Steven (undecided as of yet)

(Dream Sequence)
He stands on the deck in the darkness, he stood there for what seemed like hours, just looking out over the darkened horizon. It was late in the evening and it was starting to get dark, but there was still enough light you could still get around. Suddenly there's a light on the horizon, ever so faintly lit up, but you can tell it's there. He wonders what it is, then starts to think that it's getting bigger and brighter, so he just stands there looking... As it starts to get darker and darker, so dark that you can't see anything in front of you, let alone your hand in front of you, it's like having a wet blanket in your face. The light keeps getting bigger and brighter as he gets closer and closer, then he realizes it's a lighthouse off in the distance; then he starts to wake up.

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Chapter 1

It's dark... quiet... 3:00 in the morning. There's music playing on the internet radio app on the smart-phone on the night stand, the volume turned down low. 4:00, still dark, quiet. 5:00, 6:00, 7:00... only thing changed is the song playing and it's started to get light outside. It's not real light out yet, but it's not as dark as before. 7:30 in the morning the alarm goes off on the smart-phone on the night stand. It's time to get up but Stephen is fighting it. He opens his eyes and turns off the alarm, throws the blankets to the side and slowly crawls out of bed, arching his back and stretching, much like a cat. Speaking of which, he knows he needs to get up and feed the cat and find something to eat for himself... but first he must complete his morning ritual and get dressed. He picks up his phone from the night stand and looks through the notifications from the night before; there's a few things from his social networking apps, a text message from his friend Chris and a few emails to either look at or completely ignore, there's already so many it'll take too long to delete them all because he gets them as fast as he can delete them. 8:00 … sitting in the kitchen now having eggs and fried sausage for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee, steam rises from the top, it smells wonderful, almost as good as the sausage tastes.
He finishes breakfast and goes down to meet his friend Pat at the store for their morning walk. It's nice out, probably about 60 degrees and the birds are chirping loudly; It's nice to get out in the morning, especially when you've got someone to talk about things with because it seems to go quicker and you almost end up competing sometimes. They walk their miles and he goes back to his house where he's greeted by the cat. She likes to jump up on his leg and climb up his back and perch on his shoulder, kind of like a pirate with a parrot. When he gets back to the back door, she jumps down, goes back to her food dish and he goes inside, gets something to drink and sits down at the computer to work on some projects he has going and talk with some of his friends. 1:30 in the afternoon, time to figure out what to eat, he has a choice of a large salad, a couple bags of steamed vegetables, or anything else that happens to be sitting around in cans. He ends up deciding to have chicken with a bowl of rice. The hours just kind of whittle by as you might expect and that night he gets a call from a friend to meet up at the local pub for some drinks.
Meanwhile, since there was some time before he was to head out, so he decided to get some things done at home, there was quite a bit still to get done; laundry to get caught up on, dishes to get cleaned up, some things to get picked up around the house and he figured he needed to go outside and take the hose to the boat, so he figured he might as well get that stuff taken care of while he was thinking about it, because he knew that if he waited he probably wouldn't get it done. Then he decided to go out into the shop and get that cleaned up, take the vacuum hose out and go over the entire shop, from top to bottom, inside all of the tools and get all of the rogue dust that just for whatever didn't get sucked up when the tool was in use

