'Cuts and Bruises'

'Cuts and Bruises'





It really catches you off guard, how bright hospital lights are. When I woke up, I thought that only Heaven could be this bright and this white. In the silence, though, I hear my heart beat and I know that this couldn’t be Heaven. I’m still alive.

I close my eyes for some time more. I’ve apparently been asleep for a while, maybe a few days. I’m not able to fall back asleep and when I turn my head toward the noise in the hallway, I feel stubble scratching against the pillow. Or maybe it’s the pillow scratching the stubble. I’d shaved before, so that I could look good in the coffin. I’d heard that your hair continues to grow once you’re dead, but I wasn’t sure if that applied to facial hair. Or maybe I’d just hoped that whoever found me would understand that I wanted to leave without a five o’clock shadow. Swanky in Hell, that’d be me.

The stubble versus pillow dilemma was getting uncomfortable on my left cheek and the hallway is empty and dark. So I turn my head and lay on my right cheek. Still stubble. Still scratching. But for now, it doesn’t bother me as much. This new side of the room isn’t much different: white walls, white ceiling, white bed sheets, white pillow, white bandages around an off-white neck. Neck?

Blinking, I raised my hand to wipe away the sleep gunk from my eyes. My hands feel funny; weak. Paraplegic, maybe that’s a good word. As I rub my eyes, I feel something scratch the stubble on my chin. Did the pillow stick to me? No. My wrists were covered in bandages. Understandable, I guess. Just sort of slipped my mind.

The bandages on the other bed are wrapped around her neck. She has dark hair, maybe shoulder length, maybe a bit shorter. It’s straight, and a little jagged, like maybe she cuts it herself. I cut my own hair, too. She’s sleeping. Her breathing is so shallow I can’t even see her chest move. I can barely tell that she’s breathing at all. I watch for a few seconds, looking for her to move. She doesn’t.

“Hey…uh…you. Girl. Hello?” She doesn’t answer. Not even a flutter of her eyelids. “Hey! Are you dead?”

“Are you?” That sort of sarcasm usually turns me on in an odd, masochistic way. She opens her eyes and looks at me like I am a rotten tomato. A talking rotten tomato, laying in bed. Odd. Or maybe just stupid. I can’t imagine tomatoes being considered all that intelligent. She just kind of squints at me. Hospitals are pretty bright.

“Oh-um, no. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you or anything. I just couldn’t tell if you were breathing.” I still can’t tell. It’s a little freaky. Even when she’d spoken, her chest didn’t move. Or at least her stomach didn’t. I try to avoid looking at her chest. I don’t want her to think that I’m some sort of pervert. It didn’t look like she was wearing a bra under the hospital gown. Do hospitals give girls bras while they’re bedridden? Maybe I am a pervert.

“Your chest wasn’t moving.”

“Why are you looking? You some kind of pervert?”

Shit.

But she did smile when she said it. One of those small smiles that girls give when they know they’re making a guy uncomfortable, but whatever it was he was doing didn’t really bother them in the least. A good sign? I have no idea. I look at the bandages on her neck instead. I don’t really consider myself a pervert.

“Telephone cord. Rope tends to break too easily.” She scratches at the bandages.

I can’t think of a reply. I didn’t expect an answer, especially when I didn’t actually ask a question. She starts unwrapping the bandages to reveal a screw thread pattern of bruises around her neck, tightly wound around the base of her jaw. There are stretch marks. The whole scene reminds me of those African women with the stacks of necklaces that make their necks way too long. But these rings were blue and black instead of gold.

“I guess the ceiling fan broke. We live in a trailer. Cheap building materials, y’know.”

What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Just nod. That’s right. Nod and raise your eyebrows and don’t make eye contact. She still has that subtle little grin stuck to her chin. I look at the bruises on her neck, instead. She’s too pretty to be hanging herself. Especially with telephone cord. A silk scarf would’ve been more suitable. Of course, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know this girl. Maybe hanging herself with a noose made of condoms is more her style. You never know. Gutter-slut bungee jump.

