Jane is dead

The words had become commonplace among the people of the small town of Liverston. "Jane is dead." No one was quite sure how it had happened. There was a young girl, Jane Simmings, who had gone missing early in the year - she had been on her way home from her school's winter dance as far as anyone was aware, but she had never made it home. The police searched for months for any trace of her, but it was as though she had simply vanished off of the face of the earth.

It was during the summer, while some students were playing on the emptied campus, when the words were discovered. "Jane is dead." Written in white paint on one of the walls, in sloppy, quickly thrown up words, the statement sat, staring them in the face. The students' parents had said that they returned home, faces white as snow, as though they had seen the ghost of Jane Simmings herself. After that, the words had appeared in increasing frequency all over town, always in the same white paint and rushed, sloppy writing. On buildings, sidewalks, and even buses, the words became plastered directly onto the brains of the people. Though there was never any proof, it became almost accepted that Jane was, in fact, dead.

Her parents were heart broken, and haunted daily by the words. While to many other people the words eventually became fact, and almost so frequent as to be funny, to them it was nothing short of a curse. The constant reminder that their daughter had simply vanished, and the assurance that she had long since perished. That there was nothing they could do to save their little girl. That they would never see her face again. While the rest of Liverston moved on, they continued to mourn - they could feel their lives coming undone with each new instance of the phrase.

It was Christmas morning when the Simmings' moved out to their Christmas tree, sluggish and sad, missing the ecstasy of a little girl, excited to see what presents Santa had brought them. They had opened their own presents to one another the night before - they weren't sure that they could handle the memories if they did so on Christmas morning. Yet, under the tree sat a single, small box, wrapped in a red bow, with a letter resting against it, addressed to them both.

They were frightened by it. They had no idea where it had come from, or who could have possibly entered their home to leave it. Frightened, they picked them up together, and opened the letter.

It was a blank, white card. No frills. No features. No words or art on the front. They unfolded it, and inside, in the familiar writing, but with new red letters, read "Jane was dead."

"Was" was new.

They tore the box open, and inside was the necklace that Jane's mother had let her borrow for the Winter dance. And then there were tears.

Reset

King Jonathan's reign had been an impeccable one - in forty years of ruling, not one tragedy had befallen his kingdom, the land had flourished, and the streets ran rampant with gold. The people were happy. The kingdom was rich. They were set to flourish for generations, and while their army was rarely utilized, it was expertly managed. The soldiers were strong and fast, the generals were masterful tacticians, and the few times they had been sent into combat, they had returned victorious and with minimal casualties. Jonathan watched over it all, dictating with remarkable accuracy how the kingdom should be run, ready and willing to change the course of their lives in an instant, but always in such a way that it benefited every member of every class.

His advisors had tried early on to advise his actions, but had learned quickly to take a step back unless asked to speak and let their king do as he will. They watched in awed silence as he ran the kingdom past its limits and into new prosperity that they had never thought possible. At times, they tried to understand his decisions - to analyze the state of the land, the changing winds, the turning of the stars, the ever fluctuating powers of the neighboring kingdoms. But they could never fully understand how he came about his decisions. It was as though he could simply see the future.

Jonathan sat in his throne, staring out the window at his kingdom, deep in thought. He was nearing his sixty second birthday, and he knew that he did not have much time left. His brow furrowed as he stared at the land. His assistant watched on in an uncomfortable silence; the king had never looked so frustrated in all the time they had been together. "Your majesty?" the assistant asked quietly, not wishing to disturb his lord. "Is something wrong?"

The king turned slowly from the window to his assistant, eyes clearly focusing on the man as though they had lost focus only moments ago. "It is still not good enough."

"What is not good enough?"

"My kingdom."

The assistant was taken aback by that. In all of history, no one had ever seen a kingdom so immaculately run. "What is not good enough about your kingdom?" he asked. "What could you have possibly asked for more in your time as king? Your people could not be happier. The soil is rich, and so are you. I have never heard of success so great as yours."

"But it could have been more."

"I... I don't understand, your highness. What could have been better?"

Jonathan shook his head. "I have learned much. It is time to try again."

The assistant went to speak, but then he was gone. Jonathan stood in the blackness of the void, waiting as time rewound. He could feel the grayness leaving his hair, the wrinkles on his face smoothening, his muscles returning. Youth filled him once more, but he remembered his age, and everything he had done in his reign.

A thousand lifetimes in his mind. A thousand kingdoms. A thousand mistakes and successes.

Each better than the last. Eventually his kingdom would be perfect. Infallible. Impenetrable. Immaculate.

But there was still more to be done. To be learned. And to be reset.

Door

Deep within the Bertruvian woods stood a single, oaken door. It was not attached to any tree trunk or stone wall - it stood, solitary and alone, in one of the forest's many groves, standing a dozen feet away from the nearby pond. though many had gone to see it, no one knew how it had gotten there, and any attempts to remove the door from the forest had proven fruitless. Though the ground beneath it was merely dirt, they found it too difficult to dig through, and its frame was lodged firmly in the ground, the wood too strong to break.

Sir Krugen stood before the door, stoically watching for any who might try to pass through it. A number of curious ones had passed through the door, and not a one of them had returned. They did not appear on the other side of the door as they passed through, and the door slid shut silently behind them. Upon reopening, those who had passed through its frame had vanished without a trace. After a number of them had vanished, the king had assigned Krugen to protect the door - or, rather, to protect the people from the door. He had gladly accepted the position, happy to serve his king and kingdom.

It was, admittedly, a dull position. Even before he had been assigned the position, the rate at which people had vanished through the door was low - rumors were exceedingly successful at both stopping people, and encouraging them. But knowing that a knight was protecting the door had lowered visitors even further, and in a month of guarding, he had only turned away a dozen people, most of whom had come within the first week. It had been six days since his last visitor.

He was cooking his dinner - a deer that he had hunted as it passed through the area - when he heard the sound of someone knocking on wood. His eyes turned immediately to the door, thinking that perhaps someone had snuck past him while his attention was turned to his food. But he saw no one. Had they gone through already? Had he just missed them?

And then the knocking came again. He was on his feet in an instant. There was only one possibility, but it went against everything that he understood about the door. No one could come back through the door. No one had ever come through the door at all. They only went through - it was a one way ticket.

Was it really so hard to believe though? It was a magic door, bereft of any structure, through which people simply vanished. Was it truly so hard to believe that someone was coming through from the other side?

Respawn

Julia approached the gravestone, an opened envelope in one hand. Her mother had given it to her a few days ago, saying that she was old enough to learn about the family's strange history, and that she should get out to see it soon. It hadn't really made much sense to her until she had looked in the envelope that she had been gifted. At first she had been confused - she had been to the gravestone of her great great great great great great great grandfather before, and the inscription was one that had been placed as a joke, seeing as before he had gone off to war, he had always loved gaming.

"Here lies Robert Dennings: Hero. Father. Gamer. Respawning in 1..."

It had always read that way for as long as she could remember, which was what made the contents of the envelope so bizarre. In it were pictures taken over the last few hundred years, all of the very gravestone in which her distant relative was buried. And in each picture it said the same - except for the number, which had progressively gotten lower with time. There was no evidence of the tombstone being tampered with. No cracks around the number, no unevenness with how i was carved, no layers having been taken away in order to put in new numbers. They had simply changed, unseen, unaccountably.

