Doug: Queen of Blades

I linger in the darkness.

The sun is dying, casting long shadows in the city I have created. The horizon is stained with the color of blood and rust, fading to fiery orange and then the midnight black of space; speckled with the tiny lights of stars. A memory comes back to me, of looking up at the night sky with my father. He was pointing out constellations.

I don’t know why this memory comes to me. I am on a different world; the stars have changed… and so have I.

My wings rustle as the light finally dies. Inside my head I can hear the buzzing drone of my children, but I’ve pushed them into the corners of my mind. They can mind themselves for the time being, and I would like a quiet moment.

My feet step down into the soft purple creep that fills the landscape around me. It is a spongy substance, much like moss, but far more prevalent on this world.

My doing.

In my old life, I would be repulsed. Now I am comforted by the familiar feeling on my bare feet.

Momentarily.

Memories of my old life come flashing back. Metal, starships, guns, armor, men. I am suddenly uncomfortable with the creep below me. I look down at my hands and fight the urge to scream. They are longer, and covered with scales. My skin is a deep shade of green. I know, even though I cannot see, that my long red hair has been replaced with terrible snake like spines. The bat like wings on my back repulse me. I can see the burning red reflection of my eyes in glossy sheen formed by the sweat of the building next to me. I fall to my knees and vomit. The creep absorbs it silently.

Suddenly, the moment is over.

I rise from my knees to my feet.

Wipe the bile from my lips.

Run my tongue over the fangs in my mouth, reassuring myself that I am still the monster.

Well, at least on the physical side. I’ve been a monster for almost as long as I can remember.

Memories like that have been happening more and more.

My wings flash and flap and I rise. The voices I had pushed to the corners of my mind start rising inside and I pay them heed again. Whispering, cooing, possessing them again. They were such good little children while mother was away inside her mind.

The emotion I sense the most as I rise between the buildings of my city is anticipation. For five years we have waited in the darkness. Five years before this day my children and I cut a swathe of fear and death and destruction across the galaxy the like of which had never been seen before. My children and I planted the seeds of fear and terror and mind numbing horror in this galaxy.

Five years ago we were poised to end resistance in this sector of the galaxy. My children and I trounced Arcturus Mengsk, my old master, in a battle of fleets. Mengsk, in his own way, really contributed in this transformation of mine. I’d say he’s to blame for my delinquency during the last five years.

Fresh off of that battle we slaughtered the ill prepared Protoss forces as they attempted to take advantage of our disposition with Mengsk. My old lover, Jim Raynor, was with them. Poor Jim, I don’t think he’ll ever get over the fact that he couldn’t save me.

Finally the Terran Dominion played their cards, and was sent packing as well. I had my Guardians hunt the last of them down in deep space. You may not be able to scream in a vacuum, but you can certainly die.

Then:

I vanished, taking my children with me.

I’m quite sure they have no idea why.

My enemies have not yet fully recovered. I, on the other hand, never needed the time. My children have been aching to continue the chase for almost five whole years. They are so ready to play, it’s hard to control them sometimes.

As I take flight over my city of bone and flesh, what look like tooth filled maws with bat wings join me. Floating crab shapes as well as massive, dirigible-with-tentacles shaped beasts fill the sky.

My enemies have names for these beasts.

Mutalisks, Guardians, Overlords.

Beneath me I see roiling waves of monsters beginning to awaken from their hibernation holes. These are my children, creatures with tusks and teeth and spines. They slither and they crawl and they burrow. They act with one will, my own. Their voices sing in my head in a glorious symphony, and I sing back to them, telling them my desires, my hopes, my dreams.

They listen, and then they act to fulfill.

My name is Sarah Kerrigan, Queen of Blades. It is time for my children and I to return from the darkness of deep space.

And step into the light.

It is good to be the Queen.

Jasmine: Jasmine

“Where am I?”

Am I

“Is there an echo in here?”

In here

“Echo where are you?”

Are you

“Echo come on, we have to be somewhere.”

Be somewhere

“Get your ass down out here Echo.”

Here Echo

“I freaking portal here to find you, to take you to YOUR party and what do I get for my trouble?”

My trouble

“Fuck it.”

