Meghan: See

Cigarette smoke, sweet and heavy, drifted through the air as the group stopped for a breather. One of the scouts climbed the statue we were gathered around, looking around for possible attackers. Her slanted eyes squinted into sun and a playful breeze tossed her short black hair into her face. After a few minutes she slid down to talk to the captain, who crushed his cigarette thoughtfully under his boot while he listened to her report. I saw him glance my way and averted my gaze to study the massive stone structures around us. He flapped a hand my way and the man they’d appointed to watch me propelled me to the statue.
“Climb it.” He ordered, gesturing at the statue, “Tell us what you see.”
I nodded and climbed as quickly as I could, finding easy handholds in the spiraling metal that ornamented the stone statue. Once I was a few lengths up I looked out and over at the impressive landscape. The group was gathered below me in a tiny knot. The statue and the group were midway down a giant stone walkway that led to the ruins. Deep canyons fell to either side of the path, promising death to anyone clumsy enough to slip. Huge stone statues of ancient gods rose from the nothingness that was the canyons. They appeared to sit on nothing, just a grimacing face or spiked teeth rising from the dark to form islands. But I wasn’t here to sightsee. My eyes and my sight were the reason the group kept me around. When they found out I could sometimes see the danger that came for us, they killed everyone in the last group I ran with to use me. But I was alive, that was all that mattered. I settled on the statue of stone and iron and looked out to the road that we had traveled hours earlier to get to the ruins. My pupils shrunk to pinpoints and the view telescoped until I could see the grains of dust that coated the old path. My eyes flicked back and forth, looking for movement, and I caught a flash of color. I refocused until I could see them. They were running so fast, and there were so many. Madly dashing up the path, paying no heed to those knocked into the canyon, their red eyes focused single-mindedly on their goal.
I half slid half fell down the statue to land breathless in front of the captain.
“They’re coming.” I gasped.
“GO!!!” He screamed to his people. We ran up the path into the gaping mouth of the ruined temple. We spread out through the place, every member of the ragtag band for himself. I ran down a flight of stairs into a room with twin spiraling staircases. I took one of these and ran down a hallway. A few members of the group knew what I could do and would always follow me to my hiding places, reckoning that I was likely to survive and they would by proximity. This made hiding increasingly difficult. A black curtain passed over my eyes and I stopped running to collapse against a wall. I slid to the floor and pressed my hands to my eyes as images flicked across them.
I’m in a little room.
There are curtains
I’m hiding behind a curtain?
I’m hiding behind the door?
A girl lies in the center of the small room, one of the infected sitting on her legs and tearing savagely at her face. Another one comes in and drags another girl out from behind the door, they’re both screaming and there’s so much blood.
Wait, I’m hiding behind the door.
Or was it the curtains?
I blinked the pictures out of my eyes and climbed to my feet, feeling my way along the door in a partially blind state. I didn’t get the future pictures often, and I didn’t have time to sit and contemplate, much less wait until I could fully see. People from the group streamed past me as I entered yet another hallway. I felt blindly along the wall and turned the first doorknob I felt. I let myself into a small room and as I blinked spots out of my eyes the room identified itself as the one I’d seen earlier in the future picture. A few girls streamed in after me, the last one shutting the door firmly and setting her ear against it, listening intently. I looked around the tiny room, touching the space behind the door where I had hid in one of my pictures. Instead of hiding there, I crawled beneath a small ragged curtain that fell to the floor against one wall. Thankfully none of the other girls tried to join me, as it was the most obvious hiding place in the room, and not that invisible. The girl with her ear to the door pressed a finger to her lips, eyes bulging with panic. We all tried to hush our breathes and heartbeats as we heard the rapid thundering of feet running past the door. A small girl with brunette hair curled as small as she could behind the door. The door slammed inwards too fast for any of us to react. It caught the girl who had been listening in the forehead and knocked her to the ground. Before she could suck in a breath one of them was on her, clawing at her face and tearing out her intestines. I pressed my hands against my mouth to squish any horrified sounds I might make. I’d seen worse, but it seemed like every death was shiny and new. I was waiting for that cynicism and world weariness to set in and harden me against it, but it hadn’t happened yet. The girl behind the door wasn’t so good at suppression, and the tiny breathe she huffed drew the second infected like a fly to sugar. She pulled the girl out by an arm and when the screaming started I pressed my eyes to my knees.
And then they were gone.




-Meghan

Sarah: Hey

I miss you guys. All of you. I especially appreciate those of you who have helped this past week with the difficult situation I've faced - Jasmine for helping me with your labor and cleaning skills and Mr. Wood, you are awesome, thank you. And I want you to know that each of you has made my life brighter happier and more awesome. See some of you at the NAMI walk on Saturday.

