Zach Vineyard

As a pacifist, I was extremely taken aback when my name showed up as first place on the leader board at Laser Quest. I had entered only to accompany the youth group that I lead, but when I was in there something happened… it wasn’t so much that something snapped, but that something turned on, something that had laid dormant for millennia, and it was like I was outside of myself watching in awe at what I had become.

Laser beams moved past my head in slow motion, techno music crawled to the sound of silence. I was neither here nor there, every movement, every breath, was used to take down my enemies in a fluid dance of destruction, I… had become death.

As I read the leader board, I hung my head in shame, that I had betrayed my values so easily, that war had dissolved a wall that held back a part of me I never knew existed.

The warrior within…

Of course the fact that It was against little girls, and the fact that I barely won, will never factor into that awesome, awesome moment.