Fuck it

“I’m leaving Echo. You’ll have to find your own ride back.”

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m coming

“That’s right you’re coming, and don’t think I won’t tell mom what you pulled here.”

Pulled here

Jasmine: Pay Attention

Things learned if you stop paying attention for a couple of days
- it’s hard to get to the bathroom at night without falling
- your kitchen starts to smell
- you start to smell
- homework piles up
- bills pile up
- kitten dies (just kidding. I would never not feed loki)
- plants die (that does happen, or it starts to then I remember)
- surfthechannel rules your life like the almighty god it is
- you stop talking to people
- you forget how to talk to people
- you stare at people curiously as they pass you by
- people look back worried cause the strange dirty girl is staring at them. They wonder if she’s homeless
- you discus the strange people with your cat
- he gives good advice on how to deal with them, suggests machete
- you take machete to school in specially prepared backpack sheath
- decide to wait till after organic chemistry test
- instead of killing the class you go home to talk to your cat about the organic chemistry test
- he tells you that you did amazing and you feel good about yourself
- someone finally does knock on your door out of worry
- you kill them with the machete and cook them into the eternal pasta
- you and your cat feast well for the next week
- eventually you need vegetables
- break into neighbors house and steal carrots
- they question you about the carrots
- you kill them with the machete and cook them into the eternal pasta
- you your cat and your neighbor’s cat feast well for the next week

Sarah: The Internets

So, I usually post stuff on my Sarah Buterblog, my internets project thingie, but it has come to my attention that perhaps I should post here, because I haven't in awhile, and because, while each of our lives are spiraling off in different directions, perhaps we all share at least a past which we should honor.

That being said, I recently read a conversation between two people that was more than slightly hilarious. I read it because I was alerted to the fact that I was mentioned in it. I want to comment that neither of the two people talking really know me anymore. They may have once, but they don't now. Thus, neither can actually speak for me, and both are wrong. In a humorous way however, they have pitted themselves against eachother. To have my say, I wouldn't slap you now, as for the past, its past, and I don't really care.

So, as for me now, here's poem, rest assured its not about anyone that reads this blog (or knows about it). It can also be found on the Buterblog:

Friday

I wish I held you in my hand
Sparkly, Glittery, on the mend,
But instead you hold me in your grip
At the will of your quivering lip.

I've been thinking in this time I set aside
Do I really want to sacrifice my pride
Sometimes you're crazy and you're right
Why is this a single-souled formidable fight?

I wish that I didn't have to doubt,
But am I taking the valorous route?
You never keep me in the loop
Are we together for the physical whoop?

I wish that I could talk to you,
But somehow I'm just too blue.
I haven't breathed in awhile,
I think some time will be a trial,
Where under your busy facade,
I can take a trip to my own aid,
And when I'm ready to talk about a "we" -
Then, then we'll see.

Sincerely,
Sarah

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Thank you for being my friends. And for still being my friends.

Jasmine: Club Faire

Die young and leave a good looking corpse.

It was just the kind of sign to catch your attention. To whip your head around and wonder what could that possibly mean? It was the kind of saying that made you stop at its booth instead of the one next to it. That one was handing out cookies, but they were sorority cookies, they came baked in shame. This booth had nothing but those words emblazoned in glittery letters on a black poster board and a row of clipboards. I and twenty other hands reached for one of these. There was something about those words that made us want to know more.

The piece of paper clipped to the board looked like an application. Clubs usually only had you write your name and e-mail and you were in. Maybe this club was more like the sorority than I had thought, maybe it was just elite. I pushed all thoughts of sorority out of my mind. They were upsetting enough without thinking about them. I thought about putting that clipboard down immediately, a club, a distraction, even an elite distraction wasn’t worth the hassle. But I was curious. I thought about asking the person behind the desk what this was about, but he was quiet, nodding and smiling serenely, accepting the filled out forms and placing a clean one on the table, never saying a word. Nobody asked him questions. What was this about, or who did they even represent? I had the distinct feeling that he would just smile at me instead of answer. The only way I was going to get answers was to fill out this form.

