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@thelifepartners
E. Ray
He named his child Søren, like the philosopher, to remind himself that having children didnât mean an end to a life of inquiry.
Instead, Søren just reminded him of what he was not doing with his life, and he grew to hate the child.
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E. Weissberg
Seven Limes
The entire pie is balanced in the crook of my right arm. Iâm using my left hand and some Hail-Mary muscle tension in my legs to keep climbing up my high-riseâs fire escape. Even ground-level, I always believe a pie in-transit will fall and splatter before I eat it.
Kara is behind me. She made the pie and is shouting up to me how the recipe is simple â condensed milk and the juice from seven limes, mostly. I donât know whether Kara is a good cook. Weâve known each other maybe a week.
Thatâs probably why sheâs slung a bag over her shoulder with silverware and two ceramic plates, instead of us just eating slices off paper towels while standing in my kitchen. With a new person, itâs so easy to do a little bit of work.
After I watch Kara put both feet on the roof and weâre sitting comfortably away from the edge, she cuts a piece for me. She lifts it from the tin and the wedge remains perfectly straight-edged, something I havenât known was possible with a first slice. Â
My fork hovers towards the pie before I notice and drop my arm. Sheâs noticed too, and she laughs.
After I cut a piece for her, I wait to take a bite until she does, because I want us to have the same taste in our mouths at the same time. When I do, the flavor is the way merengue diner-pie looks, before you bite into it and the ornamental topping tastes like an industrial refrigerator and stale air.
The sky is blue. Karaâs hair is backlit and the frizz is silver in the sun. I do not know what will become of us, but at this moment, thereâs nothing more I could ask for.
Originally published at Thirty West Publishing
T. L. OâHara
The Fountain
He did not know why he had come. To the fountain. A modern, faux-classical fixture, the work of an artist who had chosen his roots but did not know them. No magic there.
       He did not know why he had come. It was not a question so much as an ache, slow and dull at the back of his head and the base of his gullet.
       She was there, to be sure. But he could not be sure she was why he had come. And when he tried to take hold of her to ask if she was the reason for his restlessness, she flitted away as ever, to the periphery, just outside of his mindâs eye.
       There were others in the park that day, even around the fountain. It was day for it. The sun shone, and the breeze was lightânot chill or even cool, but so that the park goers knew the earth still breathed.
       He breathed in deep and released heavily. He could feel the light caress of the breeze, but it felt removed, as if there was a space between the air and his skin. He sat and stared at the fountain, at this moment without seeing it. It merely occupied his eyes while he searched.
       A woman passed pushing a bassinet stroller, another new take on an old idea. Everything resurfaced, recycled, reused.
       He watched the woman, again only with his eyes, until he realized he was doing so, and he shook himself and abruptly stood. But he sat again not knowing what it was in his mind to do if he decided to leave, to move on.
       He felt about him again, looking for some clue, some filament by which he might guide himself through the maze of his own nonunderstanding.
       A memory flashed hard then. A memory he had not remembered until this moment. Coming to a fountain as a boy. It must have looked something like this one, forced or cheaply inspired, but then holding magic for a young boy who was in love with the sound of water. The fishes belching. The single cherub urinating. The coins glinting brightly up from under the small waves, speaking of the tangibility of treasures and dreams.
       His mother was there. Was it her, the phantom he could never lay claim to? He reached out, but his mother came to him as she always had, warm and soothing. She did not dart into the unknowable at his grasping, like a fish slipping through the fingers of a curious child.
       So she was not his mother. But that was not truly a surprise. Catching a glimpse of her again as she ghosted in and out of focus, he was not surprised.
       He looked at the fountain again, this time seeing it, for all its simplistic gaudiness, and he realized, with humor, that there was a comfort there, not an awe or a spiritual reawakening but a simple small comfort, found just below the surface.
       He smiled then. Which was a surprise. For he had not struck out that day to find some mere reminder of his humanity. But found, it could not be unfound. And he stood and walked away from the fountain and the park, letting the weight fall back around him where it was so accustomed and expected.
       And she followed along, behind, beside, and all about, ensuring there would always be a little mystery left in his world.