With love and appreciation,
Sarah

Jasmine: Night Climbing

This past Friday I was getting off work, I have a job now for those who didn’t know, Jarrod was supposed to pick me up so that we could go to the climbing gym. Snooze was out of town and Eli was getting a ride from Weston. Anyways I’m walking around the side checking my voice mail because we aren’t allowed to have our cell phones on us during work hours, when Weston calls me asking if I got his voice mail. He wanted to know if I wanted to go climbing in Tijeras at a place that sounded like Big Rock, but Weston mumbles so I’m not really sure of the name. Of course I said yes. It’s climbing outside. I say yes to that any time!

I get off at six o’clock on Fridays. It rained a few days before this, snowed in some parts of the state probably including Tijeras. It was going to be dark by the time we got there. By the time I hung up with Weston promising to pick me up in twenty minutes I had no idea why I was going climbing outside when it was so damn cold. Jarrod couldn’t come because he was going dancing later.

Twenty minutes turned out to be fifty, I’m convinced that Weston doesn’t actually know how to tell time, but Eli apologized for him profusely when he realized that I’d been waiting outside in the cold the whole time, and they did eventually come rescue my frozen self to take me somewhere even more cold.

In the car was Weston, Eli, and Weston’s girlfriend, a name that I am spacing on which is not good since I made out with the girl one drunken night. Not important to the story though. We drove the half hour to the climbing site and were basically flung to the ground the second we stepped out of the truck. It was so windy and cold. And terrible. I put on another layer of shirt and we wound our way down the trail to where two climbers were already waiting for us, Sam and someone else. They had a fire going because they are amazing people who deserve gold stars.

It was already getting dark at this point, and all I could think about was getting as close to the fire as I could not climbing. The climb basically looked like a cliff that came down with a nice little bit of it hanging out over the ground. Not sure how to describe it… like an over hang, and indent, a something that hangs out over the ground. There was a part that you could traverse, and other bits. The girl and I walked a way up the cliff away from the fire and climbed a bit in our street shoes. I wasn’t quite ready to take off the shoes in the freezing wind yet. We made it up then headed back to the fire.

It wasn’t long before the rest of the horde arrived, Peter and Dan and Shawn, and some other guy. Peter brought those fake logs and suddenly our fire was so much bigger they stood around drinking some beer, and vodka which incidentally makes you warmer than the fire did. And eventually pulled on shoes and started climbing. The piece they were trying I think was a V9. It started at the bottom and ended up upside down with several big moves made upside down in order to get you to the vertical part of the climb. It was fun to watch and I don’t think any of them actually finished it. Eli and I stuck to the traversing which consisted of going back and forth over an area mostly lit by the fire.

Two more girls arrived. And Weston’s girlfriend went to hang with them. Eli and I stuck with the wall. It was fun, challenging. Some guy said it counted as a 5 11 which is cool. I could do all the parts I just couldn’t really put them together, not properly. But I climbed by firelight, it wasn’t that cold, and I’d like to do it again when it is somewhat warmer.

Meghan: less than or equal to three

I crossed my eyes to turn the pen dangling from my mouth into two pens. Slowly I let my eyes focus until the pens merged into one, then repeated the process, rapidly multiplying my pens.

I’m studying, I swear.

Groaning quietly I leaned back in my little wooden chair, hearing things pop in my hips and back. It was time for a break. Trying not to disturb the deathly quiet of the library stacks I slid my books into my backpack and stood up. Then promptly staggered and had to clutch the desk I had been working at to keep from falling down. How long had I been working? I carefully slid my bag on my shoulder and trudged to the elevators. Caffeine, my love, I’m coming for you.

I pushed the down button with the steady repetition of someone with nothing better to do and walked to the door that finally lit up. The doors slid open and I had one foot inside before my eyes processed the image of the scrawny kid screwing together metal tubes.

Oh metal tubes, how interesting, my mind (dulled from weeks of studying for finals) told me. But a second later that other, more intelligent part of my brain woke up and told me what those metal tubes were for.

“Uh…” I said stupidly as we stared at each other, “I’ll just take the next one.” I stepped slowly back from the door.

“No, wait!” He hissed, almost apologetically pointing his mostly assembled weapon in my direction. He screwed what looked to be the last piece on with shaking hands, “Get in.”