There was a pen tied to the clip board with a little piece of string. Kind of them. The application was like most job applications it asked for our name, previous employment, place of residence, blood type? That was odd, but everything about this was odd. I finished and handed my form to the smiling man, and walked away feeling vaguely unsettled about whether that had been the right thing to do. But even as I stepped away from the table another took my place and picked up a clean clip board.

I heard nothing for two weeks. I had forgotten all about dying young and good looking corpses. But when I got back from my evening class there was a thick envelope sitting on my desk. I turned it over in my hands, but the envelope was blank. I ripped it open to find a more extensive application and directions about where to deliver it. Again I thought this is too much work, nothing could be worth this. But my homework was done and it was a Wednesday night. Nothing in particular interesting to do. So I sat down and started to fill in the blanks. This time it asked for a complete medical history. Whatever this club was, it concentrated a lot on my health. Maybe it was a premed club. But it also had a personality quiz section. Questions like if you had to save either yourself or your mother would you eat the carrot on the left? I stuffed it all in an envelope that they had nicely provided. It was already addressed and stamped.

Another two weeks passed. I had mostly forgotten about the strange thick envelope and the long quiz. Every once in a while I wondered what had happened with it, who it had gone to, and why they had needed it in the first place. But I had a full course load, and very little time to worry about anything. I came home from my last class and once again there was an envelope waiting for me. Excited I rushed over and ripped it open. Inside there was a single sheet of paper.

414 Pine ST SE #3
9:00 Tonight

I pulled out my cell phone. It was seven thirty. There was plenty of time. I didn’t know exactly where that was, but google maps showed it to be barely a fifteen minute walk from campus. I tried to do some of the math homework that was due in a couple of days, but I couldn’t seem to sit still. I showered, and changed clothes. Then I changed them again. What were they looking for? Did everyone make it this far, or was I special? What if I wore the wrong shirt and I didn’t get in? And for the hundred thousandth time I wondered what I was trying to get into.

It was eight thirty when I started walking, following the directions I’d memorized. I was excited and made it there in ten minutes. Was early good or bad? Standing in the dark I stared at a large fat cat that had situated itself on top of a car. The cat stared back at me. My car, the stare said, daring me to object. But I had no beef with cats. 414 Pine was an apartment complex, a little dilapidated looking, but very much like the typical college student housing I would be looking for in the next couple of years. I wondered if I should go knock, but decided against it. The note said nine. I would knock at nine. It wasn’t cold at night yet, the cat could keep me company in the dark.

Apartment three was on the second story, it had its own staircase leading up to it. I had raised my hand to knock when I heard from within “Come inside it’s unlocked.”

I had to lean into it, it had rained last week and the door had swollen and now stuck when I tried to open it. I was shocked by what I saw. I don’t know what I had expected. But with the secrecy, the peculiar envelopes, I expected something more, exotic. Instead it opened on a typical college student apartment. The bedroom living room and study were all one room. I could see a kitchen and another door probably leading to the bathroom. There were five people standing and sitting about the room. They were five ordinary kids, but not. There were two boys, one short one tall, one dark, one light, one with tightly curled black hair, the other with military zeroed sides. There were three girls. Two blonde, one brunette, all different heights. They were dressed exactly like college students. Jeans, shorts, t-shirt. But there was something different about them. I stared at them going from hair to clothes to build to their eyes. Their eyes. They all had the same eyes. Not the same color. One girl had blue eyes, one boy had dark brown. But there was some essential quality to them that caught you up, you did want to look away, because you were safe in those eyes. You could live there forever.

“Welcome, thank you for accepting our invitation. Not many make it as far as you have.” It was the small blonde one who spoke. Her eyes changed in front of me, from an even grey to a brilliant emerald green. She blinked and I broke from my revere of staring.

“Thank you. But what exactly am I here for?”

“Why you’re here to finish the interview process?” the girl snorted.

“Will it be long?” I said thinking about the large packet of strange questions from before.

The girl smiled. “No, just one question really. Do you want to die young, and leave a good looking corpse?”

Now I was smiling. This I knew the answer to. “Yes.”










“Do you think he’ll make it?” The girl Sarah asked.

“No one really knows till it happens. He’s A positive. That will work in his favor.” Said the boy Abe.

