#frm.selfpara

“Nah, yeah... Nah, yeah, I understand… Thanks for the update.”

I abso-fuckin’-lutely do not understand.

Major’s in the fucking hospital? Major? Gabriele was pretty clear about the distinction, so what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Is Major... Back? Did he find a way to get rid of... That other guy? Is what I’m doing right now a complete mistake?

There’s a muffled cry from behind me.

“Oy, shut the fuck up!” I yell at the girl tied up in the backseat of the car.

Okay, I reckon this might look problematic as, but this girl probably did the same thing, if not worse, to my best friend just a few months ago. I wouldn’t have tied her up and boxed her nose if she didn’t bloody deserve it.

“People will be looking for me,” Linnaea whimpers.

“What people? Nobody even knew who you were when I went asking around. Do you even have friends?”

“Fuck you,” she retorts. She’s probably choking on her blood because I can hear the mucus and bubbles warping her voice and it’s fucking gnarly. Linnaea gurgles and I hear her hock the biggest, wettest loogie known to man.

“Oy, cut it out!” I hiss. “This car’s a rental!”

“Fuck you,” she mutters back.

I check the GPS and we’re still thirty minutes away. Not really sure where I’m going, but the guy messaged me to meet him at this address. I think it’s a motel but there was no website, so your guess is as good as mine.

I peek back at Linnaea in the rearview mirror. Her eyes flicker open and closed. She looks like she’s about to pass out.

“Hey,” I call back. “Hey, you better not pass out. You might choke on your blood and I don’t want a corpse in my rental.”

“I’ll die if I want to, fuck you.”

“No, you will not!”

“Killer.” I hear Linnaea hock another loogie onto the floor.

“Oy! You wanna hiding? I told you not to spit in the car!” Fuck! How do I even get blood out of upholstery? JTT probably knows. I’ll have to come up with an explanation for how it got there. Or maybe not, JTT is kind of an airhead.

“Where are you taking me?” Linnaea mumbles from the back seat.

“Uh,” I hesitate. “I don’t know, a motel?”

“What do you mean you don’t know? What’s on the GPS?”

“I don’t know, I just put in the address the guy sent me.”

“What guy?” Linnaea pauses. “Are you… Working with someone?”

“Oy, I told you to shut up!” Fuck, this girl’s sharp.  Shouldn’t have said anything.

“You’re collabing on kidnapping me?”

I sigh. It doesn’t matter if she knows, right? “All I’m gonna say is I’m not the only bloke you pissed off lately.”

I hear Linnaea’s breath quiver and it makes me feel gross for a second, like I’m committing some sort of crime.

“You’ll be fine,” I assure her, even if I don’t know if that’s the case. “He really specifically told me to bring you alive, I reckon he’s not trying to hurt you.”

“Then why did you punch me in the face?”

“Because you bloody deserved it,” I mutter back.

I don’t know if it’s because she’s panicking or because it’s getting too hard to talk with her bloody, mucousy throat, but Linnaea finally shuts up.

The rest of the drive is filled with silence and it’s kind of annoying because I start to wonder again if I’m really doing the right thing. I mean, I have a killer in my backseat. And a fucking necromancer. That’s witch shit. That’s not natural.

And yet I still feel guilty for bringing this girl—who murdered my best friend—to a total stranger that I met out on the beach one time. I mean, how do I know that he’s not actually gonna kill her? Sure, he told me that he was a demigod and seemed to know an awful lot about stuff, but that didn’t mean I could trust him, did it?

Then I remember his offer.

“I can bring your friend back.”

How did he know? I hadn’t told anybody what Major—no, Lucien—said to me on the street that day. How could he have known? And was he telling the truth?

There’s only one way to find out.

“You have arrived at your destination,” my phone chirps. I roll up into the parking lot of a dingy motel. The kind a middle-class accountant might rent a room at to fuck their also-married-and-unhappy accountant coworker. The kind where you’d find an old needle sticking out of the bathroom garbage bin. The kind where someone might go to murder someone else.

I see the dude standing outside one of the rooms at the end of the long building and park right in front of him. He stares right into my headlights and I notice for the first time that his eyes are a deep, unnatural purple.

“If I do this for you, you’ll get Major back, right?” I had asked him on the phone last night.

"Your A1C's at 7.4, which is not great."

"A 7.4's better than an 8," Kieran pointed out.

His endocronologist frowned. "You shouldn't be measuring your wellness based on your proximity to a threshold."

