This week coming up looks to be busy. Besides the usual homework and the catching up on homework I missed at the tournament, I also have to finish up a novel by Wednesday. I started writing the book at the tail end of November and it’s 96 pages so far…prefer it to be longer but I really need to finish it up.

I hope to start blogging a little more regularly but my life is, of course, insanely busy. Next year I really need to simplify but knowing me…it probably won’t happen.

I wrote this at about 3 am…just bare that in mind, and yes, I should have been doing school at the time:

I caught Time today.

I put him in a bag for later because I was too busy to deal with Him now.

He’s a chatty fellow. Doesn’t mind giving his opinion even when I don’t ask for it.

I’ll admit it’s rare that I get the better of Him. Several times He’s been known to catch me off guard but I was lucky enough to get Him now.

The best way to catch Time, is to ignore Him until he comes creeping out from boredom.

Sometimes He watches me over my shoulder as I hack away at the keys on my laptop. Occasionally He’ll point out a typo but mostly He just stares. The stare that makes the clock’s hands twitch and squirm with embarrassment and run around the clock trying to get away. And then Time flies.

And He flies fast.

That’s why even when you catch Him; He always gets away from you later.

I left with Time today.

I’ll admit that sometimes I take to traveling with Time. He’s a good companion. You’re never bored when you’re with the right sort of Time.

That’s why the best way to get the right sort of Time is to pick your clocks carefully.

I stopped Time today.

I’ll admit it wasn’t an easy thing to do. He’s a persuasive fellow and He doesn’t like to be slowed down in the slightest. But once I stopped Him, it was like he never existed.

But he didn’t stop for long.

That’s why I have such trouble finding Time.

Anyhoo, here’s some photos, one if of a facet taken a while ago, the other was taken this morning (dead bee on fresh snow, intriguing, lol)

and yes, you do have permission to laugh. I don’t not claim to be a good photographer.

(this one looks better larger) Title: Frostbite

Anyway guys, I hope your December’s are going great.

We had our first snowfall yesterday. Very pretty I must say.

I’m off to work on stories.

I can’t help but think
Of the end being near
But I know in my heart
I will always be here

I can’t change my fate
And I can’t control time
To be punished’s not just
I haven’t a crime

I wish for the end
I wish to be done
But this battle’s not over
It’s only begun

My problem? My partner doesn’t shut up. The whole idea of a paramedic having a partner is for us both to be a team, to think in one mind, and the rest of the routine. But the problem with this chick, Miss she calls herelf, she belongs back in Woodstock. She’s irritatingly positive and is determined that she makes the perfect talking companion. Oh, and she has the worst habit of chewing gum.

But when I came home from work today, I tried not to bother worrying about that.

I was trying again.

Trying to kill myself I mean.

Jumping off a cliff hadn’t worked, and neither had shooting myself in the head, but there are other ways too. Tonight, it was time to try electricity. Maybe it would be poetic justice, after all. Frankenstein made his monster by harnessing electricity; maybe I could destroy a monster in the same way.

The plan was simple really, I hooked up some wires from my power outlines into the tub, and then filled up the tub with water. When I flipped the switch for the lights, I’d actually send electricity through the wires and into the water.

When I flipped the switch and got into the water, the first thought was that it was actually working. Searing pain filled my body, similar to the sensation of being on fire, I thought. I writhed and sunk below the water, opening my mouth to breathe and instead getting a mouthful of firey pain into my lungs.

Of course, it would have to be then that Missy, my irritating partner, decides to drop by my apartment with a plateful of brownies.

Discovering her fully clothed partner writhing in the bathtub she calls it in, sending an ambulance zooming to come save the ambulance driver. Ionic, yes I know.

I have to give her credit, she at least figured out to turn off the light switch before she yanked me out of the water.

When she stopped getting water out of my lungs, I could hear the sirens outside my apartment.

And that’s when I knew for sure.

I’m still not dead.

The Reaper lives to kill another day.

When I was a month old, my mom past away then two weeks later, my dad died. That’s when Death and I first met. That’s when it really all started. Before that, I was a cute, innocent, chubby-cheeked baby named Milo, after Death and I met was the beginning of the end for me, now I call myself “The Reaper”.

