So I was playing a little Black Ops, rolling around in Domination games with a sniper rifle for "kicks." Which is where most of this melancholy comes from. With just a little of my personal frustrations with time itself boiling in as well. As much as I hate waiting around, there was a time when I wanted to be a marine sniper. Too bad my dad forbid me from having any involvement with the military.

How all my dreams take seat next to logic and safety~ [/lameness]

Anyway. Enjoy, as always.

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The room was small, even by the meager standards of a poor terrorist run country. Any paint that might have been upon the walls had peeled away long ago to reveal a sickly red clay - laden with cracks and under maintenance. One could only imagine how inhospitable it was in the torrents of bad weather, or even on an average day with is almost utter lack of furniture. The one bed - nothing more than a brick, called a mattress, laying upon a poorly made wooden frame - was currently being filled by a less than approachable, middle-aged man.

The man sat, arms cradling a rifle in firing position, staring expectantly out the window. This moment - any moment of pause really - was an essence of his being; the essence of a sniper. Certainly his fingers itched with the numbness of being under used, and his skin was dry and covered in the coarse sand that was often blown through town. There were insurmountable complaints on the situation, and each of them would be noted and reviewed when he had the time. However, he was here to do a job that, despite having no personal investment, he would fulfill to completion; nothing else to be managed first.

A normal person would expect a twist, a surprise, or some quiet reflection to take place in this moment, but no such thing happened. The sniper had been almost entirely motionless in that room there for a week now - breaking only for his daily bite of bread and gulp of water to stave off death. It could be anywhere up to another whole week before his target showed, and that is when he would pull the trigger. That seems to be the way life is. Waiting in utter sufferance of our world, expecting a breakthrough, only to have things play out predictably and without excitement.

The essence of a sniper is quite easily seen to most as the essence of life itself.