Doug: I wish I knew your name.

I think this may be better, this fracturing. The voice in my head whispers.
I snort, and my body rebels against the thought, feeling physically ill at the prospect. “You would say that. Wouldn’t you?”
I am… she paused, she never did that, ever practical.
“Yeah. Hate was too.” It’s easier to say his name now. He’s an old memory now, like all the other old memories.
I’m not him, you know. He was here first, but I’m here now.
“No, you aren’t Hate. You’re something else; something far more dangerous.”
I won’t tell you my name you know. That would give you power over me. Like you had power over Hate.
“ I’m not going to let this fall apart.”
Do you have a choice? The gods have a plan for us all.
“This fracturing is fated then?”
Perhaps. Perhaps it is something else. Every problem is an opportunity, if one but chooses to see it.
My breath hissed out between my teeth, a habit I’d picked up. “Perhaps this is punishment.”
For being a liar, a cheat, an asshole? All these harsh things you think of yourself, I wonder, are you simply fishing for compliments, or do you really believe yourself? That you are monster wearing human flesh?
“I’m not a good person.”
No. But you aren't a bad one. If you are as evil as you say, why do you care?
“Sooner or later you can’t hide from the things you’ve done.”
…
“Talk.”
… You can’t change your fate, but you can rise to meet it if you choose.
“Thought so.” I said grimly. “What do I do now?”
Let the wheel turn. You can’t change this, but if you play your cards right, you may be able to reverse it later.
“I’ve a lousy poker face.”

Then have an ace up your sleeve.

_______

"You cheated!"

-McCoy

"I changed the rules."

-Kirk

Meghan: Standing

When it comes for you, what do you do?

When you suffer, when your world crashes down around you; that’s the moment when the truth comes out.

Do you hide, do you run? Or do you fight for what you want.

You may fall, and fall, and fall.

Who cares? Do you?

While you’re falling, you’re still living. Breathing, eating, knowing, seeing. All around you stars are dying, crying, lying; even when you see them shining.

What to do, tell me, tell me? Give me a drop of advice for my parched throat. Whet my lips with that sweet sympathy.

Oh, you’re killing me

Give me more

Love me, love me

Hate me, hate me

Just don’t make me give it up. I want this, I need this.

Kiss of Bliss

But what happens when you have to stand on just your two feet? Will you fall without those extra pairs?

Because nothing is forever

What if an army of legs can’t hold you up? What if?

Will you fall?

Hey, you still have two

And they work just fine

-Meghan

Doug: Responsibility

I stagger into my room, the lights are still on, halogen bulbs burning into my skull like white phosporous rounds from a 108mm howitzer. I swear loudly, and burp. I can taste and smell Schedler's vodka on my breath.

I'm not drunk, I'm just fucking tired. Turns out my alcohol tolerance is such that a few shots wouldn't even get me buzzed. I tried to turn them down, not very hard though. Toasting the Corps. I would never, repeat that, NEVER, let the Corps down. They're the only people who have ever made me work hard for anything. Still working hard at earning their respect. Make no mistake. You have to earn that from them. Sometimes in blood.

I stare at my phone and remember. I'm supposed to walk Kelsey down to the boathouse tomorr- no. Today. I have about three hours. I debate the value of staying up, but eventually decide the seven miles I ran this morning, coupled with the ache in my leg, which was competeing with the one in my skull, made an effective arguement for unconsiousness.

So now I'm going to bed.

But I'll wake. Because there's no way in Hell I'll ever let anyone down. Not the Corps. Not my Lovers. Not my Family. Not my Friends. I've got responsibilites, and I'll die before I stop protecting people.

-Doug.

"To the Corps!"
-Marine Options, UW NROTC

Doug: The Final Countdown

Music blasts in my ears.

I normally never do this. I never pump myself up for anything. I just do these things, I feel like I should be ready at anytime, so I don't prepare.

Now I'm preparing.

This game has been fun. But it's going to end. Tonight.

The overseers have seen fit to send us all on a mission we probably won't survive. This is not only unsurprising, but expected. We've been waiting for this moment. Planning. Preparing.

Though we may not survive...

We won't go down without a fight.

In the end. That's all that matters...

-Doug

"ITS THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!!"
Europe. "The Final Countdown"

That guy: More poetry?

What's wrong with me?

Anyways, here we go. I'll try to keep it short.






The breeze glances over him.
Deflected by the battle-hardened skin.
Diffused by a glare.

But it brings a tail with it. A second wind.
The scent is familiar, so familiar. But distant.
He breathes deeply, infused by the wash of memory the air provides.

He looks at his hands. They pain him, but all he can smell is Mexico.

He looks at the sky. It clouds, but all he can smell is a lake.

He looks forward. The wind wraps him up, a blanket of serenity.

A soft, soothing, caress.