Chapter 2

At about 8 that evening, Stephen finally decided to head over to the pub where he would meet up with Stan Smith, Jonathan McFadden and Dave Jones. They sit there for a while having drinks, then Steve, Stan and Dave decide to go play some pool, but Jon stayed up front. Stan racked, then Steve broke; getting solids with a green ball as his first in, then a blue and a yellow and scratch. They've got their beers, chilling listening to the music, which was very loud playing on the jukebox, but that's normal at places like this. They continued their game and suddenly "AAARRRGGHH!!" CRASH! The sound of a window shattering as Jon was thrown through it. He moans in severe pain as he slowly gets up and crawls to his feet. He looks down at the ground and sees all the broken glass, then notices a significant amount of blood on the ground with it; he then realizes he's cut and bleeding. As he goes to get cleaned up, he struggles to remember the events leading up to this altercation; apparently there was way too much alcohol consumed that night. Maybe that's why he's having so much trouble getting it to stop. It finally stops and he gets things under control, and he sits down to relax and regain his composure, then he sets out to remember what happened. Stephen, Stan and Dave came up to him and asked him what happened, but he was still hazy from the drinks and couldn't remember.
A few days later after things kind of settled down a bit, Jon started to remember a few things, but only really bits and pieces; like he remembered drinking with some guys up front and the next thing he remembered was going through the window and picking himself up off the sidewalk. Later as they were trying to piece everything together, someone they talked to actually saw what happened; apparently Jon, in his drunkenness, made the mistake of mouthing off to someone much larger than himself, and ended up out on the sidewalk amidst a pile of shattered glass; so now we know a little bit more of what went down.
Everyone asked around about what happened, and Stan was able to find out a little bit, he decided to go and sit around at the local cafe and have breakfast. He sat alone at a table drinking his coffee, listening to the people talking around him. It's a hot day outside, but it's a lot nicer in the air conditioned diner. He's long since finished his lunch, but he just sits there drinking his coffee and daydreaming. He greeted his friend Jack when he came in, and Cliff came in and walked by. He still has errands to run but he's not excited about going back outside in the heat.
Errands finished and back home, time to relax and have something cold to drink, so he gets out a glass and fills it with his favorite drink and sits back in his nice comfortable chair; then the phone rings. He looks at the caller ID and answers it; it's his brother Dave. They talk for a while and discuss some ideas they had both been entertaining. Stan had been working on some ideas to be able to extend the effective range and speed of travel of his bicycle, something about having the ability to modify the gearing and putting a motor of some sort on it, and Dave was working on some project of his own, he didn't go into any real details about it, since he wasn't very far past the idea stage.
It's Thursday, and Jon was remembering some more about the incident the past week, like how it came that he was thrown out of the bar through the window. Apparently, he got wasted at the bar and started mouthing off to someone and evidently he took offense to whatever he said and lost his temper and picked him up like he was nothing and threw him like a bale of hay out the window.
Stephen decided to go back home and get some things done around the house and take care of the cat; put out some food and water for her and put her toy back together. He goes about his tasks and gets one thing done after another, she walks around the house following him, meowing intently, wanting him to stop whatever he's doing and pay attention to her so that she can jump up on him and lay on him; but he doesn't stop what he's doing because he has too much that has to be done. Later when he's done, he'll stop and have a drink or two and lie down, then she can walk all over him all she wants; but in the mean time, he has things to do, so she just follows him around and keeps meowing...

Chapter 3

Two weeks ago Thursday, Stan had an appointment to go see his doctor, to have some things looked at. He goes to his doctor and after he gets the paperwork filled out, he sits in the waiting room and waits... He's always hesitant about going to the doctor because it's inevitable, the waiting room is always full of sick people, frequently in more ways than one.
The doctor visit went well, but now he's been admitted in the hospital, came in on Thursday, got started with an iv and now just waiting to find out when he can go home. It can get kind of boring in the hospital, the beds aren't really very comfortable, the diet leaves a little to be desired, but the nurses are pretty nice. Thankfully he can still walk around at will as long as he's not tied to an iv bag so he at least has some freedom of movement; too bad he doesn't feel brave enough to get a drink or something out of the machine, he could really use something different once in a while.
The nurses come in every so often to take vitals and start another iv, so there's that bit of interaction but it's not something he looks forward to, especially considering he'd really like to go home and not have to worry about all this, but things are what they are and things need to get done or there could be consequences for not doing so. It kind of sucks that it's a holiday weekend because he doesn't think there's much chance of getting out before the first of the week. He tries to remain positive about the situation; it's better to be where he is than the lose his leg to the infection that he's experiencing.
The first day was somewhat pleasant, dinner came and it was some sort of mystery meat with tomato sauce and diced potatoes as well as broccoli and diced peaches, and breakfast the next morning was what he could only assume was artificial egg with cream of wheat and coffee. Lunch was a pleasant surprise; cheese steak on a bun with some sort of dessert and dinner was pleasant, pasta with a meat sauce, some bland vegetables, and a cup of strange tasting vanilla ice cream. The nurse came in for vitals again, pressure and gas reading worked out but the thermometer didn't seem to want to work right, he guessed because he had just eaten some ice before she came in, but they'll just try again later.
The doctor came in to check his progress and said it's looking much better than it was, and he'll be back tomorrow to see what it's like then; for now just more iv medication and waiting, more having to keep the leg elevated to try to keep the pressure off, more of the things he hates having to do, but alas, it is what it is. Dracula struck around eleven thirty, located a vein and struck blood. He's thankful they didn't have to use the left hand, as the right hand is already in use and he's left handed and such would've been a pain. Now they're waiting for the lab results so they can give him more medication, and naturally he's not too excited about that, since that means he has to be confined to the area around his bed and chair until it's done. He hopes to be able to go home soon, but he's not putting money on it.
His results came back good so they didn't have to change the dosage and they started another bag; hopefully he'll be able to go home soon, preferably before Sunday. On Saturday the doctor came back and checked things out again and told him the good news, he got to go home with special instructions to follow and a prescription...