I was five when it happened again. It didn’t really seem significant at that time. Well, to my five year old brain it was, but not to anyone else. My foster parent had gotten me a frog the day before my fifth birthday as a present. The minute I saw that frog, I knew I loved it. In the survival of the fittest society of foster care, there was no one I really trusted or loved, but this frog represented something more, something I could love. I made a home for it, named it, feed it and stayed up late so I could watch its little throat bulge in and out whenever it breathed. When I woke up the next morning, it was dead. My little heart-broken sobs that rent the air surprised both of my foster parents, but they decided that the frog’s death was most likely due to some disease from the pet store, and told me to stop crying. I did. But I didn’t forget what had happened.

Death didn’t stop there though. When I was twelve I fell in love with a girl who loved across the street from me. A week later she died.

When I was fifteen I had a best friend, a guy who hated foster care as much as me and would sneak out and meet me late at night. Two months later, he died in a shooting incident.

It may already make sense to you, but it took me a while to figure out. What’s the secret to The Reaper’s curse? Whenever I love someone unconditionally they die.

Yeah, call me paranoid. Call me crazy. I really don’t care; I’m used to it by now. All I know is every time I’m willing to die for someone, they end up dying instead.

I’m still not sure why it happens. Maybe Death got cheated once too often, maybe Hell’s just too empty for Satan’s liking. Maybe I was supposed to die as a kid and this is the punishment for me not being dead, or  maybe it’s just one long stream of impossible coincides that happened to occur. But if you can, you explain to me why every living thing I love ends up dying.

Death and me are almost on talking terms now. I’ve gotten so use to seeing people die. Don’t think I try to love people though, I learned long ago to avoid that, but loving seems to be like breathing.  As long as you’re alive, you can’t help but do it.

A long time ago, I thought I could solve the problem if I just died myself. After all, if I was dead, how could I love someone? But that doesn’t seem to work out for me. I don’t seem to die.  I shot myself point blank in the head after my best friend died, and somehow managed to miss any major arteries as well as my brain. The doctor called it a miracle, but then he doesn’t know that I’m The Reaper. I jumped off a cliff, and only sprained my ankle. Killing isn’t an issue for me, but dying is. So I try to make up for what I do by saving people’s live.

Yup, that’s me, the paramedic. I didn’t dare go to medical school. What if I ended up sitting next to some pretty girl in class, fell in love with her and deprived the world of the next greatest brain surgeon? No, instead I decided to be one of the glorified taxi-drivers who speed around the city and load people into ambulances. I avoid talking to people; I try not to look at them. The less I care, the less likely I will be to kill them. Reclusive, withdrawn and misunderstood, those are the words that people use to describe me. But that’s alright, because I’ve learned to live with what I can’t change and this is my story. Take or leave it. Just don’t make me love you.

“Close the door behind you, Annabelle”

“Sorry sir, it’s just the coffee got in my way and then I have all these files I have to go through and mark up and all these clients to bill and I just-“

“I just want you to close the door . . . I don’t have a problem with anything else. Except . . . did you get my coffee?”

“Oh yeah!  Well, I got to Starbucks and I was trying to decide which type of coffee to get you, but I couldn’t remember if you liked hot or cold on Tuesdays, so I got both, but then I was leaving and this guy with a mastiff . . . I think it was a mastiff, it could have been a Great Dane-“

“The coffee?”

“Yeah well that guy with the big dog wasn’t looking where he was going and he ran into me and I spilled both of the coffees on his dog and the dog got really mad and almost bit me and then the man acted as if it was all my fault, as if I’m some kind of absent-minded person or something like that!”

“And that’s why there’s no coffee?”

“No, but I have some of mine if you want it?”

“No thank you,”

“Why not? I’m not sick or anything and I’m definitely not contagious.”

“I’d rather not take that risk . . . Just in case.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“What happened now, oh most unfortunate of secretaries?”

“I spilled coffee all over these papers!”

“That is a problem.”

“I can’t understand why these kinds of things keep happening to me lately!”

