Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You’d think that in a township of fifty thousand people, I’d manage to find a single person who looks like me.

The thought crosses my mind as it usually does, at least once daily, on bad days twice or more. On this occasion it’s the sole intruding thought preventing a quick nap through Miss Alphys’ first period class.

I’m in the back of the first column of seats closest to the flag, arranged alphabetically by last name. Large pane glass windows offer the natural sunlight entry at a steep angle, bottlenecked by ranks of thin metal shades. The opposite wall is white cinderblock made homely by a few math posters—some basics on set notation and the like, during exams covered by large sheets of construction paper. They surround a large cork board tacked with a number of general notices and such, and at the bottom-right corner of the board there’s a sticker of two anime girls making out.

I slump down into my seat. Before me I see not a single fellow Homo sapien. On days like these hope gets the best of me, and I scrutinize the back of each idle, inattentive head and fantasize that my cryptid habits have me so pathetically detached from civil society that I’ve somehow overlooked a glaring contradiction in my world view.

But the immutable fact of the matter is—and I’ve checked this about a dozen times using the resources at the local library—that there’s only me .

“Well maybe the census is out of date,” a voice sitting beside me, whose name is Ralsei, offers.

He says this every time, and every time he says it I want to scream bloody murder and strangle him until the trace amount of color drains from his fur and he becomes white completely.

Well not actually, but it’s come close a handful few times. Lashing out requires so much effort I’ve grown overworn of it these past years. Nowadays, when the little things start closing in, I simply let vacant inattention carry me away and let the multitude dark thoughts congest my lungs and throat and eyes until I can’t take it anymore and shut down completely.

Ralsei tilts his head. His glasses fall down the bridge of his nose. He has glasses, by the way. “It’s okay to vent sometimes, you know. Instead of drowning in pain all by yourself, why not share it someone who cares?” With a fluffy finger he pushes the green wire-frames back up. “I’m always listening. I’ll always be here for you.” An honest smile emerges beneath his nose.

I implore Ralsei to leave me the hell alone and he does.

It’s the greatest comedy, hearing him go on like that. The hell does he know about my problems? This isn’t some half-baked adolescent breakup, or worrying about climate change or world peace or whatever. It’s different. How can someone like Ralsei even begin to comprehend the lack of self, that I’ll always be the human before anything else? How can he even begin to comprehend the constant self-consciousness, that your presence is broadcast to the world simply by existing? How can he begin to comprehend the constant fear of being alone?

I mean, he’s a goddamn Scottish goat, for chrissakes. His people are dime a dozen—half a country’s worth or something. There’ll always be someone or something to set his life on the path beaten by the people who’ve struggled the same as him. I’m doomed to stomp through the mud for all eternity.

“That may be true, Kris…”

He fumbles with his glasses again.

“But that’s what empathy’s for, right? You can’t expect someone to begin to try to know these things if you don’t tell anyone how you’re feeling.”

I sigh deep. This is exactly how it goes every time, word-for-word. The same build up, the same consolation, it always ends with me screaming and crying and punching him in the face. Though in recent years my eyes have kept wide, staring, so habituated to going through the motions that they dry out and tears won’t form.

“Kris…”

I hold them open, unblinking. I let the pressure build in the back of my throat, holding down the boiling pot’s lid as long as I can hold.

“…Kris.”

Every second I keep staring is a second I inch closer to unconsciousness. I let the pressure build. I let it flow through me. Like bile, or some kind of poison, it grates the inside of my mouth until it wants to bleed.

“Kris.”

I break out into a sweat at the same time a sheer chill runs down the length of my spine. Following its path is a lump in my throat going down to an empty stomach that skipped breakfast. It lands hard, and I suppress the urge to dry heave.

“Kris!”

I blink. The seat beside me takes form—some golden retriever dog girl I’ve never spoken to.

I suddenly realize I’ve been boring holes into her with my eyes for the past ten minutes. She grimaces like I’m something repulsive. The floodgates open and tears fall to my desk. I slump until my chin hits the particleboard and taste the salt. The girl’s eyes sharpen and serrate; she looks at me like I’m lower than the dirt, lower than the worms in that dirt, that I’d be better off dead. I can’t help but concur.

“Um, Kris.” Miss Alphys reaches eye level when I’m sitting. Hunchback and mustard yellow, she’s a biped dinosaur of some sort. Her glasses are small, and her teeth hang from a massive overbite. The way she speaks denotes her as a distinct resident of these parts, or maybe somewhere close to the Brooklyn communities. Without fail she comes to school every day in a neon green short-sleeve button-down and a red clip-on tie, and hides her forearms with an earthy green corduroy jacket. Proper slacks would be too long, so she wears khaki shorts that nonetheless hit her ankles.

Miss Alphys wrings her hands.

“We’re out of chalk again, and, uh, well you’ve been dozing off during class a lot, lately,” she stammers as she speaks, but the same crooked smile never goes away. “I was just thinking a quick trip to the storage room might wake you up, sleepyhead.”

A rumbling laughter washes over the classroom. Presently walking to the door and crossing the view of every single person in the room becomes my least favorite thing in the whole wide world.

But the way Miss Alphys lingers at my desk tells me that trying to wake me up with a morning stroll is less of a consideration and more of a demand—as in, you had better get the chalk or you’re getting written up.

A loud thud snaps everyone’s attention away from me, and for a second maybe I want to jump for joy and do a little jig, but then I see, and I regret.

Closing in on six feet, the newcomer draws reflex comparison to Miss Alphys in that they’re both slouching, corduroy jacket-wearing dinosaurs, but that’s where the similarities end. For one, she’s purple, and doesn’t have a tail, and the jacket is just a shade darker purple than her dry skin. Her jeans are baggy and worn, darker blues in places, giving way to whiteish patches about her knees. The cuffs are shoestring, and dangle over a pair of black sneakers that’ve taken on a dusty ash color. The laces are missing their aglets and attempt to hide inside her shoes. She runs a hand through a greasy brunette mop atop her head that is rumored to be hair.

“Oh! Susie!” Miss Alphys says. “Since you’re already at the door, you and Kris can go together!”