She wasn't sure what it meant, or why her mother had encouraged to visit his grave with this newfound knowledge, but even had her mother not said so, she could feel her curiosity edging her onwards. She wanted to know what it meant. And she had the strangest feeling that the sooner she went to find out, the better. It had still taken her a few days, just because his grave was an hour's drive away, and she had a fairly demanding job, but she was there as soon as was possible for her.

Kneeling down before the gravestone, brushing the dirt and dust off of its face with her free hand. It was one of the few graveyards left, and one of the few gravestones left in it. Only because he had been a war hero. Only because they paid for him to stay. The stone was old and the engravings were faded after centuries of slow wear, but she could still so clearly read that "1."

Until, before her very eyes, it changed. It didn't even change to a zero. The last two words simply vanished without a sound, and the grave clearly read "Respawning..."

Then she felt the earth shifting beneath her feet. She jumped back and watched as the gravestone broke clean in two without warning, falling aside as the ground rose, the floor of grass breaking apart and throwing dirt to the wayside.

This was it. Centuries of confusion and anticipation. She thought it had been a joke.

But he was respawning.

Repeat

I understand that this is something that is virtually unavoidable, especially given the purpose of what I am trying to do with my blog, but I find that I often think that I have a good idea, but look back to find that I've already written it out. And I don't just mean a similar idea, because I check that to be sure. But there are times where I've written out an idea I'm having again to the point that I look at it, and the opening sentence I have in mind is staring me straight in the face. It's not just similar. It's literally the same thing.

It's one thing for me to rewrite a blog post, which I have done a few times, but it is another thing entirely to try and come up with a new idea and find that I have already done it. And most of the time, when that happens, I choose not to do a rewrite on it, though perhaps that would be a wiser decision. Generally, however, I choose to do rewrites on stories that I personally enjoy, and that I would like to see done better. Things that I want to flesh out better, or phrase better, so that they might become something that I can make a fuller, realer story out of. And a lot of the time the repeat thoughts I have don't quite match that feeling.

The hardest part about that is that then it gets stuck in my head. I really can't think of anything else to write about because the one idea is already there, and it just keeps repeating itself ad infinitum. It becomes increasingly harder to come up with something to write, because it just gets increasingly more embedded in my head. And eventually I either find something that completely overpowers it, or more frequently, I write a real talk.

Which, surprisingly, is not why I'm writing this one in particular. I just happened to be thinking about it and wanted to talk about it, because it is in fact a problem that I have. And while I was looking at prompts, trying to come up with something to write today, I kept coming across ones that reminded me of stories that I know for a fact I have written before. And I kinda wanted to write something on them, but I didn't just want to write the same thing over. Probably wanted to write them because I had written them before, in fact.

Perhaps I should reevaluate what I do and don't rewrite. I'm not sure. It's something to think about, especially given that editing is the thing I need the most practice in. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Swamp

The early morning fog hung heavy over the swampy water, making the air thick and cool. The sun was barely peeking in over the tree line, but there was just enough light to be able to see clearly, even with the fog. It helped that there wasn't much to see. Mark stood on the end of the pier, looking across the pond at the house he had built a few years prior - it wasn't the most impressive home, clearly being built out of old wood and scrap roof tilings, but it stood up well and kept him warm at night, so he couldn't really complain. It even managed to keep the stink out, as long as he didn't leave the windows or door open in the summer time.

He didn't exactly build the safest path from the pier to his house, on the other hand. It was a series of poles he had dug into the dirt far below the water's surface, sticking out so that he could leap across them from one side to the other. Anyone else would probably never be able to make it across - which, admittedly, was kind of the point - but he had once been a gymnast, in years past. He was small and lightweight, but strong and fast. He had the control and precision to jump from one peg to another consistently and without trouble.

He adjusted the backpack he was wearing to be more comfortable on his shoulders before pulling the hoodie of his jacket over his head. He needed to get some supplies for the week, which meant heading out of the relative safety of his home. He had been able to make a makeshift garden, but it needed to be on the further edge of the swamp in order to have any usable soil to grow anything in. Then he would need to do some hunting, which wouldn't be too hard with the pistol he had tucked into the side of his pants.

He only had to leave the swamp itself every few months, when he ran out of ammo. He was able to make his own, but gunpowder didn't last forever, and he could only reuse certain parts so many times before they simply weren't of any use anymore. Aside from that, he had learned to be entirely self sufficient in the swamp.

Most people wouldn't be content with a life like the one he lead. But he was. He was happier than he had ever been among people, though he couldn't quite explain why. He just knew that he was, and every day he was thankful for his swamp.

Sun

He walked across the burning surface of the sun, not thinking much of the intense heat or nearly intangible plasma surface. For as long as he could remember, he had lived on the surface of the sun, unfazed by its heat, and able to see beyond its wispy flames to the stars and planets in the far distance. He had some vague recollections of words which he could not place a learning to, but that he distinctly knew. Things like Earth, moon, fire, water, and of course, sun.

He knew that he was standing on the sun. He also knew that that should have been impossible. But it was the truth for him, and he had come to accept that. He could remember nothing from before the sun. He did not know if there had ever been a time for him before the sun. He did not even know if he had a name, and he had never given one to himself. He was simply who he was, and that was a man who lived where no man should.

It wasn't a particularly exciting existence, in all honesty. There were not many features on the surface of the sun, and one could only see its solar flares so many times before they grew tired of them. He slept when he felt like it, and he had no need for food or drink - which was fortunate, seeing as there was no food or drink available. There was no one to talk to. Nothing to do but watch the distant planets move.

He could see them with incredible clarity. Of particular interest was Earth, from which he could occasionally watch them send people and objects into space. A piece in the back of his mind hoped that one day they would attempt to send something to the sun, so that they could make contact with him, and perhaps find a way to bring him to their planet. All of the other planets were lifeless. They were simply content to circle endlessly around him. They never changed like the Earth did.

That was why he wanted to go there, of all places. Even from his home, he could see how much the Earth continued to change. The way the people on it were always doing strange things, and how those things could have impacts the world over. The way they worked together to do things. The way the scope of their lives was more than just one ball of mass, unchanging, unturning, unloving.

But he could do nothing to leave. The gravity of the sun was too much for him to so much as jump, much less fly away. He was certain with time he could float through space to reach the Earth. But that required leaving first. And that was the problem.

Moon

Jeremiah sat in the darkness of the night, staring up at the moonlit sky, a thin jacket wrapped loosely around his shoulders. Even in the summer, the late nights would get cold, but not so cold he would have needed a parka, or anything of the like. He sat in his yard, staring at the twinkling lights of the stars, and the single spotlight that was the moon. He couldn't remember how long he had been staring up at that enormous light in the sky - not just that night, but for his entire life. Even as a child, there had just been something about the moon and the way that it hung in the sky that captivated him, and called to him.

It had been three days since he had submitted his application to the space station. He knew that it could potentially take up to a month to respond to him, and that there was no guarantee that he could get the position, but that didn't keep him from thinking about it constantly. The thought of finally achieving his dream of going into space. Of getting to go to the moon. Of not looking at it from earth, but looking back at the earth from it. Knowing that he had traveled so far from home, so far beyond the boundaries of where he was supposed to be, to be in a place where he literally could not even survive, and yet have the equipment and ability to do the impossible.

But there was something more to it than that. Something that he couldn't quite explain. Something about the moon, in its perpetual night time perfection, the way that it was always there right where it should be, the way it always looked exactly the same. The only time it ever changed was when the sun moved around it in strange ways, painting it red or being blocked out by it. But the moon itself was always consistently the same.

