i feel like a monster

One of the perks of being more or less frozen in time was the way bad habits didn’t really fucking matter anymore. Smoking was something he’d kicked decades ago, loathing the way the stench clung to his clothes, but he’d lit up a month or so ago and had essentially been chainsmoking ever since. This hellscape ruined all his clothes before their time anyways. It hardly mattered, and he supposed changing in the aftermath of a crisis was to be expected. Eternity- or however long his slice of it ended up being- would get stale quickly if one stayed the same always, after all, and if the smoke had helped to banish the scent of the person who had originally owned the shirt he was wearing now, tucked safely beneath his current favorite jacket, well, that was just an added bonus. 

He’d stayed in the shop later than he’d intended to. He usually headed home around three a.m., but it was late enough in the morning that the sun was high in the sky. He’d been lost in drawing up sketches and designs this time. He wasn’t sure if he’d bother making them or not. Sometimes he thought it was time for a new hobby. As small of a town as this was, the people that appreciated his talents were disparagingly few. He’d keep the shop open, of course, but probably mostly for repairs and alterations at this point. Maybe he’d take up ice skating again, or writing. Maybe he’d open up a nail salon. Maybe he’d do nothing at all and become a recluse and make beautiful clothes for Natalia and himself and ignore the rest of the town entirely. What did it matter? He could do whatever he damn well pleased and it would make hardly a lick of difference to anyone but himself.

He was nearing home when his ears picked up odd sounds. It took him a moment to figure it out- someone was panicking, he thought, and he hesitated in place for a minute. Wasn’t his business, wasn’t his problem. He’d been living by those two little rules lately, had been keeping his shit very decidedly to himself and burying everything under a thick layer of apathy. He was content to keep it that way, too, but after only a few quick paces towards home his traitorious feet were leading him towards the sound. Curiosity, 1. Cat, 0. For now.

As Kolya rounded the corner, cigarette at his lips, hands in his pockets, he very quickly began to realize what a mistake he’d made because crumpled on the ground, naked and bloody, was none other than Peter Lopez. Former best friend, former short- lived flame of sorts. Kolya stood in place and stared. The thing about wounds was that, whether one healed or not, a knife in the same shape as the one that had mutilated you in the first place was always capable of opening you back up. 

It struck him as funny, hysterical, almost. Déjà vu, except this time he was witnessing the train go off the rails instead of driving it. 

He didn’t know this man, not anymore, if he ever had to begin with. The Kolya of a few months ago would have already been next to the person in crisis, crouching down and trying to help whether it was anyone he knew or not, but the Kolya of now wanted nothing more than to walk away.

Wasn’t his business, he told himself. Wasn’t his fucking problem.

He took a final drag, dropped his cigarette to the concrete and ground it out with his heel before moving in closer anyways, because some things never changed, they just never fucking changed even if they should have. He slipped out of his jacket, draped it around the shoulders of the crumpled up man and cynically wondered if he’d just shrug it off the moment he figured out who it belonged to. Probably, but he hoped not. It wasn’t the jacket’s fault things between them had gone to shit. It didn’t deserve to be punished for Kolya’s crimes. 

He could tell himself he was over this repeatedly day in and day out for months on end but as he crouched down next to the panicking werewolf on the grass, the sick feeling in his gut and the tightness of his throat was quite telling. The revelation was met with nothing but exhausted acceptance; On some level, Kolya supposed he’d been fully aware that he’d been bullshitting himself, but that didn’t matter either way. He’d help the man get home and then they’d part ways again and that would be that. 

It took a lot of effort, but he reached out, laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder. That was another reason why giving up his jacket had been a good idea, he supposed. Less risk of skin contact. Any contact was bad enough. “Peter?” His voice came soft, soothing, the opposite of everything Kolya felt just then. He didn’t know what the fuck to say, what the fuck to do. This was so far outside his paygrade and his comfort zone that it wasn’t even funny, it was just pathetic. He swallowed hard. 

“I know you didn’t. I know.” His own personal issues with the man and this whole situation aside, Kolya did know that Peter would never intentionally do anything to put an innocent at risk. Or hadn’t when they’d been acquainted, at least, but it wasn’t hard to infer by his current state that that much hadn’t changed. “It’s gonna be alright.” Kolya did not know whether it would be alright or not, but again… that wasn’t his problem. Briefly, he wondered if he should just go ahead and compel him to calm down, take the easy way out. There’d be less of a mess for everyone involved. His grip tightened, and wildly, he scrambled to think of any action that might be of use. 

