roblef's Stories

The End?

2008-05-25T17:57:02Z

I don’t believe anymore. They’ve taken it away from me; faith is a luxury I can no longer afford. From now on, it’s just facts. Straight, dry, uninspiring facts. Facts that can get me killed. Ones that can get YOU killed, all the same.

It wasn’t always this way. I used to want to believe, as the kids say. I felt good in my openness, my blind ability to suspend any disbelief.

And then he showed up. Took my life, turned it inside out like a prolapsed bowel, and left me for dead. I wish I had gone that way. Easier, in the long run, than feeling this way. Like a hollowed out clay statue, dry and dusty on some voodoo woman’s shelf. Knowing for a fact that it’s over. No hope remains.

So I sit here, and wait. I clutch the truth like a drowning man clutches his nearest neighbor, dragging them down to their own watery end.

Only you can save me. I don’t even believe in you. You don’t exist. But here I am, nonetheless. Kill me. Or bring me back to life. I just can’t care.

A Quiet No More

2008-05-06T23:39:59Z

He looks at her. Really LOOKS at her, for maybe the first time in ten of the last fourteen years of their marriage. He sees the sagging skin, the lackluster hair, the sad wrinkles around her eyes. There are new depths of sadness and pain there.

That’s when he knows. He knows what she’s done. He knows that she knows what he’s done.

He falls to his knees. Reaching for her, tears welling up in his eyes.

“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

The sadness in her eyes becomes something else. Something harder. She walks past his outstretched arms and through the kitchen door, into the hallway beyond.

He hears the front door open. Then close. Hears her footsteps on the front walk. Listens to the rusty scraping of the mailbox.

The tears fall freely now. He turns his body, still on his knees, to face the kitchen door. He hears the front door open. Then close.

Pulling in a shuddering sigh of resignation, he waits for the final sound of his life.

perspective

2007-10-24T21:41:10Z

How does acting in retaliation solve anything? why is it that you continue to churn the already stirred pot into a fine, self-centered, immature froth? Nothing good comes from overreacting. This is something you have spoken to me about from the start. Stop overreacting, you’d say.

Well, it’s your turn. Stop overreacting. Stop flinging emotional barbs left and right, entitled and righteous. We will not always forgive you. You do not have the cover of ADD or dyslexia when it comes to emotional immaturity. We are all immature. You refuse to admit to it. The first step is to admit you have a problem.

One day, perhaps, you will see this in a new light. You will be able to see how you contribute to the problem, rather than help contain or solve it. You are amazing in physical crises. You can be a liability in emotional ones.

what do we call it?

2007-08-07T20:15:42Z

This is called depression.

This is called headache for no reason, slightly nauseous and greasy eyed.

This is called sadness.

This is called what the fuck were you doing, you sad excuse for a rotted aborted fetus.

This is called anger, turned inward.

This is called what do we do now?

This is called no turning back, treat it as the crime it actually is.

This is called pain.

the trip

2007-04-29T04:38:19Z

What she wants is a binary choice. An exclusion of all gray areas. A renunciation of the truth.

Either we love one or we love none. The only way to express new love is to renounce old love. Why should new love be denied? Well, because older love will not share. Will not countenance the new love’s place in the universe.

If I move her cheese, she will not find it. If I completely replace her cheese, so much the worse. Not only is it in a different location, it is the wrong cheese. It is the WRONG cheese. Her expected cheese is no longer.

The trip to India is now a trip to Antarctica. Still fascinating, still full of interest and joy and adventure. Yet, the India trip is the one she made reservations for. Not the Antarctic. Nope.

I wish she’d come with me to Antarctica. Honest. I do. She wishes I’d just stay the course and go to India, even though it feels wrong to me. There are two wills beating at each other through the night. Two wills, one outcome, and no brooking compromise.

I’d compromise.

frubjulous

2007-04-18T19:25:26Z

Nothing worse than a phloore. Honest.

They smell bad, they utter bizarre gobbling noises from somewhere around their top nubbin of spinal and neural biomass. They are ALWAYS moving about, flapping and jigging, bending and unfolding their bodies with nauseating swiftness.

And here was one now. Flapping it’s orifice, emanating the most god-awful stink from the opening. What the hell was WRONG with these creatures?

I flipped the translator bubble to actually try and gain some sense from it’s gaseous belching and frubjulations:

“I’m telling you, monster, that I am prepared to have at thee! Go back to the dens of hell from whence you came, or I shall smite thee with mine sword!”

Frag, but they made little sense. I retracted my arm, letting the smooth, boneless muscle sheaths loosten about the phloore’s midsection. It fell to the ground in a heap of metallic exoskeleton and pointy bits.

I had no idea what to do next. The smell was just too awful.

Ghost In The Machine, Part 4

2007-04-10T23:04:21Z

The smell made him feel like dry heaving again. It was the smell of dung and death. There were bound to be alligators around here, somewhere. Maybe snakes. He looked at Tina, she was just staring at him impatiently; it was time to get moving again.

He took off, loading the chamber on the gun that had suddenly materialized on his back. He ran fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t talk.