“Oh trust me, it hasn’t started recently . . . Annabelle?”

“Yes Silver?”

“Why is there a bulldog drooling all over my window?”

“That’s not a bulldog! It’s a mastiff . . . I already told you that.”

“It is a bulldog Annabelle, but my real question is what it’s doing here.”

“Well it’s the dog I spilled the coffee on and I thought that if you really wanted some coffee than you could just get it off of him.”

“Annabelle, I don’t think even the most caffeine deprived person would stoop low enough as to scrap coffee off of a bulldog’s-“

“Mastiffs-“

“dog’s . . . back.”

“Oh, well fine then, don’t.”

“How did you even get it here?”

“The owner said he didn’t like it . . . something about possibly having rabies? I don’t really remember.  Anyway he said I could have it if I wanted.”

“So it’s your dog now?”

“Well no, not exactly . . . “

“Not exactly?”

“Well, what I mean is, it’s your birthday right?”

“No.”

“Anniversary?”

“I’m not married.”

“It’s got to be something today! Maybe it’s the dogs birthday, would you want to turn away a dog on his own birthday?”

“I don’t want a dog.”

“Neither do I, and guess where that leaves us?”

“With you putting the dog back out on the street.”

“But, but . . . then he might get hurt!”

“Lord willing.”

“How can you even say that! He’s such a cute little puppy!”

“Really? Because just a minute ago he was a vicious, biting mastiff.”

“Well people change Silver! Have a little faith in the human race.”

“He’s not a human! I don’t care if he’s suddenly turned into a puppy . . .  but there’s no way he’s becoming a human.”

“Ha! So he is a puppy!”

“Fine, he’s a puppy, but I still don’t want him.”

“But he could live here!”

“In Silver Bullet’s  Private Investigators office? I don’t think so.”

“But he’d add so much to your job offer!”

“Oh yeah, ‘Rabid dog’ just screams costumers.”

“No, but he could be a bloodhound!”

“You can’t make a dog into whatever breed you want it to be Annabelle!”

“Well he has a nose doesn’t he? He might as well use it!”

“Look, if you want him that bad he can stay. But he’ll live in here, I’m not taking him home.”

“Fine. Come and see the puppy Silver, he’s so cute!”

“He’s a slobbering, overweight, smushed-nose dog. How cute can that possibly be?”

“Come and apologize!”

“Fine, I’ll say hi but you need to clean my window.”

“Well we don’t have any window cleaner. See I was going to get some at the store but then I ran into this man who works there who has a parrot, and he said he actually had bought all the window cleaner for himself because his parent likes to smash nuts against the windows but if you want to I can go back and see if he can give me some?”

“No thanks, I’ll just deal with the window . . . the last thing we need around here is a parrot.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marcus had his front cover down to perfection. By daytime he posed as a mystic, reclusive magician who made what little money he had off of palm readings. In reality, he was a well-trained assassin.

Some called people like Marcus serial killers, but Marcus always preferred to be known as an assassin. After all, he was far more sophisticated than the average serial killer that was in the news from time to time.

Marcus had spent years honing his skill into an art. If murder wasn’t illegal, he could have made a whole lot of money writing how-to books on it.

Like most serial killers, Marcus’s problems had originally stemmed in his childhood. Kidnapping sometimes did that to you.

Marcus knew all about living on the rough side of life, and he knew about living on the streets.

He knew how to shoot a man between the eyes from across an alley before he was ten. He learned about the more creative ways of killing by the time he was a teenager.

Marcus pulled a cigarette from out of a pack and lit it. He leaned back in his chair, sticking his feet up onto his table. A flickering electric sign outside of his store, flashed on and off:

Marcus the Magician

Palm-reading and more

Prices negotiable

He let out a wry grin. The sign not only symbolized his job but also helped keep nosy people away. Most people didn’t bother snooping on someone who claimed to be a magician and Marcus had built up quite a reputation for his business.

The ability to read people was helpful for both killing targets and scamming costumers. He picked up his pile of cash for this week. A few thousand dollars, that was barely enough to get a new gun, he thought sullenly. Thank goodness for government funds.

