"Framed Like A Picture" Flash Fiction

 Every story has a happy ending.

 That's what I'm told, at least. I'm not so sure that's a universal fact so much as a literary tool to make people think they're happy, when the truth is they're miserably incomplete from their first breath to their last. Winners die, losers live. Losers die, winners live. Which of these is the more tragic? The loss of greatness and prevalence of the mourning, or the perishing of those who know no joy? It's a matter of the “decrease [of] the surplus population”, or greatness being torn from someone. We're left with the age-old question, is it better to have loved and lost, or to have never loved at all?

 To have never loved; where's the happy ending in you?

 To have loved and lost, what elation rests in this?

 No, I'm convinced that neither is worthy of jubilation. Only the perfect, idealistic tales of love that end in “happily ever after” are the ones worth having. Yet even these are of mediocrity and generic nothingness. Love is not two who are happy with everything; that's ignorance and bliss. Love is two who fight through torrents and come out exhausted, but also stronger than before.

 Ours should have been lasting. Instead, it led to binding; chafing the wrists with coarse sisal.

 Love is pain. Whether lost, absent, or enduring, it is pain. Why should we strive for such a torment? What's there to gain in love, anyways?

 That may be the wrong question; what's there to maintain in the void of love? What's there to not lose in the perseverance of it?

 The answer is life. The answer is faith. The answer is truth. The answer is hope. The answer is everything.

 Even the most tragic of love, so long as it's true, is more triumphant than the most fulfilling lack of it.

 The voice beyond what I can see informs the gathered of my crimes.

 The rope around my neck tells me I die in vain.

 The heart in my chest says I lived in love.

 And no institution of man can diminish the hope in that.

 Framed like a picture, I'm waiting to fall and shatter.

 They have the wrong man.

 I loved her.

 I lo--

Why i hate football (and other professional sports) . . .

On Thanksgiving, there was apparently a very thick cover of fog on I-10. There was a 100-car pile-up, and two people were killed. It's sad that something like that happened on Thanksgiving. Two people's families will never celebrate Thanksgiving the same way again. With the way my mind works, it was hard to not put myself in the families' shoes and wonder how to give thanks when tragedy like that strikes (i hide things like that rather well). I know it happens all across the country on any given day, Holidays notwithstanding.

That doesn't seem to have anything to do with football, does it?
Well, here's the thing. That happened early in the morning. I didn't find out until after the Texans v. Lions game. People died, and they didn't interrupt broadcasting of people PLAYING A GAME to tell us that friends, neighbors--famil(y's)(ies'), father(s) and/or mother(s), brother(s) and/or sister(s), son(s) and/or daughter(s) had died. And a game couldn't be cut off for a minute to tell us?
Besides, after the game was over, it's not like they spent more than twenty seconds on the news to tell us that two people had died--twenty seconds . . . Couldn't spare twenty seconds in a three-hour sports match. That completely disgusts me.
Oh, yeah, and after that, there was an eight-minute special (in the "news", not the "sports") about how the Texans won their first Thanksgiving day game . . . Somehow, the fact that they won was twenty-four times as important as two people's LIVES.

So why is it that the "news" is more concerned with a game than it is with our fellow man's lives?
I didn't care for football (or other professional sports) before, but now i'm genuinely outraged and sickened by it. If you watch it and contribute to it being a higher priority to the general public than the lives of two people, thank you. Thank you for making me feel this way about it.
If this offends you . . .  Well, let's put it this way: if you contribute to what offends me and yet you don't care, why should i care if what i say offends you?
Watch your pointless games that mean nothing.
If you're an adult and watching it, it's a game. Being played.
(it's not very Christian of me to be this irate about something, but . . . I'm in the world, not of it. I'm not angry at people, i'm angry at the world and the way it is)

My two cents.
Don't like my opinion? Blogs are free. You can write your own about how it's just entertainment . . .

Triumph Over Tragedy pt. 2

The sound of a pained and exhausted inhale rang in his ears and he closed his eyes. The male nurse in the room lowered his face and stepped back, disappearing behind the opposite cloth barrier.

“Eu . . . gene . . . ?” a weak voice muttered.

He toppled forward, his face pressing against the speckled linoleum tiles on the floor, gasping for air in insufficient quantities.

“Eu . . .” the voice trailed off, being replaced by the sound of the respirator; the pump exhaled into her again, “gene . . . ?”

He squirmed and writhed about on the floor, wailing; “We were supposed to have another year!” he shouted, twisting onto his back to stare at the ceiling, “A blasted year! Not two hours!”

The nurse knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder, somehow helping him regain his composure. Agonizingly, he rose to his feet and straightened his face.

“Eu—” the voice was cut off and sent into a fit of coughing and wheezing, “Eugene?”

The constitution of his face faltered momentarily, but was quickly reaffirmed. He took a long step forward and into her view. She never turned to focus on him.

“Terr?” he beckoned quietly.

Her face turned slightly in his direction and he saw her once-brown irises, now coated in a silver film, flutter back and forth, searching for him, “Gene?” she whispered back.

He turned to the trash bin and fell to his knees, emptying the contents of his stomach. He began slamming his forehead into the cabinet. The nurse urged him to stop, but didn't force him to until a trickle of blood began to stream down from his hairline.

He shoved her back and stood again, taking his wife's hand in his own, fingering her ring, and pulling it to his lips. He pressed a couple fingers to her temple and caressed the height of her face, down to her jaw.

Depth Of An Antonym

It is the sorrows and pains of life that bring the joys and comforts. If one were to sleep on a soft bed their entire life, they would not know the comfort of the rest for they would never have slept on gravel or cement. Occasionally, one must rest on rocks or concrete to keep the discomfort fresh in the mind, or else forget and not know the true pleasure of having a bed in which to sleep at night. Truth, also, is forgotten and overlooked if one is not accustomed to hearing lies. Faith, love, so far as life, what are they if absent of their acronyms? What is faith without disloyalty and doubt, love without hate or loss, life without death? They not only lose their power and meaning, but also their very existence. Faith, without doubt or disloyalty, would not be something that meant to believe or to have loyalty, but mere existence. It would be the accepted way of existing, and there would be no 'without', therefore there would also be no 'with'. Love would also not exist without hate or loss, as love would be universal and the lack thereof would not exist, so the way in which love is measured and known would be gone and there would be no such feeling to describe. Life, without death, would never be deemed life, therefore would not exist as it does. It would become, simply, 'existence'. The term 'life' would not be known, for the term 'death' would not, and the existence would be without striving for accomplishment due to a limited amount of time available in which to achieve said goals.