Everything is a blur from then on. And I only register that I seem to have made it outside when Susie slams me by the scuff of my shirt against a locker. The rows of ventilation dig into my back, and I feel a sharp pressure at my neck as I hang from my collar.

“I saw you in there, ogling at,” and then she says a name I don’t commit to memory. “What are you, some kind of pervert?”

She releases me and I slump against the metal’s sheer cold that smites through my shirt straight to my spine. Susie’s height effortlessly eclipses the overhead ceiling light from my sight. The light exploits my anxiety—plays tricks on me. I see her fangs bare, teeth glisten with rancor.

I want to scream for help, but nobody would come.

“…Kris, can you hear me? Wake up!”

I come to feeling Ralsei’s silky fur clamping over my hand.

“You were out of it for a second, there. You had me worried.” He smiles in a way that stabs my stomach with guilt for being so mean to him. Taking in my surroundings a bit more, our eyes move to a white powder dusting the floor. I suspect it’s maybe cocaine when Ralsei gives me a disapproving look.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Susie’s laughter rips away any concept of security. “‘So it was Susie who’s been stealing the chalk!’,” she mocks, halfway through crunching another stick from a narrow box. “Now’s your chance, Kris! Go tell Miss Alphys—that’ll be the final nail in the coffin! That’ll get me expelled once and for all!”

I seriously consider it. The pain from before still tickles my back.

“Kris, don’t listen to her,” Ralsei grabs my shoulder, and then my hand, the last line of defense keeping the hate at bay.

Susie waits for me to pick myself up. “But you won’t tell Miss Alphys,” said as not a threat, but in a manner of knowing. “You won’t tell Miss Alphys,” and she gets into my face until I can see and smell her rotten yellow teeth, “because nobody’s gonna believe a creep who likes to leer at girls way out of their league during math class.”

“That’s not true!” Ralsei’s voice beats against my ear. “You’re nothing like that, Kris. Tell her!” But it’s no use.

Susie bites down on another stick of chalk. “Ha-go-ro-mo,” she enunciates stiltedly. “Some Japanese crap. Pretty rare. Pretty expensive.”

I hear the cadence of her beaten shoes approach a low quickness as she passes me. And she stops for a moment.

“What’s wrong? Can’t talk? Cat got your tongue?”

My eyes squeeze shut. I nearly indulge her. Tell her off, or whatever the hell she wants me to do. But I don’t, because the most cowardly, pathetic recesses of my personality deliver a hand upon my shoulder. “It’s okay, Kris. You don’t need to speak if you don’t want to.” Ralsei’s voice, I’ll note, comes to me queerly prepubescent, if not for a nasal scratchiness proceeding each syllable.

“Come on, freak,” Susie calls over her shoulder. “We’ve gotta get Miss Alphys her chalk. You’ll be trying some, too. Your human guts’ll get used to it.”

So I trudge behind her, kicking the front of my soles into the linoleum. The rubber squeaks against the tile with each step.

Susie flinches with each squeak, and the way I fixate on the back of her head trembles with frustration. My heart rate spikes each time, and adrenaline floods my nerves, but some self-destructive ideation keeps me kicking at the tile.

“You know, Kris, I’ve been thinking.” Ralsei keeps adjacent to me with a precise cadence that matches mine exactly.

I know immediately what Ralsei is thinking, of course—that somehow this is an opportunity to make a new friend in spite of Susie insulting me and slamming me against a locker and very clearly wanting to do far more to me than most people’s basic decency should allow.

These sorts of thoughts creep in from time to time, and it’s important I stay diligent in quashing them. Ralsei tilts his head in the way he does, looking me over to convey scrutiny, but he knows that I know that he knows it’s a worthless gesture. Though maybe some faint hope crossed my mind, that if Susie is weird enough to eat chalk maybe she’d be weird enough to consider tolerating my presence, but that bridge was burnt the moment she saw me as a pervert and a creep, and Ralsei knows that just as well as I do. The nature of our companionship’s very existence means that he’s incapable of acting nor thinking in a way that I won’t permit; however dissenting he pretends to be he’s ultimately subservient to my whims—a mere pawn in the grand chess of my lunatic psychopathy.

That is, unless I’ve truly gone off the deep end this time.

A prospective life chock-full (pun intended) of the exhilarating ups and downs of degenerate schizophrenia aside, I notice Susie turn sharply round a bend leading to an immediate closet door.

She without warning then, being of tremendous stature and weight, stamps her left heel into the floor, leans back, and at the same time brings her opposite heel crashing right beside the knob. The door swings open. Wood splinters in shards.

“Not bad, huh?” Susie grins. “It’s about the technique as much as it is about the power.” She stoops down in the ruined passageway, stretching her legs. “Even a shrimp like you could do it.”

Somehow I doubt that. Though I catch from the leftmost corner of my eye before rounding the bend myself Ralsei slapping a fluffy foot paw against a random classroom door to no avail.

“You havin’ a good laugh, Kris?” Susie whirls around, baring her teeth in my face. “You won’t be laughing the same when I kick down the door to your house and bite your face off while you’re sleeping,” she snarls, opening her jaw.

I shrink back less from mortal terror and more from her breath which reeks of wet, rotten meat. And eventually she backs off.

“Kidding, of course,” she says. “Your mother’s a good lady. I’d hate to make her bury her own child.”

Susie disappears into the dark closet. I consider the wisdom in running, but between returning to Miss Alphys empty-handed and wandering the halls until next period and inevitably finding my path crossed with a teacher, all roads lead to detention. So with a hollow sigh, I offer Ralsei one last look—he’s still kicking at a random door—before stepping past the threshold myself.

A musty sawdust smell burns closer to sulfur inside my nose from the moment I enter. It sends me into a frenzy in the dark. I reach this way and that, all around me, finding little but a sharp edge that I flinch from quickly enough to avoid a cut. After a sightless examination I find no apparent injury, and I remain still, very still.

Susie finds the lights before me. A stiff switch snaps on audibly, and a sole ancient incandescent bulb paints the room yellow, directly above her, casting shadows at her feet. Her imposing frame keeps me partially cloaked in darkness; her head again eclipses the light, makes a crown of it.