“I need you to concentrate on your breathing for me, alright?” He swallowed hard, let his hand drop from Peter’s shoulder to his wrist, taking Peter’s hand and pressing his palm against his chest, over his heart. “Breathe with me, if that helps.” Corpse or not, Kolya still breathed. Perhaps if Peter was capable of syncing his breaths with Kolya’s and calming down that way they could both be free of this mess that much sooner- Kolya could only pray to gods he vaguely believed in but hadn’t had much use or respect for as of late that it would be so. 

Hell, Peter was in hell. He had finally died and fallen down into hell, and all of the stories that his grandmother had told him about fire and brimstone had been a lie. Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone, it was far more personal than all of that. It was trembling and cold, struggling to breathe as one thought disconnected from another and flew around in his mind. It was the very real possibility that Peter had killed someone, that someone else’s blood was sticky and coating his hands, matting down his hair. It was spiraling down into the dark and trying to claw himself back out, only to be shoved in yet again by the wolf that was forever clawing angrily at the back of his mind. He was alone and cold in the middle of a dark hole that he would never escape from.

His own name snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts, the world becoming a slow swirling thing as that voice his his ears and a heavy weight landed on his shoulders. He huddled into the warmth of it, huddled into the feeling of something covering him, and his eyes slowly lifted to find an angel looking back at him. It had to be an angel, his swirling thoughts supplied, God sending him a final punishment, an angel wearing the face of the man he loved to taunt him and call him the monster that he was. 

Unbidden, tears filled his eyes again, and fell quickly. What did it matter? He was in his own personal hell, let him cry. He had that right, didn’t he. The strange actions of the vindictive angel confused him for a moment, and he tried to force himself to follow the instructions, a shallow breath in, an even shallower one falling from his lips, and something in the back of his head told him that his heart was still beating, that this might not be Hell after all. But then, it could be a trick that the devil played. Prayer wouldn’t help him here, just the steady breaths of the angel, in and out, in and out. The rhythm was one that took him several minutes to grow accustomed to, shallow breaths and mis-steps setting him back a bit before he finally seemed to settle into it. His eyes never left the face of that angel, vindictive or not, this might be the last time he could see that face, and he was going to drink it in as much as he could.

When he thought he might be able to speak again, Peter’s shaky hand moved from the chest of the angel with Kolya’s face and moved to brush unsteady fingers against cool skin, surprised by the attention to detail. The angel mimicked Kolya’s body temperature, as well, matched the way those cheekbones stood out against skin, the ridge of the brow. Even now, Peter could remember those things about the man he loved, and the angel was a perfect recreation. It was almost heartbreaking. “You look just like him.” His voice came out as a whisper, eyes closing for a moment to try and force back more tears, to swallow thickly before his eyes opened again to go back to drinking in that face.

Kolya was gone from Peter now, while he rotted in this hell. Likely relieved that the werewolf had finally gone, no longer there to burden the world. The thought stung, but Peter would have accepted it. “I miss him.” Why bother hiding from this angel who likely knew his every dark thought and feeling, anyway? This was his own personal hell, might as well open up. “I suppose-- it makes sense that you took this form. If I’m to suffer for eternity, it’s fitting that I’m haunted by this face. I love him, you know. Loved, I suppose...” Trailing off, Peter’s eyes finally fell from that face, and he blinked again, a bitter chuckle leaving him, staring at the hand uselessly in his lap. “Can you tell me how I died?” His thoughts returned for a moment to frantic, and his eyes shot up, wide and afraid. “I didn’t kill anyone else did I? Please, please tell me that I didn’t kill anyone before they took me out. I can’t... I... Please.”

Vivienne raised a manicured brow as her subject downed the rest of his rancid wine. She was well aware that most people didn’t have any sort of palette for wine, but that didn’t make it any more acceptable to slam it down your gullet like a shot of grain alcohol at a frat party. The woman took another careful sip and set the glass aside. “I prefer not to cloud my senses too much before we dive in, you understand.” It was true, just as she would rather drink cough syrup then finish the glass he offered. But she wanted to keep up the pleasantries. It wouldn’t help her any if Mr. Lopez decided to rescind his offer before she even got to take one sample.