E. Ray
Far away from #metooLand
I was recently gay, and my girlfriend and I werenât hard on the eyes. Thatâs what Cowboy had said when we walked into the apartment the linemen were sharing together: âMindy, Iâm glad you found someone as good looking as you, itâs just sad, you know, when that doesnât happen.â
Cowboy had just moved into the place, and wanted us to see his room, and asked us, kind of like a little boy, to touch his bed, so he could say we were the first two on it. Mindy said had said, âNo,â and then walked out of the room. Cowboy hadnât looked abashed at all, just seemed cheerful, and followed us back to the kitchen, where there wasn't any silverware out, so everyone was eating the BBQ from paper plates with their hands.
Another guy, Ryan, asked me my name, and I told him Jessica, so he immediately called me Jess, and then, like it was normal, which it seemed to be in the house, he asked me whether I liked to lick buttholes. No one batted an eye really, but all the menâCowboy, Ryan, this quiet guy with a mousy face who kept pointing out every time someone used a multisyllabic word, and a tall guy, who owned the houseâthey all seemed pretty interested in my answer.
I wanted to be nice, and also cool, because Mindy had to work in the office where the men checked in and out with paperwork every day, and I didnât want them to give her crap or the cold shoulder, and we were at this dinner because of a person she actually liked at the office, Lola, who was sitting in the corner next to the quiet guy, but was already slumpy and quiet from drunkenness herself.
âI take the fifth,â I said.
âThe fifth means you do!â They all said, in pretty impressive unison for how generally disorganized and how many beers and vodkas in they were.
âSheâs not going to answer that,â Mindy said, sounding bored and forceful, and they all accepted it, and I felt jealous sheâd figured out how to make herself sound so alpha.
Ryan went on, talking about how, of course Mindy and I licked buttholes, because when he did it, women orgasmed pretty endlessly, screamed a lot, and since Mindy and I had the same plumbing we must know it was a good idea.
He stopped talking, and then Mindy changed the subject.
*
A little while later, Mindy had gone over to give Lola some water, and Ryan had kind of cornered me to tell me this story about when heâd been diagnosed with colon cancer, and I wondered to myself whether that was part of his fascination with buttholes, but decided not to ask.
âI told my boss I was taking a week off,â Ryan told me, âAnd he was like, âare you coming back?ââ And I said yeah, just I couldnât wait the week before the results came back, so I was going to Vegas.â
So Ryan tells me he went to Vegas, took $30,000 dollars in a duffle with himself, but not his debit card because he didnât want to spend any more than that, and the first night he gambled $5,000, and somehow tripled it, and bought $15,000 dollars of cocaine, and got a hooker and a penthouse suite for the week.
âThe cocaine dealer asked if he could stay and do some with us, and I said I was the only cock allowed in the room, and he said it'd be fun to do together, and I told him to get the hell out.
âAnd then the hooker asked if she could call her friends, and I said yes as long as they had pussies, and so she called them, and we had a great week of it. On the plane ride back, I didnât have anything in my pocket but my cell phone.â
I just sat there, listening, sometimes saying âwowâ or nodding, but he seemed to be looking through me more than at me, so I wasnât too worried about him liking me for Mindyâs sake.
âAnd then the doctor called and it turned out I didnât have cancer.â
âWow, that mustâve been stressful,â I said.
âBest week of my goddam life,â he said. And that kind of upset me a little because I like to think there are more fulfilling things in life than cocaine and hookers, but when I pressed him a little he said it was true.
*
Mindy was still by Lola, sheâd given her the water, but Cowboy was talking to them about how the Canadian linemen had started calling him Golden Cowboy because of his sunglasses, and heâd put them on and kept them on to demonstrate his point even though it was night and we were inside.
âThey call you that because youâre a faggot,â the quiet guy said, and Cowboy had explained, no, it was because of the golden sunglasses.
âItâs fagotty, itâs because youâre a fucking faggot,â Ryan said. âNo offense to faggots, everyone is so sensitive nowadays, Iâm just saying it because itâs true.â
Ryan was mixing up what he called Mexican corn, which was BBQ corn mixed up with Hellmanâs and paprika, as he said this and I decided it wasnât a good time to point out that Mindy and I were literally faggots, it just didnât seem like it would do much good.
And then the room quieted and we were left to talking again, and Ryan started telling me how he hated when kids had cancer, it wasnât right.
âI bet you think Iâm just an asshole,â he said, âAnd I ride a Harley, but people like me have big hearts. Every time I see one of my friendsâ kids has cancer, I sell one of my guns.
âI sell them on Facebook, and my friends have said I can get in trouble, but I say if someone wants to arrest me for selling guns to give money to kids with cancerâwell, they wonât do that.