It was beautiful. More beautiful than anything on earth. If he could, after he had flown out to the moon, he would settle down there. Make a new home. Spend the rest of his days out there, where things were consistent, and you woke up every day knowing exactly what was going to happen. Where you didn't have to worry about what the people around you might do, because there were no other people. Where you could count on you and only you to get things done, and you always knew exactly what there was left to do.

He stared up at it near every night, longing for the moon. It was the only thing he desired. And, hopefully, sooner rather than later he would be there.

Somebody

Michael watched her from across the club, unable to take his eyes off of her and the way she was moving, the way her eyes and her smile glistened with her every action. He could hear her laugh over all of the other noise, and he was intoxicated by it. He could hear his buddies sitting around him, he knew that they were taunting him for wanting her, but their words never reached his ears. In his mind, he was already walking over there, she was turning to give him that smile, he had some witty one-liner all ready to deliver, he could hear her laughing...

"Dude, she sees you staring at her, ya creep." Those were the first words that got through to him, snapping him out of his daydream to see her looking back at him. "What are ya gonna do now, huh? You look like some drunk bar crawler, I bet. I bet she thinks you're a creepy asshole who just wants to get into her pants." Michael realized just how true those words probably were. He had no idea just how long he had been staring. He was sure that she had probably noticed more than once, and seen just how glued to her he had been. Some kind of drunken fascination that would certainly make him seem like he would do something stupid. 

And then she stood up and started coming toward him, her friends hooting and laughing behind her. He could feel the flames roaring in his face as he blushed hard. He didn't know what to expect. He didn't know what to say. He wanted nothing more than to talk to her, to get to know her, to see that incredible smile pointed in his direction - but not like this. Not with his friends heckling him, not after he had been doing nothing but stare at her all night. He could hear them jeering behind him. He wanted to get up and run away, but her eyes were fixated on him now, locking him in place. He couldn't move. He could barely breath. 

"Hey there," she said. He heard himself say hi back, though he could barely register doing it. "You know, I haven't been in this town for very long. Don't know many people, or where all the good crawls are. This place is alright, but... Lots of guys who just wanna buy you a drink, you know?"

There was a look in her eyes, something about the way she was talking, that made something in him click. "I know somebody who could help you out with that," he said. He could hear the loud oohs and other heckles from his friends, but they were in their own world now. 

"You know a guy?"

"You're looking right in his eyes."

Breaking

It was hard just to hear oneself thinking as people ran in a panic in every direction, screaming their heads off as the earth roared and shook, and began to simply pull apart, tearing the surface apart in jagged lines with no predictable pattern. Dirt and concrete alike were torn like paper, and the people tried as hard as they could to stay out of the line of destruction, but many could not outpace the consuming void, and disappeared into the expanding and gaping hole beneath their feet. The destruction had come without warning. One moment life had been proceeding as usual, and the next, the ground beneath their feet had opened and begun to steal the lives of any unfortunate enough to be in its path.

Those who were not in the path of opening earth watched in terrified wonder as their homes shifted. They could hear glass shattering and wood and stone collapsing as the violent tremors shook loose their possessions and sent them tumbling and shattering to the floor. The buildings of the cities separated, some from each other, and others from themselves. It was hard for them to know just how wide spread the destruction was - whether they had been cursed and only their homes taken so violently away from them, or if it was happening all over the world. But as it continued, the cracks continued on to the horizon, and they could see no end to them.

When the tremors finally came to a cease, and the world once more feel quiet, the people were stunned, unsure of what to do or what to think. Slowly, as one, without speaking a word, those who remained moved toward the massive fissure to peer down and see just how deeply the hole ran. They wanted to see if their homes, possessions, friends and family whom they had lost could still be recovered, even if it would take time.

But when they looked down into the earth, they saw nothing but rock and darkness. The walls of the rift were rough and sharp, but nothing had stuck to them. Everything that had been taken by the abyss had simply vanished far below without a trace, as though they had never existed in the first place. Across the rift were other people doing the same, and they looked up to see the other's glancing back. Any bridge that had been there previously was gone, and the hole was far too wide and deep to build a new one. Any friends and family they had on the other side were gone.

Wife

Jenna looked at herself in the mirror, carefully considering her appearance. She had never been much of a fan of "dressing to impress" as some of her girlfriends liked to call it - with the low cut top and barely anything below the waist - but she also knew that her husband was an easy man to please, and easily distracted. And she had a request of him that she knew he wouldn't normally agree with. So if she wanted to have him actually agree with her, perhaps dressing down a little would be the way to do it. Besides, they had been married for three years. It wasn't like she was showing him anything he hadn't seen already.

She strode into the bedroom with what she hoped would come across as a sultry movement in her hips. Her husband looked up at her from his book when he heard her footsteps, and she could see his eyes light up the moment they laid on her. She tried her best not to blush. She watched as the smile grew on his face before he set his book aside, forgetting to even bookmark his page, and made space for her on the bed. But rather than sit beside him, she crawled across the bed and into his lap.

"Well hello there," he muttered, his arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her closer to him. She rested both of her hands on his chest, feeling the muscle under her hands and trying to stay focused. Jenna hadn't really thought through the possibility that she would be just as distracted as her husband when doing this. She thought about what she was wearing and how he was looking at her, and she could feel her brain starting to melt. "What's the occasion, and how can I make it happen more often?" he asked.

Jenna looked her husband in the eyes, almost unaware of the fact that her hands were slowly sliding up and down his chest. "I was thinking..." she whispered, before gently biting her lower lip, like her girlfriends had advised - they said it would drive him crazy, and she could tell they were right. "This house is so small and cramped, I just don't know..." The conflict was there in his eyes. He was torn between his discomfort with the thought of buying a new house, and the thin dress that was the only thing standing between them.

She shrugged her shoulder, and one of the thin shoulder strap slipped down her arm, threatening to fall off. That conflict in his eyes immediately began to melt away. "And I know this place a few miles down the road... It's just off of the beach..." She knew he knew what she was thinking of. He knew how much it would cost, too. Before he could even open his mouth to speak, the other shoulder strap was sliding down her arm, and then there was nothing that could stand between them.

A team

I've written before about how I'm not particularly fond of - or good at - writing a story with a myriad of characters involved, and I think part of that is probably because I've never been much of a team player. It's not necessarily because I don't like people, or that I don't trust them - although it would be hard to argue that either of those statements are untrue. It's really more of just that I want to be able to prove that I can do things. I was raised for a long time being constantly told that I was the leader. My family told me that. My friends told me that. And I would argue that I wasn't, but I think that that seed got planted in my head and started to take root regardless, and so it was hard for me to admit to being the guy who needed help, cause I was supposed to be the one helping those around me.

Like many things, this was something I realized a long time ago, but never really did anything about. I never had a reason to. It never seemed to be a problem. It's kinda funny how small stuff like that goes into the rest of your life and comes up in weird places. I spent a long time thinking that my writing was simply better than a lot of other people's. I'm not really proud to admit that, but it's true. I had this belief that I was going to be one of the great writers, and that I would sell the next great best-selling novel, so on and so forth.

I think writing this blog was really the wake up call on that. Much of my writing here is just bad. I'm not afraid to admit that. It's horrendous. But I do think that it has gotten better since I've started writing here, and I think that helps me to look back and realize some of the mistakes that I've made. And that helps me connect the dots - even if it's in really weird ways.