The five friends worked to get the body quickly into its bag, and into the car. They drove it out to the mesa and buried it next to a juniper bush. In three nights they would return and see if the potential would rise to be one of them. Or stay a corpse.

Meghan: Kitty

“Mmmm…that was good.”
“God, were did you learn to cook?”
“Haha, you haven’t even had dessert yet.”
I clasped my hands under my chin and looked at him with shining eyes, only to be deterred by Sarah’s mock-glare.
“Mine.” She said, linking an arm around his waist.
“But you could make so much money renting him out…”
“No.”
“Just for—“
We continued to bicker over pricing arrangements as we gathered the dinner dishes and stacked them in the kitchen. Her husband, for his part, was used to our strange ways, and just continued with his peaceful collection of glasses while his wife auctioned him off. It had been strange when I had first met him, to be in the same room and not stare. But now the black feline ears that slicked up from his head were as expected an attribute as Jasmine’s hair, or Sarah’s eyes. If the fact that her man could turn into a pussycat didn’t bother Sarah, then it didn’t bother me; and there were probably stranger things out there.
He called into the other room as he brought a pie and a carton of ice cream into the dining room.
“Ah, it’s cold,” Sarah said as she took the pie from him, “Meghan, could you?”
“Sure.” I replied as I leaned over to rest my fingers on the dish. Heat grew beneath my fingertips and within seconds the pie was steaming.
“Thanks.” Sarah said as she began to cut sections out of it.
I felt a touch on my arm and nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned and saw Sarah’s daughter standing next to me. She was as silent as her father, and the ears she had inherited from him dipped in apology.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Can you make me something?” her sweet, childlike voice made me want to hug her and tell her over and over how cute she was.
“Sure.”
“Don’t burn anything,” Jasmine said warningly, “remember last time?”
I winced at the memory of ‘last time’ and moved my chair even further back from the table. Grinning into the chocolate eyes of the expectant girl in front of me, I held out my palms and concentrated on the flames that kindled there. The fire licked upon my skin and I cupped my hands together in a bowl. The two palmfulls intertwined to form a jagged stem, then petals unfurled from the top, one by one, until a full bloom was formed.
“Pretty!” The girl breathed. I laughed and clenched my palms together, sucking the heat back through me to where it belonged.

Sleepy and full of pie, Jasmine and I curled up on the couch, listening to Sarah and her husband wash the dishes and watching their daughter act out Macbeth with her stuffed animals. Jasmine had read it to her on one of the times we had been watching her, and she had taken to it quite fiercely.
“She’s going to die.”
Jasmine said it quietly, so I would be the only one to hear it. I started violently and turned to look at her, but whatever I had been about to say stopped when I saw her face. Her expression was peaceful as she regarded the child in front of us, but her eyes were swirling with color. Mostly blues, greens, with hints of purple and gold, which told me all I needed to know; she was having a vision.
“Tell me what you see.”
She touched a hand to my cheek and suddenly I was there, looking with her through the many pools of time and thought that she could swim through when the visions came.
“When the girl reaches the age of five, she will die.” The Jasmine back on the couch told me. I watched as the child that I had grown to love bled and suffered in the waters of the vision.
“She will have to make a choice. And her choice will be death to save her mother.”
The vision switched to Sarah, screaming, crying, grieving, but she was swirled with a Sarah who dying of the same things that were apparently going to kill her child.
I was abruptly sucked out of the visions when Jasmine took her hand away, and wasn’t surprised to find tears on my cheeks.
“Why? No… Isn’t there something—“
“It’s all right.” The Jasmine-who-wasn’t smiled angelically at me, “The girl will live. Her father’s blood will save her. In the ways of his tribe he has nine lives to spare, and thus, so does she.”
“Oh.”
“But I leave you with this warning; breathe not a word of this to the family, for if they find out the choice will not be genuine, and someone may be truly lost.”
With a sharp exhalation of breathe, Jasmine’s eyes rolled back into her eyelids and she slumped down. I smoothed back her hair to find her asleep, as she usually was after seeing. I pulled her over so she could sleep horizontally with her head in my lap, grumbling at her unconscious form for worrying me unnecessarily.


-Meghan

Doug: The Architect

The ashes fell like snow.

