Story 3

A/N: This is something of an experimentation with voice and tone, so please tell me what you think. Warning: Some swearing.

I just--ugh! It's like, there's stuff that sticks with you for years, and it shouldn't be there after a couple days, or even hours. Like you're mind's trying to get back at you or something.

We were having an argument. Whatever. It was a bowling alley, even if we were yelling it wouldn't've carried more than a few feet. She was attacking whatever she could; seeing what stuck. Saying that I was a loser, I had no friends. Again, what-freaking-ever. Like I hadn't been hearing stuff like that since, like, third grade. Most of it since first. I mean, honestly, get some new material.

And then, she got flustered, she stopped thinking, and she hit something.

"I come here in my best clothes, and you come here in--in scraps--"

I really didn't hear anything she said after that. All I could think of was that she had called my very best scraps. This was my new outfit. I'd gotten it for my birthday. I loved it. It felt like she'd hit me, full on and in the chest.

I can tell you, looking back, why it bothered me so much, why I burst into tears--and the girl asked, "Are you getting help? Do you take medication for this?" which was real bright. I can tell you that, though people had insulted my voice, my oddities, my family, my intelligence, and everything else, no one had ever touched my looks. I knew, on some level, that I was pretty. To have someone attack that was worse than anything else she'd said.

Call it shallow. Call it valuing clothes over friends. But it was what I had, and losing that last inch hurt as much as the first time a friend had turned her back and snickered.

And her asking if I had medication...Hell. I know, she was just trying to push the blame off herself, onto some imbalance in my system. Anywhere that made it so she didn't have to feel the guilt. I know. It just doesn't help much. Or, you know, at all. Do people ever think before they speak? Is this so hard it's a step people just skip over, so they can listen to themselves yap insults and compliments, work themselves up some fucking popularity tree?

I put up this big facade. I don't care how I look. I don't care what you think. I don't care I can't seem to keep friends. It's all bullshit. I care. Anyone who bothered to look at me for two seconds would know that. Which means that anyone who doesn't see through this it doesn't bother to look for two seconds, and that makes me feel just wonderful, thank you so very much.

Aw, shit, I'm sorry. I'm unloading all this on you, it's not your fault.

No, it's not a problem, really. I wanted to get to know you better. And...I'm glad you let down the facade.

Hah. Thanks. Glad you saw through it.

Hey, you said it. It only takes a couple seconds. If you ever need someone to talk to...I'm here, okay?

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, J, I'll remember that. I'm probably going to come up with a list long enough to reach the moon for reasons not to, but I'll remember.

Just use a large font.

Ha! Sure, why not?

Poem #2

Forgive me if this seems disjointed. It can be difficult to tell ones own story, especially when it didn't 'happen'.

I have a moment.
But no moment stands alone.
Imagine you have fallen, because you stumbled, you tripped.
You fell off the side of the castle. Your fortress. Your family’s.
But you caught yourself. You climbed back up. One step, one handhold, one foothold, one at a time.
Then, as you reached the top, the footholds fell away. Your hand slipped. You hang there by your fingertips.
Don’t worry. Look. You’re friend’s there. You friend will help you up.
Crack.
That was your fingers breaking under a hard boot. Your heart breaking under a hard smile.
No.
And now…now you can’t catch yourself.
How could you?
How could your friend?
Here is the moment. It is that brief frozen moment in the fall. The one where you decide to let yourself fall. The one where you stop fighting, because you don’t care.
But you don’t freeze there.
You hit the water and cry out from the sharp smack on your back, the ice covering your skin.
And you can’t fight. You already decided. You’ll drown, crying.
Sobbing, gasping down lungfuls of water until you drown.
…
You wake. It’s bright, so bright. You think it might be someplace good…but the light is blinding, everything hurts…
Not the good place.
Tears well up again. You tried, damn it. You tried.
A sob tears through your chest.
Why? An enemy killing you, that would have been fine…you would have understood.
But not that one. Not the one you’ve loved like family since you were a child.
A curtain is pulled away and the light hurts even more, you whimper in the middle of a sob.
And then you hear your name. Not in anger, not in satisfaction, but almost in reverence. You hear it again, in exultation.
“You’re alive!
“Guys! Guys, guess who woke up!”
That’s the other moment. When you realize it hurts because you’re alive. Because someone cared.
You don’t recognize the one who woke you. Apparently you barely know each other.
It didn’t matter. This one saved you.

Well?
Aren’t you going to do anything?

Story

There once was a man named Achilles. He was given a choice by a prophetess: live a long life and be happy among his children, or fight a war and be remembered forever.

You know his story. You know his choice. This is not his story. This is not his choice.

A man sits by the beach. He has been called back to war; the generals all know what a morale boost he would bring--The great warrior, fighting on our side! How could we lose?

He's been greeted by a young woman, one he knows to be a prophet. He does not fully understand her powers, he does not need to. He trusts.

And she has given him a choice. She did not create this choice, she simply laid out all the consequences for him and...left. Left him to decide.

On the one hand: Go out to war. Be remembered forever, but die, soon.

On the other: Stay. Raise a family. Be happy. Live a good, long life amongst his offspring and loving wife. But be forgotten.

And as he watches the sun set, he wonders what he should choose. Life, now, or life, forever, among memories.

There's no easy way to choose this. It's not like when he was young, and had nothing much at home to interest him except learning to fight. Of course he was going to be a warrior then. What else would you be, when only fighting held your interest?

So he had gone out and fought. And fought well, earned respect, earned rank, earned--he smiled a little to himself--more than a few admirers.

But now...now he knew he could settle down. Fighting wasn't all he was anymore, just a part of it. He actually enjoyed the idea of settling down, not with that passion that he enjoyed fighting, but enjoyed it, nonetheless.

He closed his eyes and listened to the beach; heard, off in the distance, the sounds of the village. The calm, quiet place he had been so bored with as a youth.

He made his choice.

Hm? What was his name? I don't know. We've forgotten it.

Memory

You could live your whole life and never know if anyone will remember you. You never can know how long people will remember you after death.

It gets even worse when you look at our very old legends: all the ones that still have the name attached tend towards war, violence, and heroism (I'm thinking Achilles)...pretty difficult combination to justify today, unless you're fighting the next Hitler.

And this has scared me more and more as I grow. That I will be forgotten, that people, ultimately, won't remember more than a few years after I'm dead. A generation, tops. And that relies on me having children, who will remember me because I'm they're mom--don't get me wrong, a mom is a great thing to be, it's just not all I want.

And then I start trying to figure out why this scares me so much. Not because it seems an illogical fear, or a logical one, simply to figure it out, dissect it. Why does being remembered matter so much?

And I come to the conclusion that it's to have an effect. If I am not remembered, what effect can I possibly have? And the idea that I would be nothing after death is terrifying. It is no coincidence that these doubts tend to align with when I think about what might happen if I just disappear after death.

And so I want to make my mark. And I look around and try to find where I can mark, and find...I have. I have helped others understand things. I have gone out and put myself out there, leaving a line of fire written along people's souls--and regardless of whether the fire flashes for but a moment or burns a permanent mark, a permanent memory, a dream, I have been an artist and a muse.

This isn't enough. I doubt anything ever will be. But it's enough, for the moment.