I blinked and just walked in next to him. He frantically pushed the up button and started to breathe a little bit steadier as the numbers of the elevator continued to count up. He didn’t even look my way, but as his prisoner I didn’t return the courtesy and looked him over critically. Thin as a rail, wild looking hair, glasses and bad skin; damn what a terrible cliché. Why doesn’t an athletic, gorgeous frat boy ever decide to take out the school with an automatic? The light dinged and the elevator opened to the ninth floor.

“So where next?” I asked casually.

“The stairs. We’re going to the roof.”

“You know they lock that door.” He looked at me in such a heartbroken manner that I couldn’t help adding, “I’m sure you can just shoot the handle off, right?”

“Right.” He looked relieved and we walked to the staircase. I’m pretty sure I could have made a run for it, but a twitchy kid with a gun wasn’t something I wanted to try. And if I got away he would probably follow me, the poor guy didn’t even have a plan.

We got to the locked door and I tried to duck behind him out of the way of any recoil while he shot the lock on the door. Fortunately none hit me; unfortunately none hit him either and we walked out into the sunshine. I stretched in the warm light while the twitchy homicidal boy army-crawled to the edge of the roof with his weapon. I walked over and sat down next to him, leaning against the lip of the roof.

“Do you mind if I get some homework done?” I asked, “I have finals and I really need to study.”

“Fucking finals.” He muttered. I took this as permission and pulled out my books, continuing the process of rewriting my notes for the fifth time.

“Only five times?” he sneered as he scouted the crowds of students below for a victim, “You call that studying?”

“Hey, I do fine.” I said defensively, “and you don’t see me on top of roofs aiming at innocent college students.”

“Innocent?”

“Well, as innocent as college students can be.” I amended.

“Yep, they’re innocent, and they’re going to stay that way. I’m doing them a favor.”

I snorted in disbelief, starting on my Spanish vocabulary

His jaw twitched, “What?”

“Seriously, a favor? How would you know? Have you ever died before?”

“No. But anything’s better than this.”

“Then try everything else. If this anything isn’t your perfection then try another anything.”

He stared at me for a breath, “Wow. Deep.”

“I took philosophy for a while before flunking out. Too much?”

“No, it was good.”

I smiled at the pages in my lap, “So… Did I fix you?”

The corner of his mouth dipped up in a sort-of smile, “No.”

“Damn. You may have to go to an actual therapist.”

“Ha ha.” He said sarcastically. He shifted to sit next to me, pointing the barrel of his gun to the sky. Fluffy white clouds scuttled by in terror, but I felt better about that then students. I tried to watch him while at the same time labeling a detailed drawing of the heart for my anatomy class. He fumbled with the gun, clearly not knowing how to use it. He was trying to point the barrel at himself but he was realizing that his arms were too short. I could see where this was going and tried to appear deeply absorbed in my studying.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?” I replied, nose inches from my scribbles.

“I don’t even know your name, what’s—“

“No.” I cut him off.

He looked confused, “Your name isn’t no.”

“You’re going to ask me to shoot you, the answer is no.”

“But--” I saw the weakening in his resolve, but his face hardened, “No. If you don’t shoot me I’ll shoot you.”

I stuffed my books into my pack, “Okay.”

He looked startled at my abrupt change, “But—“

I stood up and brushed gravel from the back of my legs, “Well I don’t want to die, do I? Give me the gun.”

“Oh.” He scrambled to his feet and handed over his weapon. While I looked it over he paced in front of me, rubbing his mouth and chanting, “Okay, okay, okay, okay—“

“Okay.” I said brightly, “Where do you want it.”

His face (if possible) grew whiter, “What?”

“The head, the chest, or the throat? Or we could just do it everywhere to be sure.”

He swallowed, “The head is good.”

“Okay, head.” I backed up a little and took aim, “You’re sure?”

He nodded, mouth in a firm line, “I’m sure.”

I fired.

The gun clicked and the air whooshed out of him as he collapsed on the ground. But just as suddenly he was up again.

“What happened?” he gasped, touching his head to make sure it was still there, “Am I dead?”

“No.” I looked down at the gun in my arms, “Oh, the safety was on, silly me. Let’s try this again.”

One of his eyes twitched and it looked like he was going to throw up, but he took up position again. I leveled the gun again, double checked that the safety was off, and fired.

Tears poured down his face as the sound blasted across his eardrums.

He curled into the fetal position, hugging his knees to his chest.

“If you feel that way about a test fire, how do you think you’ll like the actual thing?”

He let out a sob and covered his face with his hands, “Just hurry up.”

“Nope.”

He uncovered his face to the sounds of metal clacking, just in time to see his ammo cartridge disappear over the side of the building. I unscrewed another piece and wiped it down briskly before sending it sailing after its friend.

