Origin A.R.S.

Origin A.R.S

By Scottie Futch

Copyright 2015 Scottie Futch

Amazon Edition

***

Have you ever wondered about how games really work? Do the characters really only exist as data displayed visually on a screen? When the hero wins and the credits roll, does the world truly cease to exist? Most people would say yes. The game is nothing more than a story and stories end.

What if it did not end, though? What if the game was more than a game?

If you are willing to go down a rabbit hole of those dimensions, consider what would happen if the story was real from the beginning and the hero was you? Sometimes a game is more than a game, and sometimes the one being played is the player.

I had to learn that the hard way.

Life has a funny way of screwing with people. Scott Jacobs knew this on an intimate level. In fact, he had just been reminded of that fact. In his hand he clutched a letter from his fiancé, or according to the message that he had received; his
former
fiancé.

In his other hand he held his cell-phone in a death grip. For the fifth time in the last hour he had tried to contact the former love of his life in order to talk about the situation. Once again he was forced to leave a message. “Look Sarah, will you please pick up the phone? Talk to me!”

Scott heard the disconnect tone then sighed. She was not answering. He had tried to call her repeatedly since he had been discharged from the service two weeks prior. He had served honorably for seven years before he had met Sarah. Three years and a lengthy deployment to Afghanistan had passed since then, and all had seemed well. He had returned home from his tour of duty two months ago, and set about preparing to return to civilian life. During a four day pass he had gone to visit her. He had proposed and she had tearfully accepted.

Sarah had constantly told him how proud she was of him, how much she loved him. Her only complaint was that he had been deployed for a year and a half during their relationship. She had asked him one night, pleaded with him, to not renew his service when his current term came to an end. Things would be perfect if they could be together constantly.

The crumpled letter dropped from his hand and Scott leaned heavily against the wall. He could rejoin the army if he wanted, but he would have to go through the recruiting office again. There would be physicals and paperwork and honestly he did not know if he wanted to rejoin at the moment. His head was not in the right place, not right now.

Suddenly, his depressed mood was interrupted by the song stylings of the band, Buck Cherry. The song ‘Crazy Bitch’ began to play with a sense of urgency. Scott quickly answered his phone and said, “Sarah!”

“Yes, it’s me.” Her tone sent a chill down his spine. She had sounded so cold, so aloof.

“What’s going on? Why haven’t you answered me? You know why I’ve been calling, right?” Scott did his best to hold his emotions in check, but this was the first time that his supposed fiancé had answered him since he had received that letter.

“Yeah, look... I’m sorry, alright? I know I’m the one who asked you to quit the service, but I...”

“Quit? My tour ended, I just didn’t re-enlist since we wanted to start a family.”

“Yeah, I know... but, I ...” She started to mumble and Scott had to strain to hear what she was trying to say. However, he heard someone else loud and clear.

“Sarah, who the fuck is that on the phone?” asked a loud and obviously masculine voice.

“Hey, I’m trying to talk here Jake. You said you’d stay out of it!”

“Stay out of it my ass! Tell that asshole to get the fuck over it already. You have a real man now.”

Scott heard everything that the loud-mouthed fool said, but he could not believe it. Sarah had already gotten together with someone else? What kind of bullshit was that?

“Scott... I-I’m sorry but, well I found someone else while you were gone, Ok?”

“While I was gone? You were dating someone else while I was deployed?” He could have understood that, even if he would have wished to have been told sooner.

“No... Not while you were deployed. When you went back to base ... well, I went out and celebrated with my sister and friends because we got engaged... and I got a little drunk.”

Scott could feel his heart sinking with every word that she spoke. What was this shit? Why would she call off their engagement like this?

“I cheated on you... I got drunk and there was this soldier.... about to be deployed in a few weeks and... Well, you know I have a soft spot for soldiers... and I was drunk ... and...” She started to sob loudly.

He knew that he had to say something, and he had many choice words to speak. However, he was raised better than to scream at an emotionally distraught person, no matter what they had done to him. “Sarah. I would have been mad, but we could have worked that out... Why do this?”

She mumbled something that set his teeth on edge. “I... did you say you were pregnant?”

“Y-yes... It’s his.”

“It’s his? How do you know for sure? We weren’t exactly keeping our distance the day before.”

“Well, we were always so careful and I had taken precautions and we used protection...But... Jake...When I... I was drunk and wasn’t thinking.”

So, that was the case, huh? Sarah got drunk and cheated on him with another soldier without using protection. Scott immediately said, “Even so, we can work this out. Hell, he’s deploying in a few weeks! You’ll need someone in your life who can actually be there!”

Jake started cursing in the back ground, he sounded like a real winner. Sarah, however, said something that completely broke Scott’s heart. “Yeah, I know... but I can’t do that to him. He’ll be over there putting his life on the line and thinking about how the mother of his child is with someone else.”

Scott was dumb founded for a moment. She was seriously saying something like that? “We spent three years together, planned a life together, and now because of one drunken night you want to throw that away?”

“Please Scott... please understand!”

Finally, his upbringing was overcome by anger and frustration. Outraged about the whole situation; the fears and frustration of the last few weeks culminated in an outburst that he would later regret. “I understand! You think more of that Jodi mother fucker than you do of the man you wanted to marry! That guy fucking used you to get his dick wet and now he’s manipulating you. You think his garbage ass will take care of you when he comes back? You’ll be knocked up, and have a kid to take care of by yourself because of that piece of shit!”

Jake started hollering in the background and the voice on the other end of the line changed to his. “Listen here asshole. Sarah’s mine now! She has a real man. You call her again and I’ll beat your ass.”

“You think this is over because you say it is? Your ridiculous ass will be gone for months, if not a year or more. You know damned well that you’re just trying to secure some pussy for when you come home on leave you opportunistic little shit.”

