==Crumbled Letter, #1==Write down your thoughts, the therapist said, let it out, he said... I have a journal just for that, but that's for things that I want people to see if they find it. This stack of paper that I write atop, and the one I currently jot my thoughts on, these will be burned, erased from this hellhole of a universe... Let's being, shall we?... ==Crumbled Letter, #2==It's been a few days that I had the new arm, the fake one after that loon at the refueling station sliced off my arm. I took pleasure in getting my revenge, I still remember it. I don't tell anyone because I want to be sweet and innocent, I want to be Oakie... I remember pulling out my revolver and aiming for his head, my arm was gone and my aim was shaky, I was bleeding out rapidly. I knew that I couldn't hit the head, even if he was in arm's reach, my shaking hand wouldn't allow it... That, and the force of this large revolver round I was using [which was designed to puncture fuck-wad's armors like the loon in this black and neon red shit] would hurt my only hand I had left... So, I pointed down, and aimed for his belly, center of mass. Click, boom. I must have shot through his spine, because the kid collapsed backwards, his upper torso squirming in pain, his legs restless. The recoil from the gun hurt my wrist pretty bad, but I could still hold it... At this point, these senseless assholes started gathering around, TO WATCH... No one helped me, or the poor loon, even guards were sitting back and watching. Guess that's what you get for going to an anarchy system, eh? So, the kid holds up his fist to me, I have no idea what's going on, when he suddenly fires a shot FROM HIS FUCKING GAUNTLET. It pierced through my lung and collapsed it. Before I know it, the gun was up again, I pull the trigger, and the hammer pulls back in a almost slow-motion fashion... Click, boom. ==Crumbled Letter, #3==That one shot through his arm, his shooting arm, and he was on the ground at that point, screaming for dear life. No one gave a shit around us though, they watched, I wonder if they were even betting at some point... I feel the innards of my chest pull and I cough, the sharp taste of my own blood enters my mouth, and starts this horrible, ragged breathing... I've never heard it before, but my best guess is like someone putting an air hose between two bloody pieces of meat and blowing into it, a wet flapping sound. The loon looked at me through the helmet, almost pleadingly... I took much more than he took from me, most likely that arm and his legs... But I felt anger boiling in my, fire running through the blood that leaked from my body. I lifted the gun up again, aiming for his chest... Click, boom. Click, boom. Click, boom. I emptied three painful shots into his torso, watching his arms flail and his body jump. This stupid voice modifier in his helmet gave this same distorted wet flapping sound that I had... I had just enough strength in my surely bruised and possibly broken wrist to limply hold up the gun, fire burning in the joint as I send the kid a mercy... Click, boom. He falls back, a neat hole through his helmet. The kid goes still, and the crowd... Laughs. They laughed. They fucking laughed. And I thought for a moment I was an animal. ==Crumbled Letter, #4==More to come, still venting, and damn does it feel good... Well, at that point, I was dying. I'm not sure what kept me going, either the sheer will to live, or God wanting to make my life last a bit longer just to put me through more hell. I dropped the revolver to the ground, knowing it's six shots were gone, and slowly bend down to pick up my arm. I nearly toppled there, but I knew the moment I hit the floor was the moment people were going to start swarming me to steal from my corpse. Not like I had much on me. I take the arm, it smells like cooked meat on the end, because the loon chopped it off with an "energy katana" or whatever the hell kids are using these days. I limp my sorry ass to the beaming pad, and have myself taken a short way to my awaiting ship. I accidentally left without paying, which got them on high alert... Yah, they get pissy when they lose money, not when two people are killing eachother. I wanted to turn around and just fly my ship into the station, I thought I was dead anyway... So, I just kicked on my FTL drive and shot out of that sector, letting time and space warp in front of me. My hand was firmly planted on the bullet hole, my arm was dropped to the floor beside me. I couldn't remember which hole you had to cover to breathe though... I figured out why I didn't bleed out too bad at that point, the energy weapon, though still making me bleed, burned my wound shut... Not completely, because you know, crispy bits fall and pull off, but it was drastically less than what it could have been. It was my LUNG that I worried about... I went to two sectors, dropping out near FTL orbital radio stations and calling an emergency for medical attention.First one I went to, a lot of people asked where I was, one of them said it was mostly so they could scavenge me when I die... Second one, Orion, no