âSo you see, Iâm a good guy.â
I nodded, and said I agreed guys who ride motorcycles can have hearts too, and then there was silence between us and I didnât like it, so I raised my glass, this cranberry vodka Cowboy had mixed for me, and I said, âTo the kids,â and Ryan responded, âTo the kids,â and lifted his solo cup, and then we were quiet again, waiting for everyone elseâs conversation to sweep us up, but we got to act like weâd had a solemn moment together until it did.
T. L. OâHara
A Bad Liar
He was a bad liar, not because he was unskilled in mistruthâ quite the contraryâbut because it went against his nature. He was one of those rare creatures that had reached adulthood maintaining the belief that bald truth is a virtue. He was wrong, and his heart broke more than once, but when opportunities arose for him to ease his passage through life by some subterfuge, they were largely rejected, even countered. But his virtue extended only so far as his perceived responsibilities to others, never himself. And he kept hidden his pain and fears and disappointments, for he ever was a bad liar, and bore only ever false witness against himself.
Little Men
When men have lost friends not in battle but in the slog of the mundanity of life, where are the songs? When men have faced obstacles insurmountable for themselves but for the children of other lives mere trifles, where are the stories? We ignore the mundane. We scoff at the insurmountable. We laugh at the little men, because they are littler than us and we are bigger. We are bigger and we know what to do with little men.
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T. L. OâHara
Of Gods
When we were young, we worshiped our Gods on mountain tops, we gave them names, and they were like the seasons, moving and working around us.
Now our Gods are distant and have no names. We worship them in secret and in shame, and the natural order is forgotten.
Gods do not die, for they would not be Gods otherwise, but when the world is dead around us, what use will our Gods be then?
Secrets
It was there that night in the way you walked about the floor, something secret, something unknowable. We took a turn, the two of us, once, twice, as the music played, and our eyes never shrank from each other, and when the tune faded, we found ourselves in a quiet corner, and we laughed there together, quietly, about the secrets neither of us would ever tell, even if we could, even if it meant our deaths, but we shared that night those unknowable, unspeakable things in that quiet corner, and the music started up again, and we were immune to it for a time. And the hall was empty but for we two. And we laughed.
Cheyenne Morse
This is the second part of a story I wrote a while ago. The first part is called Guttering Out and can be read here! This story picks up right where the last one ended.Â
The End of Everything
Photo by Kevin RheeseÂ
Mack woke up. There was beeping equipment and people in lab coats looming over him. He was in pain. He gasped and his eyes rolled in his head as he tried to take everything in. He activated his powers. In a moment he went from being a broken, barely moving figure to healthy looking young man. The doctor gave a small shout of surprise and she and the nurses fell away. He grabbed at the doctor in a fog. He snagged her pocket. The doctor scampered away, pushed up against the wall trying to slide away from him. Whatever had been in her hands clattered to the floor. He was left with a scrap of cloth from her breast pocket and the pen that it had been holding.
One thought blared through his mind over and over again. They got me. They got me. Â Panic was in control of him. His lungs were working like a bellows. His eyes were wide without really seeing. He had to get out.
Suddenly something was pressing him back onto the bed, some one. He wasnât as strong as he usually was, it had been a while since he was as strong as he should be but there was only one person in the world who could be holding him down. He showed his teeth in an angry snarl and drove the pen into Teraâs side as hard as he could. The plastic pen burst into shards against her impenetrable skin. A nurse screamed. Then Tera had hold of both his arms and he was pressed hard back into the bed. Heâd been half sitting up when sheâd lunged into him so the back of his head sunk awkwardly into the plaster of the wall. The frame of his cot was jammed into the wall as well. The electronics in the bed whirred angrily under the strain of her holding him down. Â
E. Ray
âNot a first impression, but earlyâ
Is the velvet hoodie a late-nineties throwback, or is it of the Kanye-before-Kanye-was-Trumpinâ-maybe-Yeezus-maybe-Jesus-still-so-cool and comfortable outerwear line? The bleached gelled hair matches the late nineties hypothesisâLance Bass when the shy girls had crushes on him, Mark Marnell in my pre-geometry class. Or maybe itâs something coming, his beard is dark still, not dyed, all psychology professorial in coverage and trim, so thatâs not nineties and neither is the velvet on the sweatshirt, which is Very This Year; I noticed it this winter, on a girl I thought was her mother because of the high-waisted mom pants and ribbon-thin shoulder-strapped bambi-colored leather purse and the, okay, awkward way her Rogaine-haired dad had his hand on her lower back as they waited for ice creamâbut then her mother was there too, stranger danger alarms dimmed (but not totally gone), and anyway, that was why I noticed velvet was in quickly this year, along with the two or three other high school girls I saw wearing it later that week.
