If you get to spend your life with your soulmate, you are devastatingly lucky.

Meeting them is hard enough, but dating them and marrying them statistically is next to impossible. 7 billion people. One of you, and one of them.

Sadly, no, one of the saddest things is that,

People settle for comfort.

They settle for money, for stability, for family approval.

And while I’m not saying that’s bad,

How can you live your life without ever finding out the big what if? Perhaps I'm overly naive or hopeful, yet I wonder. Can you be content? Can you stand to spend your life with someone else? And leave your soulmate to someone else?

I’d rather be living paycheck to paycheck in a raggedy apartment if it meant I could dance in the rain with my soulmate, watch old movies and think ordering chinese food is a treat. I know with capitalism and the way the world works, it’s not that easy. It's not that clean-cut. But love isn’t either. Love is incredibly complicated.

We all burn brightly, but only for a glimpse in history. Wouldn't it be a shame if we never tried to find the person we were meant for? Never tried to make it work? I’d rather give my life to the what if, then spend all of my life wondering about it.

With beautifully rendered scenes paying homage to every great western from The Great Train Robbery to Django Unchained, Red Dead Redemption's groundbreaking prequel gives gamers the ultimate wild west experience. The gruff but lovable protagonist and his ecclectic family of gangsters and degenerates are host to more laughs, gasps, and tears than any cast before or since. Match that with buttery-smooth gunfights, breathtaking landscapes, and more unsolved mysteries than the History Channel's nighttime programming, and you've got a recipe for an incredibly immersive experience that will stand the test of time as one of gaming's greatest narratives.

The circle of life will never implode; it recycles truth and sometimes magnifies it with illusion. We are carpenters by trade, building on the universe. The mind’s eye is the creator of what we see. Though we don’t always hear each other’s internal rivers, our worldwide tears make the oceans.

It's kind of weird. We didn't open presents on Christmas Day. We opened them on Christmas Eve and at the kitchen table instead of in the living room. Not that it's bad or anything, I understand. After everything that's happened, how can I expect my family to do what we've always done when one of us is missing?

I don't like it though. We've always been an unstoppable force, us siblings that is. I know we will never stop being that but it just feels wrong now that one is gone.

I try not to think about it because I'm tired of crying every time but I think I need to. Either write my thoughts down or do something with it. I try to distract myself.

Basically, this is just going to be a bunch of random things put down into words, things that I've been trying to keep back because I don't know how to express them.

I miss my brother. That's normal. I know. But I don't like missing him. It's like, he was never really here, but had stayed down South and worked for the holiday. For some reason, this still feels like an odd dream that I'm going to wake from, regretting everything. I kind of hope it is but I know all too well that it's not.

We have an ornament on our Christmas tree. It's a glass angel with gold fringed wings and an engraving that says in memory of my brother. It has his name but I don't really feel comfortable saying it. Maybe I'm scared to write it. I don't know.

Mom and Dad say we need to talk about him and not try to forget him but how can I do that? People ask me about something from my childhood and he always comes up because he was always there. He taught me how to ride my bike. He taught me how to play the piano. He taught me to have faith in myself and do what I love even when people may not support me or back me up. He helped me. He was the person I sat by when I rode on my first roller coaster. He held my hand on the first drop and then begged for me to stay conscious when I started to feel light headed as we were whipped this way and that. We ran through the line for that one stupid particular roaler coaster at the parks power hour just so we could ride it over and over again. At the end, I got to the point where I could ride the whole thing with my hands in the air. I never would have gotten on that thing if it hadn't had been for him.

I talked his ear off one night about my book Red Like Crimson. I kind of feel bad about never finishing it and I don't think I would ever be able to. But that's not the point. The point is, he listened when nobody else would. He talked with me about the things I loved even though he may not have been interested in or even talk about later.

We should talk about him.

I know that.

But I hate the way my throat feels when I start. I hate the way my voice cracks and my eyes start to sting. I can only fake being okay for so long.

I don't know. I'm kind of a mess right now but I know that it's okay. I'll get better soon and hopefully I'll be better when it's all done.

An old friend of the family told me at my brother's burial that it has to get worse before it can get better. It didn't really make sense at the time but it does now. I hope it doesn't get worse than this.

I’ve fallen fast,

I’ve fallen

last.

