The S Word

[StarF68]

Original Source. (With italics, didn't want to go through and put it all into this - you understand.)

"Don't you understand what this means!?" Mark's voice screamed through my cell phone, causing me to forcefully pull it away from my ear. I waited a second before answering to make sure he was done.

"No, becau-"

"Come on bro! You seriously don't get it!?" he interrupted. I sighed because I did get it, and it was stupid. I considered simply hanging up the phone and continuing on my day without him until he calmed down. Of course what Mark was talking about was the fact that he had just won an item in an auction on eBay. The item in question was an old sword, which in itself was pretty cool. But that's where my fascination stopped, pretty cool. This was nothing to go crazy over.

"Look, you won a sword. Good for you man." I congratulated in an attempt to bring the conversation to a halt. Of course this would only send him on a longer tangent.

"Good for me? Good for me? More like fucking amazing for me bro! Let me break this down for you. The fact that I'm going to have this sword means that I-" I hung up the phone, reluctant to hear his speech on how swords make everything better. Forget the fact that he already owned a rather extensive (At least, for the normal person) collection of swords from katanas to cutlass's and more. Somehow I was supposed to believe that this sword was different and special. I didn't know much about swords, but what I did know is that in this day and age they were used for decoration purposes only, so the prospect of obtaining one didn't exactly thrill me.

The phone started ringing again, I ignored the call and rolled my eyes. Sensing a string of harassment I turned my phone off and went outside to do something else. It was a warm spring day, perfect for just hanging out. I decided my day would benefit from a walk around.

Walking down the street I stopped occasionally to admire the beauty of the world around me. The air was fresh and the sky defined "sky blue." I could hear the sounds of birds and children playing, and soon my walk evolved into a light jog. I found myself eventually sitting down at a bench, looking out at a lake, hypnotized by the motions of the small waves. The sun beat down and reflected on it, and as the time passed the patterns on the water changed every so slightly. I took a deep breath and leaned back onto the bench, enjoying myself to the fullest. Closing my eyes to relax, I heard someone running from afar behind me. It didn't bother me until the sound continued to grow louder... and louder... and louder until I knew someone was running towards me. I opened my eyes and spun my torso around, not sure who I was going to be face to face with.

"You bastard!" Mark yelled, landing a punch on my shoulder as I turned. I wasn't sure why I expected it to be anyone else, but I quickly gave him a look of annoyance and turned back around to watch the lake.

"What do you want?" I asked, trying to convey the fact that I didn't want to talk about swords through my tone.

"Just listen," he started, taking a seat next to me, "I know I get a little overzealous when it comes to swords. I know I already have a lot and you've put up with me for it for awhile now." He seemed to actually be coming to terms with his obsession, I nodded for him to continue. "It's just... this sword... trust me, you'll see when it arrives." This was an explanation I could live with.

"Okay dude, sounds good. Now can we do something else?"

"Sure thing, let's head back to your place and figure it out."

"Sounds like a plan." And with that we headed back down the road towards my place.

On the way back, Mark decided that we should stop by the local Walmart to grab some snacks, maybe fill the rest of the day with video games and nonsense, which sounded like a great idea to me. We made the detour to Walmart and walked in to obtain Mountain Dew and Doritos - Original and Cool Ranch respectively. After grabbing the snacks we started to automatically venture deeper into the store, just browsing random items to see what was what. Somehow we always ended up doing this as long as we weren't in a hurry. I ended up setting up an account on the demo Xbox 360 named "Boobs" and left, really not even amused by my own antics at this point. I shrugged at the ridiculousness of what was going on and motioned to Mark to head to the cash registers.

As I scanned my Mountain Dew something caught my eye. There was a small kiosk set up in the front of the Walmart, with a large sign that read "Superengraving! 60% off until the end of March!" I realized what that meant, and instantly struggled to pay faster and get out of the Walmart before Mark noticed it too. I pulled out a quarter, but fumbled it, causing it to roll. The quarter caught Marks attention, and unfortunately had rolled in the general direction of the kiosk I had hoped would escape Mark's detection. Here we go... I thought.

"Superengraving? Like... Imprinting words onto metal objects?" Mark thought out loud.

"Yeah I suppose so." I confirmed, bending over to retrieve the quarter that had betrayed me.

"Dude, sweet! I should totally get my sword engraved." He exclaimed, scanning the Doritos. For the rest of the walk home, the subject of our conversation was things to engrave on his sword, as I had feared. Now he was even more excited, and it became harder for him to contain himself.

"Okay come on man, focus on video games, please? I'm sick of this." I finally pleaded, able to take no more. Mark apologized and for the rest of the night we played games in peace, or at least the yelling, screaming, laughing peace that is playing video games. Overall, it was a pretty good day, but nothing of consequence happened. I fell asleep that night thinking about swords, and cool phrases to engrave in them. It was a pretty cool premise, I have to admit.

