Dispassionately Displeased

When I was a teen, I babysat. Didn't do it a lot, but I did it. Sometimes it could be a fun experience if the kids were great, sometimes not. But at the end of the night when the folks come home, I'd get paid for my time and it wouldn't be so bad. Well, I just spent eight months babysitting a grown-man-baby who's idea of cleaning isn't cleaning, regardless of the task (dishes, vacuuming, moping, sweeping, etc) and that his idea of cooking isn't, well, cooking (putting item, usually a full package of bacon or an entire pound of ground beef into a pan, turning it on the highest setting and walking away for fifteen minutes then coming back to eat the entire thing). You see, I was inundated with a indolent, irresponsible, immature, lazy and otherwise useless human being who decided that shackling himself to his computer to play WoW on end was a better pursuit of his time than holding down a job for longer than a month and a half.

Oh, and there were the jobs. So many of them. In the first couple months, after he had transitioned through three jobs and I approached him on the subject, he said he was keeping his options open. Keeping his fucking options open about a job? You're supposed to hold it down, not fucking let it fly away. Nope, all his jobs just up and vanished like a grain of sand in the wind. And now? Now I'm getting his tax forms from those jobs, all mailed to my address since he's moved on and I'll get an inkling of just how many jobs he went through. My own rough estimate is ten, but hey, could be more.

So, not only was he useless in the house, but also useless in the workforce. His passion was World of Warcraft. I would become annoyed as I would wake up in the middle of the night hearing him talk to his "friends" and guildmates over his headset at two or three or four in the morning. He had no life. In the entire time he was here, he made no friends. Left the house when he worked (that is, when he actually had a job), but otherwise solicited no outside interference into his life and his WoW-time.

There is also the fact that his room smelled something awful. I remember elucidating to a friend that it smelled of a small child murdered and left to rot in his closet. He asked me how I would know what death smelled like. I think I know, having been overseas and seen and smelled it all firsthand. Rank. His room smelled disgusting. Even now, after a couple days of letting it air out, it still permeates like a musk, like some kind of feral animal marking territory in the most instinctual method.

As I remarked to my sister who had accompanied me on this escapade, it "isn't that he can't, but that he won't, and then that he can't," meaning that what he did do was so horribly done that it would have to be re-done anyway by someone else with an inkling of what was necessary. Apparently he never learned that you should do something right the first time unless you like to repeat tasks again and again until failure was met with success. Nope. Just lots and lots of failure. Rank, sad failure.

However, I'm neglecting to mention the times he shorted me for rent or bills. While I did get the money, it was an eventuality that should never have occurred. He paid for food once (out of three people), and put in another hundred and fifty. When we (my sister and I) began to pressure him for money to buy food, he posted on Facebook how he could survive on less than what we were asking of him on a bi-weekly basis. Fed up, I told him that evening he didn't owe money for food, but would be buying his own from that moment forward. I saw him eat three times in four weeks (when he deigned to leave his room).

But the man in question, the ex-roommate, and most assuredly an ex-friend (because honestly, if you find yourself lying to someone continuously, shorting him, owing him money, are you truly a friend or just a selfish child looking for handouts? I'm sorry, I'm not the nanny state giving handouts through welfare) has left. And when he did, he took the things that meant something to him: his cloths and his computer. He left behind a bed, a broken desk, a busted down computer chair (destroyed beneath the girth of his WoW addiction, and more) and a bunch of other things. Now, I could try and sells these, but I already know that he had tried to sell them because he was so strapped for cash. I, however much an asshole people thing I may be, will be sending these artifacts of a inhuman creature back to his mother. She can figure out what to do with them, because I don't want to handle them.

The expression that these past eight months have personified all of my hate would be an understatement. The initial bliss of moving was far overshadowed by the callous, uncaring and sadistic nature of a man who would go out of his way to stab someone in the back because he couldn't even begin to be bothered to care, as was wont of his selfish nature. But, he's gone. And all I'm left with is a thousand-dollar I.O.U. from him. Thanks for fucking nothing.

EDIT: The bastard in question is known as Tier Bladesinger from Veterans.

In Memory

Talking with a friend of mine, he made the comment that I intentionally block out a number of various memories. That my memory, as it stands, isn't the greatest, and I'll admit, at times it isn't. But for the things I choose to remember, it can be fairly sharp. But, as he was saying, I should stop blocking out specific parts of my life because I don't like them. He may be right, may be wrong. But his prodding of me to utilize my memory fully and not indulge in the action of blocking or repressing things that have happened brought about a very painful moment in my life, one that erupted to the surface rather blatantly, and for the past couple weeks, I've been unable to push back beneath the surface. So, with that...

---

I'm running. We're all running. I'm energetic, watchful. My head snaps this way and that, looking, scanning. The packed dirt walls towering on either side cast shadows in the sun. Alleys that were full of children are empty as the scattered shots of weapons ring out. My mind is drawn to the fact that at a distance, it sounds like popcorn going off. Past a gap in the wall and then a second. I take up a position along it, looking into the field. Shadows flirt in the treeline and I fire. Suppressive fire, shooting at the points where muzzle flash breaks the darkness of their hideout.