A sharp buzzing noise interrupted his thoughts, Marcus glanced down at his cell phone, to see the name “Jack” flashing on the screen cover.

Picking it up, he didn’t bother to say anything into the machine, Jack would know he was listening,

“Marcus,” came the clipped military tone from the other end, “You’ll be receiving a stream of possible candidates any minute.”

Marcus flipped the phone shut, and turned on his computer. Despite what many thought, your email was actually very safe.

Well, if you had the U.S. government paying to keep it secure for you.

With dexterity that could make a secretary jealous, Marcus signed into his email account and clicked on his one unread message.

Scanning down the list through names, Marcus chose which one he would kill tonight.

The feeling of being in complete control of these people’s fates sent a rush of adrenaline through his system. He decided he would pick from one of the three names in the middle of the list:

Maria Saranaha

John Smith

Oz Marinia

Marcus almost laughed, John Smith? That had to be the most overused false name in the United States. Marcus clicked on that name, a file popped up with information on the man as well as a notice which read, “Congratulations on picking your new target. The following information should help you as you complete your task”.

This was all ordinary and mundane in Marcus’s opinion, he skimmed over the rest of the information, memorizing it quickly to avoid any setbacks in the future.

Satisfied, he logged off of his computer account – Good luck hacking a 25 character random letter and number password, he thought –  and then walked across the room.

He opened up a large desk to reveal several different kinds of guns, recalling John Smith’s height, weight and fitness level, he picked the gun that would give him the most accurate shot.

He left the building surprisingly quick, one of the advantages to killing so many people; you knew how much preliminary knowledge you needed and this, John Smith, wouldn’t need much.

Closing the door to his business, he flipped the “Open” sign over so that it now said “Closed”.  Digging into his pocket, he removed his car keys and unlocked his ride. Sliding into the driver’s seat, he turned the key in the ignition of his large, black SUV. He had chosen that type of car simply for the irony of it.

Gunning the engine, he sped across town towards where John Smith supposedly lived. The man’s habits indicated that he stayed home and watched Lost on Thursday nights.

Pulling up the John Smith’s street, Marcus slowed his car down and turned off the lights. Then he parked, pulling out his gun and cocking it.

Smith’s house had many potential entrances; Marcus had chosen a basement window that was 15 feet away from the television set. Close enough to make the man an easy target, but far enough away that he wouldn’t be noticed as soon as he entered.

Marcus approached the house carefully and silently opened the window.  From this distance he could already see the television baring commercials and the body of a man, slumped against the coach.

Marcus pulled the trigger on his rifle, sending a spray of metal towards the unsuspecting man. The figure instantly collapsed onto the floor, the body convulsing each time a bullet entered.

Satisfied, Marcus walked over to the body to examine it. Three feet away, he noticed something was very wrong.  He kicked at the body and felt it: stuffing.

Someone had put a dummy here for him. Realizing what this meant, Marcus began to turn but felt the cold metal of a gunpoint pressed against the back of his head.

He turned ever so slightly so he could view who had him at gunpoint, “Jack?” he asked unbelievingly.

“We knew ‘John Smith’ would have you over here first,” replied the man, his tone as toneless and formatted as it had sounded over the phone, “You’ve outlived your purpose Marcus, and the government doesn’t need you anymore,”

Marcus became angry, “Who are you to decide whether I live or die?”

“It’s what you do everyday Marcus,” said Jack, “Who are you to decide? Who are you to play God?” he asked.

Marcus never got a chance to reply.

On the bright side, I did finish reediting my book up to page 117 so I can start writing again, once I find the time.

I’ve also starting fiddling around with the panio a bit,

now if I could write a poem that would lend itself to a panio song, that would be pretty sweet.

So yes, this is my life right now.  School and dreams of creative endevours. Perhaps soon!

A vase of roses, a story said

A secret love, nobody knows

Binds her close, as does your prose

You promised to meet, at the station at night

She came to see you, even after a fight

But you never came, and she stood alone

With no one beside her, to face the unknown

The roses in her room, wither with time

Petals fall to the floor, in an unrhymed rhyme

She keeps the flowers, wherever they fall

A silent reminder, that you were her all