“Are you sure?” It was a surprising request. Most people would only ask to feel the pain if there was some other kind of pain they were trying to smother. “I will, of course, oblige.” She opened a journal, beginning a section titled “Mr. Lopez - Lycanthrope”. She noted the aversion to penicillin and silver, thrilled to learn at least one of the myths was true. Unfortunately for her subject, a fair amount of her tools were pure silver, but she decided to keep this tidbit to herself. It would be easy to explain away later, and the professor would be lying if she said she wasn’t interested to see how the wolf’s body would react.

She nodded, scribbling down a note about his veins. It had been ages since she’d had a willing subject, and even then it had been back in school, with boring, dead humans. Normally, Viv would have to discover these facts on her own. It was both exciting and disappointing to have some of the basics down and known before she even began her work.

A sly smile crept across her features at his teasing question. “Don’t worry, I won’t be harvesting any organs. However for us to make any real progress, I’ll have to pinpoint where the virus takes hold, so to speak.” Viv closed her notebook and set her hands delicately on top. “But that won’t be until much later, if it’s necessary. More likely, we’ll be sticking to blood tests.” The professor cocked her head. “I assume you are alright with being the subject we test any potential cures on, yes?” Though she certainly wouldn’t be opposed to finding a few lab mutts for their usage.

“I am no stranger to pain.” Peter offered simply, his shoulder lifting once before he settled back against the arm of his couch, elbow propped casually, every muscle at ease, it would seem. Peter wasn’t foolish, he knew that he had a reason to be weary of this woman, but despite that knowledge, he couldn’t get past one particular thing, which was the fact that he had asked for this in the first place, fully aware that there could be pain, that there could be danger, and he couldn’t justify allowing the woman to hide any of the pain that he had asked for. 

Besides that, pain itself wasn’t something that Peter was afraid of. He often went out in search of it, getting into petty arguments with Ulrich wolves or picking fights with stupid hunters, then there was the case of his basement, which was an entirely different story. But there was no real reason to drudge any of that up, and as he watched the woman pull out a notebook and start writing, he quickly spoke up again. “During a full moon, we rip completely out of our skin, and pretty much every single bone in our bodies break to reorient, so pain is something we tend to understand quite well.” 

A soft groan left Peter, hand coming up to press against his forehead. It felt like he had been hit by a truck, if he were being honest. The morning was barely peeking in, the sky a strange mix of blue and pink, and he couldn’t quite figure out his surroundings. Everything hurt, everything was a blur. The entire night before was dark. All he knew for sure was that it was early, that he was definitely naked, and that he was laying on grass.

Several startling realizations hit him at once. He was naked. He was outside. Worst of all, he couldn’t at all remember the night before. He jerked upright, wincing at the sudden action, but unable to focus on that as panic seized in his chest. Last night have been the full moon. He was outside of his own basement, which meant that he had gotten out. Everything else fell away as that realization hit the hardest. He had gotten free. The shackle around his ankle was still there, with the chain dangling uselessly from it. It hadn’t held. He had gotten free. 

Someone could be dead.

Several someone’s could be dead.

His vision blurred, breathing coming out more and more in pants as he looked down at himself, surveyed the damage. Bruises around his ribs, blood, cuts, bites. It was nothing new. It was nothing unusual. What was unusual was the surroundings. The panic was getting worse, he wasn’t sure how he was pulling in a single breath anymore, his hand coming up to claw at his throat, to try and clear his airway, as he gasped and choked, barely aware of the sound of footsteps, frantic ones?, approaching. Someone come to put him out of his misery? Someone come to take revenge? To gape at the poor, pathetic man who had lost control, possibly to the disadvantage of several people?

“S--so--sorry. I’m s-sorry. I didn’t mean-- I didn’t-- I didn--I...” He couldn’t complete a thought, he couldn’t even see who had approached, friend or foe, but he had the sense to double over, to try and gasp and pant his way through an apology as he continued to panic. “F---fuck I’m--- I--’m so--sorry. I’m so so--sorry. Fuck. I got--- I g--got out... I d--didn’t m-mean to.”