The next few weeks were relatively peaceful but boring. I awoke every day over-contentedly ready to start the day, but there was a profound problem with this. In being so content, I lacked much of a drive to do anything important. Normally this would eventually lead to a feeling of discontent, but I was having too much fun to care, and in my lack of acknowledging the problem, I simply continued on doing nothing. This was catching up to me slowly though, as I started to crave bigger and better things to do. Eventually I wanted nothing more than to go on an epic adventure, but I knew the biggest adventures in real life weren't the kind I had dreamed up in my head. I sighed at the prospect and simply went back to my over-content state of being.

(Continued...)

[StarF68]

As I was sitting on the computer, my phone lit up with a text. I reached over and tilted the screen upwards toward my face. It was from Mark, and simply said "be over soon." I shrugged and continued to play Minesweeper, quickly flagging suspected traps and sipping on more Mountain Dew. When Mark bust through the door in an excited frenzy I had moved onto playing Tetris. "Oh, hi Mark," I said without breaking my concentration from the game.

"It came!" Mark yelled from right behind me, I put more focus into the falling pieces.

"Yeah... it..." I trailed off as I made a mistake, wasting a perfectly good line piece. "Shit!"

"Dude, turn that off and look!" Mark beckoned. I didn't dignify that with a response, and instead worked to fix the problem I had created in my Tetris board.

"Just... Sit down." I muttered, motioning to the chair next to me with my free hand. He said something else and sat but now I wasn't listening. Focused too hard on Tetris, I played through the game until it finally became too much to handle 20 minutes later.

"Damn, finally." Mark said with the same annoyed tone I would constantly give him. I closed the game and turned my head to finally acknowledge him. He was holding what was clearly a sword in a sheath.

"Hey man, you know I love Tetris, you can't just come over and expect me to stop for you. Cool sword, what's Des?" I asked, noticing that it said "Des" in fancy lettering on the sheath.

"What? Oh, I don't know. Not the point. Just look at this thing though!" he exclaimed in pure joy, unsheathing the sword for me to behold. I looked at it and admired it for an appropriate amount of time before becoming bored of it.

"Very cool," I stated matter-of-factly. "A bit smaller than I would have expected for a sword as amazing as you claimed, but hey, that's cool." The sword did seem rather small and basic for all the hype Mark had been giving it. At only about one and a half feet, it felt very inadequate compared to the rest of his collection.

"Yeah... I didn't think it would be this small, judging from the pictures." he stated, sounding a bit disappointed. "But hey! It's still really awsome. Apparently it has some sort of mystic background. They said it was even imbued with magic!" As soon as the word hit my ears I was already halfway to slapping my forehead against my palm. This was the reason the sword was so special? I really didn't want to spend a day running around trying to activate it's special source of magic.

"That's... great..." I managed to say, unable to come up with the correct deterrent to this situation.

"So what do you say!? Want to go mess around with it? Maybe chop up some fruit!?"

"I guess." I agreed reluctantly. I hoped he wouldn't drag me into anything weird, but getting some fresh air and attacking some poor defenseless fruit did sound like a good way to waste an afternoon. I figured I could even pretend it was the adventure I was looking for, even though I realized that in reality the activity would become boring quickly. Regardless, we headed outside where he had already set up a few watermelons I assumed he purchased on the way over. I wondered if he had been carrying the sword around with him everywhere - and if so, why he hadn't gotten in trouble for it yet.

Attacking the fruit was pretty entertaining, in fact it became even more entertaining than I originally had anticipated. We spent a good few hours just messing around with the sword. It finally dawned on me how strange the situation was; normally Mark never messed around with his swords. In fact this was the first time we had ever done something like in the four years I had known him. For as much as he valued this new sword, he didn't seem to care too much about its safety. When I questioned him about it, he explained that this particular sword was much sturdier, and already had a lot of wear to it. It wasn't for display, and besides, it was magic. What harm could we really do to it? I shrugged and laughed at the last part, assuming it was a joke, but a part of him was completely serious. Raising an eyebrow, I changed the subject and hacked into a fresh watermelon.

Suddenly Mark's arm began to flail uncontrollably, and he started to have a spasm. Luckily I was holding the sword at the time, as I backed up and told him to take one of his pills. When the spasms subsided for a second he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pill bottle, which would be full of adiphenine pills - their purpose to nullify the spasms Mark had been having since he was young. It didn't happen too often, but it seemed a terrible condition for a sword collector to have. I cringed at the thought of what might accidentally happen one day if the wrong circumstances lined up. Mark swallowed what appeared to be the last pill in the bottle, and leaned up against the wall of my house, taking deep breaths until he was okay again.

"Man, it never gets old." he laughed, reaching out for me to give him the sword. I bent over and picked up the sheath, and put the sword in it, unwilling to hand Mark a sword just yet, the visions of a terrible accident still fresh in my mind. "Oh come on man, I'm fine. Although I do have to refill this prescription..." he looked at the empty bottle. "Wanna come with me?" he asked. There happened to be a pharmacy at the local Walmart, which is where I assumed we'd be going.