Daniel stood on the edge of the crater where the heart of the city had once stood. Shattered shells of buildings teetered on the edge of the crater, ready to fall a thousand feet to the bottom. Every few seconds a piece of debris would fall, twirling crazily, catching the last few rays of the failing light as it arced into the eternity below.

It was not cold, yet a shiver ran down his spine. He had wrought this, his order had launched the weapon, and the weight of responsibility sat squarely on his shoulder.

Never before had he seen destruction on such a scale. Here, up close to the blast site, all the biological had been utterly obliterated, so he was spared the sight of the waves of bodies that could be found further out, but the gaping hole in the city and earth seemed to be an almost worse wound.

His head turned slightly at the scrabbling sound of one of his junior lieutenants approaching.

“General Mattis sends his regards sir, and requests you take a look at these reports.” The Lieutenant looked young, but after three days of clean up evaluation his eyes were timeless orbs.

Daniel took the papers and glanced over them. “They’re surrendering.” He glanced over at the crater. “Took them long enough.”

“I guess the Kaigani have difficulty accepting the concept of peace through superior firepower, sir.”

“I guess they do. You know, the eggheads told me there was a one in five chance that this particular device might set the atmosphere on fire.”

The Lieutenant showed little emotion at this, the possibility that Daniels order would have killed him and everyone else on the planet.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

“Sir, If I may speak candidly?” What Daniel had taken for nonemotion was really time to consider a response.

“By all means.”

“I work in operations planning. I saw the numbers. We would have lost more than 4 million men taking this city alone. I’m not talking countries or provinces, I’m talking cities. The Kaigani lost eight million here, and another six at Golan. I don’t know how many we’d have lost taking the entire nation. I know for a fact that using conventional tactics we would have had to kill every single Kaigani. Our best estimates put that at well over 50 million. Sir, we’d have still been fighting for another seven years. We have been fighting for ten. I grew up in this war. And sir, I’m so damn tired of fighting it.”

His eyes shone with the tears of a man freed from a great burden.

“Whatever history calls you for this, I know that to me, to my wife, to my children, to my mother and father, you will always be a hero for ending this. It wasn’t clean, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t humane or even honorable, but it was the knockout punch. My father once told me, ‘It’s not the guy who fights fair that survives; it’s the guy who wins.’ We won sir, and it’s not like we had any other option.”

Daniel was silent for a long time, staring into the crater that was the end of this chapter of humanity. Finally, he spoke. “Thank you, son. Give General Mattis my regards; I’m going to be here a little while. Tell him to accept their surrender, and to prepare a more formal ceremony. I think their capital building should suit the bill nicely.”

“Yes sir.” The Lieutenant was all business now; he clambered away through the surrounding debris.

The flecks of ash were beginning to cover up the damage, soften the sharp edges, blur the harsh lines of destruction.

“I do believe we’ll have to put a new city here.” Daniel murmured. “Fill in this crater. Make it a lake. Put a shrine in the middle… After the hurt comes the healing.”

He knelt down, and the destroyer of the city, who was an architect by schooling, used a piece of concrete slab and a burned chunk of wood to sketch the first outlines of Irenasgrad.

Peace city.

"Peace can mean the sight of children at play in a park. Or it can mean the absolute, perfect silence that follows a gunshot."
-Doug

adults?: Meghan

Yes I’m writing about us, using us as characters. I normally hate doing that, but I had this idea and couldn’t pass it up. I warn you, the selves I create will probably not act like you. It is for my entertainment…so it will act sort of like you.



