Doug: The Fight

“Let’s go.”

I’d be willing to bet anything he’s not expecting the straight punch to the face that snaps his head back like a whip. Two years ago he would have broken my wrist before I could get five inches from his nose. Now blood erupts forth like a fountain, splattering all over the mat.

I’m on him in a flash, knowing that the second he recovers and realizes he’s fighting for his life will be the second my fate will be sealed. Punch after punch rails down on his head and face. I feel a knucklebone crack but keep up my blows.

He reels. Hands come up and bat weakly at my arms. A vicious kick to his gut reminds him to cover his solar plexus. I cannot believe this is happening. This man used to be a god. He could fight like no other. I once watched him take down six armed assailants with just his hands. Now I, the untrained pup, beat him like a child.

He collapses to the ground. Rage fills me. “GET UP! WEAKLING! I COULDN’T HAVE LAID A HAND ON YOU A FEW YEARS AGO!” I want to punch him again and again until my knuckles show bone.

Blood and spit cover his face, making a mask of red. I can see the shame burning behind his eyes. He knows. Knows that he’s been beaten by someone weaker than him.

Bitter, disgusted, I drop my hands from their defensive guard. “You’ve forgotten who you are; shamed yourself. And me.” I can’t even look at him anymore.

That’s why the leg sweep surprised me. In a flash I’m on my back and he is pummeling me. I can see the feral glint in his eye, the killer instinct that has returned in his moment of shame. I fight back, but he’s running on something base now, an energy that I’ve never been able to harness, my blows are unfelt.

I have no chance. In minutes I am beaten to a bloody pulp. Two black eyes, I’m sure a few of my ribs are cracked, and my nose is pouring blood like a faucet. I struggle to stand, and stare blearily at the hand that is proffered, not realizing what it is for a full second. “Good fight.” He mumbles from between cut and swollen lips.

“You fucking kicked my ass.” I mutter. We’re leaning against each other for support, staggering towards the crowd that has gathered to watch our bloody mat room spectacle. Some blonde bimbo with a fake tan asks why we were fighting.

The man at my side laughs, I can feel it hurt him. “I forgot who I was for a little while. My brother had to remind me.”

I grin and that hurts too, but it feels right, and that’s all that matters.

-Doug

"There are many here among us that feel that life is but a joke."
Bob Dylan "All Along the Watchtower"

Sarah: Question

Readers, whom I often offend with what seems to be closed mindedness, you get to decide - should I revamp the site to look more like a modern blog? And if so, should I keep using the infamous lake photo from where the five of us used to camp?

I would love to hear your ideas. Thanks!

~Sarah, the html and blogger-site manager for the Fear Five

Meghan and Jasmine: Spy Fetus

The computer is hot against my thighs. They do that. Computers that is. They get hot and stick to things especially when I don’t put on pants.

There’s a cat perched on my shoulder. Not sure how he fits anymore but somehow he manages.

Meghan is lying on her back next to me no longer drugged out of her mind but I plan on redrugging her before sleep and tomorrow and forever.

I’m hungry. It seems like all I do is sleep and eat and rage against the world for being stuck in this apartment for going on three days. I’m amazed Jasmine hasn’t knocked me unconscious and locked me in the closet or something. Hopefully by consuming everything in the fridge I will gain miraculous healing powers and be fixed in a day or so. Or I’ll just run out of food and be unable to get more.

She won’t let me drive. No one trusts me behind a wheel. It’s irritating because I think I would make a good driver, and it’s practical because Meghan hopping into the grocery store like a deranged rabbit would cause parking lot accidents.

Loki is still on my shoulder. I don’t understand. He does this, he buries his head into my hair and breaths deep of the drug that is me. I’m like catnip or something. It works on people sometimes too but tends to be more awkward when strangers attach to me like leeches.

I have been instilled with great confusing feelings towards babies. All of the pregnant people on television seem to be losing their fetus’ when they sneeze, whereas the young teenagers who don’t want babies are the most likely to produce perfectly healthy children. So I have decided to make a baby then freeze it in time until I choose to raise it. This is the only solution. Okay, I’m kidding, calm down, but wouldn’t it be easier if there was just a general pool of babies? If when you were ready for a child you could just have one without the health issues or the endless red tape that goes with adoption? It seems overly complex.

