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 Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:19 am
Wake up. Never gracefully, but mornings weren't meant for poise. The first thought, always Junpei? followed by silence. A sullen trudge to the sink where she'd brush her teeth, wash her face. A twenty minute long repose as she puzzled together the ideal outfit. Her makeup done in a matter of moments.
Guns holstered, out the door. Blank face.
---
12/10/12 Entry 253
Ami looked at the page listlessly, staring at the cursive like it was hiding some deep meaning. Nothing else was written on the page, nothing had been written for days.
---
"Literature major," she repeated.
"Oh yeah, of course," classmates responded. One smiled and said, "What else would it be?"
Ami just gave a jovial smile and said, "Obviously."
"Hey, how come?"
She shifted uncomfortably in the metal and plastic desk they'd given her, as they gave every student who enrolled in high school. A tug on her skirt fringe. "Ah, I don't know. It's just what I've always wanted- I mean I love reading... it's my thing." A humble understatement. Ami had been writing ever since she picked up a pen. While other kids drew houses and sunshine on fingerpaint canvases, Ami was reading the picture books by the shelves.
"Your thing," the tall one said.
"Oh shut up." A laugh, shared by the group at her expense.
"You're going to become a great writer," he said in apology.
Ami rolled her eyes, "Oh THANK you for your blessing, Alex."
Students laughed, went back to talking about their weekend, tv shows, high school drama. The teacher came in, began lecturing about his "shibboleths of knowledge." She ignored him, like they all did, and went back to reading Dracula, while lazily writing notes in sharp cursive.
Adam slipped a note into her book. She looked at him with an "are you serious?" face. He shrugged and smiled, pointing to the note. Ami tried to play the skeptical do-gooder, but a lovestruck smile broke the facade. She rolled her eyes and opened the piece of paper.
A doodle of a zombie fighting Dracula. Well he'd always been an artistic type. She grinned and crushed the paper in her hand, shoving it into her pocket.
---
12/10/12 Entry 253
Not a single word came to her. The date had been scratched out four or five times, all attempts to write down the cursed Entry 253. A blank page in her diary- not her journal, her diary. The journal was easily filled. Speculations, measurements, descriptions, notes. Those all came easily. They were facts. Cold, rigid words without meaning to them beyond a visual reference to the world around her.
A diary was feelings. It took thought and emotions. A rawness to exposure.
No words came.
---
She'd read this paragraph two times. She couldn't focus. Reading. Simple. She could read an 800 page book in 3 days, but now she couldn't even read a paragraph less than 3 times.
Instead, she entertained herself by looking at the cover, as though that would provide some deeper form of escape. I Capture the Castle. She didn't understand. This had been one of her favorites since a friend imparted it to her in high school. She set the book down and stared out her window.
A look down to her closet. A tiny tiny lunch box with Audrey Hepburn on the front. The only thing she'd taken the time on one of her days off to recover.
---
"But Ams," he pleaded, "It wasn't even ... It was, okay it was. I still love you though."
"Enough to marry me?"
A rigid silence hung in the air. Neither of them knew the answer to her question.
---
She rotated the paper in her hands, examining the crude pencil work. A zombie and Dracula. How far away that seemed now. Only a few years really, yet it seemed like another lifetime entirely. She was almost 21 now, wasn't she. It wasn't a big milestone- underage drinking in a New York college wasn't exactly uncommon.
Her head on her pillow, she held the tiny paper up to the light as though some magic would impart on her.
Of course, nothing happened. Magic wasn't real- FEAR was. Ironic how the fairytales they'd read as children were real, but no one got their happy ending. Prince Charming and Snow White were just the figures parents put in place of the sorrows of the world. The dark reality was that the only power was through fear.
She set the paper down, and a metallic object shifted, clanking against the cool metal of the lunchbox. Ami propped herself up to search through the box. When she found the source, she wished she hadn't.
Color drained. She clutched the tiny ring in her small hands. She turned over onto her side and curled up into a ball, clutching the lunchbox and ring close to her.
Why couldn't she have just forgiven it? Told Adam it was a mistake. Gone to therapy or something? No, she just ran away, and now everything was worse. She couldn't have just stubbornly sucked it up and tried to fix it.
"Adam," she wheezed through her tears. "I've made a grave mistake, love."
---
12/10/12 Entry 253
Junpei,
I think I'm starting to get it. I do not know how to fix it, nor has any light been shined on my path. I have dug myself a hole too deep for a friendly hand up. I assume most would slither away, move to a new city, change their lifestyle, lose new friends, make new acquaintances, but I lack that option. We both know the surlier life has always suited me. Rather, I have suited it with a needle and thread in hand.
It is an inevitable fact that humans adapt, and I can do nothing against the great torrents of Darwin and Wallace. I shall find new ways to reach you. Perhaps if I make enough friends, you'll return to me? That was your whole vendetta from the beginning (you think I could not see through your schemes, but I could). Junpei, come to bring the broken girl a smile. Well you'll be pleased to know I don't need you. I've made new friends on my own, through no assistance of your shrill chime in my head. I don't know how, but we'll fix this mess, I promise. No, no this mess, I suppose. My mess. You didn't do anything but pick a terrible host.
My only logical motion now ... is to wait. You're such a pain you know. You couldn't just come back quietly, with a whisper. I know your type. You're going to make a great show of it, you b*****d. Probably with some sort of fish orchaestra like in the Little Mermaid. I wonder if you'd take offense to that?
Well when you return you'll find a composer to your mad circus waiting.
Unfortunately Yours,
Ami.
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Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2012 12:39 am
It wasn't hard to find alcohol- it never was. Even back home you just went to an older friend, went to a more relaxed bar that didn't check your ID. On Deus, it was almost easier. People were always trying to drink their traumas away. Sometimes unwilling to let a bottle go even. That is, until a superior showed up and performed and instantaneous sobering up ritual that went something like "get back to work."