Safe

The word shivers off his lips, almost not daring to leave.
It reaches the threshold, and falls, wafting gently to the ground, like a feather.

He surveys his surroundings.

Nothing but the usual.

Then where did this word apparate from?
What force caused it to spring about?

Safe

He smiles.

All he wanted was a conversation.

The wind quivers, and vanishes, leaving an empty shell filled with void.

But the smell lingers.

Meghan: just keep swimming

What is the big picture?
What is the meaning of it all?
Why do we keep on fighting, struggling to live?
The truth is; there is no reason.
We exist purely on our own whims.
If you disappeared today, who would miss you? Would anyone’s life stop for little ol’ you?
When people pull down the big picture of life, the whole tapestry of it, and ask you intently “Why do you matter?” what comes to mind? Jobs, friends, places you’ve been, foods you’ve tasted, things you’ve created. But to the whole swirling mass of humanity it’s just a grain lost in the dessert.
So who matters? Maybe those great artists, inventors, or politicians of our time? Those ones who have changed things for the better? Newton, Michelangelo, Einstein, or Roosevelt (the hot one with polio)? But really what did they do that another exceptional individual couldn’t have done in their place? Where there is a need for creation, that creation happens. Whomever creates it could be anyone really, it was just chance that these famous people got there first. So are individuals needed? The rushing tide of homo sapiens the world has is eager to fill what nooks and crannies are left in ‘the system’. It’s a miracle that individualism is still valued. Despite all odds the fish keep swimming. And I ask, what is the point?
There is no point.
So you ask me, why you’re alive?
Because you feel like it.
You ask me what to do?
If you are alive at your whim, do what your whims tell you to do.

-Meghan

Jasmine: New Years

I began this a while back and then for some reason stopped writing it. I’ve been having a lot of trouble finishing anything I start recently, at least in the writing department. But here it is, two weeks later. It started New Years day. January 1st well more like January 2nd. The most interesting events of the night started just after midnight. So December 2nd it is. But I will start before this at the very end of New Years day.

There were six of us. For the sake of all involved, and at the request of some involved, I will use incredibly clever, impossible to see through, nick names. Cricket, that guy, sarsar, megmeg and I were all at thor’s house watching samurai x: truth and betrayal. It’s a good movie. I had no background knowledge of the tv series or the manga or any of the other potential mediums it may or may not have been used in, but I enjoyed it all the same. The movie ended and we sat there. None of us really wanted to go home leaving each other. It had been a good day, and something about it made us hesitant for it to end.

Somehow, I’m sure I have no idea how, it was probably that guy who brought it up, of course it was... We settled on the idea that we should go somewhere and drink, or more specifically, get drunk. That guy’s place was an option, an okay one since he had the booze, and the less transportation of it the better. But he also has a roommate and that would probably have ended up awkward. In fact looking back, it definitely would have. But I had this dorm all empty and waiting for us. So we ended up there. The boys stopped by that guy’s place to pick up our alcohol and then met us at my dorm.

That guy pulled the alcohol out of his backpack. Black velvet whiskey, cool comfort or calm comfort or something entirely different also whiskey, some kind of rum, and a strawberry flavored Smirnoff vodka thingy, there was only a small amount of that though. We also put some beers on ice. Tasted it, beer is still gross.

It was at this point that the two most amazing people, most specfuckingtacular friends we will ever have as long as the earth keeps turning, spoke up. Thor and cricket weren’t drinking. Cricket was dd and thor was our take-care-of-the-inebriated man. To be fair cricket let us honor him with that position too.

We started off way too slow. It was almost as if we were waiting for something to really get us going, for someone to just drink first, a catalyst. Or maybe all of us first timers were just afraid to take the first sip. So we sat on the floor of my living room staring at the alcohol like we were waiting for it to do something. Because we sure as hell weren’t doing anything. Then that guy called for the glasses and we were off. Have some of this have some of that, there’s only a little of the vodka so split it up as best you can. We tried some of everything he had to offer.

I learned that whiskey burns, and rum really doesn’t, though maybe by the time we got to the rum all nerves had been seared away. We may never know. But we’d all had about three shots when we brilliantly thought that we needed a game. Something to keep us drinking. We had a couple more shots brought out the orange juice and apple juice and started mixing stuff. Then I grabbed the only real games we had in the dorm. Chess and cards. Chess for the drinkers cards for the sober/drinker game.

Megmeg and that guy started their game of chess. Now megmeg didn’t know how to play chess and was already slightly inebriated so to help her game I stole her orange juice whiskey drink. And watched her begin to lose badly. Repeatedly I tried to help her, but that guy refused to acknowledge the moves I made on the board. Something about waiting my own damn turn to play.