“Oh, here it is,” Susie says, apparently standing on the tips of her toes. “Uh, pretty high up, I guess.” Even her tallness struggles to permit access to the far back corner of a ceiling-height shelf cubby thing. It takes a few seconds for her arm to go rigid and pull back with the box in hand, supposedly white, but oddly yellow with age. “Hum,” she grunts softly. A sudden cough blows away a few cobwebs. “Pretty dusty, this thing.”

The sight has my right leg backpedal on reflex. The left follows quickly thereafter. My mind is still reeling from the previous darkness and the arid smell. I don’t think about why I’m leaving—solely that it needs to happen. Like the urge to sprint down through dark hallway, there’s no logic involved. Hoping to weaponize the closet’s strange lighting to mask my escape, my retreat is careful.

Light footwork landing toe ‘fore heel carries me as far as the exit when Susie stops me.

“Wait a sec.” She tears open the box and my hidden fear takes form as a single white cylinder from within. “Don’t forget about your little snack.” Dangling the piece in front of my face, she taunts me. “Looks tasty, doesn’t it?”

Like before, fear compels me. I pinch the chalk, brand name printing along its length, from below, between my fingers. It’s weird. I’ve used other chalks before, of course. Like, the rainbow Crayola brand stuff you get at the Staples for a buck fifty, I distinctly remember Mom buying from time to time to scribble all over the driveway—but this is smooth, not cake-y, almost lacquered.

Susie eyes me sideways-like. Her arms are crossed, leaning against a wobbly cabinet. She gestures with her snout, like telling me to get on with it already.

“Um, well,” Ralsei’s voice begins from somewhere. I want to tune him out but he’s got something useful to say for once in my life. “For what it’s worth, calcium carbonate is non-toxic. You’ll be alright, Kris. You’ll make it through this.”

Welp. Down the hatch.

It cracks open with a bit of pressure from my molars. Initially it fractures smoothly, a single straight break, but further pressure grinds the crumbling material into a fine dust. Though I can’t say I’m intimately familiar with the taste of chalk, there’s something premium about this particular brand. As an adolescent whose palate’s been well-spoiled by the American diet, I find my tongue groping for flavor amidst the initial perceived blandness. It finds a subtle earthy texture previewed by a waxy film. It’s something like screened fill sand, close to uniform and purged of impurities. I’m already convinced of its worth when a sharply new flavor dances across my tongue. Faintly bitter, contrasting the empty powder, I catch a hint of coated metal, like licking a battery.

Susie goes bug-eyed. “Holy—ha ha !” She laughs, then claps me on the back, leaning forward with what feels like half a ton of weight; quickly I . “I didn’t expect you to actually do it—oh, man,” and feigns wiping a tear from her eye. “What a riot. Maybe you’re not so bad after all…”

I hear Ralsei stifle a snicker that’s very much ‘I told you so’, and the ensuing bloodrage urges me to tear the blade off a nearby guillotine paper trimmer and hurl it at where he would be if I wasn’t delusional psychopath.

Susie cocks her head at me, strangely quiet, so I offer the remaining half, twirling it about my fore and middle fingers as one does a cigarette.

She flashes me a pointy smile.

I find the remaining half snatched up and within the seconds the outline of it travels down her throat and disappears behind the collar of her shirt I suspect was originally not so off-white. As I now have context for the taste, I vaguely understand why she’s already digging into the box for another piece.

But then the sounds of rustling stop, and Susie’s face scrunches up. I tilt my head.

She matches my look. I stare back emptily. If she’s planning on making me shove it up my nose or some similar torture she’d have done it already.

“I…” Her words trail off.

Our staring contest continues. I’d like to think this is one of those moments where we’re both thinking about how that chalk tasted weird as hell, but I’ll never know if I don’t open my mouth to ask, so I don’t. On that note, the strange metallic aftertaste from the chalk’s condensed into a pinprick stinging sensation at the tip of my tongue. I’m tempted, briefly, to panic and throw a fit about being poisoned—anything to break the silence broken only by the hallway ambience wafting into the closet with the A.C.—but Ralsei whispers into my ear that old chalk or new chalk oughtn’t make too much of a difference.

“Well that was weird,” Susie finally admits. Huffing past me, I’m shoved against the table with the guillotine paper trimmer, and she’s out to the hallway. “Come on, Kris. Miss Alphys’s probably wondering what’s taking so long.”

I close my eyes and count to ten. Then I follow Ralsei past the ruined door.

Approximately at its center, our school boasts a wide-halled intersection connecting the gymnasium and the pool and the lunch commons and the music rooms to the main building, which we colloquially refer to as the ‘T’. Notorious for its traffic so dense it’d make the most hardened fire chief blow his brains out in despair, it’s eerily empty when Susie and I come across it.

“So what’s the deal with you, anyways?” she asks. We’d been walking without speaking up ‘till now. “I mean, uh, with gawking at that girl earlier this morning.”

I pretend like I want to say something (I don’t), but she cuts me off anyways.

“—and, and don’t think I’m letting that slide,” she starts. “But we’re partners in crime now, yeah? If you snitch on me, then I’ll just have to tell them you were being your ‘usual self’ when they ask me why I caved your skull in. You know, um,” she stops for a sec.

“Mutually assured destruction?” Ralsei offers, walking at my side opposite Susie. Though of course she doesn’t hear him.

Here, Susie stops at a drinking fountain just outside the T. Ralsei vice grips my arm and I watch in mild intrigue—Ralsei, sheer terror—as her massive jaw encloses the entire spout. Stray thoughts reminding me of her poor dental hygiene only worsens the scene. Must be an Irish thing.

Susie stops to catch her breath before going in again. “Wow, you’re really not much of a talker, huh?” she asks.

“Nope.”

Presently I gain valuable insight as to what a drowning purple dinosaur might sound like. Susan O’Brien’s huge hands clamp down onto the fountain’s porcelain bowl as she retches. Her life flashes before her eyes as she roar/heaves, like, a pint of water onto the floor. Ralsei yips and yelps and fails to make himself useful in general. I try finding a paper towel dispenser. Luckily, as the T is close to the commons, there’s a communal hallway sink in sight with just what I’m looking for.