When she first typed the paragraph above it read “loosing” instead of “losing” babies. I’m now imagining fetus’ forming out of snot balls like those little grow sponge dinosaurs. Just add water. You sneeze, a mini fetus appears in the Kleenex or hand and grows into a fully formed baby, then you send it off into the world, “loose” it on the world. Fetus attack! Guard Fetus’! Spy Fetus! The next Disney movie!

Meghan is going to paint now so I think this blog might be over.

Yes it is. Painting!

Meghan: Stir crazy

My eyes flicked open to see Jasmine’s face inches from mine. Her hand curled a blanket under her chin and her eyelashes brushed her cheeks in sleep. Slowly and painfully I slid down the length of the bed to roll onto the floor, trying to keep the cast on my foot from smacking into something and waking her up. I used a dresser to pull myself up so I was standing on my one good foot, then hopped awkwardly into the closet and pulled on a shirt and shorts. When I was clothed I peeked out to find her still sleeping.

Success.

I dropped to the floor and army-crawled across the scratchy carpet into the next room. A small black kitten leaped on my back and I batted him away gently as I reached for my keys. The click of unlocking the door seemed deafeningly loud. I held my breath as I opened the door, listening for sounds of Jasmine waking up in the apartment. When all was silent I breathed in the sweet, sweet air of the outdoors and pulled myself to my feet with the doorframe, preparing to hop out. A low growling noise made me turn. Jasmine stood at the entrance to the bedroom, holding the black kitten that had probably gone and woke her up when I refused to play with him. I glared at the traitorous kitten then made a leap for the exit, hoping that her lack of clothes might keep her in the house. But I should have known better. With a thump that knocked my breath out she crashed into my fleeing back, face planting me into the grass. Post-surgery as I was I couldn’t put up much of a fight, but I wiggled my arms and remaining leg in protest as she straddled my back and looped a rope around my struggling limbs. With a strength that someone her size shouldn’t have, she yanked me to my feet.

“Hop.” She said grimly.

“Jasmine I—“

“HOP!”

“I JUST WANTED A LATTE!!! I’VE BEEN IN THE HOUSE FOR DAYS, I’M SO FREAKING BORED!!!!” My shouts lost most of their threat as my tiny, mostly naked girlfriend continued to corral me back to the house.

“Do you want to have more surgery?” She asked icily, “If you re-break something, next time you’ll be handcuffed to the bed.”

I turned to growl at her again but noticed we were gathering an audience. Small Hispanic children in swimsuits stared at us with huge eyes and a small group of college boys were taking long pulls from their cigarettes while they watched the show. My face flushed and I hopped inside the apartment quickly. Jasmine turned to wave before pulling the door closed, collapsing with laughter against the wall. I fell onto my back, looking like a stunted water beetle with my broken foot suspended in the air.

“What if they complain to management?” I moaned

“They’ve seen us do worse.” Jasmine giggled.

I sighed, she was probably right.

“Anyway,” she stretched her arms above her head, “I want more sleep.” Her hands paused at the knots in my bindings, “Are you going to behave?”

I gave her my most innocent face, “Of course.”

She sighed and released my ropes, indicating that I should hop ahead of her back to bed. I lay back on the bed, exhausted from the small outing but still plotting another on. Jasmine laced her fingers through mine and I turned to her, smiling. But the smile turned to a grimace as I heard the click of a lock and found myself handcuffed to a lamp. I expressed my displeasure with a muffled scream.

“Goodnight.” Jasmine said, kissing me lightly before curling up once more with her blanket. I curled up around her back, happiness battling with stir-craziness.

“Heal faster, stupid foot.” I whispered.

-M

Jasmine: The Baffled King Composing Halleluja

Some people see their lives as a symphony to god. They live as though god himself were their conductor, directing their crescendos and decrescendos. They are not in control of their world except that they could play the wrong note or the right one at the wrong time and conductor god would be angry with them. If they follow the music at the end of it they have this neatly wrapped gift of a life and hand it over to god and go “what do you think god?” almost as if that symphony, their life were their ticket to eternal happiness, depending on how well they played.