“I’m sorry, my name is Renee.” And suddenly there’s this dainty little hand reaching across the chasm between our beds. The tiles at the bottom are actually speckled, not pure white like I’d thought at first. Her fingers are long and embarrassingly graceful. Pale enough to match the sheets. She has chipped fingernail paint on. Black on every finger except the thumb. Some say the thumb doesn’t count as a finger. Maybe she thinks that way and doesn’t paint it because painting a non-finger with fingernail polish is a ‘misappropriation of product intent’ or some jargon like that. But what about toes? I look. Her toes aren’t painted. She takes labels on bottles way too literally.

Her hand is still there and she’s looking at me looking at her fingers and her toes and her eyes don’t ask a single question. Amazing. I reach forward to return the handshake. She throttles the fish that my hand has become. I try as hard as I can to get a grip, but my fingers are nearly limp. I can feel them just fine. Her skin is really smooth. I just wish I could squeeze back.

Apparently the confusion I feel is visible, because she shifts her hand and touches the bandages on my wrist. “I hear, when you do it right, it severs most of the tendons in the wrist and lower forearm. Takes weeks or months to get your strength back.” She smiles a little bit wider, biting her lip slightly. “Looks like you’ve got a period of celibacy ahead of you,” she whispers and shows me that it is indeed possible to wink without actually closing an eye. It’s like a sparkle or a glint that goes along with a smirk.

I won’t lie. I don’t have a girlfriend. “I’ll be ok, I promise,” I reply, hopefully sounding less put off than I am. This girl with the strangled neck has caught me more off guard than the hospital brights ever could.

Feeling awkward, I try to pull my hand back as politely as possible, but she grabs a tighter hold and spins herself around to sit up on the edge of her bed. Her hospital gown hikes halfway up her thigh. I look away in an effort to be respectful, but I’m running out of places to look. She’s got freckles above her knee and they are enough to make me blush. She leans forward.

“Why did you do it?” Oh my God, a cat just died. She’s slaughtering felines left and right with that look in her eyes. She’s hungry to know. She starving for an answer, as though my motivation for punching out early is the answer to all her questions and problems in life; I am her suicidal messiah. If she bites her lip any harder, it’s going to bleed. I can’t believe her lips are that color naturally. No lipstick needed.

“I was…already alone.”

She smiles. I just look at the floor.

Leaning forward, she kisses me.

“Do you still want to die?”

Left 4 Rapture: Proposal for Bioshock Multiplayer Mode

Many have called giving Bioshock or its successors a multiplayer mode either impossible or purely impractical. And in essence, they are right. Bioshock as a deathmatch would not work. However, I think if any game has shown the capabilities of creative multiplayer possibilities and presents a possible alternative to a Bioshock multiplayer feature, then that inspirational title is Left 4 Dead.

Yes. Left 4 Dead has taught me how to make Bioshock multiplayer. Of course, a certain suspension of disbelief must be maintained for the mode to work at all, but if laid out as a separate timeline to the original game or an amendment to the story of the sequel, it could actually work quite well. My specific citation of inspiration from Left 4 Dead is the 'Versus' multiplayer mode.

The basis: A small group of aquatic Divers hear of the plane crash and dive down to the depths of Rapture either during the events of the first game or immediately after in order to investigate this lost city. They enter through a different part of the city, thus allowing for a variety of new maps and level designs. Each player is given the choice of either uploading the profile and stats of their single-player character or they can design a new profile using a certain budget for plasmids and tonics, which can be earned as they play. These are persistent profiles and their level gains are permanent to the profile. As such, my player is maxed out and is generally tiered toward stealthy wrench-based attacks while another play may have focused their points into electricity and fire plasmids while another player may actually be a standard gun-toter. Either way, as you play, you gain points toward your budget to build you character, unless, like me, your character is already maxed, in which case you can create a new profile.

