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.