So I turned to the sober thor and cricket and the not so sober but not quite as drunk as she would get sarsar and we started a game of ERS. Egyptian rat screw rocks. And I rock at it because I am the god of screwing rats. No I’m not drunk now. Sarsar is usually a good player, but apparently even a little hard alcohol is enough to destroy her reflexes, but not mine. I owned that game. Sarsar was out first. Then our not so little cricket. I faced off with thor and took him to the ground ripping his squealing flesh from his losers bones. We love you thor.

Half way through our game megmeg gave up on chess or it gave up on her so it could play with sarsar, it could have gone either way but I’m betting on the latter. Anyways she did her best to distract cricket and I. eventually I just pulled her behind me telling her that no I couldn’t make out with her because ERS was not done, and proving how wonderful I am is more important than kissing my drunk girlfriend. She kept falling over and we kept dragging her upright again I didn’t really understand why but she was next to me so I tried to help. Obviously it was my duty as a friend and a drunk to keep poking her and throwing bottles of water at her. Even if she couldn’t catch them it was fun to watch.

Cricket defeated allowed himself to be dragged off into my bedroom by megmeg. That guy shouted something like “you owe me man,” I don’t know how cricket responded but when we saw them again megmeg was wearing my robe. My brand new white robe. Oh, and nothing else. Hey megmeg *waves sheepishly*

Megmeg and cricket gone I turned to the dissolving game between that guy and sarsar. It was less of a chess game then it was sarsar shouting things like “you hurt me so bad…” and “you just don’t let people see you…” and a whole lot of other things I don’t really remember, I was busy trading off between rolling on the floor laughing because sarsar was hysterical, and devising ways for sarsar to beat that guy in the chess game. But when I tried to move her pieces they magically moved back to where they started. I have yet to figure out how.

Thoroughly disgusted with how poorly the game was going I decided to pay more attention to how that guy was trying to bump fists with me. I’m a fun drunk. Or so I’ve been told. I consider myself more of a funny drunk, or more of the world is an amazing place drunk, because everything everyone said, was great. I started laughing again, laughing so hard. One minute the world was fun, the next I was vomiting onto the floor in front of me, the next it was kind of sad and smelly. And my carpet was dirty. Thor handed me some paper towels and I cleaned it up or tried, but the smell was still there. I went to the bathroom and tried to find something that might make the smell go away. I came up with Kasey’s mouthwash. Poured some of that on there and decided just to avoid that spot in the foreseeable future. Then I decided that maybe some of the smell was me. so I brushed my teeth with megmeg’s tooth brush, and changed my clothes managing to get all my zippers and buttons in place. I’m awesome.

Cricket and megmeg came out of my room megmeg swaying against cricket for support was dropped into a chair sarsar threw herself at cricket and promptly started crying out her woes about that guy. Apparently that guy is an uncaring ass who felt no need to voice his deepest darkest thoughts. Or maybe he just wasn’t that drunk. Seeing all this I promptly fell to the floor laughing yet again. Staring curiously at megmeg as she sat at a stool next to my sink. Why was there a stool in my kitchen? I know now, but I sure as hell wondered then.

Several other things happened in this time, but I’m not sure in what order. Megmeg ended up in my room asleep on the floor. That guy was on the couch demanding things like a pillow or a blanket and I watched helplessly as things filtered out of my room and onto his couch. Somewhere in all of this I ran for the toilet and sarsar ran for the shower projectile vomiting into it. But she was a good sick person, she cleaned everything up immediately and had to be persuaded that it wasn’t actually necessary to clean anything else.

Ah the toilet. My beautiful porcelain goddess. How she failed me that night. I knelt at her feet for more than forty minutes dry heaving, trying to give up some of what I had given myself that night. Trying to vomit more because my head and stomach were spinning with the need to. But no luck. By this time thor and cricket were trading off between watching me pray and holding sarsar’s head while she cried. Every once in a while I couldn’t help it I had to laugh. She was still funny. And I hold that I would still have laughed sober.

Again time lapses, things happen, not sure in what order. But I was with one of the sober ones and someone asked what had happened to sarsar, I don’t know it could have been me. A voice in the living room called back that she was making out with that guy. I couldn’t help it I threw myself from my goddess and rushed the living room hitting the wall instead. I tried again and this time someone’s hands caught me and gently led me back to the goddess. She must have been insulted by my plan to leave her, even if it was just to catch a glimpse of some make outs, because I didn’t get to throw up again that night.

It came time for thor to get home and for cricket to drive him. I had long ago given up on the goddess favoring me and was just lying back against cricket. Probably mumbling things I shouldn’t be. My eyes were closed and I felt the world shift as he slid his arms under my legs and carried me to my bedroom to lay me next to megmeg. He told me where the keys were hidden since I was the only one who didn’t know how to drive, and then I fell asleep.

No commentary on it. This is just a story about what happened as I saw it, not as people told me they saw it. This is my view, not a compilation of other views. And yes I know it was very very long.