"Harry! How are you?" she says as she opens the door of her house. Her name is Dana, and you've known each other since fourth grade. You shared your first kiss with her, though you're both past that now of course. You're familiar enough that she doesn't take your coat or anything formal like that, but lets you go to the coatroom to put it away while she goes back to John and Kavita, who are waiting in the living room.

School's been tough lately, and you all feel a little burnt out, so this game night, you all figure, is just the thing you all need. Kavita gets to go first, and after the initial 'hello's, everyone is quiet for a bit as the game gets underway.

Eventually, John brings up his economics class, which is fair enough, it's what he likes. It's not something you like though. For a time, the conversation slows to a near trickle of the mere stream it began as. Then Dana brings up that one economist whose name you can never remember. The one they talk about all the time, whom you've almost looked up information about, despite your indiference to all things financial.

Suddenly, the game stops and the conversation has taken it's place. Dana is jumping all over, and you can't help but watch her red hair bouncing around he face. It's so pretty, the way it frames her curvy cheeks with it's own not-quite straight construction. Big eyes: so you can see the smile even across a room, even if her mouth isn't showing it.

But she cares about economics now, she wants to be an accountant. She wants a simple day job.

You never feel so alone as when you're with your friends.

WHAM!

The five seconds it took the rocket propelled grenade to reach you were spent watching it arc through the siberian desert. The next five seconds will be spent falling the hundred feet from the cliff. Jenkins will not survive, search teams will find only his cap, the one with the ear flaps that make his head look just slightly too long. You land in snow.

This is one of those strange, lesser-spoken-of deserts: the artic circle.

Immediately you start to dig. Three feet of packed snow lie between you and your next breath of fresh air. Luckily, you came prepared. Sucking on the straw in the corner of your mouth brings in oxygen, the supply isn't large, and you know that all too well as you start to black out six inches fro mthe surface. Even heavy snow, however, is no great difficulty for you at only 6 inches, especially when you have your dying breath to power the punch through it.

Punch through it you do, but the sudden illumination of the hole means only one of two things: either they saw your hole, or they're just searching and the light being on your hole is a coincidence. If they haven't already seen your hole, they soon will with the spotlight on it like that, you think, and pull out your favorite semi-automatic rifle.

You surface, with all the agility of a young leopard, only to find dogs. Big dogs. Dogs that could be described not only as motherfuckers, because they would, but also some of the more plebian descriptors, like "unfriendly", "angry" and "nasty".

There are only three of them, you think, your rifle runs on 20 shell cases, you could easily take them all out before any human reinforcements come. That one on the left though, there's somerthing about it, something you can't quite put your finger on.

No.

It can't be, can it?

It looks just like Jeremy. You know it, and you can't forget it now. That one dog on the left looks exactly like your girl's dog, Jeremy. It has the same blotch of dark fur over the eye; just like Jeremy.

You raise your gun and center the dog's forehead in the sight. You're close enough that he might survive the blast on virtue of the bullet plowing straight through his head. Your finger is on the trigger, the safety lock was never on, you're no wimp. But Jeremy is looking back at you, sure he's snarling at you in a not entirely friendly manner, but he's Jeremy.

Suddenly, startled by a sudden noise, you look around. They're coming for you! They're sending midgets, you think to yourself, why midgets? What else would be three feet tall?

But they're not going to fool you, oh ho ho ho noo. You fire right into the little bastards face. Then you hear your wife scream. She runs over and bends down, sobbing, on the midget.



Then you shoot Jeremy, you might as well, since there's no girl to worry about explaining it to anymore.