I ensure to keep a light ambling familiarity with the way there, giving Susie ample time to reflect on her multitude misdeeds—and maybe me, my own—and I also decide to wash my hands because that closet was gross as heck.

The running water downs out Susie’s dyingness, and with it any guilt I might have for leaving her there. I wince as scalding water hits my hands, fighting the urge to cry until the pain becomes numb. My eyes stay open. The school’s faucets are always hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and when hot emits the nauseating odor of burning plastic. My eyes stay open.

“A-ha! Kris!”

I whirl around, and my wet hands assail the person behind me.

“Augh! Kris! What gives?!” Lacerated by drops of burning water, Berdly’s scream echoes down the hall.

I eye him up and down. As his name implies, unremarkably, he’s a blue bird guy with yellow legs and a yellow beak. He’s wearing the same green Triforce t-shirt he’s worn since middle school beneath a neon greenish-yellow sash with ‘Hall Monitor’ printed in black across its length. His student ID hangs from a lanyard overtop. He isn’t wearing any pants.

“ A-hem ,” he clears his throat. “I—I see, Kris, that you are being very fascinated with my nether regions.” His sentence stops short. I keep looking. “But—um, well,” he fights to keep composed. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to see your hall pass.”

I switch off the faucet. Taking an extra long paper towel sheet I dry my hands with half of it. A certain reptilian groaning again fills the halls.

“S-Susie?” Berdly’s face goes through the motions of fear, then scorn, then curiosity. “Wait, why is she on the ground? Kris, did you kill her?”

I nod.

Berdly runs ahead, says something about needing to write me up for murder. I figure either Susie’ll smack him dead or he’ll give her a stroke and either Susie goes to jail or he does. I debate how fast I ought to follow him when Ralsei appears and sets the pace at a similar concern to jaywalking across Market Street.

“Susie’s fine, by the way,” he says. “She’s acting all dramatic-like, but she’s breathing okay.”

How hell does he know that? It puzzles me, and maybe I consider I’ve created it from my imagination, but Ralsei won’t let me think.

“It’s awful nice of you to be worried about her, you know.”

Shut up.

“I told you she wasn’t that bad a person, even though there was that misunderstanding at first.”

I swing a hook at Ralsei’s face and hit the wall. The skin of my knuckles cracks and bleeds, but nothing breaks.

He takes advantage of my temporary incapacitation. “You know, once you clear things up and explain that you’re not really a creepy pervert, I bet you’ll be friends for real! And Berdly—”

No. Nuh-uh. He makes me want to slit your wrists in a bathtub after just five seconds of hearing him yap. He’s a weirdo and a nerd.

“And you aren’t?”

I don’t have a response to this. I keep my eyes open until I reach Susie. From the floor she shoots an out at me, clawing the air all dramatic-like, but she seems to be breathing okay. Berdly kneels by her side, acting the part of a mourning widow. In his hands he holds hers—no, he’s not holding her hand. He’s holding what’s in her hand. He’s got the box of Hagoromo.

Arriving at the scene punctually, I hear the entire conversation.

“Susie, this ‘box’ of ‘chalk’ you’re holding,” he says, stressing words at random, pausing for dramatic effect. “Did you happen to find this ‘chalk’ at the ‘back’ of a tall shelf in the supply closet?”

“Uh-huh.”

Berdly gasps. “Oh my God! Susie!” He grabs both her arms; she hasn’t the strength to resist. “Listen very closely, Susie! This ‘chalk’ you’re holding—it looks like it’s been ‘opened’! You didn’t ‘open’ this ‘box’, did you? Tell me you didn’t!”

“Dude, quit talking like you’re a Jojo’s character and spit it out already,” Susie says and I think at the same time. We share a look.

But instead Berdly starts shrieking for whatever reason. “Susie! It’s a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question! You have to tell me! ‘Yes’, or ‘not Yes’!”

“Yes—man, get off me!” Susie’s frustration overcomes her windedness and she throws Berdly off of her. She takes the chalk. “C’mon Kris, we’re getting out of here.”

“No! Susie!” He calls out from behind us as we both begin the trek back to Miss Alphys’ class. “Whatever you do, don’t ‘eat’ that ‘chalk’! It’s ‘cursed’! Do you understand what I’m saying to you? It’s a ‘cursed chalk’!”

His pleas fade once we round a bend.

We’re well past the T now, down the main corridor where we’ll turn right and arrive just before Miss Alphys wraps up class for the day. She’ll probably be upset, or else glad to be rid of two troublemakers for the period.

She’s a long-term substitute, as it happens. Part of me is weak to remorse for giving her a hard time; it stings my heart, injects its poison; but on the other hand a little poison as penance is par for the course for a person like me. Susie contributes more to making her job hell anyhow.

On that note, she’s been yapping about Berdly all this time. About the weird curse bit. It’s bizarre, the experience, hearing her speak conversationally—or at least not lambasting me for a change. Whereas before it triggered anxiety, an invisible knife’s edge closer and closer to my neck with each word, it feels very normal. I’m not on edge. I’m calm. Well, I’m never on edge and I’m never calm but I’m listening to Susie and not agonizing over every word in feverish flight-or-flight cowardice.

“I mean, you don’t feel ‘cursed’, do you?” she says.

I shrug my shoulders and she starts laughing. I hadn’t noticed it prior, but it’s this strange ritual where her head bucks up like a horse. I wonder if it’s a tic specific to her species or if it’s closer to a learned behavior. Maybe a mix of both—I don’t know the psychology.

“But man, what a weirdo,” Susie snickers. She sends an elbow my way. “Makes freaks like you seem normal, huh?”

At this, the odd stillness of the past several minutes finally breaks. My stomach lurches. I step awkwardly to keep from keeling over. Head hits a row of lockers, the cold metal subdues the burning nausea until it feels like it’s melting into my skin. My eyes stay open. It’s too good to be true; I need to drown it out. The mere threat of praise, the mere suggestion of connection—the hope kills me. I want so badly for it to be true but it isn’t. The cognitive dissonance bombards the plains of my brain back into its deep network of trenches.