"I'm healthy, correct? You just confirmed it."

"Kieran, I'm not going to fight you. You know what my recommendation is. You've been on MDI for a month now and it's clearly not going well. Your levels have been roller coastering. You need stability."

'Stability.'

"Have you considered going back on the pump?"

"I've considered it," Kieran mumbled.

"So what's the hesitation?"

"Affordability, for one."

"Kieran, would you rather front the cost of a pump or pay multiples of that amount when you go into ketoacidosis and need emergency treatment?"

Kieran pouted.

The doctor sighed. "It's your choice, but if I were in your position, I think it would be a fairly obvious one."

"We were very impressed with your portfolio, Kieran."

"Thank you."

"But unfortunately, we're just not able to support any remote positions right now. We would be happy to offer you a position based here in our Manhattan location. Is moving an option?"

Kieran bit his lip. "How soon would you need me to start?"

"Ideally, May 1st."

Kieran shut his bedroom door and lowered his voice. "I would love to accept this position, but I'm currently based out of Montauk and would need some flexibility on either the starting date or the location."

"I can talk to the higher-ups, but I'd also like to remind you that you will be called upon to do evening shoots. If you're considering this position, I would highly recommend that you find a more stable residence here in the city. Can I recommend..."

"Is it so wrong to value simplicity? Do we really need to derive our value from the workplace? From convenience? Or some superior sense of being part of 'something greater'? Can we not just appreciate what little joys we have while we have them?"

Kieran lowered his phone and clicked the volume down until the room was quiet. When he sat down on the couch, the last dredges of sunlight were still spilling in through the window. Now the moon was throwing the shadows of their windowframe across the carpet.

'Little joys,' he repeated in his mind. Kieran looked across the room to the bar of light leaking out from under Parker's closed bedroom door. "Hm." Kieran lifted his phone again.

"Material wealth is—" Kieran swiped away the video and switched into his browser. He pulled up all of his tabs and started swiping them away one by one.

'Average wage of part-time barista.'

'Cost of insulin pump.'

'New York City apartment rental.'

A blank page. Kieran let the white light wash over his face while he thought. Then, a new search.

The plate made such a satisfying, gravely rumble as Kieran slide it across the table toward Parker.

"I found the recipe on Epicurious. I will confess that I used store-bought English muffins, but I poached the eggs and cooked the ham myself. And of course, the hollandaise." Kieran pointed to the dish. "That said, I did break the first sauce. This is the second attempt, which is why I took longer than I predicted, but this one came out fairly stable." Kieran smirked. "Save for a lump or two."

Kieran took a bite of his own benedict. Not as good as something his brother might make, but Kieran was proud to eat something that he had put together himself.

Kieran's phone buzzed on the table beside him. A text:

Hi, it's Kennedy from Speedlight Studios! Wanted to check in and see if you had an answer for us about that position!

Kieran flipped his phone upside down and pushed it away. "It's simple," he admitted with a shrug. He tried not to be too obvious about watching Parker take his first bite. Then, seeing the reaction on Parker's face, Kieran smiled.

Stimulation can be like the fall of rain. Too little and the earth dries up, unable to bear any fruit. But too much and you’ll find yourself drowning in the flood. In today’s episode of The Power of U, we’re going to talk about how you can harness your divine feminine energy...

HONK. HONK. HONK.

“Fuck you.”

Jack rolled over and slapped his phone until all sound ceased. Listening to a podcast made falling asleep much easier. Jack couldn’t hear any of the critical voices in his head when Linda Ballerini was droning on about self-empowerment just a few inches away from his pillow. Though, he hadn’t yet figured out a good way to get her to shut up once he actually did fall asleep. 

Waking up in the Phobos cabin was always slightly awkward, thanks to the giant window occupying one side of the cabin. From the outside, it probably looked like a huge mirror at this time of day, the sunlight gleaming off the glass, but Jack still felt like the entire world could see straight into his bedroom, watching his every move with a judgmental and humiliating glare. Maybe it was for this reason that Jack kept his room so clean. 

Or maybe it was because he had little no material possessions. 

Jack dressed in one of his six outfits—all similar in style, all greyscale in hue. But today, he took a little extra time smoothing out the creases, fixing his hair in the mirror, and flossing between every tooth. For a few weeks, Jack’s morning routine had grown a touch longer as he put more and more conscious effort into looking good each day. 

Maybe there was another reason he had been keeping his room so clean.

