Michael

"You seem tense this morning Michael, what ails you?" My guru asks as I wheel into his presence. I suppress an annoyed scowl at his immediate attention on me.

"Nothing in particular," I say crisply and wheel myself around the group of young men walking in to be outside his immediate view and make it to the temple grounds in peace.

I need to meditate, I need to release all my frustrations somehow.

"I think I know why your chakra is imbalanced now." He suddenly says from right behind me. The man is uncanny in the silence with which he moves in such elaborate robes.

"I am ever a student to those ahead of me," I say with a mental sigh.

I don't like talking when I'm in this mood, introspection is more important at times like these. No need to open my mouth and end up offending someone unnecessarily.

"Your throat chakra is blocked. You've been stifling your words again, not saying things that need to be said to fully express yourself."

"The words within me these past few days are bitter and poisonous. Not really appropriate for polite conversation."

I have a lot of shit going on in my life and a man that stays in such a 'zhen' environment, with no family meditating all the time probably wouldn't understand. I don't say that either though and school my expression to passivity.

"We are always here if you need to speak Michael, even words you would consider unpleasant have their setting and uses." He says with irritating patience. Its frustrating, I should have just gone home to my own garden to be alone.

"Thank you for the advice, Master Yoshi. I will try to think on it," I say bowing my head slightly.

He sighs. "If you refuse to talk to someone at least unblock your chakra another way. Here," he hands me a book from somewhere. Where he had it stashed I can't even guess, all my first suspicions too uncomfortable and random to be likely. Unless he has special pockets sewn into the robe, that would be interesting, and odd.

I take a look at it, its an empty journal that he pulled out from under his robes. It's new as well. Either he carries one around or he was waiting to give it to me, both unlikely but disturbing possibilities in their own ways.

"Thank you, now if you'd excuse me," I swing past him after accepting the gift. I need to clear my head.

*

After an hour of trying to calm myself down at the temple, I eventually head home. Parking the car at the front, climbing into my chair and wheeling myself to the elevator as quickly as possible to avoid any further human interaction.

In my room I head to the toilet to refresh myself before pressing the remote to light classical jazz that I enjoy as background music. I sigh thinking of my life so far, thinking of all the shit I've been through.

I grab the journal from the pouch I stuffed it in along with my firearm and wallet. Bringing everything to my desk with me.

There is a light tapping on my door before my 16 year old niece calls from the other side of the door.

"Do you need to talk?" She asks, causing a smile to spread on my face. Her concern is comical to me at her age, but she is probably the most matured person in this household.

"I'm fine Veroni. Go stack up the phone bill or whatever it is teenagers do these days," I yell back through the door. Not really wanting company right now anyways.

Her concern means she already knows that Alice has served me with divorce papers, which means the entire household knows, which means Alice called mom to let her know. Or probably spoke to mom before speaking to me.

I sigh as I wheel myself to the balcony. Looking out at the view of the vast property that is our back yard. I love this place, it used to be our country estate but has somehow turned into the families main estate after my accident. A bittersweet dilemma, having people around and not having people around.

At least I have my own wing, though that makes little difference sometimes as Veronica just proved with her presence. I head back to the desk, switching on my computer and looking at the journal.

I haven't seriously written anything since high school essays. Anything personal anyways, but I do have a lot on my mind that needs to be said. I nod, deciding to try it out.

I switch off the jazz and play a deep house mix from my library as I grab the book and put pen to paper. Writing as though I were speaking to someone, as though I had an audience.

*

My name is Michael O'Hare. I am 37 years old and have accomplished very little to justify my existence in this world. My contribution to the world has been minimal, the greatest of which is probably the conception of my son James who is much smarter at 14 than I ever was.

I grew up as part of a wealthy family with a long rich history of oppressing the native Indians and investing early in oil. The type of family referred to as 'old money' in the South, with cousins driving Lamborghini's or driven by chauffeurs to school.

I had a few girlfriends growing up at school and lost my virginity at 16 to a senior girl that wanted to lose her's before going to college.

It was a good experience for me as Amanda, my neighbour at the time, needed to 'practise' multiple times with someone who wouldn't blub to the whole school about our 'experiments' before she considered herself ready for college guys.

Nothing extraordinary happened to me in high school but in hindsight, those were some of the memories I treasure most in my life, the years of my innocence and naivety. I never did reveal about Amanda and me, she has kids now and I saw her a few Christmases ago at the old family manor on Long Isle in New York.

My father is a salesman mother had a dalliance with in her younger rebellious years. My stepfather is a lawyer with the 'right' breeding mother married when she came back from the cold reality of life without a swiss bank account and a trust fund.

My dad is 53 now I think and he tries, he really does, but we never had much in common and he never had a chance at a custody battle with my family. Not with grandfather knowing half the judges in the county on a first name basis.

Growing up rich was fun even though I never fully fit in, and yes like all rich kids I was an obnoxious asshole sometimes. Especially to some of my teachers but particularly my stepdad and his relatives. I was a mean little shit sometimes I will admit.

