Justin

Justin was staring out the window on that Monday morning, as he usually did on Monday mornings. As he usually did most mornings. His so-called friends rattled a vending machine behind him. It was the same as every other Monday morning. The same as every morning.

‘Don’t you ever get tired of always doing the same meaningless things, over and over again?’ he would ask them. But he would get no answer for he asked them only in his mind. He lacked the courage to confront them. Not only were they the only friends he had but they were also much taller and stronger than him. Justin doubted they actually considered him a friend but what choice did he have? In such a small town, either you were with them or against them. But how had it come to this? How had he become reduced to pretend relationships with people he despised, he  many times wondered. This is how.

Justin’s parents weren’t very close. They weren’t close at all. Product of a back-seat accident, Justin was raised by his grandmother after his mother fled town a couple of years after he was born. Till this day she still wrote to him but Justin never replied and he knew she would never come back.

Justin’s grandmother was a kind middle-aged woman, except when she got to drinking and then Justin hid the glasses around the house because, according to his grandmother, no self-respecting woman, no matter how desperate, should ever be seen sipping from the neck of a bottle.

At school things were always tough for Justin. He'd always been very thin, very pale and had always had a very substantial nose. It wasn’t offensive but it had a personality of its own. Unfortunately, intelligence or understanding didn’t roar a plenty in Justin’s little backwater town and so his nose was a deterrent.

‘Stu,’ they used to call him. ‘Stu, go do something silly to entertain us,’ they would say, knowing his name was Justin. Stu was for “stupid” and no, Justin was not proud of his nickname in the slightest. But fate had donned him with it and he accepted it, not having the mental or intestinal fortitude to do otherwise. But Justin was anything but stupid; he was just misunderstood.

One day, he lost himself staring out a window for some time, the very same window through which he was staring through now. The same friends, some years younger and fussing over a different vending machine. During the previous night, the town’s lake had frozen over. It had been a relentlessly cold night and the water had begun to ice as the families had sat down for dinner. Still, authorities dimmed the ice to be, as of yet, too thin for the practice of popular ice sports. But Margaret, a girl that all deemed from that day on, as a downright ninny, ascertained that she knew better than whoever it was that had the job of stating when the lake was safe for skating on. So off she went to skate on it.

And what a marvelous skater she was. She twirled and glided atop her silvery skates, her long wool skirt whirled around her, hypnotizing her sole spectator. Justin was enjoying her performance and  assessing Margaret in general when, suddenly, she stopped on her skates and opened her arms wide. She looked veritably upset, worried even, at least as far as Justin could tell from his view point a hundred feet away. Then it happened. With a terrifying shriek she sunk under the ice, her arms flapping above her and the fabric of her thick red skirt bobbing up to her chin.

Justin couldn’t help but laugh. Oh, of course he felt bad for poor Margaret: she could have died or been seriously hurt or fallen ill. But... he had to laugh. It was in him now and only a good chuckle could get it out. As he wiped the tears from his cheeks he noticed his friends' bovine stares at him. He regained his composure and urged them.

‘Come on', he said. 'We have to go help her.’

Circa 2005, edited January 2012

Liger

‘Is this safe, Kyle? I mean, its obvious it isn’t, so why must we go on with this? Half our dogs have already died, the other half is by a thread, our guides tell us to go back and threaten to leave us if we don’t, Lifus is dead, my finger’s broken and we’re running out of food. If I was any regular guy I’d say we’re crazy. But I've always considered myself as crazy as you. But now even I'm starting to consider falling back and accept that there’s nothing here... Are you even listening?’ He wasn’t. Kyle couldn’t listen even if he was paying attention. His ear mufflers, hidden beneath three layers of thick hoods, wouldn’t let neither cold nor sound in. Morris gave up and sat down on his share of the seat of the sleigh.

Of course he wasn’t listening. No one would listen to him, not even his own son. So why should Kyle, this solitary and half-deranged scientist? Looking back, Morris realized that accepting this assignment had been a pretty demented thing to do in the first place.

Times were rough in his line of work. Hair care products just weren't selling  as they used to. And fighting for custody of his only son wasn’t cheap. So, after some pondering, Morris decided to become a freelance scientist. It was a thriving and exciting way of life, being a mercenary. Morris decided it was as good a job as any and certainly much better than staying unemployed.