The thing that got me thinking on teamwork in particular was video games. Particularly the recent hit, Overwatch, which I have begun to get into. And that game is heavily based on teamwork, and having played several hours with teams who were even worse at the game then I was, I started to realize that it didn't matter how good I was at it if the people around me weren't. Which is funny, because I've played other games that heavily encourage teamwork, and I've played them by myself. Especially Monster Hunter. But with time, I've found that it's just not as fun unless you really get a good team going.

And I think that's pretty true with stories as well. I may be able to tell a story with a minimal number of characters, but it's going to feel pretty empty and restricted. So while it may be difficult and uncomfortable for me, I probably should spend some time figuring out how to involve more characters in my stories. Figure out how to make them interact in ways to inject more character into the world, and give more context to the events unfolding.

But god damn am I gonna have to keep a reference sheet in order to do that. I forget how to spell my main characters' names if I walk away from a story for too long.

Scouts

I don't really remember joining scouts in the first place. I mean, I know how it happened - I've heard the story multiple times - but I don't really remember it. I just remember being in it at one point. And when I was in cub scouts, being about eight years old when I first joined, none of it really had that much impact on me. On occasion dad would have me get dressed up in my little uniform and we would go out to the school for a meeting, or to someone's house, and on rare occasions we would actually go somewhere like a museum or a fire department. In the summer we would go to some park and get to do a few actually interesting things, like shooting bb guns or doing archery.

When I got to the end of cub scouts, and people around me were getting ready to go into boy scouts, I didn't really see the appeal. I had never been all that big a fan of scouts and the things we did in them. Some of the other kids were ok, but I wasn't great friends with them or anything. It mostly just seemed like a place to go to spend time, and I was always a gamer, so I would have much rather been spending that time playing games. Hell, there were some nights that I kept playing my games even at the meeting.

That was one of the only times in my life that my dad really pushed me to do something. For the most part, he's let me make my decisions, and deal with their consequences. But my dad did everything in his power to convince me to join boy scouts, to the point that he had me talk to one of my friend's older brother, who was in scouts. And eventually I succumbed and I joined, though I will freely admit that I wasn't overly enthused about the idea.

The boy scouts changed my life. Everything that I do today can, in some way, be tied back to the boy scouts. All of my passions, all of my hobbies, all of the people that I know. I learned about National Novel Writing Month from a friend in scouts. I joined martial arts because of a guest speaker we had at scouts. I discovered lacrosse because they were having a scout night. My guitar teacher was a teacher of another friend from scouts. And everything since has off shoot from that - I met my girlfriend through that guitar teacher, for one.

I learned to love the outdoors. I learned to love helping people. I learned to be a leader. I learned to make friends. I learned to be honest, to work hard, and to never give up. All lessons that I forget at times, but that help define who I am. I literally would not be who I am without the scouts.

It's been a few years since I was really involved. I've fallen out of going outdoors, and camping, and hiking, and experiencing new things almost every other weekend. That's something I need to get back to. It can get tiring, but those kinds of things can really help to give your life focus and meaning. And I could really use some of that from time to time.

Train ride

The train chugged steadily along as the tracks transitioned its passengers from their regular city lives into the wooded outskirts of civilization. Jack rested his chin on his head as he looked out the window to watch the transition happen. It was always interesting to him to see how quickly the landscape went from buildings to trees. Perhaps things had been intentionally left that way along the train tracks, or perhaps it was just around the city that he lived in. But the change was near instant, and it always amazed him how that could even happen.

Sarah sat beside him, less interested in the scenery, and more interested in her book. She was combing over it with her pen, frequently writing notes to herself in the margins, crossing out words, making edits. It was a proof copy of a book she had been writing for years that she used for editing, which the train ride was a good opportunity for. It would take three hours for them to reach their destination, and the relaxed atmosphere of the train and its rocking motions put her in a mood for reading and writing.

When Jack had grown satisfied with watching the trees he leaned back into his seat and put an arm around Sarah, pulling her to his side. Without a word, Sarah turned in her seat to rest her head against his chest, her face still buried in her book, her pen still scritching away at the words on the pages. Jack rested his head back against his seat and closed his eyes, perfectly content to take a nap for the next hour or two.

They had been married for three years. Sarah had started her book the year they started dating, which was four years before their marriage. Jack had always supported her writing, constantly encouraging her and getting her to push onwards even when she didn't want to, but he had yet to read any of it. Not for lack of desire - in the beginning, he had frequently asked to read what she had written - but because she was always so self conscious about her writing. She didn't want to share her work. Not until it was done, and perfect. That was why it had taken her so long just to write a first draft. She would likely be editing that draft alone for a year, and who knew how many drafts of it she would go through before it was done.

But Jack had gotten her to promise that he would be the first one to get to read it when it was done, and he had long since become satisfied with that. He felt no need to try and peer over her shoulder as she was working, because he knew that it would only make it harder for her to work, and he knew that someday he would get to read it in its best state. And she had long since become comfortable with him even being there when she was working. They had spent many a night, with him watching tv, and her sitting in his lap writing as he did so.

It was a comfortable thing. They didn't live a fast life. And that was why they took the train.

Speedrun

Speedruns aren't exactly an overly popular thing, even among the only group of people that the concept of is applicable to - gamers - but it's something that many people get into once they learn about it. Whether it's just watching speedruns or attempting to complete them, there's just something about the idea of completing a video game as fast as humanly possible that, when you love games, it's just hard not to love the idea of.

Personally, I learned about speedruns a few years ago, and I've been watching them avidly ever since. I love seeing the way people intentionally play the game wrong, trying to find the ways that the game world is broken, where its seams just don't meet up properly, and where its mechanics let them do unintentional things. The way they take what they learn and apply it to weird and unexpected places that lets them just shatter the reality of the game. And then seeing the consequences of those actions. And some games even get to the point where they become so fast, and so uninteresting in how fast they are, that people will intentionally slow them down so as to actually experience the game while going through it as fast as possible.

Personally, I've never attempted to speedrun a game. If I did, I'm not sure what game I would even want to start with. The games that I normally like to play have extensively long speedruns - still shorter than playing the game normally, granted, but given that you're going to be sitting in one spot for the entire run, I want to avoid my inevitable need to go to the bathroom from stopping me halfway through a five hour run. Plus, I'm not much of one to intake something more than once, and when speedrunning, you're going to be playing through the game likely hundreds of times within the span of a month, and I just don't know that I can stand the same content that many times.

And yet some people out there will run the same fifteen hour run over and over and over for months on end until they have it perfected. And I love those people, because I love watching those kinds of runs and seeing how crazy stuff can get. I love that people can know the game so well that they know when they can afford to walk away, to eat, to go to the bathroom. The amount of practice, knowledge, and muscle memory that these runners possess is staggering, and it's easy to be jealous of that.

And the coolest part is that most of them aren't even doing it just to be the best in the world. They just want to see what the best in the world can be. So they're not mad when someone beats their record. They're excited. They're inspired. It's such a community effort, rather than the effort of a single person, and that's such a unique thing to have in, realistically, a competitive setting. It doesn't make sense, but it's there, and you're gonna be hard pressed to find that anywhere else.

