Echoes

It's funny how much perspective the slightest suggestion can give.

My roommate says: "Coworker and I are hitting a bar for a couple drinks this weekend, you want to come?"

I say: "Sure."

He smiles broadly as he tells me how his coworker wants to get drunk and how he's looking forward to it.

The echo says: "Be DD for me and a stranger."

I frown.

These echoes ruin quite a bit of potentially good things for me. Not because they're true, but because they're never entirely untrue.

All possible solutions. It's part of being so mechanical, I think; it's a necessity of being able to predict a situation in order to counter it if something that particularly needs countering should arise.

That blue-eyed girl was right about me. When she said there's something about the way I move that she can't put her finger on...like I'm always looking at the exits, waiting for someone to jump out at me, looking for a grenade to fall on. She was right on all accounts.

I've taken the dive onto more grenades than I can count. People seem to jump out at me every day, swinging and shooting while I just keep dodging. But those exits that I've just been looking at for so long...well, it might be time to try one of them out.

So many masks have been rotated, shelved, dusted, and rotated back. So many shattered in the name of a larger, more elaborate mask. It won't be enough now, though. I will have to craft an entire suit of armor to survive the venture I'm about to undertake.

I think it should be a delightful run of things, however it turns out.