Morkaj

The wooden hut was leaking, as it had been for the last three days. Morkaj knew he had to re-thatch the roof, but the fire-watching every night was taking its toll on him. The monsters beyond the edge of the village were getting bolder with every passing cycle of the moon. The warriors had told Morkaj that he needed to make the fire brighter to keep away the monsters. The wood-cutters weren't bringing in enough wood to support the fire though. Every time the wood-cutters would go to chop wood, another one would be killed by a monster. Morkaj feels the village dying, slowly. He took the fire-watching position so he could be alone during the night and gather his thoughts. Soon, he would have to leave this village, and being disconnected from the other villagers would make it easier to ransack their food and weapons.

Three more cycles of the moon pass. Morkaj has accumulated enough dried meat, arrrows, spearheads, and water-skins to last him for one solar cycle. As the sun begins to set, Morkaj gathers his supplies and sits down in front of the fire to watch it until the sun has completely set and his eyes have adjusted. The sun has completely set. Morkaj picks up his animal-skin bag full of supplies, takes a long look at the dying village that gave him his life, and walks away into the wilderness.

A wild cat eats Morkaj the very night he walks away from the village.
The monsters overrun the village and eat every man, woman, and child.

Mark and Amy

Mark, an army veteran, with a beer belly developed over the course of 20 years of hard drinking, was throttling his wife around the throat with his fat, stubby fingers. Her eyes were bulging and her tongue was starting to stick out uncontrollably. Her hands are around his forearms, trying to stop him from stealing the breath from her lungs. She burned the meatloaf slightly, and Mark was on his third beer when it happened. His PTSD had been acting up for the last few days, and his paranoid delusions had started to take over his life. His wife is the young woman he had to kill in Syria. The sound that set him off was the fire alarm. It sounded just like the alarm klaxon from his time overseas.

As the life is draining from her, Amy remembers her husband from before he went to Syria. He would gently hold her, and make sweet love to her whenever he felt like it. He wouldn't zone out of reality and try to kill her.

Amy takes her thumbs and jams them into Mark's eyes. She's crying the tears he will never be able to cry again. She pushes. Hard. He lets go of her neck and screams like an unworldly demon. He holds his eyes as he keeps screaming. He falls down and rolls around like a dog that got into poison ivy.

Amy picks up the phone to call the police, but can't do it. She doesn't want anyone to know what's going on. She grabs a scarf out of her nightstand and tries to comfort Mark the best she can. She corrals him to their 1986 Volkswagen golf and heads off to the nearest hospital.

On the way to the hospital, an 18-wheeler is getting onto an off-ramp and signals too late. There is an accident that kills Amy and Mark.
They are portrayed as a happy couple on Facebook and in the papers.

Quality Time

I opened the door to my mother's house, and walked in. The trash was overflowing. The TV was blaring commercials, and my step-dad was hastily trying to show me something on his computer that was supremely boring.

It's Thanksgiving. My mother is in the kitchen, making stuffing to go with the turkey, cranberry sauce, fruit salad(which is really just a sugary syrup of concentrated peaches and pears), and hot buttered rolls.

There's no table to eat off of. We're all going to be eating in front of the television, watching HGTV, or the Cooking Channel, or some other extraordinarily boring program. I don't want to be here, but she invited me and I couldn't say no.

There's nothing for me to do, but sit and watch these TV shows about situations that will never apply to me, or watch my mother cook, because she needs no help, or listen to an asshole drone on and on about what he does that makes him no money, and only serves to take up his free time between sleeps.

This is my family, and I hate spending time with them. I am literally only here for the free food.

The food takes much longer to cook than I was hoping it would. My existential boredom is growing stronger every second I spend here. I should have brought some sort of video game to play. Maybe I could have spent some quality time with the boring man droning on and on. Video games tend to get people to shut up and play. Oh, well. I am just waiting here, in what normal people would feel extremely happy for, but I can't.

The food is ready. It is sub-par. It is dry. The stuffing is bland. The cranberry sauce is runny. The turkey is overcooked. Nothing is good. The company is bad, the food is bad, and it is boring.

They wonder why I never call.