The pastry was gone almost as quickly as the mood shifted in the room once more. If emotions could physically slap you, Samson would have backed away from the force at which the words lashed out from Peter, eyes wide. He was too fucking high for this. He shook his head, trying to gather his own thoughts among the chaotic emotions now flinging themselves about the room, an ache beginning behind his temple as the man’s voice cracked. God, what was he supposed to do here? He opened and closed his mouth a few times, simply trying to parse through the tidbits of information fed to him, trying to think of anything he could say or do that wouldn’t just result in another disaster.

Anger was beginning to roil up in his chest, unwanted and unwilling. It felt like it was choking him as it bubbled beneath his throat, and he could feel his fingers tense on the fabric of his apron, feeling the threads pull. He quickly moved his hands to the counter, on the edge of the display case, not wanting to tear apart the apron as he felt the telltale itch of claws wanting to spring out from his fingertips. Clenching his jaw, he breathed in through his nose, trying to calm himself down from an unwelcome shift.

“I- Peter? I know you’re not okay. Obviously I know that? I just… I meant that, I hope- God, who knows what I meant at this point? I obviously can’t say the right thing anyway, so what does it matter?” He laughed, and it wasn’t a pretty sound. Bitter, self-demeaning. And Peter’s next words had his eyes widening once more, “Fuck boy?!” The confusion and anger sent adrenaline shooting through his veins, proving that moving his hands to the case was the wrong move as clawed fingers crushed through the glass, the top pane of glass shattering, cutting his hands and falling onto the pastries below. “Fuck-” He ripped his hands back, blood dripping onto the floor, pupils blown wider now.

Peter hadn’t exactly expected the reaction, but then, he hadn’t expected to blow up, either, and the moment that he heard glass shattering, he jerked back and a snarl ripped out of his mouth, shoulders jerking up toward his ears, entire body tight, ready to strike, ready to attack because his entire body, the wolf growling in the back of his mind could only think danger and instinct took over common sense for Peter far too much recently. He was lashing out and attacking pretty much anything, lately. Apparently that extended to the baker boy quite easily. 

“Yeah, that’s what your fucking sister called me.”

The words came snarling out through gritted teeth, body refusing to relax even as his mind tried to remind him that he was in no immediate danger. There was nothing bad that Samson could do to him that he wouldn’t fully deserve anyway, so honestly, what was he going to do to defend himself?

And he was hurt. Some small part of Peter wanted to hop the counter and check the boy’s hand, make sure that there was no glass embedded there. Quick healer or not, he was intimately familiar with out painful shards of glass digging into the skin could be. Rather recent memory, too. His head shook quickly, and he forced his shoulders, at the very least, to relax. “You’re not okay, either.” The words came spitting out, voice harsh, a little too rough, as he gave the boy a once over, the blood dripping, that harsh copper smell almost cancelling out the normal sweet smell of the bakery. Something distinct stuck out to him, and his eyes narrowed slightly. 

She stepped back sharply, grateful that she no longer had to abuse her knuckles against the door. Peter was always a bit gruff, a bit snappish, and it made sense that he was a whirlwind of extra piping hot negativity today. “I’m not here for peppy bullshit,” she answered, squaring her shoulders and digging her heels in to her courage, to the reason she was here. “But you’re miserable and Kolya’s miserable…Peter what the hell is happening right now?”

There was no basket of goodies hanging from the crook of her elbow, she didn’t launch into her typical cheerful script. No…she was here a messy ball of concern. Her friend was hurting and Peter looked just as broken as Kolya did. So why were they not talking to each other? What impasse had come between them with such sudden ferocity that they’d both decided it was impossible to mend things.

“I’m coming in.” Willow didn’t normally announce things like that, but she did this time, and even pushed past Peter and into his place. She tries to make sure her body language isn’t hostile. Of course there’s a part of her that wants to talk sense into both of them and fix this. But the more realistic want is just to get a more accurate depiction of what happened, what they’re both thinking. It’s up in the air whether Peter would let her be a friend to him, but Kolay would and she needed to know how best to support him through this. 

“I just…Kolya told me what happened…from his perspective. And his perspective just involves him being the worst entity ever to exist and you giving him his due punishment for being a monster. I don’t know you well, Peter. But I give you more credit than that. I think you care about Kolya more than that. So I just…what happened? What are you trying to do or not do here?”