Tori was an easy source for Ami. The girl had gotten it before, she could do it agan. Curious thoughts occurred to her as she walked back to her dorm, firmly perplexed. What denoted a friend? The ability to share alcohol freely? An ally on the battlefield, like Kat? A place to stay when she felt alone, like Madeline? Then what did she call Wilson or Otto or Lex?
She groaned as she trudged down the hallway, mind swimming without a single drop having passed her lips.
---
Twisted delirium had set in, a buzzed smile on Ami's face. Still coherent, but significantly numbed to her surroundings.
"You know Jumpy-" No one was around of course. One refreshing perk of being a hunter was that no one ever accused you of being schizophrenic. They all had voices in their head, after all. "I quuuuuuuuuu I like this." A smile came across her face. With no weapon now, she really was schizophrenic now. Or did that require having voices talk back? She really couldn't determine between the two at the moment. "Why don't I do this more? Like ... smart. It's smart."
She fell back onto her bed, doing nothing but staring up at the ceiling she knew as well blurred as she did clear. Tiny dots stared back at her, mocking her very existence. At least, that was how she would have worded it. The bottle touched her lips one more time.
A part of her wondered if anyone would notice if she didn't stop. She could always stumble back to Tori's and get more. No one would notice, would they?
How far could she go? She'd never heard of a person dying of alcohol poisoning here on deus. Maybe their heightened abilities just filtered it out. Then why was she getting drunk? Ah yes, the loss of her abilities. Human again, human again. So would anyone care? Was there really a soul on this island who could confess she was irreplaceable? She assumed there would be a mourning period, maybe a day or so for a few like Tori or Kat, then she would be chalked up to "oh well." Just like Marcus, right? No, not like Marcus. Marcus would be missed forever. If not by Cass, then by Ami herself.
Death had become so detached. She hated everything about this island. The way it shaped people. The way it hardened them- all of them. Not just her. She knew it wasn't just her. It couldn't be. The other day she'd seen Sasha with an expression she'd never though possible for the girl. Was it wrong to miss home? Was it wrong to sometimes want to go back to her old life?
Her knee bumped against her tin box once more. Curious. She pulled out her tiny ring, slipped it onto her finger once more. Shined it a little, even. No one was looking, so what did it matter? "Of course I will! I love you!" she said, echoing her words from years ago. No, just one year, right? Had it really only been a year? Ami stood up and twirled in her skirt, which of course made her stumble and bang her leg on a chair. She blinked a few times as things stopped spinning. "Ohhhhh yes. Let's just ge-married. Noooo thinking. Just loooooOOOOOOVE." The bottle clanked against her ring as she tipped it back yet again. The bottle was empty, so she just looked at it lackadaisically and set it on her desk.
---
Leaning over a toilet retching out nothing but gastric juices was not how she'd pictured saving the word from great evils. Drunken b*****d was not in her 4 year college plan. Her eyes stung with tears, but the feeling was almost neutral. Crying was nothing anymore. Merely and emotional reflex she had yet to tame. She could bottle everything up except tears. They were tricky. They came when you least wanted them too, and completely impossible to predict. Tricky bastards.
This probably would have felt better if she'd at least eaten something. Ami couldn't remember- was it two mornings ago? Three? Two. It was probably two. Lex's snickerdoodles came to mind and another round of dry heaves hit her. Cookies were not where her mind wanted to go right now.
She wished she'd never been given this stupid ability. Whatever being hung around in the sky must have thought her existence a complete joke when he wished it upon her. Give the hardass an immutable characteristic and watch her life crumble. Throw in cowardice and hatred- it made for a good show. That's all it was, right? A show, with a curtain to be drawn. Two empty bottles sat next to her. How many were back in her room again?
All part of the act, right?
---
Well on a scale of one to things she'd never admit to in a million years, that excursion was a solid rocking headache and a pair of sunglasses. She sipped a citrus tea, thinking that somehow tea was the answer to all things. It was, wasn't it?
Calling in sick was unheard of on Deus. She'd have to go eventually, right?
Ami didn't make any sudden moves. Someone would come searching for her eventually. Well, she wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. Ami was ninety percent sure she was an ankle weight to everyone at this point. Instead all she did was sit there in silence, staring at the ring still on her finger. The loneliness of a single band of metal was incredible.
---
Her eyes caught her old blue backpack sitting in her closet. Something she'd picked up on her first day off, thinking there would actually be a time and a place for using a backpack. It really just weighed you down, which she hadn't expected.
It had other uses though. A strange though occured to her. Why did she never travel? Quite frankly, why didn't all of the hunters go sightseeing on their days off. Portals made it so the entire world was at your fingertips.
What a foolish thought. Hunters didn't have time for that. Days off were for shopping, supplies, meeting necessities. It was frivolous to treat oneself as a human anymore.
She shrugged the idea off. The ring on her finger stung, and she had other matters to deal with.
---
Junpei,
I would like it if some day I had something to show to you. Some mark of accomplishment that I could wave proudly above my head like a banner. Then again, the things you value, the marks you treasure I have yet to discover. Our time was too short.
You were right about overdoing it. I do, overdo it, that is. I miss having you telling me to stop, even if I ignored your counsel. I still haven't the slightest why you picked someone so opposite of you. Perhaps masochistic desires welled deep within you? It seems too much an effort to sort through the machinations.
On second thought, you probably had no intent at all. Perhaps you thought my dilemmas would be an easy fix. Ah, yes that is much more suitable to you, my aquatic friend, than a noble ideal put forth on a pedestal. You have always been more stableboy than knight.
Annoyed with waiting,
Ami
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