He has a pink Nalgene bottle, so I know, along with the way his voice is always gentle and happy sounding when he greets me, despite one good conversation once at a work mixer in the spring and not much after, that itâs probably not the Kayne, or that if it is, he probably has a good reason for itâwhat asshole has a pink Nalgene?
Cheyenne Morse
Grief is a circle. Even when you are moving forward everything around you reminds you of the person you lost. Memories new and old curve in on themselves until itâs a perfect circle, an inescapable loop. But thatâs comforting in its own way, that we can never get too far away from the person we wish was still with us.
Today is Derekâs birthday. The first since we lost him. One year ago I sent him the last message he would ever receive from me. I sent him others while he was in the hospital but he was not awake to read them. The anniversary of his death will follow just behind his birthday. Â
Itâs impossible not to think of lasts today. The last time he attended writing group. The last time we talked about his novel. The last time he printed out a story of mine so he could write me notes in the margins. The last time I saw him.
Since the new trilogy of Star Wars movies began the premiere of any Star Wars flick has been like a holiday. Derek was always good at bringing people together. He would buy out more than half a theater worth of tickets and a whole swarm of us would go to opening night together. People would get dressed up in costumes. Weâd meet up for drinks beforehand and bask in the excitement of new stories, new characters, of being surrounded by friends.
That was the last time I saw him. He drove up from Kenai to bring us all together. Afterwards, even though it was late and he would have to get up in the morning to drive back home, he lingered with Matt and I in the freezing parking lot outside his hotel. Just to talk. Finally, after saying goodbye several times only to end up picking up some thread of conversation again, we actually parted. As I turned towards where we parked I squeezed his shoulder, his hand came up to touch my elbow, and then we were headed in opposite directions. The last time heâd be close enough to touch. Â
The last book he ever recommended to me was about addiction, death, and grief. Now that feels like an omen, a warning, or a goodbye that I missed. Because in this circle everything comes up again and I feel like I should have known so much more so much sooner.
In this circle, the me that is six years old and watching A New Hope for the hundredth time misses a friend that she will not meet for more than a decade. Here, the me that doesnât exist yet misses Derek when I go to see Star Wars Episode nine. Today I am sitting here writing and hating that even though he was brilliant he will never get to write another book.
The first time I tried to write about his passing I only wrote one line. âIt felt like a whole universe went dark when I learned I lost Derek.â Thatâs as far as I got. I never knew what to say after that because it just felt too horrible to be true but too real to be denied.
Now it reminds me of a Star Wars story I read years ago. Leia was in some distant part of the galaxy and she pointed out a star that was where Alderaan used to be. The world where she was raised, the home of her family, long destroyed. She talked about how sometimes she traveled so far out into the galaxy that when she looked for Alderaan in the sky she could still see its light.
Derek may be gone but when I read his books I can see the light he left behind. Not just a single star but a whole constellation.
T. L. O'Hara
"In Another Life"
To declare love lost for the loss of one seems selfish, though I am feeling selfish just now. But to let love die for
the death of one would not be honest. The life we had surely was not enough. Surely there is more time given to
lovers such as we to repent and love more fiercely. If not, I will carry our love forward and use it, not as a foundation but as
a scaffold. I will bury you deep and ride toward the sun and trust that you and I will live and love again in another life.
Metaphors by T. L. O'Hara is available here.