Peter felt his shoulders tense, heckles immediately rising, body language immediately shifting to defensive. Of course, Willow was here on behalf of her friend, it had nothing to do with Peter himself. Probably here to read him the riot act for the absolutely horrible things that he had done. And said. Maybe she would hit him. While the idea was almost comical when he considered that this was Willow fucking Forsythe, it wouldn’t necessarily be unwelcome. How hard could the human hit, he wondered. He doubted that the girl had done much hitting in her entire life, so it would probably feel like getting hit in the face by a rather small bug.

He was already opening his mouth to tell the girl to just go home and slam the door in her face when she made her own intentions clear and walked right past him into his house. Just... waltzed right the fuck in. He blinked, eyes still on the spot that the girl had been in just a moment before, which was now just empty air. “Excuse me, did no one ever teach you manners?” He whipped around, foot kicking the door closed a little too forcefully, listening to the slam as his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t just go walking into people’s houses, Willow. I didn’t invite you in.” 

The words cause him to pause for a moment, eyes closing against a dangerous memory threatening to come to the surface. He didn’t want to think about that last night. He didn’t want to think about anything. He opened his eyes again in time to realize that Willow was speaking again, and the words were registering a little too slowly in his mind. “I... beg your fucking pardon?” 

Kolya... thought that he was the monster in this situation? That was... a total load of bullshit. It was bullshit and his mind refused to latch on to it. No fucking way. His mouth opened, closed, opened again. Probably looked like a fish for a moment as he tried to collect his thoughts. “I hurt him. I... I broke his fucking neck and he thinks he’s the monster in this situation?” His head shook a bit, eyes closing again, this time a bit longer. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we’ve had a bit of a falling out. We’re not friends anymore, and that’s probably for the best. Dunno if you know this, but I could literally kill him. And since I do care about him, as you’ve so helpfully pointed out, I took myself out of the equation so that he wasn’t in any more danger from the likes of me.” A pause, and he finally opened his eyes again, narrowed, glaring at the girl. “We done here? You’re free to uninvite yourself from my house.” A jerk of his head, toward the door. He really, really wasn’t in the mood for this shit. 

   Poor little sacrificial lamb, she can’t even manage that right. She wasn’t upset by the rejection of her offer, and in fact just offered a smile in return, bobbing her head in a nod, “See, that’s a good point because I don’t want to make a shitty day even worse, you know?”

   The idea of seeing a movie by herself was always refreshing, because it meant she could sit and stew in her own form of self hatred and nigh-nihilistic thoughts that she didn’t dare allow any other hour of any other day. If someone were to sit Patricia down for long enough, that friendly smile would wilt at the edges like an old salad, and eventually her facade would crack into a thousand pieces and people would see that, though she is a sweet girl who wants to help, she’s also fully aware of her own limitations and the fact that life really does not like her.

   A glance around at the burgeoning crowds and her mind was whisked away to being 19 and working there, and how she had still been trying to perfect her mask to the point that it made sense; no one could expect her to be truly perky at that point, as she’d been taking care of her siblings and her mom had only been missing for a few years, but it allowed her time around people and learn how to make them smile while she mirrored it back in perfect unison… however untrue.

   “I might take you up on that. I mean I have the job at Town Hall, but it’s rare that anyone needs anything from that specifically because most people are just… we’ve sort of given up on the idea of most things so it’s all documentation and file work and eventually you don’t have anything left to do.” Patricia rambled a moment, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug, looking over to Peter.

   Game knows game, and she knew that he was not nearly so happy as he put on, but as he wasn’t smashing her own glass house with a hammer, she wouldn’t shatter his. She did, however, reach out to pat his shoulder, innocuous and friendly, “If you ever need anything though, you really can call me.”

   … that much was true. The friendships she had, however tenuous they were because of her own reclusive nature, she valued and would go to bat for at the drop of a hat. … Supernatural or not.

Peter wasn’t oblivious enough not to realize that he was in a bad way. He knew that his hair was a bit of a mess from the constant running of his fingers through it, he knew that under his glasses, his eyes were bloodshot and the bags under them would be heavy, he knew that even his normally put together clothing was a bit more rumpled and disheveled than he would allow himself to look outside of his own home. When he had first gotten to work that morning, he had managed to look a bit more put together, a bit more as he should, but the day had worn on, and between being stuck guiding idiots to the correct theater (when there weren’t even that many theaters in the damn building in the first place), and his own wandering thoughts poking and prodding at the back of his mind any time he had a free moment to think, he was falling apart at the seams. Someone was bound to pick it out eventually.