I don't hear the call I'm so enamored of what it is that I'm doing. Aiming, firing, reloading, watching. Then I hear it, my name, being called. They want me because I have the combat stretcher. I ask where, get told, and begin to run. Back through the gaps, the heat of the sun and the peppering of dust flickering into the air as rounds lash against my bootheels. But I'm not thinking about that.

There he is, lying face up. The captain.

I begin to take the stretcher off. My sergeant is there, yelling at me. I'm numb. He's been shot around the neck, but not much blood. But he's unconscious. My rifle, my sergeant asks, where is it? I look at another man, also there. He has it, had taken it off me when he handed me his machine gun because he was a back-up medic. I shrug, tell my sergeant what's up, and pick up the captains rifle.

Life his body onto the stretcher. Radio in for the truck to come pick us up at the intersection. Have to move. Lift and carry. Back through the gaps, a body on a combat stretcher while dust is scattered up all about me as I run with three others to safety from bullets erupting all around me. Now I'm afraid as I raise my captains rifle one armed to shoot back into the field. I don't care where I'm aiming, because I can't aim. I just want them to keep their heads down, because if someone is going to take a bullet, it'll be me on the outside.

And through the second gap, still walking at a quick clip. My adrenaline is fading, being replaced by the empty pit in my stomach. His body gets loaded and I turn to a wall, pumping rounds down range. Anger is surging. Finally, I get tapped -- time to move. Time to run. I begin to run. It's not too far back to the COP. Two hundred meters and I'm home. Home. But there are figures on rooftops, firing. I'm firing, blindly. They're dropping, dead or for cover, I don't know. I don't care. I'm still shooting and reloading. My life depends on it. Others lives depend on it. I'm near the back of the first section moving in.

And I'm gasping for air like I can't breath when I finally return to the outpost, gulping at air like I'm drowning.

Swimming in a world of oxygen unable to breath, hyperventilating, listening to the medics as they attempt to keep him alive, listening to the gunfire receding in the distance as we mortar the fuck out of the enemy. And my arms go slack and I can't even hold my gun, and my legs are screaming, and my eyes are watering, and I can't breath. I'm gulping, but I can't breath. And I look over, and there's blood. Everywhere, there's blood. Soaking into the sand, the stretcher. It's everywhere and I can't look away, but I have to.

Sand I'll be digging up with a shovel and putting into a garbage bag.

And the choppers won't be here for fifteen minutes. Meanwhile I'm on the wall, lungs screaming for air they can't have, body aching for rest it won't see for months, and a yearning for a silence that won't happen. And I'm aiming down the sight of a weapon that isn't mine looking for enemies I can no longer see as they retreat. And I look down at my watch and it's only past nine in the morning. We'd been fighting for hours. Since seven. And everything feels like a there's a finality to...something. An eventuality that I will see but wish I wouldn't. He's dead...

WPCA - Erumid

"Captain on the bridge!"

"At ease. Status report, Commander."

"Everything is clear and in the green, Captain. A number of new ships have exited slipspace and are making for the planet. They've already signed in with Erumid Planetary Control and transponders all flagged green."

"Excellent."

The captain took his chair for the last time.

---

The blinking, black eye of near darkness of slipspace opened and snapped shut, and from it, an object emerged shaped like a small-scale spire. Having exited slipspace nearly on top of the the planetary gravity well, the resulting gravitonic shockwave rippled outward playing havoc with sensors all about the system.

The Erumid Defense frigate Natalissi crumpled inward, folding in on itself from the force of the impact as the object ripped through the unshielded mass. At the point of impact, matter became ions, and supersonic droplets of molten hull metal sleeted through from the top down, arriving before the vibrations of the impact could, and shredding all persons within before their nervous systems had time to register anything amiss. Behind came the shockwave of superheated air expanding with such fury that blast shields bent and warped, searing everything in its path.

The resulting fireball erupted into space like, moments before a secondary explosion caused by a magazine misfire as the ordinance detonated. Bodies and metal flaked off into space as the object continued on unabated, the Natalissi folding in on itself in silence like a toy before the two ends wrung itself apart as the engines continued to fire, sheering off the fore in an almost comic fashion.

---

Warning icons flashed amber in the holo-displays of his HUD. Giant, glaring red exclamation points punctuated by information. It could be summarized by a single phrase: shit hit the fan - hard.

He looked down and nearly threw up, forgetting how the inside of a Needler was an all-encasing holographic nexus of information, turning the inside of the deployment vehicle into a vertigo enticing entourage. It was like he was falling feet first toward a planet and the burning, ionized atmosphere was slashing super-heated claws lunging up the sides of his legs as the dark of space turned to the blue of sky.

He did puke, the regurgitated mass escaping from his mouth and floating there, nauseating him further. Gravity was a swell thing when traveling to at a T-norm speed of 9.8 meters per second squared. Although in this case, Erumid was something a little higher with a rate of 9.913 meters a second, and even with that information supplied by the TACNAV telling him terminal velocity had come and gone like a gentleman caller in the night left his stomach falling while his bile rose.

The capital of Erudimaz crawled into tangible existence, the circular city with wide-ranging wall to fend off the tropical forest that beset it on all sides and tall towers that spun like lazy minarets into the skyline. Plazas and parks were plentiful, and Paradise Canyon, a winding river, slashed through the whitewashed center of the ovoid mass.

---

It streaks down on a coil of flame and fury, sonic booms reverberating in the sky. People point, awestruck. People die...