Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Farewell to Fear

Ramirez needed to pee.

It was at least two in the morning and he lay on his bed cursing his single kidney and contemplating weather it was worth it to remain in such a state of urinary discomfort, or risk getting out of his nice warm bed and walking to the bathroom, and for about ten minutes, he got neither of those things as he sat simply in the darkness contemplating his discomfort.

Eventually there was nothing to do but to stand and waddle his way down the isle of sleeping marines and towards the bathroom. None of them would care or notice that he was up. The marines slept like rocks doused in Nyquil. Technically as their acting unit Sargent, he could have gotten a room all to himself, and he had certainly thought about asking the Admiral, but after so many years of sharing a room with other marines. He wasn't sure if he would be able to sleep without someone snoring like a lawnmower.

He had grown accustomed to it, and all of the crazy things that tended to happen when you spent so much time with a group of other people.

He inched into the bathroom, with the lights still off. The ambient glow from the keypad casting enough illumination into the room for him to see where he was. When you lived constantly with other people, a little courtesy went a long way, and he didn't want to wake anyone up.

He finished up relieving himself, keeping his eyes half closed in order to preserve the sleepiness, and wandered over to the sink and the mirror where he could wash his hands. He kept his head ducked down not allowing himself to look into the mirror. Ramirez wasn't a big fan of mirrors.

Or correction, he was a VERY, big fan of mirrors most of the time. In fact, he advocated that it was important everyone ogle themselves in the mirror for a good five minutes every morning. He found it boosted confidence in a way that no other activity did, but that was in the morning, when the lights were on.

Ramirez hated mirrors in the dark.

he had hated them since his childhood, when one of his sisters had dared him to do the Bloody marry challenge, and then locked him into the bathroom when he got scared sure that something was gong to crawl out of the mirror after him.

As a man in his mid to late twenties now he knew that wasn't a thing, but the thought of it still haunted him more than he would have liked to admit. He got done washing his hands, waving them dry and wiping the excess water on his shirt. He didn't want to use the hand dryer as it would be relatively loud. He still kept his head down to avoid seeing the mirror and paused.

This was stupid.

He was a grown ass man.

He wasn't a child anymore, and he didn't need to be afraid of dumb things. Besides, there was nowhere safer than where he was now, with eleven other marines in the room aside from him.

Taking a deep breath he forced himself to look up staring into the mirror and making eye contact with himself.

He sort of expected to see black eyes and a mouthful of impossibly sharp teeth staring back at him, but that wasn't the case. He just saw himself, lit from one side by the glowing blue light of the keypad, the other side of his face hidden in darkness. He reached a hand up to touch his cheek, running fingers over smooth skin.

He still looked pretty good.

And he planned on keeping it that way.

He turned his head this way and that admiring how the blue light of the keypad fell over his cheekbones, spilling over his skin like the cool rippling of water.

He was just turning his head to the side, when his eye caught something in the mirror.

It was a splash of black against one of the shower doors, or less of a splash and more of a streak, a thin black line that came from the edge of the door a few inches out onto the opaque bubbled glass. He frowned and stared at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it was.