He was unsurprised that Patricia had picked out the fact that he wasn’t quite right, but it didn’t make him feel any less defensive when the girl reached out and patted him on the shoulder. He was fine. He was thoroughly convinced that if he continued to tell himself those words, like a mantra, like a prayer, that they would eventually be true. He couldn’t be not fine forever, and simply because he had royally fucked up and cut off one of his true sources of happiness in this shit hole town didn’t mean that there wasn’t bound to be something that he could find to make it... not better... but some kind of bandaid to patch the emotional wound.

He had a few ideas. He was well aware that they wouldn’t be approved by anyone that supposedly gave two shits about his well-being.

He was finding it extremely hard to care, though.

Offering a smile that he could feel straining around the edges, he gave a small nod of his head. “I appreciate it, Patricia. I really do.” He paused, lips twisting, thoughtful for a moment before he offered a soft sigh. “I’ll get over myself, I always do. But the same goes for you, you know. Anything. I’m not hard to find, since I’m pretty much always here or at my house these days.”

   Going to a movie by one’s self wouldn’t be the metric by which most would measure their day as going well, but it allowed Patricia some quiet reflection, so it ended up being less daunting than most. She didn’t care about the women around her age who shuffled past on their way into a new film as a gaggle, as they whispered and cast a glance at her; everyone in Ashbourne was weird, and if going to a movie alone was the extent of her weirdness, she was coming out ahead.

  A shrug lifted her shoulders however and she moved over to Peter so that she wasn’t shouting across the place and could have a normal conversation, “You look like someone spit in your sandwich and then yanked your hair, so I’d imagine I’m probably doing better by that measure. Do you, uh… do you need any help? I mean I’m seeing a movie but if you’re stuck a bit I can sub in… no one needs that kind of stress.”

   Part of being a Forrester was offering yourself up as charity a lot. She, her brother, and her sister had all inherited that quality from their father, and sometimes it was to a fault; it was hard to pull yourself out of a self-sacrificing nosedive before you splattered against the concrete like a warm melon, but her smile never faltered, “I don’t mind.. I worked here like… six summers ago? I think it was before your time but I’m pretty handy.”

   Her brain screamed for death, but her smile was all warmth and helpfulness. In all fairness, it wasn’t that Patricia didn’t want to help — the people she cared about mattered most, and she really did like being helpful — but it was a constant state of hiding her abject sadness and general macabre view on life that got her the most. Peter probably wouldn’t mind a slip in the persona, but she couldn’t let it get back to Celeste; her sister was surprisingly fragile.

Peter offered the girl a soft snort as she describe the state he was apparently in. If he was being honest, he would have preferred that to what was actually going on, but he wouldn’t drag that out and bum the poor girl out. Besides, why ruin such colorful imagery with something as boring as Peter’s vanilla brand of self-hatred? “I wouldn’t disagree, except that I actually rather enjoy having my hair yanked, so I can’t say that would put me in a sour mood.” His grin took a more devious smirk as he spoke, and he had enough in him to shoot the girl a playful wink before the facade fell a bit and he let out a sigh.

Her offer was kind. He would admit that. But he would never allow someone to simply take over his job for him, especially not someone that wasn’t even currently on his payroll. Besides, Patricia was here to enjoy herself, to watch a movie and relax. What kind of horrible person would let her work a job that wasn’t even hers in cases like that. Peter shook his head slowly, offered a grin. “Absolutely not. Do you know the paperwork I would have to fill out if someone found out I let a non-employee work? Besides, you’re here to have a good time, not to work for the rattled manager.” He offered her a small nudge. “But thank you for the offer.”

He let out a soft hum, however, as he thought back six summers. “I was here. I wasn’t managing yet, though. I was cleaning toilets and the sticky gunk off floors back then and didn’t actually speak much. Plus, I mostly worked the ten pm to three am shift back then.” He lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. It had been a terrible job and a terrible shift, but he had liked how quiet the theater got after the last show let out, and he had the place to himself to clean and set up for the next day. He hadn’t had ambitions of moving up, but the promotion had been nice. “If you ever want to come back, though, for real, just know that the job will always be yours. I would never turn down someone who was, self-proclaimed, pretty handy.”