My eyes stay open, defiant. I steel my senses, diverting all focus to the searing ember placed at the center of my tongue, the sour aftertaste from the closet. It’s fading fast. The tongue forgets. I keep keep the thoughts at bay.

“Uh, Kris?”

My eyes find Susie’s and she flinches. Maybe my eyes are bloodshot red and dry and it’s creeping her out. And maybe I’ve finally won over my inferior emotions, and this is where she gives me a black eye and cracks my skull against the glass window we’re passing and saves me a whole lot of trouble.

“Well, uh,” Susie begins, “I said—” then coughs awkwardly.

It appears she thinks I misheard her. I want to rectify the misunderstanding but I don’t. In place of action, I hope. I feeblemindedly ‘hope’ she’s adjusting her speech because she felt bad for calling me a freak because I lack a brain and fail to comprehend her slamming me against the lockers twenty minutes ago.

“—I was, uh, saying that, um, Berdly’s weird—like, really weird—and, well, you’re not so bad in comparison, am I right?” She’s back to chuckling and elbowing in her normal way by the end.

The white fur of Ralsei’s head dusts the outskirts of my vision between Susie’s elbowing. He doesn’t need to open his mouth to suggest, ‘stop being a Deborah downer and make some friends for once in your life,’ and every muscle in my body screams to smash my face into the concrete—anything to maintain my status quo hair-thin frown. I’d stitch my mouth shut if I had a needle and thread. I’d sew my eyelids open so I wouldn’t blink no matter the pain.

Yet, try as I might, a crooked smile takes form instead.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Chapter Text

“Huh, I never knew the original intro already said ‘Episode V’.”

“The first of many great things you’ll learn if you keep hanging out with me, my dear Susan.”

The opening crawl continues.

We’ve got detention for the afternoon. Miss Alphys already made me call Mom, who spoke in that nicely weirding Caucasian woman way that I just know there’ll be hell to pay when I get home. A myriad punishments cruel and sadistic tempt to torture me, but I can’t watch Star Wars while dreading unclogging sink drains, so it’ll have to wait.

By ‘we’ having detention, I mean me and Susie only. Miss Alphys wasn’t too pleased in a three-minute errand stalling class to a standstill for an entire period. Turns out she’s not a complete pushover after all. The room itself bears the default construction of every other classroom in this school, but instead of a hallway-facing concrete wall, it’s all windows, a special design to advertise the machinations of delinquents to any teacher passersby.

Berdly’s here, too, but he’s not in any trouble. According to the whole story he explained when we got here, he’s a supervisor of sorts. At first it was a purely volunteer thing, but it turns out that Susie finding Berdly ‘really weird’ isn’t an uncommon appraisal. Before long the staff started requesting Berdly monitor detention, and almost overnight people feared the pink slip, lest they weather two hours of Berdly’s eccentricities.

But if you ask me, I personally don’t mind a long-winded tangent on the cumulative efforts made to recreate Star Wars’ theatrical releases if it means getting to watch a copy of one said de-specialized edit.

“I’m surprised Susie hasn’t had detention with Berdly before this,” Ralsei says. Wherever I go he goes, so he’s stuck here too.

I remind him that Susie’s long since outgrown minor infractions: threats of outright expulsion are more familiar to a schoolyard villain of her caliber. I also tell him to shut the hell up because the opening crawl’s over.

Incidentally, I did know about the whole ‘Episode V’ thing. Mom often recalls going out on opening night at a very young age to a drive-in screening, and the ensuing confusion about the episode number—like if it was supposed to be adapted from a book or whatever. My dad pretends to remember when Mom brings it up but he wasn’t born for another four years or so. They’re divorced now.

Berdly yaps about all the filming techniques and effects and crap as they come on screen, and—considering all her talk this morning—I’m shocked to see Susie lean forward in her chair, laughing and talking. Periodically she asks about the tauntaun or the probe or Han’s (Susie pronounces it Han like one pronounces ‘hand’, which quickly derails us into a series of interlocking parenthetical conjectures involving a paused movie and Hans [ Han -s, the right way to say Solo’s name] Zimmer’s work on Inception [which we watched recently in science class], but that’s a story for another time) Mauser C96 and Berdly earnestly indulges her curiosity.

On one hand I’m genuinely pretty happy Susie’s taking this whole detention thing well. I half expected her to crash out and call Berdly a slur and punt me into the stratosphere, but the universal appeal of Star Wars lures in her attention, erodes slowly at her prejudice, ‘till the increasingly familiar air has her defenses finally lowered and she arrives at the bait and bites down—the active engagement begins and she really wants to watch Andor now. She’ll know who Marka Ragnos is before long.

On the other hand, they’re talking over the movie and a small part of me wants to take a shotgun and splatter Susie’s guts all over the projector screen right after she kills Berdly with a nuclear wedgie.

Oh, but then he’s not wearing any pants…

I live at the end of Hooker Avenue in a moderate, two-story home with a big yard. My name is Kris Dreemurr. I’m seventeen years old.

I attend the local high school, located less than a minute outside of Hometown, the paradoxically-named unincorporated community in which I live. Its lukewarm proximity to my house makes me ineligible for most bus routes without having to walk a fair bit, so my mother drives me in the mornings and lets me walk back in the evenings. She works at the neighboring middle school as a instructional paraprofessional and leaves work right away for an arduous pentaweekly choir practice at three o’ clock, so this is the most convenient arrangement for the both of us.

The school itself is turning seventy-five this upcoming September. Parts of the building are old and the once-white hallway tile yellows with age. In recent years a generous wealthy philanthropist family with three generations of alumni have overseen a new stadium as well as additions to the gymnasium and basketball court. They’re the subject of recent controversy, the talk of the town, as they’re proposing a complete renovation of the entire building—almost four hundred million dollars. Their only request is to change the name from ‘Castle Township High School’ to ‘Castle-Holiday Township High School’. Many of the parents expressed grave concerns about a place of learning being ‘bought out’, whereas others are simply glad the remodeling won’t be on their tax dollar. I have no opinion on the issue as I’ll be long graduated by the time the new school is complete.