I know where

mountains grow and

shadows end,

there behind

forbidden sanctuary,

deep in my cavernous

armory

of blank deceit.

I’ve starved that conversational

tick,

that frenzied bug which whispers

for faultless love,

I’ve lost my

humming senses,

that fanatical buzzard

swooping toward

wrecked prey.

Lost in

spiraling nightmares of

bliss,

eager for

the day vexing agony

would vanish.

I’ve fallen fast,

I’ve fallen

last.

I’d chase tempest

clouds and city stars

awaiting nameless things.

Like moths and monarchs

surging heartstruck

skies.

I’d sit and wait

on corroding shores-

where tides sung death

and hope sunk in

wavering depths-

finding only

scorched earth days,

devouring suppressing

malaise.

I’ve fallen fast,

I’ve fallen

last.

I’ve forgotten

your ways,

I’ve absorbed your lies.

I seek paradise...

Paradise I’ve

lost.

I’ve fallen fast...

I’ve fallen...

last.

Darkness is not

the absence of light,

but, rather, it is

the lack of

i n

m a

u t

l i

l o

i n

.

Humanity died fast when the list appeared.

First came the suicides. When you see yourself at the bottom of the list that supposedly represents all of humanity, it’s hard not to lose hope.

Then came the murders. Of the people who had discovered the list. The people who kept it running. Some decided that the list was fake, and that anyone who believed in it deserved death.

Eventually, we stopped. Killing and fighting and tearing each other apart. At least for a while.

I was born with a number on my hand. I don’t remember what it was. No one can tell me, because you can only see your own number. But right now, my number is 3,425,007. Out of the eight billion people on the earth.

That’s one of the better numbers. My mom told me once that her number had dropped to 6,331,909. I thought she was kidding until I heard the gunshots. One that took my sister. And one that took my mom.

I don’t know why my mom killed my three-year old sister. I don’t know why she killed herself. And I don’t know what the number on her corpse was. Because as far as I know, your number stays with you forever. Even when the only one who can see it is dead, it lives on.

I’d like to imagine my little sister was 1 on the list. Maybe 2, for that time she killed my fish by pouring too much food into its bowl. But other than that, she was perfect. I can’t understand why the cosmic power that decides where we stand would put her at anything less.

No one else understands, either. Everyone has their own idea of the list. I guess that before it showed up, people were content with their own views of right and wrong. But now that someone is deciding for us, we’ve gotten desperate.

A few streets from my house is a church. The sign outside says “God forgives all-Numbers are warnings, not punishments”. The church three blocks away is telling me to ignore the list entirely, that it’s a construct of the devil made to deceive us and turn us away from God. And the synagogue on Bailey Cove promises a way to move your number up the list, and a better understanding of why you were ranked where you were in the first place.

My mom and I went to a church back in our hometown that told us we had to be honest with our numbers and share them with the world. The next church we tried told us the list was a gift from god, to tell us when to repent. My mom loved that answer, but I wasn’t sure. I stopped going to church as soon as I could, and mom’s death didn’t do anything to persuade me to return.

I’ve always wondered who’s at the top of the list. You’d think they’d be on the news all the time, sharing their five-step plan to being a good human being. But only one person has ever claimed to have 1 embedded in their skin. Anton Icara, famous actor, TV personality, and philanthropist. When the first rape allegations came, the woman who had submitted them had been completely ostracized. After all, this man was the pinnacle of human decency. No accusations could ever stand up to that little number on his hand.

Security cameras don’t see your number, though. All they saw was Anton’s fifteenth murder. The same woman who had tried to tell the world what he was really like lay dead on the floor, a knife in her chest.

I wonder sometimes if he really was the best person on earth. If our own view of morality fell apart somewhere along the way, and he wasn’t lying when he told us that he was the only person who understood what perfection was. It seems plausible. When I was a kid, I wondered why the Bible banned so many things that sounded perfectly moral to me. Maybe the list works the same way. Maybe that’s why giving to charity didn’t move my number up the list, but watering my houseplants did. Anton Icara might have been right.

Then again, if he was lying, why did we all believe him?

I don’t know why the number on my hand is there. I don’t know what it means, what it wants from me. I don’t know who decides our numbers. And I don’t know what will happen when I die.

All I know is when this bullet goes through my head, I won’t be looking at the number on my hand.