Being the bastard son of a salesman in the company of legacy rich kids was tough though, and I guess I needed an outlet besides fighting. Fighting I preserved only for the ones I hated the most or that did something to piss me off beyond reason.

I had worked out a fighting system since junior school. If you don't fight often you aren't labeled a 'problem child' or considered a bully by the teachers. You have a maximum of two fights a year before being at risk of expulsion. And I didn't waste those two fights on idiots and their pranks.

Those two yearly fights were reserved for the true assholes that needed a good beat down to teach them some manners. And if parents didn't get involved everything turned out fine most of the time anyways, so I made sure not to permanently injure anyone and always kept them off school grounds.

Come time for college I had absolutely no idea what to do with my life at that point in time. I'm not sure how the world expects kids to just decide at 18 how the rest of their lives will look like going forward with any real conviction.

But I did want to be as far away from my family as possible and I did somehow get into chemistry at M.I.T in Massachusetts. And of course, I wasn't a stupid kid even though I had my good and bad years academically throughout my life.

First-year was a breeze but I also discovered I really wasn't all that into chemistry. I finished that year though with mostly distinctions in the courses I had taken.

Second-year I change to information technology, I.T, and it is in one of those classes I met my first love, Alexandria.

Alex was one of those people that walk into a room and it immediately gets brighter from the grace of her presence. Her personality, her smile, her kind eyes and innocent face was like a balm to a part of me I never knew was injured.

Being with her let me speak to someone for the first time about all the shit I had built up to that point in life. I had always thought I had a mild life, but it turned out I had some serious issues lurking beneath that I had suppressed.

And yes she was majoring in child psychology but taking a computer course as an elective. My sharing induced her sharing though and we ended up knowing each other quite intimately both physically and mentally through most of our relationship.

Beginning of the third year I got closer to some of my other classmates including a very reserved guy named Wesley. Wesley was very much into the hacker lifestyle and got me interested as well. Computers were still the new frontier at the time and it seemed we could do almost anything with just a few clicks of a keyboard.

Wesley and I looked into the school's secret societies and old alma mata societies. He was very much into secret societies and the underground culture in general. Anything from black market internet and personal sales and deals, to the club life of every major city in the state. It's while with him on LSD in a club whose name I can't remember that I met Aurora.

The unrequited love that changed the course my life was currently heading towards. A euphemism for, she bulldozed my perfectly structured life to pieces.

Aurora was 27 to my 21 and very worldly. I had it bad for her the moment my eyes fell on her tight black raggered jeans, black and white converse sneakers, and her $12k reinforced leather biker jacket.

The tight ass in those jeans and the pretty face were a bonus. Alex and I were still an item at the time of course, but we were mainly preoccupied with our own shit most of the time. Her parents loved me but my grandparents barely tolerated her.

One drunk night during my affair with Aurora I confessed my undying love for her and after another great fuck I never heard from her again. To this day I haven't the slightest idea what happened to her, though to be honest, I've never seriously searched.

My first heartbreak and it crushed me into a wallowing depression that drove Alex up the wall. It's around that time that the towers fell in New York. Perfect timing for me to redirect my energies into something constructive/destructive.

Everything was emotion and adrenaline those first few days of the attack. Anyone from New York knew someone that knew someone that worked at the towers.

I somehow found my way to a recruitment centre and signed my name on the dotted line. Alex broke up with me for enlisting, it was a long time coming and I think she just needed an excuse. I strangely still loved her very much, but also didn't want to be dating her anymore.

Mom was very upset, trying to forbid the whole thing. Grandfather wouldn't mess with the military though, no pulling strings to get his hot-headed grandson out of enlisting. Especially at that time in our history.

We had been attacked on home soil. Of course we would burn the world to make a point. Ensuring that any other such mastermind thinks twice before fucking with America.

Anyways I already had two half-siblings in their teens that grandfather actually approved of. Grooming them to take over the family business, running investment funds and whatnot. Not my forte at all.

The military is not what one would expect it to be. I know my boot camp and basic training was nothing like I had expected it to be. From the format to the training to the people themselves. The military culture is its own thing understood only by people that are involved in it.

Everything is overdone in the army to extremely exaggerated levels. The running the hiking, the obstacle courses we had to do. It was all exhausting and designed to break us down to our base elements, it felt like it would never end. And this was the concise version we later found out. Done this way because the army needed bodies at the front lines in the Middle East fast.

At first no one during training gives a damn about anyone else. Most everyone is crude or butch, trying to project an image of being the toughest son of a bitch amongst us. By the third day all pretence is gone and those walls of indifference collapsed. By the third week knew all of each other's names at the base at that point as we shared a bond only forged by men through suffering together.

*

I'm interrupted from my writing by the polite tone of my intercom.

"Yes," I answer, already finding this writing thing cathartic.

"Excuse me young master but dinner is ready," Forrester, the family butler says.

"I'll be right down."

"Very good sir," he says and cuts the line.

I sight, it's time to face the family.