"Why would I go with you?" I wondered, now with the urge to go back in and play another video game.

"Come on, we can stop by that superengraving place and engrave my sword!" he said with excitement. I considered the idea of bringing a sword into Walmart.

"No way, you can't bring this in there for real." I contested.

"Okay, here's what we'll do. Come with me, wait outside and hold it, and I'll ask them if it's cool. Deal?"

"No way!"

"I'll buy you Mountain Dew." he offered, knowing I wouldn't be able to resist free pop. I glanced down at the sword, then out towards the sky, and back at him and nodded.

"Fine, let's go." I stated as I was already in motion. On the way we conversed even further about what me might engrave into the sword. I told him we should just give it some badass name and put that into the blade, but Mark insisted on some phrase - preferably in latin he said. I told him it was cliche and silly, we should name it Xero or Vlad. We laughed and joked about it all the way to Walmart, where I stood outside waiting for a sad Mark to approach and give me the obvious news that they wouldn't allow swords into the store. I felt awkward even standing outside the door with it, people giving me strange looks as walking in, as if to say "What are you?"

I diverted my attention towards things in the distance, and thought about what to do with the rest of the day. A few minutes later Mark emerged from Walmart with a guy who appeared to be in his early 30's. "He says he'll do it!" Mark yelled with joy.

"Yeah, I just have to come out and get it myself, it's cool though, I'd be happy to." the man said. I figured he was making a special exception in order to make some money. As cool as superengraving is, not many people seemed to be too interested in the service. We walked in and headed straight over to the man's kiosk.

"So what did you want engraved?" he asked. Mark looked at me and then back to the man, opening his mouth but no words came out. The man looked confused by this, and I could tell Mark was having trouble coming up with a choice now that the decision was facing him.

(Continued...)

[StarF68]

"Tiny." I blurted out, unsure of where the suggestion came from.

"Tiny!?" Mark sounded angry with my input.

"Yeah, 'tiny,'" I said again, "Because it's smaller than you thought it'd be, hah."

The man looked back at Mark, who seemed to be struggling with his own ideas. This led to a 15 minute argument between us, wherein which I told him to either pick an idea, or let me name the sword tiny. After he admitted he kind of enjoyed the joke, and that the sword wasn't truly the most important thing ever, he resigned to the suggestion. The man, annoyed by our spat, gave us a price and headed through a door to engrave it into the blade.

"You're buying your own Mountain Dew." Mark called out as he rushed off to get his pills.

"Aw come on man!" I shouted, but he was already too far. I stood next to the kiosk, waiting for the man to return. I wondered how long superengraving took, and was answered abruptly when the man returned within a minute of that thought, sword in hand.

"All done, here you go." he said, handing me the sword.

"Oh, I'm not paying for it, Mark is, he'll be right back." I said, admiring the fancy letters now on the blade. I felt strangely connected to the sword now that I had granted it with its title. Realizing we were standing in the front of a crowded Walmart, I picked up the sheath and slid the blade halfway in, then stopped.

"You okay?" the man at the kiosk asked, but something about him sounded far away. I stared blankly past the sword, focusing on the floor. I felt something coming over me, and as I became dizzy the world seemed to spin. I looked around, the walls seemed to be melting away, now the man was gone, as were all the shoppers. I was standing alone in a vast and empty room.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, telling myself I was going to be okay. Then I said it was all a dream, and I continued to feed myself delusions until I believed I would be fine when my eyes opened. Unwilling to look, I cracked an eye open. Something was bright red, I felt heat, and opening my eyes completely now I saw that I was no longer in Walmart. In fact, I was no longer in Minnesota. I wasn't even sure I was on Earth. I stood on a rocky terrain, the sky a blood-thirsty red. There were fires scattered around, and dead looking trees. I felt as though I was in a very stereotypical version of hell.

I closed my eyes again and waited for the nightmare to be over. From afar I heard the sound of movement, which got closer and closer until I couldn't take it anymore. In one swift motion I unsheathed the sword and swung violently in a swooping motion backwards. Quickly and cleanly the blade chopped through what appeared to be a mutated dog. A hellhound, as it were. Laughing at the situation I was in, I felt strangely powerful and emboldened. This was the adventure I had been hoping for, and I would no longer be discontent in my over-contentedness. I slowly started to sheath the sword, purposely trying to look badass. I could feel the power and the magic in the sword flooding through my body, and before it the engraved letters disappeared beneath the sheath, they started to glow a hot blue. With a bewildered smile, I knew that I was about to embark on the journey of my life. I laughed a little as I noticed a word written across my weapon.

Destiny.

[tinytim12]

You used the word sword too much

[StarF68]

At 3/1/11 05:13 PM, tinytim12 wrote: You used the word sword too much

I dunno, it was a pretty large story and the emphasis was on swords. But maybe you're right. I did just kinda go for it with this story, and wasn't really paying attention to how much I was throwing the word around.