The backstory, given as an in-engine cutscene that is skippable, is that these divers arrive at Rapture and are forced to survive for 3 days before the players actually gain control of them. This gives ample opportunity for continuity to allow that they have gained weapons, plasmids, tonics and knowledge of the general denizens of Rapture. The standard group size is 3, but is scalable up to 6. To note; as with Diablo II, the more players you have, the more enemies you encounter and the stronger they will be. Another note: Because Tenenbaum is too busy with the main character and everything to hand out the formula for saving Little Sisters, the Diver's are unable to interact with Little Sisters. They are merely invulnerable, non-violent NPC's that spawn with some Big Daddies and not with others. A player who is a Big Daddy cannot have a Little Sister. Find a new motivation for your violence.

Where Left 4 Dead's co-operative Versus inspiration comes in as this: While standard 'Thuggish Splicers', 'Leadhead Splicers', 'Security Bots' and the occasional 'special' creature are controlled by the in-game AI, a second group of players plays opposite of the divers. These anti-heroes, called Splicers, play as 'Spider Splicers', 'Nitro Splicers', 'Houdini Splicers' and at random times one of the Splicer players is released from a Vita-Chamber as a Big Daddy, just being made into the Tank on Left 4 Dead, usually as a Bouncer but every once in a while a player is created as a Rosie. This is to help with range balancing, since Rosies are long range and have high health.

Just like in Left 4 Dead, creature appropriation is random. No player can choose what Splicer they spawn as, but they can choose their spawn location, unless they are a Big Daddy, in which one of a number of Vita-Chamber locations is used. The Vita-Chambers work just like the respawn closets in Left 4 Dead. In order to allow fairness and dissuade the chance of bad spawns, a player can never respawn within a certain radius of a Big Daddy and a Big Daddy can never spawn within sight of any player. Unlike the Tank, however, there is no damage meter dictating if a player can lose control of a Big Daddy. I feel this would disrupt the pacing. Do not forget, while Left 4 Dead serves as a great multiplayer model, the two games are built toward very different experiences and Bioshock lends itself to a slower, stealthier, more deliberately tense pace than Left 4 Dead.

In order to balance the Big Daddies, they have a lot of health but also take a lot of damage, especially if set on fire or shot with armor piercing rounds. The only way a Big Daddy can dampen the amount of damage they take is by regaining health by causing damage to the players. So, a Big Daddy with 2200HP (Player base is 100) takes 2x the amount of damage as the other Splicers do, and 3x the damage is on fire, 2.5x the standard damage if stunned by electricity and 4x the damage from armor piercing rounds. However, every hit that a Bouncer lands will gain that Bouncer 150% percent of the HP lost by the victim and every round landed by a Rosie will regain that Rosie 50% of the HP lost by the victim. Proximity mines thrown by a Rosie give back 90% of the damage caused. So, much like the Tank in Left 4 Dead, the only way to stay alive for a respectable amount of time as a Big Daddy is to wreak havoc and cause damage.




Now, just like in Left 4 Dead, each of the difference classes of Splicers has special abilities, as listed below:



Spider Splicer: This is the equivalent to the Hunter. Fast, agile, able to crawl on ceilings and climb walls (oh the FPS camera hell that could be...) and given the abilities to Dodge, in which they flip in the direction of the dodge, and Lunge, in which, like the Hunter, they pounce onto the enemy. However, unlike the Hunter, Spider Splicers do not pin the player to the ground, but instead latch on to the player's body and pummel them while the player is still standing. The player's vision is obscured, but they are still mobile. To balance this, the damage taken from Spider Splicer hooks is much more than that of a Hunter's claws and, like all the Splicers, the Spider Splicers take more than a couple shots to kill as opposed to the quickly dispatched Special Zombies in Left 4 Dead.