My mother, however, is deeply conflicted with the proposed changes. Though she’s a dedicated educator of twenty-five years, the Holidays happen to be close friends of our family through our respective patriarchs: my dad and Mr. Holiday’s friendship goes way back. Mom maliciously suspects they’re both closeted homosexuals.

As I’ve mentioned before, she and my father are divorced resulting from an incident too convoluted and emotionally troubling to explain at present. Both she and my father are proudly Scottish, and three years prior to adopting me they had a son—my older brother Azzy.

We have another brother but he’s at a gay conversion camp in Kali-Fornia. 

These past years Azzy’s been going to Bloomsburg (well, actually there’s a bit of a story behind that: Bloomsburg University in the year of our Catholic Lord two thousand twenty-one absorbed two schools, Mansfield and Lock Haven, in response to financial difficulties stemming from low enrollment, and became one unified Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania—but Azzy’s at the original Bloomsburg campus so that’s what we call it) out west, so it’s just Mom and me at home.

Mom is very adamant about raising me as her own. This is all well and good, but there are particular things about long-haired goat people that she doesn’t realize are troubling to humans, like how their fur sheds and gets everywhere. It clogs the drains and gets on your clothes and you could use up an entire lint roller on Mom’s living room chair and there’d still be fur. The fur gets everywhere and it’s really gross. The fur gets everywhere and it makes me want to puke. The fur gets everywhere and I wanna stab my eyes out and burn the house down and blow my fucking brains out in front of her with a Fifty Action Express so she’ll be traumatized for the rest of her life.

We’re very dissimilar, she and I, yet in spite of the many misunderstandings and disagreements, we get along pretty nicely. While she is devoutly religious, she totally understands that I’m not too big on the whole church thing. She’s a woman who lives by her faith, if faith means compassion and grace. For instance she’ll take time out of her day to bake my favorite pie expecting not a single chore in return, or spend her well-earned weekends volunteering at a soup kitchen or the senior center. There are a few things about her that tick me off, like how she likes to vote Republican sometimes, but nobody’s perfect. She a great woman and a good mom.

My father is a registered Democrat.

He runs a flower shop now, after the police chief gig fell through. I have no idea how he manages to keep the place open while also paying alimony and our house’s mortgage without spiraling into bottomless suicidal ideation, but he’s always super giddy when I see him. He has a court-ordered therapist now and’s been taking medication since the last ‘incident’, so he’s probably definitely doing completely okay. He does not have custody.

Asriel is set to come home this upcoming weekend, the day after the day after tomorrow, for summer break. Castle Township High starts summer vacay mid-June, so I’ve got another month to go before I’m free. Dad’s adamant about spending the weekend together with us; it’s his gateway to a summer of frequent visits and a hopeful flower shop summer run by father, human, and son—and now the movie’s over, and now my spiel is done.

“So what was that whole freak-out this morning, anyways?”

“Huh?”

“Man—” Susie grabs Berdly by the head plume and gives him a shaking. “You don’t remember?” she says. “The ‘cursed chalk’ you made me steal back from Miss Alphys just to bring here—oh, so you were just fucking with us, huh?”

“Me?” Berdly points inward. He strikes a gay pose. “Never! That chalk is absolutely positively ‘cursed’. Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a ‘cursed’—!”

He yelps, diving under an eraser Susie pegs at him.

“I told you to cut out with the weird talking crap, Nerdly,” Susie shouts.

On all fours, wings and legs, ‘Nerdly’ scampers like some kind of moron around the detention room’s perimeter. Susie gives chase, pushing forward with a broom she finds against a wall. I think she’s trying to shove it up his cloaca.

“K-Kris!” he shouts, beak wide. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!” But that’s a lot of work, so I don’t.

“It’s awful nice those two are getting along so well,” Ralsei remarks, allowed to speak now the movie’s done.

I mean, she’s chasing him around with a broom.

“Okay,” Ralsei says. He plops his head sideways atop the desk, his fuzzy ears the perfect pillow. “But she’s just, um, you know,” and here he pauses. We both ponder a moment.

Roughhousing?

“Yeah!” He perks up. His ears do this jumpy thing when he does. “It’s not like she’s trying to murder him.”

I consider Susie’s wicked grin, her Goliath strength. The way she runs the broom down the narrow passageways between the desks, bristles jabbing the bottoms of Berdly’s bird-feet. Hidden deep beneath her tousled mane, above her sharp, dripping teeth I see it. A beady pair of eyes, yellow, poke out beneath the jungle of her hair so darkly brown it’s almost black. They’re wide, not narrowed like a predator hunting prey. The bottom eyelids crest up gently, almost twinkling.

Her pursuant likewise doesn’t run like any prey I’ve seen. Though adrenaline drives him forward the catalyst isn’t fear—excitement is imprecise but explains it well enough.

And just as I’m about to agree with Ralsei and shake his paw and pat him on the back and give him a high-five and dance a little jig, I remember being slammed into a locker, breaking my back as well as any positive interpretation of the scene before me.

“Because she thought you were being a creep to that girl,” Ralsei notes.

Touché. I made sure to clear that one up before we got back to class and got detention.

Eventually Berdly and Susie run out of steam; guess neither is big on cardio. They brush themselves off and look at me sitting in my chair like I should’ve joined them and I give them a blank stare back that probably comes off a little judgmental. They share a good laugh either way.

“So the chalk,” Susie gets around to saying.

“‘Cursed chalk’,” Berdly says.

“Okay,” Susie says. “What’s the curse?”

We start packing up for the day. School ended at two-thirty and detention ran out around four, but between the Berdly’s lengthy preliminary tirade preceding a two-hour movie and the Hans Zimmer detour from said movie, it’s getting close to five, about the time the other clubs are closing up shop.

