Memories: (1 of 3)

It seems like forever since I last saw him. It was shortly after the war began and his father had just called him saying he was on his way home. I remember the look on his face when he heard that. It made me so happy to see him smile again. He had not smiled since the start of the war.
He came over to me, and gently touched my face. My god! How I miss his touch. Then he came closer and whispered in my ear what happened. I felt happy for him, and yet at the same time I felt a desire for him more than ever. Almost as if I knew that I would never see him again. He took a step back, and said the last thing that he would ever say to me for a long time. “Don’t worry Lisa. I am going home to wait for my father. Come over tomorrow, I want to spend the whole day with you.”
The next morning I went over to his house to see if he still wanted to spend the day with me. I knocked on his door, and after a minute, his mother appeared. I instantly noticed a look of sadness masked her face. Her makeup had run from her tears, and her hair had been mangled into an uncared-for state. Her body showed signs of abuse. Her dress was ripped, and there were bruises covering her arm. I looked at her and my heart felt as if a weight had been dropped on it. His mother looked at me, and her tears filled her eyes. She took a step out of the house, and fell to her knees. Anguish exploded from her in an indescribable way. “They took him!” she screamed. Tears free fell from her face, smudging her makeup further. “The imperial soldiers came here yesterday asking for Mark. I told them he was with you, but they just came in and waited for him to come home. When he did, they knocked him out and took him away! I couldn’t do anything about it either. One of the officers held me in another room with a pistol to my head. I tried to escape, but…well…” the rest of what she said I couldn’t understand.
I couldn’t move. My legs felt like lead. My head went into overdrive thinking about what could be happening to him. “No…NO…I won’t…I-I can’t believe it!” I felt so helpless. I cried. For a long time I cried. Every hollow of my being was aching for him to come back to me. I tried to rationalize what was going on; asking myself the same questions over and over again. “Why him? Why now? What do they want?” Over and over I kept getting the same answers. “They are the military; they can do as they please.”
No…there had to be some reason to this act. I couldn’t take it. I screamed. “Someone tell me what’s going on!”
Soon after, my cell phone went off. “Hello?” I said.
It was my girlfriend Katrina. When she spoke, she sounded out of breath and in a crowd of people. “Lisa, it’s Kati, I’m in the town square right now in front of the Mega screen. You won’t believe what’s going on! Quick, turn on your screen.”
“A-alright…”I stammered.
I got into the house, and walked over to a couch. Marks mom went into the kitchen, and started washing dishes out of a nervous habit. I stumbled over to an end table next to the couch, and activated the screen using a controller built into the table. I pushed one button and a large section of the wall in front of me opened exposing a screen. I pressed another button and the screen powered up. The welcome view showed for a minute, then instantly, I was bombarded with images of the war. People were interviewing other soldiers outside of their Battle Mech’s; others were just recording the war.
I watched a squad of Flyrunners bomb an empty town before I responded. “I’ve seen this already.”
She laughed a little when I said that. “Maybe, but you haven’t seen this that’s coming up.”
I watched the screen for a minute, not hearing anything, then all the sound came at me at once.
The newscaster headlined. “We finally have some footage of what’s going on, down here at the battle front. Why is this war happening you ask? We will find out soon enough. This here is one of our base camps, and as you can see our soldiers are working tirelessly, preparing for the next strike.”
The remote on the table had a view stick, so that I could see more of the surrounding area. I used that to pan the camera around. What I saw after a minute of panning, I could not believe. “Is that…”
I wanted to zoom in, to get a better look, but there wasn’t a zoom function.
“Who?” Katrina asked confused as to why I was talking to my self.
“That man there…Here I’ll send you the image.” I took a photo of the image using one of the tools on the remote, and sent it to her. She got it almost instantly.
“That looks like…that looks like Mark! Hey Lisa, is everything all right over there? Did something happen?”
I didn’t want her to know about it. “Ah no, everything is alright.”
He looked so serious in that picture. Almost as if he belonged there. His cloths were that of the military, but they were different, almost as if he held some sort of power over the other soldiers. He turned and saw the camera. He walked up to it, and turned it off.
I felt so confused. I kept asking my self questions I didn’t know the answer to. “Why is he there? What do they want with him?”
“Lisa, are you still there? Lisa…hello?” I had forgotten I was still on the phone.
“Yea I'm here.” I mumbled.
“You alright? You sound weird.”
“Yeah I'm fine…”
Truth was I wasn’t fine. I was downright miserable! I really wanted to be with him, and if I couldn’t do that, at least understand this war.
With some hope, I decided to ask Kati about it. “Hey um Kati, did they ever say, you know, why we are in this war?”