“Ted, err…Tina. What’s happened to you? I mean, not the gender thing…er…” he trailed off, uncertain.

“Dude, you have got to relax,” she said. “It’s not like I’m any different.”

yeah, thought Kavin, except that amazing new rack and an ass I have to try hard not to stare at.

Kavin grunted something non-committal and kept running…

Ghost In The Machine, Part 3

2007-04-10T22:52:13Z

They ran through a chaos-torn landscape, low walls ripped into by bullet and missile ordinance, shrapnel and shells lying everywhere.

Up ahead, Kavin could see the tell tale shimmer of a warp point, projected on the simulacra of a warehouse door. He pulled Tina behind him.

She pulled back. “Kavin, quit pulling me, you fuck. I can run just fine. In fact, I used to kick YOUR ass at gameZ. So get to the damn warp point, and stop pulling my wrist.”

Kavin didn’t paused long enough to give his old friend a sheepish look, then ran headlong for the WP.

The warp twisted them around, turned them inside out and spat them into a swamp. Kavin dry heaved. He could never quite handle the effect the Warp Point had on his stomach. Tina just looked on from behind him.

The Warp Points sent playerZ to random nodes; they had a few minutes to catch their breath before the hounds would be on them again.

Kavin looked around, pale moonlight filtered through low trees. Frogs croaked and some kind of animal squealed in the dark.

Ghost In The Machine, part 2

2007-04-10T22:50:47Z

“Ted?” Kavin asked.

It took a moment to recognize him, because he wasn’t a he anymore. It was Ted, but not Ted anymore. Kavin and Ted had gone to school together. Both assigned to software implementation and maintenance training before the war began, before the Gamez began. Kavin had heard about forced gender reassignment before, but never knew anyone who went through it, at least he didn’t think he’d known anyone.

“Not anymore, I’m Tina, now.” Ted/Tina responded.

Kavin looked her over, the features weren’t changed too much Tina was still tall, still skinny. She must’ve gotten reassigned right before the Gamez started 3 years ago. They ended the forced gender reassignment policy. Breeding was reduced not for a lack of natural born women, now it was reduced to keep a lid on humanity.

Kavin could hear the hounds again. They’d picked up his scent, maybe Tina’s now, too. Kavin grabbed her wrist and they started to run.

Ghost In The Machine, part 1

2007-04-10T22:49:51Z

Kavin burst through the containment field, the hounds on his heels, close behind. They bayed and howled as they smelled his blood. The Gamez had been rough this year.

He pulled himself up onto the ledge of a nearby building, scraping more skin of his hands and knees in the process. He ran across the ledge, fingertips brushing the sides of the wall to maintain balance.

Jumping from the ledge to barely miss the low wall below was a challenge. He stumbled, and fell, his clothing huddling around him when he landed, rolled, and got up to a crouch.

Breathing heavily, he thought he heard a almost-familiar voice behind him.

“Kavin…is that you?”

wtf

2007-03-28T02:39:25Z

“Wake up, Cassandra.”

The voice was deep, but neither male nor female. It had a rhythm and cadence far too even to be human.

“I can tell you’re awake now. Good.” It uttered the last word with no emotion attached. Like an oven saying the word, “tasty.”

“Will you open your eyes, please? We need you to see.”

See? We? What the hell was going on.

And where was Kavin?

charmed, I'm sure

2007-03-24T20:18:32Z

So I sat there, must’ve looked stoned for all the slack-jawed energy I put into my facial expression. I watched the jackass fool run off, his laughter dopplering away from me, like a sick commentary on my current existence.

I like to camp. Seriously. It suits me. Call me a hobo, a bum, homeless, whatever. No one is my boss, and I answer to no one else. Freedom. F-R-E-E. That’s me.

The charm thing sat on my chest. It started to get warm. It started to burn.

“fuck fuck Fuck FUCK FUCK !” I slapped at it, standing, and stumbling int he process. It burned hot, like an ember from a cook fire that had gotten stuck in my chest hair back in ‘08.

I must’ve stumbled in the right direction, because it cooled off. For an all too brief moment. Then it began to heat up.

Now, I may be poor, but I ain’t stupid. It only took 3 more hot screaming sessions to figure out that if I moved in a certain direction, the damn thing would cool off. Hell, I’m not gonna force it. Off I went, in the only direction I could.

blurble

2007-03-22T22:13:17Z

I hitched up my mental bootstraps and inched closer to the …thing, I suppose.

I don’t know what made me even try, but I said, “You ok?”

“Does it LOOK like I’m ok?” the thing burbled at me.

It was like hearing two conversations at once. Like when your co-pilot is talking to you about his latest sexual adventures while the commtroller in the port speaks codes and incomprehensible computer gibberish into your other earbud.

This thing was actually giving me the stink eye. Literally.

“Did I stutter?” it said, with the same frission of gibberish and GalStan.

“Uhhh. No,” I managed, in my own brand of GalStan.

I mean, what would YOU say to the mountainous form of a too many eyed, greasy blurbly creature that you find in your hallway, or airlock, or wherever you may have found it?