue, the blue spikes and spears lapping at her welcoming shore.

Life hurts right now, in a really bad way, in a I can’t get my AP grades, I can’t see Ricky Meyer, I can’t get into an Ivy League college way. Maybe not life, then, maybe it’s reality that hurts, that bites, that stings, that realization next morning that I’m not going to make it through all of this alright and that it’s going nibble and nip and bite and pry at me for the next couple of decades.

I hate how everyone is caught up in their own bullshit, so they can’t pay attention to mine. I hate how small I feel at the center of everything. I hate how useless I am in the end of everything. I hate how I’m just so ordinary and pathetic in the very worst ways. I hate my own existence because I can’t fix it.

I don’t need to hear about it anymore, I know. I have a sinking feeling of dread, doom, the occasional sense of unrest, unease, sickness, a sickness that rests in my stomach, in my chest, that sinks like dirt, to the bottom of my arteries, to the pit of my stomach and sits and sits and sits, unmoving, immutable pain, that every once in a while, is stirred by a pesky disturbance, an annoyance, a trespasser in my feigned veneer of peace.

I feel like crying and crying and crying so that one day, I don’t have to cry anymore.

I’m shaking, the fan makes me cold. I have the most unnerving predications of the future and a blinding, overwhelming white heat, like a poker, sticking through my gut, piercing my heart, all of this as I wait, as the minutes tick by and the world lapses.

Okay, let’s be honest. We didn’t do so good, did we? No, no, we did not. So, what’s the best that we’re expecting? Certainly not fives, certainly not. Can we settle for a three? Sure, maybe. Alright. So, it’s a three and any lower I will die.

Demeanor

I used to write the first letters of the first words of the first sentences of individual paragraphs of my speech before rounds, on napkins. It was mind-numbingly repetitive, never had a memory lapse. I only did it once, at States and the judge looked me funny because I scribbling through other people’s speeches.

James Finley was turning twenty-six and he was alone. Sometimes he resented the way his footsteps echoed in his single room apartment, how the floor creaked from his weight, but for now, he remained seated, perched before his television with a plastic fork in one hand and a microwave dinner in the other.

Pathetic is a word that ran numerous times across his mind, but he preferred not to think about it. Friends was on and his dinner, as he looked down at the lump of meat before him, decorated by green peas and orange carrots and a watery, brown gravy, was waiting. He preferred not to think about it. The blunt tip of the fork dug into a pea and broke the green, dimpled skin. Joey was saying something to Monica.

Sometimes, he was just glad he had a couch, because he’s spent so many nights on the raggedy piece of furniture, the same one that he picked up senior year, he wouldn’t know what to do without it. He was half asleep by ten, microwave dinner conquered and tossed down the garbage compactor down the hall, the credits were rolling for Friends and he was barely able to read the fine, white text through the slits of his eyelids. He gave a slight yawn as the commercials cut in, stretched, rolled over on his couch and buried himself in a corner of the couch, digging his nose into the flower patterned fabric that smiled, as best he could describe it, like home. The floor beneath him shuddered, passing train, he slept. He left the TV on, “call today for your free trial package.”

The television colors danced along his back, across the pattern of his checkered button down, the individual strands of his uncombed hair, the curve of his neck, the shifting creases and folds of his jeans as he fidgeted, the rubber plateaus of his sneakers, dangling over the other end of the couch.

Finley dreamt lightly. He was chase by a murky obscurity that eventually wrapped its black, slimy ribbons around his waist, binding his arms to his sides. The realization that it was indeed a dream ruined the experience for him and he flitted through the remainder of his nightmare as a wraith, neither scared nor stimulated by the best that his imagination could muster.

James Finley was turning twenty-six and he was alone.

“There is a rumor of the most unsettling nature circling the Mist these days,” The man begins. Intertwining his long, pale fingers accentuated by three, knobby joints, he leans in, lowering he head closer to the candle flame, and whispers slowly, with reluctance, “She’s back.” A sudden gust of wind invades the tavern, banging open doors and windows, catching the patrons off guard. The candle flame bends, as if being pulled to its death by invisible fingers, as if being teased by its own demise, before snapping back to place.