“How long has it been?”
“Forever.”
“Where have you been, what have you been doing?”
“Well you know…”
The happy chatter of friends meeting again swelled in the restaurant. It had been years since all of them had been together like this, years of experience, love, and loss that had changed all of them.
I balanced a tray of sweets and tea in one hand and silverware in the other as I made my way over to them. A hand reached to lift my burden and I smiled at Abe, the smile turning into a frown as I watched him take a bite of my cake.
“Hey!”
“It’s my payment.”
I shrugged, at least he hadn’t eaten the whole thing. I took a huge bite out of the remainder and closed my eyes in joy at the sugar rush. After running around as a hospital slave all day it was heaven.
“Wow, I didn’t know sugar could pleasure people that much.”
I rolled my eyes at the grinning Doug, still in his fatigues and fresh from overseas. We all bore imprints of our jobs and our lives in our appearances. Doug didn’t need the outfit for his look to scream military. The haircut, the demeaner, even the way he stood said it all. I wondered if the way I forked my food was telling my friends things about me that I didn’t know, if I had soaked up some of what I was working so hard at. I hoped so, it just seemed like every day I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
“Serious thoughts?” Jasmine asked as her fork snaked stealthily towards my plate. She was in her black scrubs and tiny metal skulls dangled from her earlobes. She loved them because they pissed her boss off to no end, who was forever giving the staff ‘sensitivity training’ and padded around words like ‘corpse’, ‘dead’, and ‘rotting maggoty meat sacks’. It had something to do with being sued and almost fired, which made sense, but the man was making life miserable for those around him.
I growled and blocked her intruding fork, then pondered the question during the utensil battle that ensued.
“It’s like we’ve all become our jobs.” I said frowning, “We haven’t seen each other in forever and all we can say is, ‘Yeah and then I accidentally severed the artery on the wall of the…’ It seems kind of…sad.”
“And then we’ll have babies, and all we’ll talk about is the babies. And then we’ll be old, and all we’ll talk about is the past. And then we’ll die, and—“
“You are so depressing.”
“I love you too.”
I grinned and turned back to the group and an empty plate. I glared at the plate, then glared around the table. I went from serious face to serious face and just decided that Abe had done it, since he had already marked it with the first bite.
“Cake?”
“Would you like me to throw it back up for you?”
“Gah, no keep it in there. When did you take it? I didn’t even notice.”
“So great are my ninja powers that you cannot even possibly comprehend how I could take your cake.”
Abe was something of a mystery, given that he wouldn’t tell anyone where he had been or what he had been doing for the past few years. His job was of the implied but not talked about kind; Doug probably knew, but he was the only one.
So with a sigh, I bid farewell to my cake and started eating Doug’s.
He had opened his mouth to protest but Abe and Sarah’s voices carried over and stopped whatever he had been about to say.
“Abe, I can’t.” Sarah said sharply
“Come on, it’s only this once. When else are we going to have a chance?”
“No. Besides, my clothes will get completely ripped off.”
She looked forlornly down at her neatly tailored business suit.
“So change clothes, come on, it’ll be fun.”
Jasmine, Doug and I were all staring at them, Doug was the one who spoke first.
“You two are either about to do something that is a very bad idea or…no. I can’t really think of anything else your words could mean.”
Abe grinned wickedly at him, “Remember that game we used to play?”
Doug got an equally evil smile on his face, “Laptag?”
Uh oh. I had a bad feeling about this.
“Can you call—“
“Yeah, how about—“
A very bad feeling.



-M

Doug: I dream of steel.

The acrid smell of spent ammunition is like a drug to me. Gunpowder and primer is like my version of heroin. Every detail is sharpened. I hear the metallic clink of brass hitting the floor. I can feel the thumping vibrations of displaced air. The smooth feeling of the shell casings in my hand, waiting to be loaded into the magazine.

All of these things are vivid in my memory, all of these details I can remember so well.

Snick, as the rounds are loaded into the magazine. SCHWANG! As the bolt drives a round home. A soft click as the safety catch is flipped off. Up to the shoulder goes the stock, tight in and comfortable. My finger, extended to the side, parallel to the trigger, is now brought down to caress it oh so gently.

Squeeze, don’t pull.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

It almost sounds like when the batter hits a solid home run straight out of the ball park. The recoil is joy to my arm, letting me know my little bundle of lead is safely on its way. I glory in the arc of the falling shells, the fresh smell of burning powder assailing my nostrils, the home run sounds.

After, there is a slight ringing in my ears, then absolute, perfect, silence.