Lonely knight

Marrana rode through the wasteland which had once been her home, horse and rider both remaining dressed in their kingdom's colors, though their kingdom had not stood for a great many years. The bright, blood red style of their outfits stood out amongst the vivid green backdrop of their grown over lands. Those who had attacked them all those years ago had not been looking to expand - merely to stop the onward progression that her king had desired. But while some of her fellow knights had turned against their king in the onslaught, taking the promise of a new life from their invaders, she had remained loyal until the very end. And while her king's end had come at the end of that attack, hers had not.

She had been forced to evacuate her home, her family, and everything she had ever known, lest she be tore apart by their attackers. She suspected she may have been the only one to have managed doing so, however. She had lived on her own since then, surviving off of the land without the aid of another human being. She avoided contact as much as possible. She knew that the colors she continued to wear had become a symbol of plague amongst the other kingdoms. But she had loved her kingdom, her people, and her king - perhaps more than she had any right to. And so she chose to reject what society asked of her, and maintained her loyalty, long after she had lost anything to be loyal to.

Although it only painted a larger target on her back, she was glad that she had grabbed one of their flags during her escape. She had witnessed the flags left behind being burnt as a sign to anyone watching that her kingdom had been burnt to the ground. She was the last remaining remnant of what had once been a mighty and powerful kingdom, which had governed its people well and done all in its power to give them the land and resources it needed to flourish. It had not been her king's fault that doing that meant taking that land and those resources from other kingdoms. That was merely the way of the world.

She stood in what had once been her king's throne room nearly four hundred years earlier and saw around her only trees, grass, and bushes growing without control. The greenery had erupted through what was left of the stone hallways and architecture and overtaken it. The walls and ceiling had been utterly crushed and decimated by catapults during the attack. Even now, she could recall it all in horrific clarity.

Gently she nudged her horse forward. There was still ground yet left to cover for the day. She had never been much of one for daydreams and fantasy.

Hanging

The pull of the lever was accompanied by the loud cranking sound of gears turning below the platform, then the large snap as the hook holding the latch below him shut flew out of place, opening a gap into which Matthew fell only halfway before the rope around his neck reached its full length, tightening around his throat and snapping his neck. He made no move to struggle - he glared at the audience who had come to watch him die as he was denied oxygen. He knew they had heard the bones in his neck snapping. He knew they knew he was dying. But he would not give them the privilege of enjoying it.

By the five minute mark, Matthew had lost consciousness. His eyes could no longer remain open. After ten minutes, most of the audience had left - they were satisfied that their hanged man was dead. But the guards and officials waited another ten minutes, a total of twenty, before they were satisfied that the man was dead. They had convicted him for the murder of several high ranking government officials, and they had made public his deeds before they had sent him to the rope. They wanted the people to know that this man who threatened their very way of life would no longer be alive.

They sent one guard forward to check his pulse, who reported back that there was none. Satisfied, they resealed the hole through which he had fallen and cut him down, watching his lifeless body collapse to the ground and fold in on itself. But when they approached the body to remove him, he put out his hands and lifted himself back onto his feet.

The men froze as they watched his lifeless corpse move. They were certain that he had died on the rope. There was no way that he could have survived. He had not breath. He had not heartbeat. And yet here he stood before them, standing tall once more, the severed rope still around his neck, which was crocked slightly to one side after the bone supporting his head had snapped.

Matthew stood up as the air rushed back into him. He could feel the rope still tight around his neck, and reached up to loosen it, slipping his fingers knowingly into the knot and tugging on it to pull the rope loose. It had not been the first time he had been hung. It would not be the last.

Though, he supposed, the broken neck may take some time to heal.

Dragon's spirit

Corvan watched as the king stood from his throne, unable to act freely thanks to the guards over looking him. He had come to challenge the king for that very throne, but he could not strike as long as there were two heavily armed and protected warriors standing on each side of him. The king looked down on him, the look in his eyes clearly saying that he found Corvan's challenge amusing, rather than intimidating. That only made Corvan's scowl grow heavier.

"You come to challenge me, the king, with not but a bow and a single arrow as your weapon?" The mockery in the king's voice was thick, but Corvan knew better than to speak up now. Let the king have his moment of superiority. It would not last long. "Do you know how much work and pain goes into being a king, son? How many conflicts I sit and agonize over in a single day? How every single tiny action I make affects the lives of thousands of people under my rule? Do you really think that, even if you could defeat me with your puny arsenal, you would have the fortitude to take this position? I would like to see you try."

"Then is that an acceptance of my challenge?" Corvan's voice was controlled, flat, withholding the anger that he felt in his breast to the best of his ability. He remained on his one knee as he had been commanded, but he did not bow his head. He looked the king directly in the eyes as he spoke. He would not show weakness. Respect, yes. But not conformity. Not weakness.

The king looked back at him, eyeing him up and taking in his stature for the first time. "Yes," he said after a pause. "Yes, I do." Almost immediately, a servant approached with the king's sword and shield, which he took and equipped, slipping the shield onto his right arm, and flicking the sheath off his blade in the left.

Corvan stood as the guards withdrew, pulling his bow from his back and taking his arrow between his fingers, ready for knocking. He watched the king prepare as he slipped the sleeve off of his right arm, revealing a long and winding dragoon tattoo that extended from his chest and down to his fingers. The king smiled coyly when he saw it. "Is this your battle armor?" he asked mockingly. "To reveal your skin and make you easier to cut?"

Corvan knocked his arrow and drew back, arrow aimed directly at the king's heart. The king smiled and raised his shield to protect himself, but Corvan's aim did not change. "I call upon the dragon's spirit." The words were out of his mouth, and his tattoo burned like fire, a bright blue flame on his arm rising up and engulfing his arrow before it shot forth, sticking in the king's shield. He could see the king's eyes light up in fear for the first time for a moment before he realized that the arrow had still stuck in his shield. He went to drop his shield and mock once more.

And then the dragon's spirit was there before him, and collapsed over him.

Titan

Trenor reached the turn on the mountain path and came to a halt, taking a much needed break to lighten the load on his back and get some water back in his system. It was a long and arduous hike, but it was one that he enjoyed making from time to time. There were never very many travelers on the trail, especially the further along he got. There were very few people who had the time, strength, or willpower to take a hike like this one. The trail was narrow, with nothing to protect oneself from falling down the mountain side, inevitably ending in one's death from the sheer distance alone, not to count the number of jagged rocky edges and trees one would hit on the way down. At a massive twenty miles one direction, it could not be easily covered in a weekend, much less used as a day hike, and the altitude gain was immense.

But for views like the one Trenor now witnessed, it was hard to argue becoming possible to complete. And once having seen such a sight, it was difficult not to want to return from time to time, if for no other reason than to assure one's self it had not been a dream.

Across from his own mountain stood another, hidden away among a circle of mountains and extending well above the clouds, which he now stood above as well. And from the top of those clouds extended what could only be considered the impossible - the massive skeleton of a titan killed long ago, whose flesh and muscles had long since corroded and been torn away, leaving only the bone behind, and the blade that had pierced its chest and killed it still stuck in the stony pillar. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that time had not been kind to that titan - its bones had corroded as well, and were breaking away thanks to the icy weather of winter that was setting it.

It was hard to say just how long it had been since the titan had been slain. Titans had not been seen on Earth for as long as the history books could recall, though there were a religious few who still believed that once their home had been inhabited by such creatures larger than anything mankind had ever known. Very few were lucky enough as Trenor was to have seen proof that such monsters had once existed. And seeing the craftsmanship of the killing weapon, it was humorous to him to see just how similarly the two races had advanced in terms of craftsmanship.