She responded with almost too much shock in her voice. “You mean you don’t know? Good God girl, where have you been this past week? The earth has been using so much water now since some scientist discovered it could be used as fuel as well as a source of food. So for years now the world has been, you know, using loads of water and such. Now the world is running dry, and the last ocean is being fought over between the east and the west. I thought you knew all this already.”
“No…no I didn’t.”
“Oh, I’m sorry…hey, I have to go. Something just came up, ill talk to you later, ok?”
“Yea, ok see ya” then the line went dead.
I looked around. Each little thing reminded me of him. I picked up a photo of him, his mother and father, and as I looked at it, my mind trailed through the memories.
I remember weeks, maybe months ago, when he would look at me, and smile. I remember other times too, like the time when he was working on something on the computer. I wanted to surprise him, but when I wrapped my arms around him, he just got angry with me. I did not understand. However, it made me think, what was it he was working on that would make him do that? I wonder if it is still on his computer.
I start going up the stairs, and his mother looked out at me from the kitchen for a minute, and then went back to the dishes. Down the hallway and to the left was his room. It was small, but he made use of it well. I sat down at his computer, and signed in as him. Suddenly, the obvious became even more blatant. I did not know what I was looking for. I thought for a minute, but all I could remember was a blue screen. I sighed, and started opening files at random. Tireless hours passed, before I found something remotely similar. It was a “.grt” file, and there were no others like it, except for one that had the same name. I guessed it was a backup. I opened the file, but a password window came up.
“It must be something really important if it’s protected like this.” I thought.
I sat back in the chair and thought for a while about the password. He was creative; he never liked to make things easy. He always had a way to make people think in the abstract.
I turned to the clock. “Wow its 5:30 already…” I sighed and continued to think. After about twenty minutes, I shook my head, and gave up. I left the screen on and the window open and went down stairs.
His mother was asleep on the couch, with the screen turned to the news. I carefully went down the stairs as not to wake her. When I reached the bottom, I headed for the door, and went home.
As I walked along the path to my house, I looked up at what was left of the sky, and tried to find the sun. It was a dull and dismal sight. The smog was at its thickest at this time, and impossible to see through. I looked around me. Trees and flowers had become all but extinct since the water shortage, so all I saw were buildings. I came to an intersection, and pressed a button to extend the bridge. It started slowly, but progressed quickly to the other side. When I came to the middle, I stopped. The streets were empty, so it was alright. I just stood there, in the middle of the bridge, looking over the edge.
“This is where we first met.” I said to no one in particular, and thought back to that day.


I was coming home from school, which was actually just down the block from here and I saw him running down the path with two or three books in his arms. I looked at him strangely because books were a rarity to have these days. Usually people take there notepad, and plug it into an information console to get the information they want. However, he was different. He carried those books as if they were gold! He was mumbling about something and not paying attention to where he was going. As I was watching him, I had forgotten I was still moving, and almost walked into another man. He passed in front of me, and brought me back to reality. I had gotten to the bridge, and the boy with the books was still coming this way, still mumbling about something. I extended the bridge and started to walk across when I heard a thud behind me. It was the boy with the books. He had fallen, and his books had scattered everywhere. I walked over to him to help. His hands were bruised a little from his fall, but besides that, he was alright. I giggled at him, and he looked up at me. I think he got a little embarrassed because his face turned red. I thought it was so cute! I set my things down and offered him a hand to get up, but he didn’t take it. He just went over to his books. He was wearing a pair of tan slacks and a white jacket. I went over to one of his books and picked it up for him. He stood up and I gave him his book. He thanked me and went on his way. I was still curious about his books, so I followed him. When we got to the middle of the bridge, I introduced myself. He looked at me, and sighed. “Your curious about why I have these books with me, am I right?”
I looked at him and nodded. He said his name was Mark, and he was working on a special project that he needed the books for. I asked him what kind of project, but all I could get from him was that it was important. I walked a little further. We were getting close to my house. He stopped in the middle of the path, and looked at me. “Thanks…” he said nervously. “I ah, was wondering if…well…you know, if I could see you this Saturday?  I’ll take you to see a movie, if you don’t mind.”
I nodded and smiled. “Saturday…at eight?”
He smiled “Sure, whatever works for you.”
I looked at him, and watched him walk down the path a bit more.
I woke from my mindless trance, and looked at my cell phone. The time read 6:10. I sighed and went on my way home.
When I got home, my mother was on the couch with her new “boyfriend” and my brother was on the floor in the corner of the room, knocked out drunk. The whole house was a mess. There were clothes in corners of the house and old batteries were scattered about the floor. I shuffled my way through the clutter and made my way to the stairs. As I made my way to my room, I couldn’t help but think about him. Those eyes…those eyes stay with me, even to this day.