"Peace? I love peace, I'd be out of a job if there was peace."
-Tony Stark
"Iron Man"

Sarah: Let Dreams Be Real

Would you like tea or coffee while you decide what to paint, Lily?
She used her right arm to tuck her long brown hair behind her right ear. She smiled softly not knowing what to say. This isn’t her place. It isn’t her place to make the decision. It is her friend’s responsibility. Or it was. That was before she, before she, became no longer capable.
Tea, please. Meghan’s going to wake up today.
Lily, replied. The parents, those caring people that didn’t know their daughter at all, were visiting with the doctors. They had given up. Lily wondered – did they really care about her? Meghan had been doing better. She screamed in her sleep at night. She held her belly sometimes. She shook her head.
We sure hope so.
Lily had been at the Neuropsychiatric Institution in Utah for a long time. It was her home. Locked into a wheelchair, not able to walk since the day she entered the Institution all bandaged from the “accident,” she stared at the woman.
Yes, yes we do.
And she continued to paint. She painted with her tears of a world where she knew how to walk. A world where her and Meghan traveled, laughed, and smiled. A world where that nice, tall boy that kissed the young blonde doctor, held Meghan’s hand too. A world where the afflicted caretaker had no worries, except getting whooped at chess by a woman that made him not only smile, but glow. She painted herself in the picture, in the corner, not alone but instead a part of everyone she loved. She held a hummingbird in her hand. He loved her. Then she finished the painting, closed her eyes, and prayed.
And Meghan woke up.

Meghan: Perfect

One month to go

She absently stroked her stomach, trying to massage away the internal prodding that had become an almost constant pain in the last few weeks. To distract herself she picked up one of the magazines that littered the waiting room and tried to let the smiling pictures of babies and mothers calm her. It was all going smoothly, perfect according to the doctors, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone horribly wrong. She hadn’t even…and the pain—

“Ms. Michaels?”

She jerked at the soothing voice of the nurse and her stomach jerked with her. Wincing, she put down the magazine and rose unsteadily to waddle through the door that the nurse held politely open for her.

Her feet swung from the padded bench where she sat, vulnerable in her hospital gown. The doctor felt her stomach gently, asking her about her pains and if there were any other major problems. She lay back and he absently spread cold gel on her belly for another ultrasound, staring intently at the machines hooked up to her.

“Have you been taking the vitamins?”

She sighed, “Yes, all of the vitamins, the exercises, the foods, I’ve been doing them all. Why does it still hurt?”

His eyes looked slightly glazed as he stared at the ultrasound screen, “…just fine.” He said absently, “you’re doing just fine. Perfect development.”

“Can I see it?”

“Yes, of course.” He pushed some keys on the device and turned the screen so she could look, “There, perfectly normal.”

She was suspicious of anyone who used the word ‘perfect’ so often.

Two weeks to go.

But it was too early; would the baby be all right?

The baby would be fine; she was assured, just…

Perfect

She screamed at the ceiling and dug her fingernails into the arm of the orderly who stood at her side. It was splitting her, God the pain. But this would be the end, right? She would have her child and the pain would end, replaced with soft things like the baby’s laugh and the smell of its skin. If she could just hold on.

Crying? She wept with relief at the sounds of raging protest that her child made at being brought out into the world. With little hiccupping laughs, she watched the nurses clean the baby off and wrap her in a pink blanket.

“A girl?” she breathed, “Perfect, she’s perfect, please give her to me.” She held out her arms as the doctor took the bundled thing from the nurses and stood at the foot of the bed.

“Please give me my daughter.”

“Daughter?”

“Yes, give her to—“

“You have no daughter.”

Whatever she had been about to say died at her lips and she just stared at him, trying to process what he had said.

“You—you—what?”

“You have no children.” He enunciated carefully, as if she were slow, “You came to the clinic with severe abdominal pain and we found a tumor in your pancreas. Luckily it was small and removable; you’ll be able to live out a long healthy life.”

Her jaw clenched, “No. There was no cancer; I…give her to me.”

“Her?” He stroked the head of the baby in his arms and her mother’s fists clenched weakly in the blankets, “She was born yesterday, a ward of the state now, as her mother died in childbirth. I thought I’d bring her to see you, cheer you up, but I can see that it’s upsetting you.” He motioned a nurse over and handed the infant over, her mother’s eyes tracking her desperately as she was taken from the room.

“No! You can’t, bring her back, she’s mine!”

“Please don’t be unreasonable Ms. Michaels,” The doctor said evenly as he walked around to sit by the side of her bed.

“Unreasonable?! You take my child from me and call me unreasonable?”