one was home at the time, who's ever heard of an ENTIRE SECTOR being asleep?... Bah, must be from the same colonial group, right? I went to a third one that I visited a lot to finally get some help from an Avian and a random man, who... Whisked me away. They didn't break into my ship, they were really there to help me. Guess the universe decided to stop kicking the downed dog, eh?... ==Crumbled Letter, #5==I don't get how people can say these things... Say that they killed so many people, shot and sliced, eaten or mutilated, and they just boast about it, they're completely unmoved by the fact that they took life away from other living people. Don't get me wrong, this sounds horribly hypocritical from like... What, the second piece of paper? Anywho- at least I think about it, at least I regret it. I worked for a private company military and, guess what, the things I had to do, the people's faces who looked to my face, the last they would see, in either horror, disgust or anguish, maybe something else?... That shit cuts deeper than any knife, leaves a bigger hole in you than any caliber cannon you got stripped onto your body. I know for a fact some of these people saying this stuff are just kids trying to look cool, maybe get an easy pickup and a one night stand, but people who I KNOW who have killed, who I KNOW have seen TRUE HORROR?... How... How do they not care? I tried everything besides drugs, I wasn't going to throw my damned life away with shit like that. I drank until I was passed out, and even then I had nightmares. More nights than one I thought about the blaster that was under my coat, and how easy it would be to just press it to the side of my head and... Those... Those things are not people They're monsters. The moment you stop giving a shit about the people you kill, you become a monster, something that needs to be put down. You need to regret taking so much potential away from the universe... ==Crumbled Letter, #6== *dried splotches of what seemed to be water dot the paper.*They could have been a doctor... A lawyer, a mother or father, a grandfather/grandmother. They had a chance to spawn something else that might chance the universe. HOW... How can people just... Just... Not care?... The loon- he was just some drugged up kid... He was just some drugged up kid, probably some rich kid that got a hold of some family cash and bought armor, wanted to be cool... I could smell it in the air after I shot him, he was pumping shit into his mask, this noxious, horrible stuff. I know what it was. That was Rage Dust. That's... That's what made me go all out... I was so close to him that when I hit him, his suit punctured... Even if that's not true, it's... It's what I'm going to tell myself. The kid though, he was still someone... Behind that armor, he was someone's son, grandson, someone somewhere CARED for him, we all have people that care for us... And I took them away... How can anyone just shrug these feelings off and go on, even GLOAT about it?... ==Crumbled Letter, #7==How... How...When they talk about it, I cringe. When they gloat, I get shallow... I feel it slowly shaving my sanity away, sliver my sliver. It's only a matter of time before you hit some tender center and cut a nerve... I'm going to break, I keep denying it, but I feel it... I'm going mad... I want to drink, but I know I shouldn't. I want fucking Happy Trip, but I know that shit fucks up your head and puts holes in your brain... All I wanted was to be HAPPY... To explore, to meet someone I loved, to settle down and raise the next generation, kids I can call my own, adopted or not... To marry anyone that I loved to to raised kids to make sure they didn't make the mistakes I did. But it won't let you... ==Crumbled Letter, #8==It won't... It keeps taking from you. How many times have I been hurt mentally and emotionally. If the scars on my heart could be listed on wall a mile high and a wide in one inch tallies, the wall would be painted black. If I could display my mind, it would be like modern art- indescribable colors and fragments dotted across a canvas that was slowly burning to a crisp, to be turned to ash and carried away by the wind, scattered like my hopes of a future. If my dreams could be heard... They would hear true grace. If my reality could be heard... They would go deaf from the horrible screetching. The universe is taking so much from us all... Some people act like they're above it, but it's not true... ==Crumbled Letter, #9==I'll find a way... Time will erode me, but I won't go easily. I will be a diamond in the stars, maybe not perfectly cut and shaped, but I'll be proud of all my rough edges. I'll find someone that loves me, and I'll raise my children to know the universe out there, their choices and how they could be made without my influence. Maybe then, far, far from now... A distant family member of Oklahoma Red will be huddled around the last of the stars, absorbing it's warmth as it slowly dies, one that is at peace with how it all ends... At least. I can only hope. Maybe that's all I need... Just some more hope. ... And maybe a beer.