It certainly wasn’t for visitors, because Jack had none. The last person who had come into his room was Faye, when she used to live in the cabin and would have to walk in to pull Jack’s attention away from the music blaring into his headphones. And before that, it was Rian.

They only dated for a few months, but it was enough to get Jack to swear off a certain type of bullshit for life. For a reason that Jack couldn’t remember, he had turned a blind eye (Ha.) to Rian’s self-loathing, homophobic bullshit for an entire summer. Jack guessed that he probably felt lonely, that the feeling of having a partner was nice after being rejected by everybody for so long. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad pretending not to know each other in broad daylight if Jack got to spoon somebody for thirty minutes before falling asleep, right? At the end of the summer when Rian left camp and told Jack that he wasn’t willing to risk his reputation for a fling, Jack decided to kill the part of himself that ever doubted that he deserved more. 

It worked for a little while.

“Ugh.”

The burn on Jack’s face was mostly concealed under his hair, but it still crept out onto his cheek like a demented claw. 

For a while, the scar felt like a mark of fury—the telltale sign of a protagonist who would one day achieve his climactic revenge against the villain that wronged him. But in isolation, Jack found that with each replay of the memory in his head, the red tint of anger slowly faded. Now, the confrontation that left him with the scar felt much less like an attack and a lot more like justice. If Jack was being honest, vanity only made up 10% of the reason he covered his face. The remaining majority was something more like guilt.

For the years following, Jack concealed the scar by wearing sunglasses at all times, even though he no longer needed them the way he did before. It had always frustrated Jack that he had to wear them because he always thought of himself as having nice eyes. Jack had come up with an alternative but never really had the courage to try it. But today was a new day, he reminded himself, and so  Jack pulled a leather eye patch from his drawer and pulled it down over his shame. 

“I’m... A fucking pirate.”

Jack looked at himself in the mirror, as he had done every morning for the last few months, making direct eye contact with the person looking back. It took a while to commit to this ruin without feeling cringy or self-conscious—Jack always thought back to the huge window and wondered if anybody could see him talking to himself. But now that the habit had become a ritual, Jack honestly couldn’t leave the house without doing it. Jack heaved a great sigh, trying to shake off the thought that he looked like a swashbuckler. In a steady voice, he began:

“You’re capable. You’re important. You’re worthy.”

A full cup of coffee in a bookshop

where Linnaea pored over ancient literature

until the smell of old paper stained her hands.

How long could he remain afloat among the dead?

If only she could offer to suffer in his stead.

A warm cup of coffee in a bookshop

where Linnaea pored over ancient literature

until the smell of old paper stained her hands.

Perhaps the goddess of crossroads and witches

for guidance of manners of demons and liches?

A murky cup of coffee in a bookshop

that Linnaea poured over ancient literature

until the smell of old coffee stained her hands.

It flooded the pages, washed over the tomes

and the words sunk beneath the surface like bones.

An empty cup in a bookshop

where Linnaea wept over ancient literature

until the stain of old coffee set in her jeans.

Time was too precious, more so with each day,

“How in the possible hell did you think this would be okay?”

“Nobody was hurt, right?” Akira pointed out ironically.

“There’s blood in the concrete!” Gregory’s veins looked like they were a millimeter away from bursting through his skin. 

Akira lowered their tone, trying to bring down Gregory’s energy. “Look, we had healers on hand. Nobody–”

“I don’t give a bloody damn if you had Mother Teresa here raising fucking Jesus from the dead! You let people get injured in my warehouse and you put my ass on the line!”

Akira tried not to laugh. “I don’t think you understand who Mother Teresa is.”

“Get out!” Gregory’s hand was pointed like a missile at the door. “Get the fuck out and take your goddamn Blockbuster sign with you!”

The metallic plating of the six-foot blockbuster sign screeched against the pavement as Akira dragged the light fixture down the long road to downtown New Athens. 

‘Why don’t you compete,’ Casey had asked him a few weeks prior.

Jack hadn’t planned on sitting on the grass for longer than a few minutes but when he looked up, Brent and Macey were already gone and the dog pen was much emptier than it was when he had arrived. He didn’t want to admit it, but Jack had grown really attached to the one-eyed ball of fur that had fallen asleep on his lap.

Which made it all the more heartbreaking when Jack realized he couldn’t afford to adopt him.

“What do you mean I have to pay $200?”

