What e/n site would be complete without a place to put depressing stories that don't end up meaning anything at all in the end? Well, this is certainly no exception. I'm not the best writer. Actually, I'm not even that good at it. I do think my grammar is pretty good, but that only means that the crap will be easy to read. Anyway, these are some stories that I've written up throughout various times.

Some of this stuff was posted elsewhere before, but I'm reposting it here. Also note that they may be edited in one form or another from their original posts. I thought the idea of editing my own work was a little silly, but after typing up a large paragraph to apoligize for various things, it just seemed to make a lot more sense to edit my work. So, here they are (click on the titles to read them):

The 100 Deaths of Cartio
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With blood covering his face and trickling down his arm, Cartio stood, his sword pressed into the red-blemished dirt beneath his feet. As he breathed heavily, he looked around at the many corpses he had left surrounding him. Many of them were missing limbs, some were entirely dismembered, while still others didn’t even resemble the human anatomy. This was the hardest fight yet, he thought to himself, perhaps too hard. Cartio noticed a large gash on his leg and an even larger one on his arm. He realized that he was not going to live long. As the adrenaline in his system started to thin, the pain became unbearable. Cartio’s sight soon became lurred; the corpses lying about were getting darker. Before he knew it, all was black.

His sight came back to him shortly, but things were not as he remembered. In fact, things had gotten much worse. He looked over all of the corpses and saw the spirits of each warrior staring back at him. Not a single one had a look of compassion on its face. They started marching slowly towards him. Cartio, following his war instincts, reached for his sword, but it wasn’t there. Out of ideas, Cartio turned around and ran. He ran as fast as he could. He looked behind him, expecting to be outrunning the spirits, but they were still right behind him. It’s no use, he thought, I’ll never get away from them. Realizing his fate, he stopped running and turned around to face his doom. The spirits came closer and closer, and eventually formed a circle around him. One of them stepped through the circle and stood directly in front of him.

"We will have our revenge," he said in a mystical voice, "One by one we will destroy you. Each and every one of us."

"But there are a hundred of you," he replied, "I have only one life to lose."

"Not you. You will die a hundred deaths, one for each of us. Such is your curse."

Before he could let out a reply, the mob of spirits rushed Cartio and beat him to death. Once again, all was black.

When his vision came back, he was in a much different place. He was in very large, open building with machinery spread throughout. He was standing in a line.

Just then the man behind him said, "Boy, I though five’ o’clock would never come, eh Carl."

"Yeah, I know what you mean.", replied Cartio rather instinctly.

He continued to wait in line. He could see that each person was punching their timecard. When he got to the machine, he did too. How did I know that? It’s as if I’m two people in one. He left the factory and drove home. While driving, he wondered how he knew where he was going, let alone how he knew how to operate the car. Once he got inside his house he sat down and assessed his situation. Okay, I killed a hundred soldiers, died, was cursed by their spirits, and died again. Now I’m here, in a totally different time and place and even person, yet I know exactly what is going on in this life. This is indeed very odd. Just then there was a knock at his door. He walked to the door and opened it. There was a rather tall man there.

"Um...hello there. ", he said to the man.

The man looked at him, pulled out a gun, and pressed it right against his forehead. Cartio suddenly remembered the words of the spirit: "You will die a hundred deaths." This was his last thought, though. The man at the door pulled the trigger and pieces of Cartio’s head spread all over his house. Yet again, all went dark...