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