Nitro Splicer: Nitro Splicers actually have the fastest run speed in the game. They are given a box of infinite molotov cocktails or hand grenades, picked at random upon spawning. Hand grenades have a 2 second gap between throwing opportunities and molotovs have a 4 second refresh. Hand grenades are combustive in nature, with a blast radius of about 12ft. They cause a lot of splash damage and even heavier damage if they explode as a direct hit. If a hand grenade hits a target, they explode on impact. If it misses and hits part of the environment, they have a 1.5 second fuse after making the initial bounce. Molotiv cocktails explode in impact regardless of what they hit and they erupt in an area-of-effect flame that spreads to a radius of about 20ft. Anyone caught in the flames is caught in fire and is continually damaged until the flame burns out (about 6 seconds later). Molotov cocktails cause greater total damage than grenades if landed a direct hit. Nitro splicers are also immune to fire and resistant towards explosives, but have the least amount of health out of all the Splicers. Note: Fire will attract standard A.I. Splicers to the players, while explosives will alert any nearby turrets, camera, or active bots. Use the knowledge accordingly.



Houdini Splicer: If the Spider Splicer is the Hunter and the Nitro Splicer is the Boomer, then the Houdini Splicer is obviously the Smoker and serves a similar role. Except for one thing: Houdini Splicers have the most health of all the Splicers. This will be possibly be the most fun Splicer to play if one likes to disrupt teamwork. When playing as a Houdini Splicer, a player has three attacks, though only two cause damage. 'Fireball', like it sounds, is a small ball of flame that causes mild damage upon impact and does not cause procedural flame damage like a molotov. They merely impact and cause a default level of damage. However, being magical in nature, they have infinite range and do not run out. While slightly slow moving, catching a player from behind with a few shots can cause respectable damage. The second attack is 'Claw', in which the Houdini Splicer uses one hand to hold on to the player's clothing and uses the other hand to pummel them. During this, the Diver player has obscured vision and can only use melee attacks and close-range plasmids to defend themselves, but unlike Left 4 Dead, they CAN defend themselves, albeit in a weakened state. And this is why the third skill matters: 'Abduct' is a skill that is used in tandem with the Houdini's 'Teleport' ability.

To teleport, simply press the left trigger to open a body ghost of yourself and place is approximately where you wish to teleport, and then press the assigned Teleport face button. The game will instantly place you as close as possible to the place you selected. If you merely press the face button, the game will teleport you to the last place you Teleported from. In order to Abduct an enemy, use the Left Trigger to 'paint' that player with your ghost and press the Teleport button. You will Teleport behind that player and have a small window of opportunity to press 'Claw' and grab ahold of them. This is where it gets tricky, in order to balance this out. Once you grab ahold of them, they have the opportunity to break free of the hold by pressing their Jump button. You have to press the 'Teleport' button before they press the 'Jump' button in order to Teleport to your last location with them. If you do, you will automatically teleport to that location (by default of the system, it will be within line of sight of where they were) and will already have a hold on them to begin Clawing them. They have to try and defend themselves as you attack. They're attacks cause minimal damage but can interrupt your attacks if timed right. They cannot break free of the hold. The only way they can break free of the hold is if you let go or if a teammate rescues them from you by damaging you, shocking you, or freezing you.




The Divers: As explained earlier, your Divers are what you make of them. You save their profiles and keep them from game to game. In order to cater to a more conducive system for co-operative multiplayer, health and eve hypos are somewhat more plentiful, though still dictated by the game A.I. to some extent. If a player wishes, they can take up one Tonic Slot in both 'Combat Tonics' and 'Physical Tonics' each to gain the 'Regen' tonic. This tonic allows a slow regeneration of Health and Eve. If a player meets a certain criteria (as set by the developer), they can use up an 'Engineering Tonic' slot to upgrade the 'Regen' tonic to 'Medical Miracle' in which the rate of regeneration is increased. The cost of two or three slots for this skill will actually balance out any game-breaking advantage it might give to a player.