Chapter 4

Stan was only in the hospital for about 3 days, but was exhausted by the lack of sleep, and a bit underwhelmed by the whole experience; but he took his prescription and had it filled, then he started walking more. After that it's just been ups and downs as always, but he hasn't had to go back to see the doc or have any other treatment, so that's great.
Meanwhile, Jon isn't totally sure what exactly went down, but he's starting to worry about it a little less and just write it off as merely a passing occurrence; just something that happened for whatever reason. He's not physically injured, or if he is, he doesn't know it yet. He plans to get together with Stan and Steve later and go fishing or just carouse, since the weather is so nice, unlike what it's been lately; and they haven't been in a while.
They decided for Jon's safety, as well as the sanity of the rest, that there would be no booze taken on the trip, so they went to get ice and drinks for the trip, getting water and sports drinks, then they have to swing around and get the bait, or there won't be any fish caught and it'll all be a wasted trip, although one could probably dig up some worms off the bank, but that's a lot of work for three people to fish.
Anyway, they fished for several hours and caught a few things, took it back to the house and cleaned it and planned to cook it up in a few days; just then Stan gets a call from Dave saying that he's decided that he wants to start a new life and move up to Utah to take advantage of the fact that there's a lower level of humidity and it's just so nice up there at least in the summer.
That being a bit of a shock to Stan, there was really nothing he could say to convince him otherwise, so he said he'd help him pack to go.

Chapter 5

Feeling a bit down, Stan went to help Dave pack his stuff and get ready to leave. He suggested to him that it would probably be cheaper to drive out with what he can get in the car and have the rest of it shipped after he gets settled and knows where he's going to be, than to rent a trailer and pack it all up and then have to rent a storage shed after getting there. In a matter of hours they got everything packed up in boxes and ready to go; Dave sold the furniture and dishes, figured he'd just get new stuff out there, would save money on the move and give him extra cash for the trip.
It would still be a few days before Dave actually left, but they talked for hours that evening about pretty much everything that was going on, about Stan's health, Jon's incident at the bar, they laughed about shared memories, things that happened growing up; things they would never forget about and memories they would always hold on to forever.
Stan and Dave got together with Jon and Steve one more time before Dave left, they went to the bar and got some food and a couple pitchers of beer, laughed and talked about all the old things, people they knew and women they went with and the like; then they decided to shoot some pool and throw some darts while the music plays. The time wore on, they all had several beers each, nobody was sure by the end of the night who won the billiards game, but among friends, who really cares. They left the bar and went back to Stan's house and chilled out on the deck, played some cards since it was a really nice night out for it. Stan got his guitar out and played some and Jon sang, it was agreed that it'd been way too long since they'd just sat and chilled at one of them's house like this.

Chapter 6

Meanwhile, back at home, Stephen fed the cat and sat down on the couch and turned on the TV and the game console and put a game in and sat back with the controller to relax a bit, and just as he starts to get into the game; same as always, here comes the cat wanting some attention. The thing is, she doesn't just come up and start meowing trying to get your attention, she just jumps up on you and demands it, usually climbing up your back and either sitting on your shoulder or she'll just climb all the way up and lay on your chest cradled in your arm; and when that happens, you might as well not be doing anything at all because she doesn't care about it whatsoever.
After a bit he decides he's not going to get anywhere on the game, so he just turns it all off and turns his attention to the kitty. She'll climb up on him and curl up in the bend in his arm, and from there he can manipulate her onto her back in the bend of his arm there and scratch her chest and behind her ear. What she seems to particularly enjoy however is when you scratch her on the underside of the neck, kind of on the throat, because when you do, she just lays there with her head thrown back just reveling in it.