But I am not a religious person, not beyond the awe I have over the ability of living things to function at all and the reverence I show on behalf of how much we don’t understand about this universe.

I try to live my life as such that I would rather be myself than anyone else. So that if some power offered me the chance to switch lives with someone else I would refuse. To me this is a much better way of living, pleasing myself, having pride in myself, instead of god, or my parents, or my friends. Because if I am happy in the way I live my life, proud of who I’ve become and looking forward to my future than anyone who doesn’t agree with my path in life doesn’t matter.

I try to live this way

But I still have far to go before I’m there

So for now all I can do is hold onto this ideal and do what I can to make myself this person I so want to be. Thank you Clint for your insight and eloquence. You are a better person by societies standards than I will ever want to be, yet you are still an interesting guy.

Jasmine: Colon Cancer

“Hello, welcome to Kaufman’s!” Erin’s voice was falsely cheery and grated on my self control for the umpteenth time today. There was truly only so much a retail employee could take and I imagined us both pulling out matching 5.11 knives that sales reps had forced upon us and dueling it out in the holster aisle.

Today was exactly like every other day. I folded the same pair of pants I had already folded twice today and seven or thirty-two times the day before. Anna stared dully into a cabinet memorizing the prices of everything there so than when called upon she could spout out numbers like a computer for the cashier. Anna was good with memorization, she could kick ass at that card game.

A thin tall man with curly brown hair and a small sickly looking boy with a brown bag attached to his side and the same hair walked within fifteen feet of me. I hurried to go see if I could acquire a sale and ensure that I would have a job tomorrow.

“Is there something I could help you two with?” I said putting on my brightest smile and affecting my most joyous, buy lots of expensive things that you don’t need or let me convince you that you do need them and then buy them if that’ll make you feel better voice.

“Actually yes, as you can see here my son’s colostomy bag is almost full and we were wondering if you carried the replacement bags?” he gestured to the brown bag attached to his sons side like a leach. So that’s what it was. It was okay as a retail employee you get used to all manner of body fluids. I was no colostomy bag virgin.

“Of course we do” I smiled potentially blinding the man, but if he couldn’t see I could just put things on the counter and force him to buy things. Or offer him a pair of three hundred dollar sunglasses guaranteed to mute the glare of my smile.

This was the automatic response drilled into us by Renee. She’s one of the owners and looks terrifying in and out of leather. The only time this response was proven wrong was in the case of the hot pink pipe cleaners, and this was only because a Girl Scout troop had cleaned out our entire stock minutes before. It turned out okay because Renee had already ordered more which would be there in a few hours. But even so, the shame is still with us all.

I led the man and his gross pale son with the bag of poop attached to his side to the colostomy bag aisle. “Here are adult bags, probably too big, and the girls bags,” I motioned to the Barbie and frog princess bedazzled bags, “probably not eh, but these will do.” Along half the aisle were rows of monster truck patterned bags, Aladdin, GI Joe, Buzz Lightyear and even a serial killer collage one. Under new arrivals was…

“Wall E!” the kid squealed. The new arrivals sign was a lie. Renee over ordered and we were supposed to push the Wall E bags to make room for more merchandise.

The young boy giggled delightedly holding the wall e bag in his hands. At that moment his current bag, a Spiderman one, filled so we took him to Dodee to fit him into the new on and after paying an exorbitant fee, probably three times as much as one would pay at Wall-mart, and after Erin managed to force them each to buy a pair of Oakley sunglasses for them and their pets, they were happily on their way.

I moved to the shirt wall where I proceeded to make every shirt the exact same size as all the other shirts and arranged them into a beautiful even stack that not even Renee could scowl at… though she would try.

Jasmine: I love you

I love you

?

I just felt like saying it

?

There’s this song that keeps playing on the radio and I like it very much and basically the message is tell the people you love that you love them as often as possible because they might be gone tomorrow or even later today. I love you.

I love you too