Ryan Hughes

It’s puzzling, I know……..I still can’t put my finger on it. This goes here, and that goes……there? No, it can’t be. There’s no way it will fit. Hmmm……….Maybe if I move it to the side…..and I……no, that won’t work……..Aha! I see it so very clearly now! If I move this over here, and this over there, I can move that over there to………..damn it. Didn’t work. How can I do this.

I must say. This puzzle is indeed most……puzzling.

Pah! Whose great idea was it to do a puzzle by the firelight, anyway? What time is it…..three in the morning? My parents have long gone to bed, I think. And my siblings? Weren’t they supposed to be helping me with this as well? Ah yes, they’ve gone to bed too it seems. I suppose in this old cabin of aged yet sturdy wood, I’m the only working so diligently.

What about this……if this piece can move there, then…….drat! This makes no sense sometimes. How can I only have a mere corner of the picture completed? Hell. I can’t even tell what the picture is of, anyway. I see black lines on white paper, but that’s it. Not enough to see what the picture can possibly be. And don’t even think I’ll look at the top! That’s how wusses do it! I’m different. I like a challenge.

Sigh……but this challenge…..this just seems too much.  No matter which piece I pick up, I end up putting it down again and picking up another, repeating the process. I look at the top of the box, flipped upside down so I can’t see the picture, and the temptation grows and grows and fills me up to my eyes. It grows so much that several times have I reached out to the lid, but I realized what I was doing and sat on my hand. I can do this. I know I can.

Sigh……I don’t know why I torture myself like this.

It’s dark outside…..my eyes wander constantly to the cabin windows that reflect a dim glow from the small stick unscented candles placed around the room. I can’t see a thing outside. Is it because of the glare from the candles? Or is it simply because it is too dark? Yet again, puzzling.

My head always turns back to the table in front of me. This thing. It taunts me. The pieces seem no larger than my thumbnail. The laugh at me as I hold them; they know they can forever fool me. But at the same time it screams at me, screams for me to reunite all the members of the picture, to begin the days of their revelry. Perhaps it is the good in me, or the determination, or the arrogance–but I still try to unite those members. I still try to make them one again.

Now I begin to focus. Every once in a while I manage to connect a piece to the existing corner. I know I’m making progress. Then I find another. And another. And another! I can’t believe how well I’m doing now! As I put my mind to it, the picture starts to come together…….

Then I hit the wall. As I look at the new additions to the corner, I still see nothing but black lines on white. They become more numerous, more intense, and no matter how hard I look, I can’t find a single piece that seems like it would connect with another even remotely. And hour passes and make no progress. Just like that, from cruising speed to no speed at all. My mind is getting drained, but I still try to focus. I find it easier to doze off now. I try to bring my mind back to the task at hand. An hour and a half. Two hours. It’s five in the morning now. The birds start to sing and I can see the distant orange of the sun through the window. Still no pieces.

It’s officially decided: I give up. I take the lid in my hand and turn it over…..

And there it is. Black lines on white. Just black lines. The title of the puzzle reads: “Modern Art.”

Fuck this! It’s just a fuckin’ puzzle!

I’m going to bed.

Mannkrik’s platoon of soldiers outside just inside the borders of Storm, waiting. They watched the earth directly in front of them, trees shrouded in darkness less than a hundred meters in the distance. Lightning flashed and struck in the trees, a red bolt enflaming one piece of land, a white bolt sending a cloud of dirt above the treetops. Yelling was heard, and some light soon became visible between trees. The lightning continued to strike. More yells of command and screams of muffled screams of anguish followed. Mannkrik’s army, the new army of Storm, still waited in a line. Mannkrik was at the front.

Their first line of defense was natural–they let the lightning tear apart the enemy forces before they reached the safety of Storm. The tower was still collecting power, but the army was outside the borders of Storm; therefore, they were in danger–grave danger. They had their second line of defense already waiting in a line at the side where they knew the enemy would attack. And their third line of defense was also planned: the tower was still collecting magic energy, though there were no more soldiers to siphon the energy to. So it was just collecting. Being stored, bolt after bolt was accumulating, destructive power increasing with each strike on the tower. Mannkrik finally had discovered how Storm had defended itself against the armies of nations for all these years.