“Whatever loser, I’ve got your girl. She made her choice and she’s back where she belongs. Give it up and go fuck yourself.” This thought-provoking and intelligent conversation continued for several minutes before Jake finally hung up the phone.

Scott took care of a few things in order to calm down. After he composed himself he gave his former mother-in-law-to-be a call. He needed more answers and hopefully she could provide a few of them. If her father was around, he would have called him. Sarah had never known the man, however. “Hey, Mrs. Fine? Can I talk to you?”

“Scott. Yeah, I guess we can talk. You should know, though, that I’m keeping out of Sarah’s business.”

“I understand. I just want to know what’s going on properly. She finally told me what had happened, but I can’t understand why she would choose what she chose.”

A soft sigh emanated from the phone and Sarah’s mother said, “I don’t get it either. She goes out and gets drunk then sleeps with her old boyfriend.”

“Wait, old boyfriend? She acted like they had never met before!”

“Oh, I’ve said something that I shouldn’t. Oh...”

“It’s ok! I just need to know why my fiancé decided to ditch me after a few weeks. Till I got this letter from her we had been making serious plans.”

“Fine, if she gets mad at me... its fine. Look, Scott, Jake had been after her for months. He had moved away from town and came back about four or five months ago. The only reason they broke up in the first place was because he’d had to move away when they were in school.”

Scott listened quietly as Mrs. Fine continued her story. Jake had joined the army a year prior, then gotten stationed at Fort Bragg after his training.  He kept trying to get in touch with her, and despite her insistence that she was with someone, he did not take no for an answer.

“So, he found out about the engagement from Erica’s boyfriend, one of his friends, and went to the dance. Well, you know what happened after that.”

A few seconds passed before Scott said, “What kind of guy is he?”

“Well, he’s a hot head but he isn’t really a bad guy. He actually proposed to her back in high school, but I didn’t allow it because she was so young. So, I feel a little responsible for them breaking up.”

Now he understood why she did not want to be involved. What normal mother would stand for her daughter to ditch someone who had been good to her for years, just because she had gotten pregnant by someone else during a one night stand? She did not hate the guy and she felt guilty about the situation. She was overcompensating for past sins.

He spoke to Mrs. Fine for a few more minutes then hung up the phone. This situation, he could not really call it fair. It felt like something that you could only see on a poorly scripted day time soap opera. “So... really, one night of drunken fooling around was all it took, huh?”

Defeated, he sat down on the couch. He held up his phone and looked at the background photo. It was him and Sarah at one of those goofy photo booths. Their faces were pressed together and they made silly little kissy faces at the camera.

The memory overcame him like a rogue wave crashing on an unsuspecting shore. He felt as though he was about to choke for a moment. Slowly, tears began to trickle down his cheeks.

Scott tossed the phone away without a care for where it would land then stretched out on the couch. He was angry, pissed to tell the truth. The last few years had been thrown aside, cast away like they were nothing. “It never fails, does it?”

Thoughts of all the relationships that he’d had in the past began to filter through his consciousness. A kaleidoscope of female faces; women of various sizes, shapes, and hues; arose within his memory. Why had all of those relationships ended? Was it something that he did? Was he the one who was at fault?

He could not legitimately see how he was at fault during this break-up but some of the others were due to his issues. When he was younger he lacked ambition. It was not till he joined the army at age nineteen that he finally found some semblance of direction. He could easily believe that his overall lack of focus had caused his relationships to flounder in those earlier years. Even after joining the army, he did not become Mr. Ambition overnight.

During his stint in the army he had been forced to move a few times. More than one promising relationship had petered out despite the desire to remain together long distance.

Looking back at his relationships he actually managed to laugh a little. “Strange, it was the strippers that stuck with me the longest.”

Sarah was a good example. He had met her at a Metallica concert, but found out that she worked as a dancer later. Strangely, she was an example of another stereotype. She had been dancing to pay her way through college. Sarah Fine had been a stripper by night and a med-student by day.

Scott remembered the stupid little perverted joke that he had told her; a thing that he was sure had won her heart. Sarah was studying to become an oral surgeon. Tears ran down his cheeks as he remembered saying, “You’re going to be an oral surgeon? Great! I love a woman with an oral fixation.”

He closed his eyes tightly then whispered, “Ms. Fine, you have the whitest teeth that I ever came across.” His body shook lightly and the choking sensation started again.

Somehow, despite his cheesy lines and perverted humor, she had fallen for him. He had found love in the strip club.

In the end though, it had not been enough. Copious amounts of alcohol had given him a chance to be with someone wonderful, and copious amounts had helped to take her away. He had never been much of a drinker, but the night that they had first gotten together had been the same night he had finally gotten to the point of being drunk. Now, it seemed that life had gone full-circle.

Time passed, minutes turned to hours and hours became days. A little over three months passed and he was still uncertain of what to do.

Scott had once again returned to a place in his life where he had neither purpose nor direction. He did not live near any of his relatives. His only friends were still in the army and several states away as well.

He had moved back here officially two days before Sarah had dumped him. Had she told him the truth to begin with and made it a clean break, he would have had more options. Now he was starting to run low on money.

He had gone out job hunting after the first week, but it was just after the holidays. Businesses were laying-off workers instead of hiring. Every day it seemed like he would have to return to the army if he wanted to have a career. It would not be a bad choice, but it felt like the wrong choice.

The army would be the safe answer, and if things became truly bad he would take that road. Right now though, he wanted something different, anything different. He had been a soldier for ten years and in the end he had wound up right where he had started. This, in his mind at least, was his last chance to have something in his life before he reached a point of no return.

“I’m tired of working for other people and trying to please someone for a pay check.”