By Ensign Rada Dengar
Stardate: 80207.16
Concurrent with Taking Command
--=Rada’s Quarters=--
Stardate: 80207.16
Concurrent with Taking Command
--=Rada’s Quarters=--
Rada exhaled slowly as he approached his desk. He had been dreading this cycle off since his talk with Halliday. He had realised what he would have to do if he was going to move on and unfortunately the time had come.
He lifted out a holo image of a beautiful woman with hair of gold and eyes of piercing blue. She was dressed in an Ensign’s uniform although she did not belong on any ship. She was smiling that cheeky smile which Rada had spent the longest time trying to recreate. Rada did not know why he had held on to this for so long.
He had spent weeks trying to accurately capture her image and had never truly been happy about the result. In a way that made this easier. He had come to hate this woman so long ago and yet a strange ambivalence still burned, hidden away in the darkest corner of his mind, which could never be extinguished.
*She was never real,* he reminded himself. He still could not bring himself to do what he knew he must.
She had first made him love life and then to dream of death. She had shown him pleasures which he had never thought possible and then when he realised that their price had been too high she had shown him that pain was equally her speciality. He had felt trapped in a place he had once never wanted to leave. He had almost lost himself in the haze which had hidden the world.
He sat the holo image down and removed a letter from the draw as well. This letter was the strangest thing to Rada; it was bizarre to think that he must have written it himself. Delusion is always saddest and most powerful when one believes they’re finding proof.
He reminded himself that she had made him into little more than an animal. She gave him the feeling of freedom by robbing him of all his self control. He knows that that was not the life he had wanted and yet those few moments of feeling truly powerful still haunted him.
Whoever he was on the path to become, he had felt for the first time that he was truly loved. Such is the curse of those who hide themselves from the world, if you never reveal yourself then you can never truly be loved.
--=Flashback: USS Venitar=--
"Amazing, I’ve only just arrived and already you’re beginning to emulate me" she laughed louder and for some reason Rada did too.
"I don’t know why…" Rada continued his words being drowned out with laughter "but I can’t seem to stop laughing"
"It feels good to be extreme, doesn’t it?" she said laughter drowning out her voice too. Everyone was now looking in Rada’s direction.
"What’s the joke?" asked an unknown voice but Rada just ignored it.
"Tell me, Rada. How do you feel about this glass?" she asked cheekily and pointed at Rada’s empty glass on the counter as their laughter suddenly stopped.
Rada developed a huge grin on his face and said "I hate it" then he began to scream "I hate it, I hate it" then he grabbed it and smashed it on the ground. Suddenly they both began to laugh again, but this was not like their previous laughter, this seemed somehow sinister and much more vicious.
"What else do you hate?" she asked as they both continued to laugh.
Rada looked into the crowd of people around him and pointed to a member then he grabbed the man by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Holding him up while he choked.
--=End Flashback=--
He placed both hands on the top of the letter and turned away from the holo image. He ripped the letter down the middle once, overlapped the two halves and ripped them as well. He dropped the letter into a bin he had kept beside every desk he’d had since he was a teenager. This bin was there for every awful idea he had ever had. A way to keep mistakes in the past. It did not recycle its contents or keep any record of them, it merely saw them destroyed. This was what Rada wanted now.
"Empty" he commanded the bin and after his confirmation was given the bin was filled with a flash of light. The letter was gone.
He picked up the holo image and lifted it over the bin. His eyes spoke a silent goodbye and he turned his face away. He couldn’t drop it though. He turned the image on its side within his hand and pressed a switch beneath it with his thumb. After he provided confirmation the image was gone. He exhaled again and sat the empty holo image back in his draw. Hopefully one day he would find another image to fill it.
Ensign Rada Dengar
Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012