His eyes bulged with horror, “Y—you—“

“Don’t worry, I wiped off the fingerprints, they probably won’t know it was you. Not that you did anything.”

He was the most pitiful, hopeless thing I’d ever seen as he shook on the ground in front of me. I continued tossing pieces over as he rolled and struggled to his feet. He seemed unable to do anything but stare and gape, face turning alternating colors of red and white. When there was nothing but a long, thin barrel left I walked over to where he stood staring over the edge at the students gathering around the scraps of metal.

I tapped him gently on the head with the barrel, “You might want to run. Pretty soon someone will recognize what those metal things are and come up here.”

His hands slid around my wrists and his eyes stared into mine, blank and uncomprehending.

I smiled softly at the little broken boy, “You’ll be fine.” I gripped the metal of the gun barrel in my hands and bent the ends towards each other, molding it into a heart. Gently prying his hands from my wrists I slid the heart over his arm like a big bracelet. He blinked out of his wide eyed stare in surprise, staring at me in confusion.

I smiled and patted him on the head, “See you later.” I bent to scoop up my backpack and sling it over my shoulders.

“Wait.” He croaked, “Who are you?”

“No one.” I walked rapidly to the stairs.

He followed, clutching his metal heart and spitting out questions as fast as he could draw breathe, “What? Who? Where? How?” But when he set foot on the stairs I was gone. He took the stairs two at a time, trying to catch up but he was out of the library before he finally realized that I wasn’t there anymore. He craned his neck, wondering if he had just imagined the whole thing.

“Hey Josh!” someone called, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Ughh?” he replied intelligently

“The physics final is cancelled.”

His heart stopped in his throat, there was no way his worst final was cancelled, it had to be a joke, “No way.”

His friend nodded rapidly, “I know I thought the same thing, but Mr. Yolkavich was hit by a flying piece of metal at the library and had to go to the hospital.”

Josh winced, “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, just a head thing or whatever. But who cares? No final!” And he ran off screaming the good news to any other classmates he could find.

Josh looked down at the bent metal in his hand.

“Thanks.”

-Meghan

Doug: Just who's side are you on?

I'm depressed.

I just around six hours writing a paper about the Second Amendment. I picked the second amendment because I feel passionate about firearms, and think that Americans should have the right to own guns if they feel like it and are responsible citizens.

Turns out that the Second Amendment really doesn't provide any real legal wordage indicating that private citizens have the right to own firearms regardless of participation in state militas. I argued for everything I hate.

Turning in this paper is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done. I almost feel like throwing it in the trash, or permanantly deleting it.

But I can't. I know in my heart that I've presented a logical arguement. And that I'm right. There is no basis for private citizens being protected from state or even federal governments taking away their guns.

But there should be.

And I'm willing to fight for what I think should be a right.

So come get my gun. You're going to have to pry it from my cold dead fingers.

-Doug

"Go ahead. Make my day."
-Clint Eastwood

Meghan: Teapot

This started out as a reply to Sarah's blog but became too long so it is reposted




It's late at night and Sarah is working calmly on her final pottery project. A passing freshman trips over a stray chord and falls onto Sarah's wheel, a hand landing directly on her beautiful teapot. Sarah looks calmly down at the warped remains of her work, then slowly back up to the freshman, who begins to sweat. Just as calmly she picks up her chibi knife and launches herself at the unfortunate clumsy one, slicing and hacking madly. When it is over she squeezes a handful of diced meat over a new lump of clay and begins to mold her project anew.
The next day Sarah’s teacher holds her project up to the light, exclaiming with joy.
“Sarah, how did you get these colors into your clay? It’s beautiful!”
Sarah just smiles widely and licks a spare flick of something reddish from her arm. (After spending all night working in the room there had been no time to go back home and wash off those pesky bloodstains).
In the years that followed Sarah would serve many a pot of tea from her bloody pot. It was always said that those who drunk from it developed a certain craving for meat…



-Meghan

Jasmine: Guy Fawkes Masks

Their faces where ghost-like, drawn thin and long reminiscent of Guy Fawkes masks, but more dead. They beat at me with spider like hands, each blow barely landing, but when their skin touched mine it stole my breath away, and it felt like it was stealing my soul. Little bit by bit sucking my soul through their soft dead fingers. I kicked out at them, and threw punches, and when they landed their faces and knee caps exploded in bloody horror. The villain would fall only to have an identical one replace them. There were always seven. It felt hopeless and I was getting weaker. No longer standing I kicked up at them lying on my back. I was in a narrow alley way that seemed to go on forever, no one there to help me or no one close.

Then I woke up. This was a very unsettling dream I wonder what it means.