All Alone

So, I haven’t updated in a couple weeks and I apologize for that. It’s just that I’ve had a major upheaval in my personal life and I had to spend some time dealing with it. After many years, I’ve suddenly found myself alone.

I mean, I thought things were going great. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but I thought it was good. I was always there. At least, I thought I was. I always made time. Perhaps, in hindsight, not enough. I admit that I took it for granted, that I thought it would last forever.

Forever did not turn out quite as long as I thought.

 So here I am, sitting alone in my apartment, drinking a coke. There are cobwebs on the swords. My mace is dusty. The cobra’s getting fat, the traps are rusty, and I’m listening to Johnny Cash because that’s what you do, isn’t it?

I guess I just have to face it.

The ninjas are gone.

They left a note, a very nice note, explaining that though it had been fun, the contract was over and they were moving on. Something about a guy in Chicago and a bonus for making it look like an accident. And they were very sorry, so very sorry, to leave like this. If, by some chance, they found themselves in my neck of the woods, they’d swing by and attempt a disemboweling, just for old time’s sake. And they wished me the best, the very best, and hoped that the next time I chased someone across a rooftop with a guan-dao while wearing monkey slippers and leiderhosen, I’d think of them.

It’s been hard, I admit. As often as I cursed them, made snide remarks and blogs about them, I do miss them. They were a constant, y’know? A dangerous, often venomous, constant. Sure there were swords involved. Sure they once tried to strangle me when I was on the potty. It was all part and parcel.

Yet, in a strange way, they cared. They thought about me a lot. They knew my habits, my likes and dislikes. What I ate in the morning, when I went to sleep, and where I hid my brass knuckles. It was a violent, bloody caring, but in lieu of anything else, it was something.

And now they’re gone.

Oh, I’ve tried to cope, but the mundane world offers little when you’re typical Tuesday consisted of fighting eleven armed men with a rubber chicken filled with buckshot while simultaneously keeping an eye on your chicken in the microwave.

So, yeah. I miss them. They were a danger that became a nuisance that became a habit. It was its own special specialness. 

And, in all honesty, I just bought 100-gallons of napalm and I have no idea what to do with it now.

Oh well, summer’s coming up. Maybe I can figure out a way to bbq with it.

Cheers,

-Jason