I get to my room, and struggled to get the door open. I managed to get it open wide enough to slip through. When I did, my cat Smoky came barreling through the door, causing me to let go and the door close again. I mumble to myself “freaking cat…” and get the door open again.
I stumbled into my room, and threw myself upon the one clean surface in the house; my bed. I took off my shoes and stockings and threw them into a pile of clothes. I striped down until I was only in my shorts and a tank top. I looked over to my cluttered desk, and I noticed a picture. I picked it up, and held it in my hand. It was a picture of me and mark. It was summer, and we were in a public park. He had just bought something…and wanted to try it out with me. We were just standing in front of one of the synthetic trees, and smiling. As I stared at the picture, a tear ran down my face. My hands trembled, and I dropped the frame, causing the glass inside to shatter. “No…” I whispered, and I slowly bent down to pick up the glass.
Another tear ran down my face as I carefully placed the little pieces in my hands. I looked at the pieces. Some were reflective, like little mirrors. I took the pieces and placed them on my desk, still being careful so that I diddn't cut myself. I crouched down again, and picked up the picture. I put it out of the way on my bed, and grabbed my waste basket from the corner of the room. I brought it over to the edge of the desk and slid all the glass into it. I placed the basket back in the corner and stretched out on my bed. I picked up the photo again and just stared at it.
We looked so happy. I was in my blue dress and he was in his blue shorts and tee-shirt. I flipped the photo over to see if it was dated, but it wasn’t. Although, there was a message. It said: “To my Beautiful, forever and ever.”
“Forever and ever…” I mumbled.
Soon after I said that, there was a loud pounding at my door. In panic, I quickly ran to it and locked it tight. After a minute, there came a voice.
“Come on li, I know you’re in there…” It was my brother. He was awake from his drunken-slumber. I stepped away from the door, even though I knew it was locked, and looked around my prison of a room for a way out. The only way out was the door I came in, and I knew I couldn’t get out that way. There were more bangs on the door.
“OPEN UP, YOU LITTLE BITCH!” He screamed, and I cowered in the farthest corner of my room. More and more he pounded on the door. "You know what I want! You are the only one who can give it to me!"
I could tell he was using his feet now; his hands were most likely ripped from the steel. I just sat there in my room and waited. His episodes never lasted very long. Maybe ten or twenty minutes and a lot of screaming later, the noise finally died down. I stood from where I was, and went over to the door to unlock it. I moved a pile of junk that was leaning against the door, and unlocked it. There was a slight clink of the metal lock, and I opened the door. When I stepped outside, my brother was in a pile on the floor, bloody and exhausted. He didn’t move when I moved closer, but I could see his chest moving, so I knew he was alive.
I went back into my room for a minute to get dressed. I went through a pile, and took out the cleanest outfit I could find, which was a blue tee-shirt, and a pair of jeans. I put those on, and went through another pile for a jacket. Once I found one, I went over to the pile where I threw my shoes, grabbed them and ran out of the house as fast as I could. I couldn’t stay there…I wasn’t safe.
        I ran. I just ran. I ran until I couldn’t run, and even still after; I ran. I didn’t know where I was going. All I knew was I was getting away from my house. Away from my house and my brother. This wasn’t the first time my brother did this and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
He was always abusive, and the alcohol just made it worse. The day he turned 21…that was 3 years ago. It started as something small. A punch in the arm maybe a smack on the head. But now…now he’s sexual too. For the past week he had been trying to have sex with me. The only thing I can do is lock my self in my room, and hope the locks hold longer than he does. I don’t like to think about it. That’s why I’m always out of the house.
After a while, I realized I was in front of that public park mark and I went to. It was currently closed for repairs, but I couldn’t help but stare at it.

“To my Beautiful, forever and ever.”
“An eternity with the one you love…” I thought. “It’s an imposable dream, thought of by the dazed, especially now…now with the war pulling in, drafting your loved ones to get killed, to never be seen again…”
The wind blew around me, sending waves of ice crawling down my spine. “I can’t stay outside.” I thought
I took out my cell phone, and called Katrina. It rang once, twice, three times, and then went to the machine. I didn’t feel like talking to a machine, so I hung up and called Mark’s mom. She picked up immediately on the first ring. I was a little nervous, but I got over it pretty quick.
“Hello?” She asked half asleep.
“Hi there, it’s Lisa.” I said
“Oh hey there Lisa, what can I do for you?”
“Um, would you mind terribly if I spent the night with you? I…I don’t feel comfortable being at home.”
“I understand Lisa,” She yawned “You can come over whenever you feel like it. You know you’re always welcome here.”
I sighed heavily “Thank you! Thank you so much! I’ll be over soon”
“Any time dear.” And she hung up.