He flipped through a folder that he had picked up like he couldn’t hear her.

Gritting her teeth, she ripped the I.V tube from her arm and tried to struggle out from beneath the blankets and off of the bed.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The doctor said without looking up from the reports he was scanning, “You’re incredibly weak and have lost a lot of blood. If you’ll just sit back we can discuss what’s to be done.”

“Done?” She paused in her pathetic attempts to escape her bed and stared suspiciously at the man, “About my—“

“Financial situation.”

She choked on the sentence and stared in confusion at the doctor, “You—“

“Before you get upset, I want you to know that this hospital will not refuse you service just because of your…upsetting lack of health insurance.”

She just stared at him. She knew how bad it was, how bad it looked. Getting pregnant out of the blue had at first seemed to throw her life even deeper into its hurricane of destruction. But she would get better. She would make it better for this other person who hadn’t experienced anything bad yet. It had been hard to find a job, what with her growing belly and terrible record. But she had found one, then two, then three until she hardly stopped moving except to eat and sleep. But that little bundle of cash that she saved was growing, and the little room where the baby would sleep eventually got a crib, stuffed toys, and tiny clothes. She painted the walls with beautiful oceans and savannas, wanting the child to see more beauty than was here.

And now the doctor was telling her that there was no baby, there was just a tumor.

“However, the Department is willing to offer you a deal.”

“A deal?”

“The type of cancer that you contracted is very new and a lot of research is being done with it.”

She narrowed her eyes, cancer meaning child?

“We’re willing to offer you a significant sum if you’ll allow us to study the tissues that we took from you; many scientific advances may be possible from studying such a rare disease.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, “You even have to ask? No way in Hell. Give her back.”

The doctor sighed, “You understand that giving the samples back to you isn’t an option. They have already been processed and to allow an unlicensed civilian to take them away would be…dangerous.” He met her eyes in a blank stare, “If you don’t agree to let the samples be researched, they will simply be disposed of.”

A chill ricocheted from her heart to her stomach. Disposed of? No they wouldn’t…probably. But was probably enough of a chance? No, she would never risk it, and they would never give her back her child voluntarily.

“You have my permission to use my…samples.” She said through clenched lips.

“Excellent,” The doctor said briskly, “Now if you could just sign these forms…” He passed her some papers from his folder and indicated where she was to sign away her soul. And she signed. But no matter what forms were signed, and what words said, she knew that she would be back, and heaven help anyone who kept her daughter from her.

-Meghan

Jasmine: Curious

I’m always curious what people think when i come to class scratched and bruised. Do they think I have an abusive boyfriend? Abusive father/brother figures? Do they think I’m one of “those” kids? Always in trouble, gangs, drugs, and violence. When really I’m just the violence, and not very careful about it. But I think the stories that they spin inside their minds would be interesting to listen in on for a little while. Anything becomes boring if you can’t get away from it.

Jasmine: Compulsive Liars

Compulsive liars are interesting. A woman called in a couple days ago at work, I think her name was Bernadette something or another. Or it could be something entirely different. Little back history on Bernie. In the past two years she’s made three large claims, the last one was finally denied and her policy was canceled, or terminated, or something. The claims all seemed to be cumulative, some kind o f roof leakage for the first one, wind damage to the roof for the second, and some six grand of water damage caused by a roof leak for the final and denied one. Something tells me ole Bernie didn’t get her roof fixed with the first two claims.

The other far more experienced/better trained assistant secretary person got her call and was taking notes about Bernie’s life:

- Mom’s a doctor
- Dad’s a doctor
- Bernie’s also a doctor
- Mom won 240 million dollar lottery
- Mom died
- Mom put money in a trust for her that she can’t access when she wants because mom doesn’t trust her husband.
- Dad’s in Bahamas so she can’t get to the money that way
- She was also left a flat in new York that they are trying to sell
- Currently lives in a small house in los lunas
-
The other secretary found this highly entertaining and shared it with the rest of the office. I share it here with you.

Here’s a Sarah Buterblog style question: What do you guys think about compulsive liars? I’ve met quite a few bad ones in my life, but even every day friends will over spin a tale to make themselves seem more important, more amazing.