He had yet to see a living titan. He was not sure if he ever would. But seeing this skeleton gave him an odd sense of peace and satisfaction, which was why he chose to return every few months, just to be sure that he hadn't just been losing his mind from the altitude. But again and again he witnessed the long forgotten corpse. And he knew that there was more to life on their planet than anyone could imagine.

Prisoner

Darren was silent as he allowed himself to be lead through the halls of the prison, not bothering to glance around to see how his cellmates would be. The shackles around his wrists were heavy, made of thick solid steel, but he could barely feel them. He would say nothing about it - he was much stronger than they were giving him credit for. The shackles, meant to bind him and weigh him down, were lighter than the weights he wore regularly at home. Even with the extras connected to his neck and ankles all combined together could not compare to the weight that he wore on a single wrist on a daily basis.

He sat in his cell without complaint, his eyes fixated on the security guards as they backed out of his cell and locked it shut. He watched them place the key on a wall far from any of the cells, behind a door that was also locked from the other side, and those keys were kept on the hand of the head of security. That was a man who came down into the cells purely for the purpose of unlocking those doors and looking in on his prisoners with disdain. Darren suspected he would never even see that look.

It was late in the evening when he was imprisoned, and he waited patiently for the sun to finish setting. The other prisoners yelled and mocked him, but he paid them no mind. They would only be keeping him company for so long. Eventually their voices grew quiet as they fell asleep, and when there was nothing  but the sound of breathing in the air, he finally stood up from his bed.

His muscles bulged as he tore his arms apart, breaking the chains on his shackles without much difficulty. He broke them off his wrists, then from around his neck, and finally off of his ankles. He dropped the heavy steel components to the ground, letting them clang loudly against the cold, concrete flooring. He wasn't too concerned at this point about waking his neighbors or alerting the guards. They couldn't do much about him escaping when they realized that he could simply bend the bars in front of him and make his way out.

He stepped out into the hallway as he discarded the orange jumpsuit that they had provided for him. It simply wasn't his style. He strode confidently down the hall, naked as the day he was born, proudly displaying the massive muscles that had allowed him to escape without trouble. He reached the door and simply tore it off of its hinges.

They had severely underestimated him.

Game over?

Aval's legs gave way underneath him as he attempted to run and he collapsed to the ground, feeling his knee crack as it slammed into the hard, wet stone. Blood splattered on the ground below him as he coughed. He could practically see the life running out of him, being washed away by the rain as it poured down over him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the beast that had done this to him advancing on him ever more.

It was hard to describe its form - harder still to say if that was because it was such a strange beast, or if it was merely his mind and his eyes fading. He could swear that the monster was a swirling mass of long tentacles acting as limbs, with glowing red lights in the center of it like eyes staring through his soul. He didn't think it had even touched him. Just its presence had been like a mass slamming against him, tearing him apart from the inside out.

The streets had been oddly empty that night, as though the people of the town were aware that leaving their houses would be the end of them, but no one had warned Aval. Even the street lamps had been extinguished, so the only light available was that provided by the full moon, though it was hidden behind the rain clouds. The creature slid along the stone street, tentacles passing over the walls, but it left no evidence that it had ever been there. As powerful as it was, it almost didn't exist.

Watching it advance towards him, Aval could practically feel that his life was over. There was nowhere left for him to go, no means of escape. No one who could come to save him. If he couldn't do anything, he would die, and there was a good chance that no one would ever know how or why, or possibly even acknowledge that it had happened.

His hand shook as he pulled the revolver out of its frog on his hip, drawing his last bullet out of his coat pocket. It was a powerful weapon, with which he had obliterated a number of invaders in his home in a single shot. He slid the bullet into a chamber and shut the revolver, spinning it into place to fire. He aimed it shakily at the red lights that were the monsters eyes. One shot. One kill. That was all it would take.

He just had to get lucky enough that it actually hit, and didn't just phase through and burrow itself into a wall.

He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The bang was ear shattering, and the butt of the gun slammed into his chest as the recoil flung it back into him. And in the next instance there was silence.

He was too afraid to look and see if he would get to live.

Stealing

Treton slipped silently in through the open window, the wraps around his feet bound carefully to minimize the amount of sound he would make when doing so. It was the dead of night, and he had been patiently watching the house, waiting for the lights to go out, and then waiting another hour to make sure that the inhabitants had in fact fallen asleep. It wasn't a difficult thing to do - he had been sitting on a bench in the park just across the street, reading a book his brother had lent him and glancing up every fifteen minutes to see how the house was doing.

He had been eyeing this house for some time. He had noticed it one night when he was patrolling the town, several windows remaining open to let in the cool air after a hot summer day. He checked it repeatedly over the course of a month, and without fail, the windows would remain open throughout the night. From within, he could hear the familiar voices, quietly talking and gossiping, and he could hear the displeasure many of them had. He couldn't have asked for an easier target.

The only problem was finding the unhappy ones. He carefully pulled his long hair that he normally wore straight back and into a ponytail, uncovering his ears so that he could better listen. It wasn't much of a barrier, but it did the job of making those small, nearly silent voices even quieter for most of the day, allowing him to function normally. But now he needed to go thieving, and for that he needed to listen.

He softly ran his fingers over the cabinets and drawers, listening to the discussions of the belongings inside of them, listening for which of them dreaded a person's approach. Those were the ones he would steal. The ones that were dissatisfied with their owners and begged for someone to come and steal them in the night so that they could have a better chance at their master. He pulled out a smart phone, a couple gaming systems, several pieces of silverware, and from the wife's bedside table, two different dildos, each wanting freedom from... He was used to hearing about that at this point.

He placed them into a bag on his back that he had customized several years ago to have dozens of different pockets. Into each pocket went a different stolen item, letting him carry them more carefully, meaning they wouldn't scream at him quite so much as he snatched them away. The first year or so of thievery had taught him that little trick.

The final piece was the tv. It was a somewhat older model - table mounted and square, with some depth to it. And a couple dents on the top from someone pounding their fist against it in frustration. He went to it and whispered for it to wait, that he would be back. He needed to pull his car around to the front in order to collect that particular piece of furniture. It was much too large to carry out entirely by hand.

The keys made no complaint as he unlocked the front door and slipped back outside. That was fortunate. Most keys he had to deal with somehow managed to be the loudest things in the house. He walked calmly around the corner and retrieved his car. He had been caught a few times early on because he had been in a rush. It brought too much attention. Another lesson well learned.

He lifted the tv up carefully after pulling its cables loose and heaved it out the front door. Tvs had always been the most difficult things to steal thanks to their weight, but he had grown accustomed to it. It was funny what kind of muscles you built being a thief. Carefully he slid it into the back seat, went back and locked the front door, then drove off. He didn't have to worry about security cameras. He had already made a deal with them.

Burn

Steve lifted the pile of dirty clothes with a grin on his face, carrying them out of his room where they had been piling up in a corner, and out into his backyard. He had cleared out a space on his patio with plenty of room around it, and in the center placed the old bowl that he had once called a fire pit. It was rusted out plate for all intents and purposes, and it hadn't stored any firewood for years, because the rust put it in danger of burning out. He had always been too lazy to get rid of it, and now he was glad he hadn't, because it would be able to serve him one last time.

He dumped the clothes into the bowl, trying to contain the gleeful squeal that wanted to erupt from his lips, and pulled out his phone to snap a picture of the scene. He wanted to make sure to document the process he was about to go through. He was going to remember this for the rest of his life, but he wanted to make sure that he never forgot exactly what it looked like.