“Well yeah,” responded Caine, who was trying his best not to come across rude after a long day of paperwork. “It’s to cover the costs of shots, treatments, if the dog is chipped—there’s a lot of expenses that go into pet care.”

“But like... The dog is defective.”

“Which only makes him that much more expensive.”

Jack sighed. The little dog in his arms didn’t have a care in the world, his face pointed straight into the breeze, eye closed. 

“Now what do we have here?” Jack turned to find an older woman walking his way. She was dressed in a flannel and fishing vest, with every pocket stuffed with treats or doggie bags. Jack guessed that the woman was anywhere between 45 and 60. She had youthful eyes, but her face was etched with creases and laugh lines, as if she had laughed so much throughout her life that her face had grown around the shape of her smile. Even though she stood at least a foot shorter than Jack, she carried herself with such confidence that Jack felt minuscule as she approached. “I’ll be damned if I ever saw a dog-human-duo that twinned harder than you two.”

“Uh, thanks,” Jack muttered, suddenly feeling like a child.

“Isn’t that right, Jack?” she cooed.

Jack blinked. “What? Do you know me?”

The woman looked confused. “What? No, I’m talking to little Jack here,” she pointed to the dog. The crease in her brow smoothed away, replaced by the crinkle of a smile in her eyes. “Wait, is your name Jack too?”

No response.

“Stop!” The woman threw her head back and guffawed so loudly up into the sky that the dogs all the way by the back area turned to look. Even Caine, as wound up as he was, couldn’t help but chortle along. Jack shut his eyes, wishing he could combust into a pile of ashes right there.

“Well, it doesn’t matter, because I can’t afford him anyway, so...” Jack trailed off.

The flannel lady was still laughing. She had to catch a breath and wipe away a lone tear that was building up in the crease of her eye. “I’m sorry, honey, you’ll have to say that again.”

“I can’t afford to adopt him,” Jack confessed.

“Now is that so?” She turned to Caine, who nodded in confirmation.

“Just following the list you gave us,” Caine explained. “Says here that with Jack’s shots and treatments, it would be about $125 for you to break even. And then since Jack—er, sorry. Since big Jack hasn’t owned a pet before, he’d have to buy a kennel, food, et cetera, which would bring it up to about $200.”

Jack had never felt so little as when Caine referred to him as Big Jack. “Um, okay, I get it. Can we stop dragging me through the mud for being poor now? Thanks.” 

The smile on the woman’s face had melted down to a look of concern. “Hey, Jack, do you work?”

“Um, no. I’m not really qualified to do anything, so...”

The woman held her chin between two fingers, lips curled to the side. After a moment of silence between, she snapped and pointed up in the air. “Here—” she stepped forward. “My name’s Amelia.” She extended a hand toward Jack. “I run the farm upstate.”

Jack looked down at Amelia’s hand. “Uh. I don’t do contact. I’m a son of—” Jack froze. Who is this woman? Does she know where she is?

The look on his face must have been entirely transparent because Amelia just laughed. “Son of... A god?”

Jack stuttered in surprise. “Uh... Phobos?”

Amelia nodded in understanding and dropped her hand to her side. “Say no more. My wife ran with Artemis for quite some time. I’m just a muggle myself, but I know about all your cool powers and tricks.” Amelia and Caine exchanged a knowing glance. “Well, Big Jack, son of Phobos, I’ll cut you a deal.”

“Um, okay, but I really need you to not call me Big Jack.”

“I’m heading back upstate once this event ends and I’m gonna need to load up my truck with all this equipment.” Amelia turned to point towards the dog pens. “All this fencing, all that spare equipment over there, as well as all the stuff for the bunnies—that’s all coming back with me.” Amelia turned back toward Jack and held her hands out. “So why don’t you give me Little Jack for now and he can sit with my friend Caine over here. You can help me start loading up my truck and once I’m all packed up, I’ll pay you. Say... $200?”

Jack’s mouth fell open a little bit. He felt like he had already cried more times this week than he had in the last 20 years of his existence (save for a six-month period a few years ago following a mishap on the ice), but he could feel his eyes welling up once again. “Um...” Jack was sure that he did not deserve this level of kindness. “I...”

“I think you should take the deal, dude,” Caine urged.

“That’s my final offer,” Amelia pressed.

Jack nodded and turned to Caine. “Uh, here—” He carefully passed the little dog over to Caine, who seated him right in his lap.

“Hey, little buddy!” Caine looked down at the dog then back up to Jack twice over. “Wow, you even have the same hairstyle.”