Living in an industrial and war accustomed continent, he didn’t find it hard to become a scientific mercenary. In fact, a few days after he'd posted his ad on the underground job market, offering scientific expertise in the field of chemistry ‘no questions asked’, he got an anonymous phone call asking him to show up at a certain building at a certain time in order to get hired for a certain six-figure-payed job. After checking his bank account and probing his fridge, Morris decided to undergo such a shady interview. The pay was tempting and his stomach yearned for something more substantial than gulps of air. So he went to the interview. Deep down. the idea of being a mercenary thrilled Morris. He longed for a change of pace in his life; like many middle-aged men, Morris wanted a spot of adventure before becoming too ancient to even eat by himself.

In an obscure office of an obscure firm with an obscure man, Morris gladly accepted the job and was introduced to sir Kyle Prai, a renowned scientist in the field of primitive archeology. Tall, pale, eyes framed by glasses and a cigarette pressed between his lips, Kyle seemed a bit detached of what happened around him. Stuffed inside his white gown, Kyle stared apathetically through the stained window.

At first, Morris assumed that they had both been hired under the same conditions: not knowing anything of their fate and working strictly for the money. Morris also believed that they would work as equals, one not being superior in rank to the other. How gullible was Morris. In fact, Kyle knew more of this expedition than any other. He was one of the main organizers and the money came mostly from his own account. His only interest in Morris was his expertise in the chemistry department, something that his mind could not compute in the least nor had any interest in. It seemed that Morris was hired ‘just in case’ the need for a chemist arose.

Another member of this party was added a few days later. Lifus Alas was a genius in the field of mechanics that had refused to join the party at first, due to his busy schedule, but the sudden multiplication in the number of zeros on the check convinced him to tag along. He was a kind and trustworthy man, plump and pinky. A person, much unlike Kyle, to whom one could talk to.

On the day before the assignment was to get underway, Morris was finally briefed on his mission. The party was to head to Liger. Any attempt of exploration of this continent had been strictly forbidden by the Kaner sect and for this reason alone, the government of a very wealthy Bralian country organized an expedition to investigate it. If it was forbidden, for a reason it had to be. Hidden away somewhere could lurk a secret  that the Kanerians didn't want to share.

At this point Morris was too late to jump ship. Some very conspicuous agents had already gone to his house and packed everything they felt was necessary for the dear doctor to take on his journey. Morris was too frightened to complain about the breaking-and-entering. And even if he did feel like complaining he didn’t have a chance. The bulky men escorted him to the barracks where he was to sleep. He was to spend the night in the company of his fellow crew members to tie up any loose ends before they set sail.

Very apprehensively, Morris conceded to all of this. He never did like the cold and the simple vision of himself out there in the barren frozen desert that Liger was told to be, chilled his soul and his mind wandered in search of a way out. During dinner that night, Morris met his guides: two very cheerful and slightly inebriated Austeres. Even though the continent of Austere was a strict follower of the Kanerian sect rules, Moi and Koi were more than happy to escort them to a place so much like home.

Moi and Koi were brothers, twin brothers at that. Fine gentlemen. The simple face they shared gave out expressions of compassion and friendship at every smile, sentence and burp. Behind their country rudeness, a wisdom gained only through experience guided their line of conversation. They talked for hours about the weather, frost-beasts, their kids' college tuition, women and paychecks. And that part of the conversation was what interested Morris the most. It seems that they were all getting paid as much as him. Which was odd because mere guides usually receive mere-guide-like checks and hired scientists usually get ‘erudite’ compensation. But Morris did not make a fuss; the fact that they were all getting paid the same was even better, he thought. The pay was more than enough for him so it should be a bliss to Moi and Koi. No wonder they were getting drunk.

Circa 2003, edited January 2012

Lineage

The summer sun has been up for a good five hours now. Its shine blazes my scalp, stirs up memories inside me that would be better left forgotten. What has happened to me?

There is next to nothing here. But the barren landscape soothes me, reminds me of what I truly am. A lone bird soars through the insipid sky, circling with its inherent grace. It seems to me that he flies with disdain for all below him, for me. He might as well. I can count by the fingers of one hand the number of beings who have shown me some respect, fewer so have shown me love. But one who had was now standing in front of me in tears asking me a question no child should ever have to ask.

‘Why do you hate me?’

Neither denying or acknowledging, I set about the telling of my story, hoping that my actions were finally made clear to him.

 Circa 2005; edited January 2012