Susie slings her backpack across her left shoulder. It’s a Jansport, the left strap missing and main zipper broken. Berdly’s is a High Sierra XBT TSA—modified with a ceramic plate insert in case of a school shooting—bulging with textbooks and whatever else he’s got crammed in there.

He starts explaining: “As you already know, Hagoromo is an exquisitely premium brand, often referred to as ‘the Rolls Royce of chalk’ by many a professor and mathematician alike. Compared to the bargain competitor, the markup is in excess of one thousand percent.”

Susie whistles. I try to, too, but fail.

Berdly continues. “Normally the tax-subsidized Castle Township High would have to settle for the cheap stuff, but as a part of their frequent attempts to court administration—Susie, listen! This is important and—get your finger out of your nose and pay attention!” he says. “I heard it from the principal himself!

“Anywho, the Holidays supply the expensive chalk, naturally. It’s common knowledge the mother Holiday is an avid orientalist. But in twenty-fifteen the company announced that production would cease, leading to a frenzy of chalk-hoarding. The demand led to an acquisition by the Korean Sejongmall, but following the Southern Dissolution and subsequent eradication of private property in New Korea, the company moved to Communist China, where it now resides.”

“Cool. What’s the curse?” Susie says for a second time.

“I’m getting to that—so zip it!” Berdly quacks. “Susie, this ‘chalk’,” he picks up the open box sitting idly on a desk. It rattles a bit. “This was purchased way back in twenty-fifteen! This is an original Japanese ‘Hagoromo’!”

“What’s Japan got anything to do with—”

“SOO—” Berdly’s voice peaks. “—ZEE!” He gets up on the tips of the webs of his feet. “If you would kindly—zip it!—for just a moment longer you would know because I’m about to tell you!

“See, the Japanese put a curse on this chalk to curb the hoarding frenzy. It dates back to its the company’s inception almost a century ago! It dates back to the time of the Japanese Empire! It’s an ‘evil’ curse!” He brings a wing to his forehead for dramatic flair. “And you and Kris have just eaten this ‘evil’ ‘cursed chalk’!”

“Nerdly.” Susie clamps a hand down on his shoulder. Her head stoops low with her voice. “I’m gonna ask you one last time to explain what the hell this goddamn curse is or I’m gonna make you eat the rest of this box!”

“Iiii—!”

Berdly wants to shriek again but the mechanical cycling of the detention room door drains the joy from his eyes into something stone-faced serious.

“Hi Kris! Oh, and, um, Susie and Berdly, too!”

Berdly slowly turns, melodrama and horror paling his feathers a shade of ghostly light blue. At the doorway stands a long-faced reindeer girl with long top-mounted antlers sprouting out from a head of long blade-length blonde hair draping over a long-patterned red-black-and-green Christmas sweater, and a long ankle-reaching pleated skirt. This is Noelle Holiday.

“We’re too late,” Berdly squeaks. He makes a great deal about cradling his face and pleading to God for mercy. He falls.

Susie, conversely, stands dumbly, book bag drooping low on her shoulder. “Oh, uh, Kris,” she says once I get up to return Noelle’s greeting. “I didn’t know you two, uh, knew each other.”

“Of course!” Noelle says. She clasps her hands and lets them hang. “Our families have known each other since forever. We even used to do Christmas together.”

I stare at my shoes. There’s a budding hole in the left toe.

Susie’s maw seals shut for a few moments. Her brow furrows as she turns from me to Noelle. “So,” she says low, mumbling without parting her lips much. She hesitates some more, maybe waiting for rescue. Berdly’s still writhing on the floor. Ralsei clears his throat.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” I say facetiously.

Noelle edges towards the table with the chalk—reveals it before she says it. “I’m helping out with some preparations for Multicultural Night next week. With the Asian Student Association.”

“Which one?”

Noelle’s hands unclasp, bringing one to her mouth to stifle a smirk. “C’mon Kris, obviously the Japanese one.”

I follow her eyes. It’s undeniable. She’s locked on to the ostensibly ‘cursed chalk’.

Tiptoeing over Berdly’s fallen wing she arrives at the table and begins a thorough inspection of the box. The chalk inside rattles as she turns it.

“I, uh, see you tore it open already,” Noelle says nervously.

“Susie did it.”

“W-what?!” Susie sputters suddenly. She stamps toward me, jabbing a finger. “Don’t blame this all on me! You ate half a piece, too!”

“…‘ate’?”

From behind Susie, Noelle’s head pops out, tilted. “Kris, you ate one of the last remaining original Japanese Hagoromo Fulltouch white chalks?” With each proceeding syllable she transitions incrementally from dazed and confused to twisted and shouting.

“Susie ate the other half.”

Noelle falls backwards. She finds a proximal seat to land in and slumps back, defeated. “Well,” she says to the ceiling in this distant, airy, trance-like voice. “At least we have the rest of the box.”

Ralsei and I fight in silence. He tries explaining himself multiple times but I refuse to hear; I know only violence. The others bear witness to a lunatic psychopath air-boxing empty space.

As we trade asymmetric fisticuffs Susie trudges over to Noelle’s desk. She finds herself able to flap her gums freely this time, now that Noelle’s not facing her.

“You know, Nicole—I mean, Noelle,” she stammers. “We could, uh—we could come back with you to your club room to explain what happened.”

Noelle perks up. “You’d really do that for me?” Susie’s mouth snaps shut as soon as the two meet gazes.

“Sure thing,” she coughs out.

And so we do. Or at least, we begin to. Noelle’s the first out, her mood lifted a fair bit, telling us Room 214 on the second floor. Berdly goes next, walking briskly, continuing to mutter loudly about how ‘it’s too late’ and ‘we’re all doomed’. It’d help if he took a moment to explain what the hell he’s talking about—or at the bare minimum hint us in on what this ‘evil’ chalk curse is to begin with—so of course he doesn’t.

Remaining is me and Susie, the latter of whom appears to have caught the former’s brand of insanity, talking to herself in the corner. My own personal schizo-soldier, Ralsei, urges me ahead of her.

“Kris.”

I feel a tug at my book bag’s top loop just as Berdly absconds. When I turn around Susie has this incredible face on—soft, muted features like a contrite puppy—one which I’d never seen anything like on her.