The creature sitting across the table jerks violently at the words, in the sudden chill it shudders, bony shoulder shaking under leathery, pasty, amphibian skin. The candle flame dances, throwing grotesque shadows on the tavern wall behind it. The creature’s eyes—huge, bulbous, luminescent orbs, pale, gray, fear-stricken—dart back and forth, from one corner of the noisy tavern to the other before settling back on the source of this information. Its pupils elongate vertically, like a cat’s, into a thin streak of black dividing liquid pools of mercury, it speaks, stuttering, “Who, who, how, how do you know for sure that,” it catches its breath, and trudges on slowly, “sh-she’s back?”

The man notices a bead of cold sweat dripping down the creature’s voluminous forehead. He reaches for his glass of wine and notices that his own hand is shaking, beneath his tailored shirt and suit an overwhelming fear bubbles. Clenching the goblet with difficulty, he downs the rest of his drink with muted satisfaction and slams the vessel down against the antique wooden table. He looks to his friend, the fish-like creature before him, “The River never lies.”

Somewhere between a shriek and a gasp, the creature settles further into its unwelcoming wooden chair, face devoid of color. Its scaly, webbed fingers reach out for its goblet, taking a sip of its drink, barely able to swallow. “Has she made preparations?”

His companion shakes his head solemnly, stalks of hay colored hair swing back and forth, the human sighs, “She’s taking her time.” A barmaid, juggling a large, brass pitcher of wine, refills his goblet generously, her beige dress sweeping the floor. He eyes the way the dress adorns her hips from above the lip of his goblet as she walks away. The sound of the fish’s voice draws the man back to the table.

“This is the end, isn’t it?” The creature laments, a small wail escapes his plump, blubbery lips as he bows his head in contemplation.

“Don’t be so pessimistic.” The man tries to grin, but the edges of his mouth weigh heavy and the hastily raised veil of levity drops. He sighs, “Come of it, Lobe. It’s just one immortal who woke up from a four millennia nap.”

Lobe looks up alarmed and hisses vehemently, “Quite, fool! Not so loud, not so loud!” Looking around suspiciously, a new paranoia creeping up on the creature, Lobe whispers, “Unhappy immortals are of the worst sort. I’m telling you, anybody with one of these bloody Imperial Seals,” he shakes the golden amulet in the hilt of his sword, “anybody in the Imperial Army, anybody that has anything to do with the current ruling crown is going to get it when the next decade rolls around, and if she’s in a rush, tomorrow.”

“You think there’s going to be a war?” Liopold asks, dubiously.

After thoughtful consideration, Lobe gulps and pinches his pale face into a grimace. Eyes squeezing shut, lips pursing, he exhales deeply, gills flapping like the exhaustion pipe of a car, “Yes. And we’re all screwed.”

—

Shadows, as James Finley’s grandfather used to tell him, dwell in the Mist. The abode of the Immortals, shadows are mankind’s sins and follies, their irreverent protectors and guardians, in the murky fog of eternity they reside. Past the river brimming with ice, across the bridge built of memories, lies the Mist, the city of the dead, of miscreants, vagabonds and creatures forgotten by the day.

His grandfather’s voice never left him. On restless nights, when the dull ache of loneliness grinds away at the edges of his mind, he finds solace in the warmth of childhood memories. The way his grandfather’s apartment used to smell, of newspaper, coffee and decades of his grandmother’s handiwork and housekeeping, a woman he never knew. The way the apartment silently echoed each passing sound from the city three floors below, a passing ambulance, a crying child, noisy teenagers, and on quiet Sundays and the sound of leaves rustling.

James Finley never heard the end of that story, falling asleep way too early in his grandfather’s arms, head buried in his sweater. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure how he felt about all of it, sad, remorseful, regretful, words that never quite filled the gap where his grandfather should’ve been.

James Finley is turning twenty-six and he is every bit alone.