The game: Just like in Left 4 Dead, the point of the Bioshock multiplayer experience to is survive from checkpoint to checkpoint while an overseeing game A.I. procedurally generates A.I. Splicers, Bots, Turrets and Big Daddies, in addition to dealing with the other team in Versus mode. In Left 4 Dead, you have Safe Rooms and Safe Houses. In Bioshock, you have 'Hideaways' which are rooms that are stocked with Health, Ammo, Weapons, and Eve, much like the ammo tables and health chests found in check-stations in Left 4 Dead. Instead of an escape vehicle, the destination in Bioshock is a Bathysphere. Players much survive long enough to reach the Bathysphere to beat the level. At then end of each level, whether by Divercide, in which the Splicers kill all the Divers, or by Bathysphere escape, the total scores are tallied per team, after which the sides are switched and the level is played with the roles reversed before proceeding to the next level.

Unlike Left 4 Dead, the Bioshock multiplayer experience will involve a good bit of story and will have scripted, skippable cutscenes at key points, as well as the ability for players to find Audio Diaries, Ghost Memories, hidden Tonics and Plasmids (these are randomly hidden at the start of each game. No GameFAQ cheating for you!) as well as access vending machines and U-Invent stations and the ability to hack all the machinery present. It will be up to the procedural A.I. to up the challenge accordingly. Each of the 'Districts' of Rapture, which is what the levels are called, are actually linked together in a connected narrative, unlike the separate chapters of Left 4 Dead, and completing all the Districts in order will reveal the actual game story and provide a constant narrative. Once the story has been completed by a player once, if hosting a game they are given the option to 'Remove Story Elements', which disables cutscenes, Audio Diaries, and Ghost Memories. In order to skip a cutscene, all players must vote of skip it. This way, little Mikey who's never played it before, won't have all the vets deprive him of his story.



As a whole, the Bioshock multiplayer mode could be expanded into many directions if ever given the proper amount of care and thought put into, but this is my personal set of ideas of a plausible method of creating a valid and definable Bioshock-themed multiplayer experience, even if it is a complete rip-off of Left 4 Dead. Why is that? Because Left 4 Dead got it right! Complimentary flattery indeed.

The Dog is Bald

It's my birthday. I celebrated last night/this morning since I have to work tonight. I just woke up and I'm still slightly drunk and I also have a hangover. Ugh. I think 14 beers may have been a bit much...

Oh, and my car needs a new starter. $130. I WAS going to use that money to get a MagnaFlow muffler and go up to Rock Hill to say goodbye to all my friends up there before I leave for good. But nope. Every time I set money aside to go to Rock Hill, some other financial emergency pops up.

Man, I need more sleep. I'm gonna try and fix that. Night, all.

always the hard worker

Joseph Birmingham is my father's best friend. He is also a very good friend of mine.










Joe has cancer. Joe is dying.

Apologies around the pub!

So I'm giving out a free round of apologies to the entire non-existent crowd and anxious readers I sometimes pretend to have. After dealing with all the absolute torture that was my last 6 months at Winthrop University, I had pretty much forgotten that this blog existed. I'm both too lazy and disinclined toward carpal-tunnel to actually recap the past six months. I'll summarize it with this:

Winthrop and Michelle both can go suck a big donkey turd.

I'm staying back at home with my dad, working part-time 3rd shift to help out with the bills.

I plan on moving to Missouri to live with Beth, Crystal and Noah and begin attending a new school up there. And I'll be moving....when I save up about $900. Yep. It's gonna take a little bit. Donations are greatly appreciated but hardly expected.

I guess my life right now feels...stagnant. And were it not for some of the absolutely amazing people I've met at the Hawty McBloggy forums, I'd probably be depressed or fat or anti-social or something along this lines. There is an absolute dearth of social activity and opportunity in this town, so an online social scene is really the best that I can hope for. And honestly...I seriously prefer it. Some of these people are so much easier to talk to than some of my real-life friends. Elpolloguapo, SonofMacPhisto, and Merde 'Sam' BrusselsSprouts in particular are just so easy to converse with and connect with. I get the feeling that they really do respect me for who I am and not who I am labeled as on-sight, as is so often the case with meeting people in person.