That day had been his last day at his job. A day that he had worked day in and day out without fail, always serving customers with a smile, always greeting each and every one of his coworkers as they walked past, and secretly hating every moment of his life while he did it. That job had slowly drained every once of power and life from his soul, and he had withered away, but it had paid him well and he needed the money. But he had been wise. Wise enough to put as much of that money away as he possibly could, building his savings and letting his interest build. He bought only the things he absolutely needed up until he could live comfortably on those savings alone for at least a year. And then he put in his two week notice, claiming to have accepted another job elsewhere, and counted down the days until he was done.

He would get another job eventually. Maybe one that didn't pay quite as well, but one where he would feel like he could at least be alive on the inside. But he needed at least a month to himself, to rebuild the spark of life that he had lost in his years there. And he intended to start that spark with another kind of spark.

The gasoline flowed freely over the clothes, soaking into the fabric and pooling at the bottom of the fire bowl, all while Steve frequently snapped pictures. His face hurt from how much he was smiling. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so joyous, and he hadn't even gotten to the best part. He had started just at sunset, and he sat down and waited a bit for the sky to grow dark, soaking in the feeling of freedom that had so long eluded him.

And then he lit the match, and tossed it into the pit, and watched as the flames erupted around his work clothes, consuming them, never to be worn again.

Fisherman

Michael waded out into the water, his box of bait sitting on a small flotation device attached to his hip, and his fishing rod in hand, the first piece of bait already attached to the hook and ready to be cast. It was a quiet day out on the lake, not a cloud in the sky or a breeze in the air - a perfect day for fishing. He couldn't help but smile as he flicked his wrist, flinging his line through the air and into the deeper water a dozen feet away, feeling the weight of the line settle as the hook sank below the surface, its floater keeping it from touching the lake floor. And then he single most prevalent part of the act - waiting.

Hours passed as he slowly pulled fish from below the water's surface, one by one, feeling their weight in his hands as they wriggled and shook, trying desperately to get back to the water, until they dried out and the life faded from their eyes. The he tossed them into an ice chest he had strapped to his back, weighted in the front to keep him from losing his balance, put on some new bait, and cast again.

Years of fishing in this manner had built his muscles well. His legs were strong, unfazed by the hours of standing in one spot, and his shoulders were broad and muscular, well accustomed to the weight placed on his back. He may be sore the next morning, certainly, but as long as it didn't bother him until then, he could fish happily in peace, knowing that the fish that he caught would keep him fed for the next week or two. But it wasn't just about survival. He thoroughly enjoyed the peace and quiet in the day, and the strain on his arms that it took to wrestle the fish from the water.

His mind would wander as he waited for the familiar tug of a fish on the line. He would think about how long he had been out in the water, and how long it would take to clean and gut how many fish he had caught, and how he was going to cook them all. He would think about what supplies he would need to buy when he traveled back into town. And he would think about what kind of stories he would write in the time remaining. His books were where his income came from. They were what let him live the life that let him spend so much of his time fishing. They may not be best sellers, but they let him make due. He didn't need much.

The sun was setting when he finally backed out of the water, lifting the ice chest from his back as he reached the shore to count how many fish he had caught - just to be sure. A dozen and a half fish, all of decent size. That would keep him going for a while, at least. It gave him time to get some new bait, to be sure. He lifted it up once more and carried it back to his truck, a smile on his face. It had been a good day.

Happiness

Matt slammed his fists into his punching bag again and again, rocking the chain that was holding it up  nearly out of its holster. He could feel the strain in his muscles as they cried out, exhausted from their extended use, throbbing in pain as he continued to strike unrelentingly at the leather bag. His breath was hard and heavy, sweat dripping from his upper body, and it was only when his foot slipped and his fist flung past the bag that he stopped. He rested against the bag, wrapping his arms around it to hold himself up. Each twist of his torso, each shifting of his weight, had born his weight upon his knees, and he could barely hold himself up anymore.

He pushed off of the bag after a minute and stumbled to his bench, falling onto it and leaning against the wall in order to catch his breath. He ripped the boxing gloves off of his hands to see how badly he had torn his knuckles. They were bleeding fairly heavily, red streaking down his hands, the spread only aided by the heavy amount of sweat running down him as well. He sighed and grabbed his wraps, pulling them tight around his knuckles and tying them down. He knew he should get a first aid kit and clean them out better, but he was not in the mood. He'd much rather get to the bag.

But he was stopped when he went to stand by a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see his girlfriend, Sierra, looking down at him, a frown on her face. Without a word he nodded and sighed, leaning back against the wall once again as she sat down beside him. "Are you ok, Matt?" she asked, resting one hand gently on top of his own. He could just barely feel her fingers over the wraps. "I know work's been hard lately, but you don't have to go hurting yourself because of it."

Matt sighed and looked down at his hands. He could already see the blood bleeding through his wraps, and he knew that going on with the bag would only cause more damage. "Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" he asked quietly. "Working this job? I mean, it pays alright, sure, but it's driving me crazy. It makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing with my life."

"You know you can always find another job, honey. This one pays you well, sure, but it's certainly not the best one you could be working."

"But it's stable. I know what I'm getting into. I know I can do the work. It just frustrates me, doing the same thing day in and day out, and never getting any recognition or appreciation for it. I don't feel happy there."

"Then get out. You need happiness in your life, sweetie."

He looked up at her, saw the way she was looking down at him, the worry in her eyes. "Why can't having you be happiness enough?"

She smiled softly at him and stroked his hair. "Because I can't relieve all of your stress all of the time."

He sighed. "I know. I know."

Journal

When I was a kid, I had a lot of problems - not like health problems or diagnosable stuff, just problems - and one of the recommendations I was given to try and tame them was to write a journal. I don't know if I was advised to do this because they knew I was a writer, or because it was just the thing to recommend, but something about it clicked and it was something I decided to do. They also suggested that I share it with someone from time to time, and what I decided instead was to write them specifically to my then girlfriend.

I don't know whether or not writing these actually helped, but it certainly felt at times as though it did. Sometimes I would write up to three journals in a single day, and sometimes I would go weeks without writing one. I would write when I was angry, upset, sad, or happy. I would write about whatever was on my mind, and I didn't much worry about whether my writing was any good or not. My goal was simply to get my thoughts down, to think through them and to try and explain myself and why I felt the way I did about certain things. I tried to explain who I was. I tried to explain why I was.

I stopped doing that several years ago, and I haven't much thought about it since. It seemed weird to still be writing them when I was no longer dating the person to whom I was writing them. But lately I've been wondering if I should get back into writing them, because I've been struggling with my thoughts and trying to understand things about myself. The problem is that I don't want something like that to be public like my blog is - I definitely wouldn't write any and put them on here. They wouldn't be about good writing, or length, or anything other than what I'm thinking. And I write that kinda stuff here sometimes, sure, like I am now. But when I wrote journals, they contained things that I don't feel comfortable sharing. Things about who I am and what I think about in my most private moments.

But I would still want someone to read them. Having someone to talk to about what's going on has always been of great help to me, though I don't think I wanted to admit that until recently. It's just not who I've always thought of myself as being, but it's who I really am. But I don't know that I would feel comfortable sharing them with my current girlfriend, because of how involved she would be in them, and I wouldn't want to share them with some of my other friends for the same reason. Which kind of puts me at a standstill.