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T. L. O'Hara
A Ghost Story
The ghost followed him, just as she always did, just out of sight, a dull patch of black in the northern half-light just out of his vision. She followed him from the small cabin at the top of the cliff where the others had bedded down and down the long dirt road to the gray, stony shore below. It began to rain as he descended, a soft drizzle, and a light wind added itself to the elements, but it was not a storm, not as he might have wished for. Stepping onto the stony shore, he listened to the gentle thrum and breath of the ocean as it stroked the stones and pebbles and other things it discarded. He looked for the mountains he knew lay across the water, but he saw only a swirl of gray, like smoke from a fire that would not quite light. She was there too, he felt, just where he could never lay claim to her or say to another she was truly there, but she ached, and so he felt her, and he ached also. He walked along the shore awhile, on the gray uneven stones, but soon lost his impetus. There was a light ahead in the distance, but it gave him no hope, because he knew it belonged to another life. Then, as if he had never seen such a thing, he noticed the trunk, larger than any tree that could have grown on that coast, something else the ocean had anointed and given up. He approached the behemoth and put his hand on it, feeling something still sturdy and strong under the slickness of the rain. He knelt down in the gentle wind and rain then lay down and huddled himself against the trunk like a cub against its mother, the stony shore beneath, the sturdy wood at his back, and the elements still teeming overhead. He kept his eyes open, and though he could not see her, he felt the ghost, for the first time, standing directly in front of him, a small smile on her face that shifted with the swirling, tumbling gray of the clouds and ocean behind her. She smiled, and he stayed there for a time, feeling the stone and wood and elements seep into his soul. When he stood, she was gone, as if she had only ever been the darkness and the weight he felt had only ever been the rain soaking into his clothes. He turned and put his hand on the trunk one last time then started back the way he had come. But by the time he reached the dirt road at the base of the hill leading back to the clifftop and the cabin, he felt her again, just out of sight, never truly there, not even a shadow. He turned back to look again at the ocean, that tumbling, heaving mass. Then he started up the hill, and she followed. She followed him up the dirt road and back to the small cabin where the others were already asleep. But she stayed outside as he entered the cabin and removed his rain-soaked clothes and curled up under his blanket, trying to remember the feel of the stones below, the trunk at his back, and the elements above. And eventually, he slept, and the ghost remained outside the cabin, a small smile on her lips, shifting with the gray of the clouds and the ocean behind her.
Metaphors from T. L. O'Hara is available on Amazon.Â
Cheyenne Morse
Hard Red WinterÂ
Photo Larry Tomlinson
The wheat needed to be protected. The winter wheat was in the ground and the first snow had fallen. I moved along the markers set up around the edge of the farm; retouching the protection spells and hanging new charms. It was work that could have waited another day or so. The One Below always fell into stillness when the first snows came. I could have come out in tomorrowâs sun, had the rest of the familyâs help, but I wanted to be alone.
I paused at the next post to hang a fresh protection charm, woven from corn husks by my husband and my niece that morning. It was getting colder as the sun descended toward the horizon. I fiddled with the folds of my scarf until it covered my ears and stretched my fingers inside my gloves, trying to keep the blood moving. Snow was falling around me. Just a light dusting. Nothing like what would come later. Â
The One Below has been buried deep in the earth for centuries. Some folk said it would wake up again someday and the world would end. Some said it was dead already. That the presence we all felt was the last ragged inch of an old god falling slowly into decay. No one could say for sure.
T. L. O'Hara
Light in the Woods
The light was hard. It pierced his chest then left an ache like the death of a loved one or a second birth. He could not see its origin, but he felt it coming from a cold, unfeeling place, not hateful or malignant but indifferent. Standing there, among the dark, oppressive trees, pierced to his heart, his soul his marrow, he knew what it was came for him, to pull him from his darkness. He stood there, in the dark and the woods, unable to move, forward or back, huddling into himself, and the light crept closer.
T. L. O'Hara
Tragic
Fine lines and equine
presentments herald
the great reckoning.
Heroes hail from their
passing carriages as the
crowd stands in the rain,
as they have been
conditioned to. The fires
start and the sacrifices
are brought forward.
Mothers weep and fathers
stand stoic, fearing there
truly is nothing they
can do. The victims are
pressed to the flames, and they
utter not a sound, and a
tragedy is condoned by those
who refuse to understand.
The Bridge
The chill seemed to add a
clarity to the beauty of the
day. The crispness and the
clearness seemed symbiotic.
He walked slowly. Occasionally
he looked up and about to take it
all in, but mostly he looked at his
feet. As he crossed the bridge, at
first all he could think of was throwing
himself off. But then there came
the thought that he had not yet
slept with the woman he was seeing.
He did not love the woman, but
he was a man who took things
seriously, which was why, perhaps,
he took seriously the urge to
throw himself off a bridge. And
he walked on considering suicide
over sex, sex over suicide, like a
fool, because in the end, he decided the
fall from the bridge would not
have been enough to kill him.
Part and Parcel
We look left. We look right.