Not having the burden of appearance allows for ample opportunity for acceptance. It's not that us internet-addicts are anti-social; it's that we prefer a social life free of material and superstitious judgmentalism that so plagues all of the Western world. I don't have a perfect Hollywood smile, far from it, nor do I have six-pack abs and a flawless bronzed tan. Do Guapo or Merde care about that? Or anyone at HMB? No. And for that, I love them. With the financial troubles my father and I are going through right now, along with the stress of figuring out how to get back into college, sometimes it really feels like the community I've discovered there is really the only thing keeping me afloat.

I should be used to loneliness by now. I'm an only child and I've been relocated so many times that bonds and strong friendships are a luxury, not a right, for me. I've spent more of my life alone than I have asleep, to put it into perspective. I had thought that my 3 years at college would've made up for lost time, but 1 year and a half of that was spent in an even worse situation: emotionally alone on a campus of 9,000. A lot of that was self-inflicted and my junior year was an absolutely amazing improvement, excluding hurricane Michelle which rolled through my head and chest. But the social foundation I had begun to build there only makes this new isolation all the worse by comparison.

You see...when you're always alone, you don't realize you're lonely. It's just part of your everyday existence. But once you experience something besides loneliness, you come to see loneliness as it is and you loathe it and reject it and lament it instead of accepting and befriending it as you once did. I never yearned for a little brother until I was 11 years old and had both gain and lost my best friend in less than 2 years. And from 11 until the time I was nearly 20, I struggled and pined for that same commitment to loyalty that he and I had shared. I had briefly experienced the brother I was never given.

In college, Mike and I began to grow that sort of bond, but I let Michelle get between us just as Mike let Ferrari get between us. And Rachel showed me was a true relationship and truly accepting love really was. After she and I ended, it took me a while to realize just what I had experienced and how little I cherished it when I had the chance. I expect Michelle to be able to give me that some sense of security and comfort, but I was mistaken...and much to my own personal torment, at that. Looking back, I can't believe what I allowed Michelle to lead me to becoming. I can't even recognize who I was for those few months. I was so...broken. And after leaving Winthrop, I've had only silence and ample time to pick up those pieces and begin slathering on the rubber cement. I've still got a few holes and jagged edges, but I'm much closer to being the man I always knew I could be. I wish I could thank Rachel for the amazing patience and love she showed me and tell her how sorry I am for not listening to her warnings about Michelle. I wish I could get back to hanging out with Mike and sew that friendship we starting stitching between us.

As for Michelle...

For her, I hold only a furrowed brow and a tightly clamped tongue.


I guess all I can do right now is pinch my pennies and look to Missouri. At least it's not South Carolina. And though I'll never gain that brother I used to long so heavily for, I always held a smile and a hope for a little sister. Maybe Beth can be that for me. A sibling is a sibling, whether connected by blood or not. And love will always be love. It can't be anything else. I never had a mother to love. I never had a brother to love. At least maybe now, I'll gain a sibling sister to love.




Brother, I

By: Chris H.



This lack of a sibling

sister had long been a sustained

disappointment. To awake,

dazed, and turning and looking for

a friend each dawn. As yet, never

a brother has awoken here.



A friend there was, of course.

An old friend. Almost a kin of

a kind; a friend born

of storm clouds

and dandelion fluff

on days alone in the fields.



Pan’s shadow: always a ready

companion: ever-proverbial, an

all-weather friend

with unparalleled social skills.

A big toothy grin, It reaches out:

“May I have this dance?”



He has to decline. “There’s only

one warm pair of hands here,”

(We’re not even good

for a game of catch”).

A sustained disappointment.



This lack of a sibling sister has

endured to here. Look at all

the pristine white tiles..sanitary,

the maternity ward lobby becomes

a welcome suspense.