But writing is good. It is good for me. It makes me happy. It makes me feel like I'm doing the kind of thing that I was born to do, when so many other things feel like what I am supposed to do, but don't necessarily want to or should enjoy as much. Writing feels right. And if I can apply tha tto the things that feel wrong, well, maybe that's what I should be doing.

Executioner

Jarleen flipped the switch and watched as the man in the electric chair was fried from the inside out, his brain turned to mush, and his internal organs turned to crisps. He felt the rush enter him, like countless times before, as the man simply ceased to be. He had taken countless lives in his time - all legally, unlike those he killed - and he would take countless more. Many rulers had come and gone in his time, and he served under them loyally - but when the time came, if they were not loyal to their people, he had taken their lives all the same.

But there were fewer lives to taken now a days then once there had been, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Jarleen knew that that meant his days would become numbered. As more of the populace became opposed to the idea of the death penalty as it was now called, the criteria for a person being sent to their death became more specific, and a smaller number of people were being sent to him. The executioners role would last perhaps a hundred more years at most. What he would do after that time would become uncertain.

He watched as the corpse was carried away from him, and felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder. He needed not look to see who it was. "Jarleen, my friend," the president said, "how many years have you been alive now?"

"I turn 17,622 in four months, sir," he stated flatly. "I have served as an executioner since I was 43 years old."

"How do you keep track of that? Having been alive so long... All the lives you must have taken."

"I am an executioner, sir. It is what I do. But there is not a day that goes by that I do not count."

"So if I were to ask you today how much longer you will stay alive?"

Jarleen shrugged. "I take the remaining life of those I kill, sir. As do you, should you be put in that position. But to say how long each man should live is beyond our capabilities. I could kill a sixty year old and get thirty more years from him, or a twenty year old and only get five. It is impossible to say. But given how long I have lived, and how many I have killed in each year, it is safe to say I will live a good while longer yet."

The president nodded to himself. "You are a good man, Jarleen. We are fortunate to have had you for so long."

Only then did he turn to look at the man. "When you serve as executioner, you learn not to be the one in the chair."

Finally, Death

The final horseman sat on his horse, over looking the continent that his brothers and sister had started their journeys upon. Each had been tasked with setting upon the Earth and bringing about its end in their own, unique ways, and each had done so. But this horseman, dressed all in black upon a pale horse which barely looked strong enough to stand, found their ways childish and slow. They toyed with their victims, making them feel and experience things before their rather timely demise. But he would not wait for that.

With a click of his heels, his horse descended the steep cliffside, its legs scorching the earth as they rode, and from his back he drew his scythe. It reached far and low, its tip piercing the ground as he held it to his side, and he could hear the sounds of the local wildlife taking their last breaths and falling to the wayside. As he cut into the ground, he cut at the very life force of the planet - his family caused chaos, but he brought the final punishment. If they were to make the people want to kill each other, he would kill them before they got the chance.

It was not long before he entered the first town he had set his gaze upon. The people did not have time to rally together or cry out. The horse and rider were hardly even a part of the world - they phased through their homes and cut the peoples' very souls from their bodies, leaving emptied corpses behind in beds, at dinner tables, in the fields, and in one another's arms. It took less than an hour for the entire town to be annihilated, though looking in from the outside, one would hardly have been able to tell. But the smell as they entered would be inescapable.

His horse rode faster than any earthly horse could, and they left nothing but death in their wake. Even without directly attacking, their very presence was like a poison to the environment. Greenery simply ceased to exist as they rode past. It was as though they had burned everything they passed, though a fire never appeared - one moment the life was bright and thriving, and the next it had been snuffed relentlessly.

He gained no joy or pleasure from the action. He was merely determined, set to accomplish what he had been tasked with doing. He would see to it that the entire planet had been extinguished - that there was nothing left to fight back when the father had come to make anew.

Famine

The black horse trotted into town ahead of its master, and the villagers screamed in anticipation. They had heard of what followed the black horse as it traveled from city to city. The way that crops seemed to wither and fall away with each click of the horse's footsteps, only to be followed by its enormous rider stomping after it. He was a giant of a man, standing over six feet tall at two hundred and fifty pounds, ever last ounce of which was muscle. And as he came through, he demanded the food of every house he came across, and those who resisted, he crushed.

He left the villages without a means to sustain themselves, doomed to starve to death. Some anticipated his arrival, armed with weapons and heavily defended food storages. They would try to attack his horse, but the moment their weapons came close to striking, the man was there, and their attention turned. But he was already on top of them, snapping the cores of their weapons like twigs beneath his feet, and leaving their bodies broken and useless on the side of the road so that they could watch as he broke into their storages and devoured their supplies.

It was a slow way of taking the life out of the planet - much slower than that of his comrades - but it was a painful one, and one that he took great care and joy from acting out. It kept him fit and strong, and he never went without a full belly. He needed not rely on the power of others, for he was powerful enough to wreak his own havoc. People were not tools to him, but obstacles to overcome. This world would not kill itself, as his comrades were always so certain of. Rather, it must be killed, slowly and painfully, knowing that it was on its way to death but unable to do anything about it.

But there was one thing that he agreed with his comrades on. He did so enjoy looking back at where he had been and what he had caused. He loved to look upon the people as he ate their food and rotted their fields, to see the despair in their eyes as they could do nothing to stop him. He feasted on that as well.

He heard whispers of his actions reaching further lands. The more crops he poisoned and killed, the harder it became for the larger kingdoms to sustain themselves as well. In time, the economy would become unsustainable, and the poor man would be unable to afford basic accommodations, making it impossible for them to work, and the rich man would therefor have less labor, and the crops that he had yet to kill would go unworked.

And the people would starve.

And the people would die.

War

Atop her red horse, a single woman sat, dressed in a beautiful red gown cut low under her breasts, one bare, smooth leg extending out of her dress from the slit cut strategically just at her hip. Any higher, and perhaps the men who stood drooling over her would have been able to see the piece of string that barely classified as a thong she was wearing. She smiled as she watched those men crush each other for a chance to lay their eyes upon her, spilling one another's blood and turning a blind eye to it as they came close to her.

It was not just the simple men that were taken in by her beauty and charms. Kings as well were taken by her, abandoning their queens for her, and putting their armies to war for a chance to bed her. And at times she would let them bed her, for knowing just how marvelous she was in bed only served to increase how much men wanted her. They could not keep quiet of their "conquests," though they were always too taken by her to realize that they were the ones being used. For it was never long after she had slept with a man before he was slain, and his position and power were to be taken by another.

Entire wars were fought because of her, and two kingdom's desire to take her as their queen. Kings who wanted to wed her, and men who were hoping to take his position as soon as she was claimed as their own. Fighting with their hearts and never their minds over her, never thinking about what had come of the men who had been lucky enough to be chosen by her, only wishing to be one of them.

These actions had continued on for centuries, and never did the men question the longevity of her life or how eternally beautiful it was. Perhaps because there were very few who lived through the wars long enough to realize that she had been the center of the world's attention for so many years past when her prime should have ended.

She was a master of deceit. She frequently lied about how many lovers she had taken or who she had recently bedded in order to get the attention of those she sought. She lied about what people were whispering behind her lovers' backs, or what people had offered her. In fact, she hardly remembered the last time she had told someone something even remotely resembling the truth. The truth would have stopped the battles. And she did so love watching people fight over her.