The word quickly spread that Storm had been taken over. The nations of the world saw this as an opportunity to finally take the village for themselves, as they thought Storm had been weakened by the invasion. They didn’t understand that although the original soldiers had been defeated and the forces of Storm had drastically decreased, the power of the new Storm had only greatly increased.

Mannkrik’s army still listened, now able to hear twigs snapping under the feet of their enemies. Lightning grew less frequent in the distance–their enemies were closing in on the defensive border of Storm, and the lightning was attracted to magic moreso than other objects, that’s why the lightning hit the army. Eventually the lightning stopped altogether, and the only lightning they could see was in the far distance, kilometers past the advancing forces. Screams stopped. Yelling grew in volume and freqency, clearly illustrating the last preparatory commands before battle.

Then the Storm defense saw black figures exit the treeline and begin running across the barren field toward Storm. Mannkrik let his black lips raise an enormous smile.

“Gentlemen,” he said, as if welcoming his guests. Though he could have also been talking to his own men, telling them to prepare.

Nonetheless, none of their enemies seemed to hear his greeting. They only ran faster. They looked like a dark ocean, endlessly flowing from the trees.

Mannkrik’s army quickly became one huge smile. They knew their victory on their first battle had already been guaranteed.

Storm’s victory followed minutes later.

It’s my first mission like this. I’m in clothes I don’t normally wear, in a place I don’t normally go, wearing glasses when I’d normally wear contacts, and sweat is covering my face and dripping profusely over my brow and into the sink below. But the good news is that I’m almost certain that they haven’t yet discovered my true identity. Therefore, I should try to combat my nervousness as best I could.

It feels unbelievably hot in the bathroom here, even though it is rather sizable and easy to move around in, and the thermometer next to the door reads seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I told them I had to use the restroom, but the truth is I feel sick. Though it’s not the kind of sick you feel after you ate something bad, or after you’d been in a car with a reckless driver for too long. This sick…I don’t know. I’d never felt this kind of intense sickness before in my life. Though maybe that’s because I’ve never been on a mission like this before. And I definitely know it’s the nervousness taking over.

Ugh, why am I so nervous?! I’ve prepared for this mission for hours on end and gone over the plan over and over and over again! I don’t understand it…and I know that if I keep acting the way I’d been, all jittery and shaking, they’ll definitely blow my cover! So why can’t I just tell my body to act naturally? That’s no doubt the safer way to go…yet my body doesn’t want to do it. My body wants to stay nervous and stupid and get me caught and possibly killed.

Hehe…sometimes I can’t help but think about the scene in Austin Powers when he’s in the casino under cover, and he just plays things so stupid and nonchalant but ends up completely fine. Why can’t this mission just be something like that? One in which I just act so nonchalant and almost idiotic that I almost treat it like a joke?

Hmm…maybe I will! Maybe if I go out there and just have fun with it…just cut the act altogether! Let my true colors show! I’ll go out there and bust a few jokes, maybe even treat the whole thing like a joke! Ahh, those gangsters have so much shit going on right now, I’m sure they’d just appreciate a few laughs right about now! Something to lighten the attitude! And hell, I’m sure they won’t even notice my sudden change in personality. I mean, the way I’d been acting so far, I’m sure it’ll be like the same personality.

Man, I feel great now! It seems that all my nervousness faded away in two seconds! I listened to my body, and it told me…just act naturally! Be yourself! And if they don’t like you for who you are, then fuck them! You don’t need them if that’s the case!

Alright, let’s just get cleaned up now, wipe the sweat off, and bam! Good as new. Man, I’m so excited for this now! I’m actually thinking this is going to be fun! What a fantastic feeling! Hell, I want to go on missions like this all the time now!

Hell, I’d recommend anyone at all go on undercover missions trying to get information out of underground gangsters any day!