The Gambits: Jkovo

I don't care what you think, I'll eat spaghetti however I want. Even if that means throwing them at Sammy at dinner after school. I suppose I am getting older, but it still brings back good times. When I first started dating, I never had the incentive to spaghetti fight.

However now the bombs are tossed at us like meatballs at a dinner table. And we are the ground chuck. Why did I have to listen to my mom this time? I never listened to her opinion before. The city lights in the arcade district only glow at just the right hours, then its closing time. Me and Liana had only dated briefly, and my previous girlfriend more brief than that. Although the previous date was not really a date, but a chance to conjoin and masturbate. Joining end to end, like user encryption, are bodies were tied together like four square ciphers. Rows of random letters disjointed, the flow of counting up to. Stop, and life starts all over again.

"Don't forget to brush your teeth." she said.

"Shut up bitch, you're not mother." I said.

"I suppose you're right."

The biggest mistake of my life, those exact words. Though I didn't realize that at the time. Now I gently close my sweet hearts eyes, trying not to cry. I never liked the idea of crying in public, though the current situation has given me no choice. For me girl who at the speed of bang, lost her voice. Lost her life, lost everything but the memory of her. And now I run out of time. I am running to out run the triangular craft from the Southern district, their pace matching their desire for revenge. They burn building, the skin they singe. And like monkeys we fall to dust. I carefully hide in the public library, and read the last message Samantha sent to me.

"Jkovo, where are you? Come home. Everyone is missing you."

But I didn't want to come home to anybody. I didn't want to come home with blood on my face. I purged the message from my USB drive, so in case I am ever captured by dream-scanners, they will not find anything of value. I had previously given administrator rights to Lian, yet now I have nobody besides family to converse to securely. The electro-magnetic biological bombs already struck the lower Northern Colonies, and now it was simply a matter of time before they would strike us. I've never been so terrified in my life, and yet I must face my masters. Yet I respect no masters, not even my own mother. Not even to save my life. I wish I didn't listen to my mother, I should have stayed home to be by Sammy's side. Perhaps my girlfriend's life would have been saved, as she never wanted to leave my side.

And yet now as she is buried in rubble, and my beard all a stubble, I long to be in unacknowledged paradise again. A paradise of milk and money, beyond the meadow of gold. A paradise where the war was over, and we can wear normal shoes again, and eat normal food. Yet these desires fade daily, the war ever growing longer. I had briefly thought of enlisted in the Southern army, though this was before we had moved up North. Yet now as I'm being fired at by Adam's forces, I regret the idea, and denying even ever entertained it.

I remembered the last few nights I spent with Lian, telling her that poetry was suppose to rhyme. Ever after, she began to not pay as much attention to her grades. Even less than I did. At one point I offered to help with her homework, but she said it was Algebraic equations, and said it was probably over my head.

"Look, sorry about the"

"Don't worry about it, want to the arcade?"

"Sure, what kind of pizza."

"Whatever you want."

I offered to listen to more of a poetry, gave some suggestions for improvement. I even mentioned different rhyme schemes. Some of which she seemed to wonder why bother even calling them rhymes at all. I told her about interior rhymes. She told me about different eastern poetry forms that didn't rhyme at all. We exchanged verses, exchanged thematic curses. We exchanged till closing time, all to disjointed rhyme.

Yet between us, there was only us.

Yet now as I wait for death, as I wait for paradise, I want to be reunited with Lian, who taught me how to not rhyme in verse. Me and her meeting was not a curse, it was a match I didn't deserve. For once I could admit, I got served. And in this USB disk I send an ciphered message, I send it to mom. A message I wasn't sure whether I really felt, but something I always felt an obligation to say. And if I die tonight, by bombs tossed like spaghetti and meatballs, I can smile for my girlfriend's sake.

I sent her the message: XICMLISM.

XI-CM-LI-SM. I hear footsteps behind me.

They are marching closer.