tru-author85

 “You shouldn’t be here, Marcel,” Areya said the moment he walked into her uncomfortably cold apartment.  She didn’t look like the confident young woman from a year ago.  Her dress, black and reaching from shoulders to ankles, was torn, but otherwise, fit her figure well.  She was 19 now, and she looked like a nervous wreck.  The heels tossed across her bland living room and the bloody streaks across her cheeks didn’t improve the image. Marcel easily stood a foot over her. He was a vet. His body had been turned to the side as the door closed ominously behind him, as if his fate was sealed.  The young woman

       Back before the suicidal overtones and the comparisons to Hitler, back before the divorce and the fighting, before the cheating, before the love and the children and the marriage, before the seven years of servitude in the military, I was just a teenager trying to figure out my identity.  The school semester had started a while back and we had just relocated from El Paso, Texas to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  My stepfather completed his duty with the Army and retired, and our family of six was beginning our readjustment period.  It had been over a decade since I had gone to a school that didn’t have a large population of army brats suc

    I remember a while back just standing on the sidewalk with my hands in my pockets as the rain poured down over me.  It wasn’t because I enjoyed standing in the middle of a rain storm as my clothes got soaked.  There was a decently sized line in front of me and it hadn’t dispersed as the bus pulled up to the stop.  Killeen isn’t exactly known for its happy-go-lucky residents, so I kept quiet and to myself as I boarded the bus.  As the green locomotive rolled onto the highway, I took a look at the faint reflection in the window and thought to myself:            I’m not a good person.            I’ve had fri