We look up, down, and
past our own sight. But we
do not look at matters as they
truly are. Morality is shattered
when our realization is complete
that right and wrong are obsolete
and love is the only logic we
can employ with success. Fear
is the ever constant danger, and
yet it is never stranger than to
face the world when we are not
afraid. Fear and courage are
part and parcel, and if it is courage
we would marshal, the first course
is to feel fully of our fear.
Metaphors from T. L. O'Hara is available here.
Cheyenne Morse
Guttering OutÂ
Photo by Mat Culpepper
The hospital room was washed with pale colors and it smelled of sanitization. The arm of the chair Tera sat in was polished by years of fidgeting by worried hands. Mack was in the bed, tubes and sensors attached to him at various points. Â He was stable but he hadnât woken up since Tera had dug him out of the rubble two days ago.
Tera had dozed off and on the night before and now existed strung between a state of exhaustion and the inability to sleep. The windows had the shades drawn tight against prying eyes but they glowed dimly in the late afternoon sun. Tera was wearing a floral print t-shirt she'd bought at the gift shop downstairs and a pair of maroon scrub pants that one of the nurses had kindly loaned her. They'd asked her to change out of her uniform, still bloody from her fight with Mack and dusty from when the building came down. The black and grey jumpsuit was in a bag on another chair along with the tattered remains theyâd cut off of Mack.Â
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T. L. O'Hara
A Prisoner to His Rest
Facing pain of death, he
staggered stalwart toward
the gallows. The rifle at
his back felt hot, though
it never touched him. As
he climbed the scaffold, a
familiar melody rose
from somewhere in the crowd,
and it grew as a myriad
untrained voices took
cue and added their quavering
sound to the sluggish
lament. When he reached
the noose, he felt the coolness
it offered, not the heat of
the rifle, and he felt a soft
peace descend as the rope
was placed about his neck,
and he felt that he might weep.
What dreams we hold when
the sum of our undoing
is nothing more than the slap
of a hand at an irritant. What
royalties we concoct when
the life we leave behind is
truly in the purview of others
He Himself
He prayed in the morning,
fretted in the afternoon, and
drank at night. The cycle was
brutal as it was ironic. He
condemned himself a thousand
times, and pardoned himself
a thousand times, but never
did he forgive himself for
who he was and who he was
not. He ate at himself and used
the cud from his gnawings to
patch the wounds. He was a
man beside himself and outside
of himself, even below himself.
But never was he himself.
Hate
He thought he knew how the bad guys in
films felt: Lonely. Afraid, perhaps.
But mostly hate. A dull persistent
hate that covered everything like
the opposite of rose-colored
glasses. This hate was unembodied
and floated free, gracefully caressing
everything in sight and mind. There
was no reason, no purpose, just the
ache of that hate smoldering a hole
inside of him. He hated it but couldnât
shake it, and it tainted his life, and he
could tell no one, because no one would
believe him. He was alone, so he was lonely.
He had no answers, so he was afraid. And
so he began to hate anew and hate harder.
Metaphors by T. L. O'Hara is available here.
E. Ray
The CS Lab at Night
Photo by Radu Florin on Unsplash
By the time Brad was at State College, gambling no longer made him nervous. Gambling was his job, a repetitive series of probability-based clicks, something he felt a monkey could do if given enough Red Bull. Heâd started online at age nine, stacking a pillow on the computer chair so he could see the screen, blazing through juice boxes to keep up his energy. Heâd had a few glorious years where the excitement of it had made sweat prickle under his bowl cut, blood flow through his tiny fingers. But, once heâd gotten the hang of it, the rush had worn off.Â
Now nothing made him nervous. Not girls. Not the future. He saw everything through the lenses of calm detachment and probability heâd acquired by age 13. Heâd tried hedonism. Heâd tried altruism. He did like drinking beers alone during spring and autumn on his fratâs back porch, but there were only so many kicks a guy could get from that. He kept waiting for something more to come, but he eventually realized it wasnât coming. His insides, he knew, were unfortunately mismatched. He was a person who craved intensity, and everything, for him, was just too easy to ever feel exciting. Bad luck, he supposed.
When the Devil showed up, Brad wasnât surprised. Heâd been hearing about him from all the top gamblers for a while nowâa sort of accoutrement that came with the territory. To talk to Brad the Devil had possessed the body of Bradâs CS teacher, Dr. Macnamara, while Brad was up late in the lab finishing up a set. But even with his eyes rolled back into his head, the Devil-as-Dr.-Macnamara seemed bored.