“You’re pretty good friends with Noelle, so I was hoping to ask you…”

I nod. Susie takes a second or two to keep going. She bares her teeth, pointed yellow eyes straining to maintain composure. Her fists clench tightly. She looks at the ground, and before her messy hair conceals it I catch a dusting of pink across the bridge of her snout.

“…um, if you know stuff she likes—and stuff.”

Something like the sound of a dying roach comes next, but the roach continues its death quietly. Susie simmers in place, gathering resolve.

“Look, um, Kris,” she says. Her vocal cadence begins to even out a bit. Her eyes narrow forward. “I know she’s, like, probably super duper extremely out of my league and stuff, but do you think someone like me has any chance with a girl like her? Even a little bit?” She swallows a gulp that lurches her whole body. “Even though we’re both girls?” For a moment I’m humored by her groveling for a favor, but then reality sets in.

I don’t want to talk about the conversation Ralsei forces upon me after that.

“Totally,” I tell her right away. “Go for it. I’ll help.”

Susie breaks into a smile. All tension explodes out with her laughter. “Awesome, dude!” She wraps me in a loose headlock. “We’ll be partners in crime—uh, well we’re not gonna kidnap her or anything, but you get the idea.”

“Yep.”

“Well—! Maybe you could kidnap her,” the gears in Susie’s mind turn something dangerous, “and, and then I can swoop in and—”

I try my best judgmental brow raise on for size.

“—yeah, you’re right. That’s kind of bad, huh?” Susie says. “But that’s why I’ve got you around.” She punches my shoulder. It could be hard or not hard; I wouldn’t have felt it either way.

As we depart, Ralsei animatedly outlines a five-step plan for Susan O’Brien to court Noelle Holiday, but I tune him out. He’s much too soft and romantic for logic to have any say in his deranged machinations. And as I’m clearly the lead expert on these sorts of things, I decide for myself a plan of action.

Beginning with objective one: buy a goddamn toothbrush.

“I didn’t realize there were two Asian Student Associations,” Berdly says.

We’re walking as four in a two-by-two. As my first executive action as Susie’s professional third wheel, I stride beside Berdly at the rear, forcing Susie to walk alongside Noelle up front. I’d prefer if it were Susie doing the talking with Noelle, but she seems content enough walking so close, the way her hands fiddle nervously with the hem of her corduroy jacket.

“It’s kind of confusing, isn’t it?” Noelle says. “There used to be just one, but they split over some argument. This was five years ago, I think. Dess was actually the reason why it happened.”

“Do elaborate—ow!” I let Berdly off easy with a stomp to his un-shoed foot; his mournful look earns him forgiveness. For there’s a single unspoken rule about the Holidays everyone seems to agree on: don’t talk about December.

“Well,” Noelle begins. “It was around this time of year, during Multicultural Night. Dess set up her little nook with the old ASA, as per my mother’s request.”

“She didn’t…?

“N-not this time,” Noelle clarifies, heeding the implication. Presently I wonder just how much of her older sisters’ reputation reaches her. “She’s Japanese—half—just the same as me, so she put up, like, a bunch of Rising Sun flags and banners. You know, the white one with the red circle and, like, all the red lines coming out from the center—and it takes, like, five seconds before the Korean and Chinese and some other ASA members start getting really upset and, like, you know how Dess gets, so it basically ruined the entire event. What’s really crazy is that, like, the other few Japanese students took her side, and then, like, my mom got involved and it, like, spiraled out of control.”

“Hm,” Berdly hums, a little confused. “So why not name the second club the ‘Japanese Student Association’? Isn’t that easier than having two ASA clubs?”

Noelle makes a kind face that has Susie fighting demons, then gives a playful shrug. “I dunno. I just know the story behind it.”

We’ve reached Room 214 when the conversation winds down. It’s pretty dark inside, the same layout as the other classrooms, the walls are blank and featureless in the dark, though as I know this to be a Spanish classroom—the teacher to whom it belongs is a Colombian native who’s known to be a major hardass about pronunciation—and so my imagination fills in a poster of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, a map of South America, and papel picado crowning the walls. Most of the desks are cleared away from the center; the teacher prefers the U-shaped desk arrangement, I guess. The enclosing structure traps us within the authority of a council of sorts seated at the well of the U. A few stray members here and there line the walls.

The head group becomes three once Noelle hurries to the left seat. At the front of each of their desks sits width-folded index cards labeled with Sharpie standing tentwise. They read ‘Half Japanese’, starting with Noelle on the left, then the opposite right seat is labeled ‘Full Japanese’, and finally the center: ‘Fresh Off the Boat’.

Fresh Off the Boat, a bespectacled fellow with no apparent features discernible in the dark, stands so still you’d think him dead. Noelle hands him the chalk, and he turns it over in his hands. The third, a fox-ish girl named Ceroba, whom I know of from class, whispers something over to him and he whispers back.

“You opened this?” he says.

Berdly flinches as he’s addressed. Birds don’t typically sweat, but maybe Berdly does—that, or he’s already reached the point of tears.

Susie comes to his rescue, stepping forward so she’s blocking his scrawny ass completely from their scrutiny. Her resolve wavers when Noelle gives a little wave, but she manages to hone her attention away from any distractions.

“I opened the chalk,” Susie says. “Miss Alphys—the long-term sub in Room 115—she told us to get more chalk from the supply closet, so, uh, we did.”

Fresh Off the Boat (henceforth ‘FOtB’, for simplicity’s sake) might’ve made a complex expression, but the light coming through the windows from the hallways strikes him in a way that makes it difficult to perceive.

Lacking inflection, he says, “every standard box of Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk comes with exactly seventy-two pieces. I see two pieces are missing.”

“Well, uh, I dunno about the other piece. Miss Alphys probably used it for class or something, but I ate the other bit.”

FOtB’s palm slaps down onto the table. “You what?!”

“I—” Susie falters a moment, but emboldens herself for Noelle’s sake, who shrinks back at FOtB’s sternness. “I ate the chalk. Like,” she mimics pinching a piece and dropping down her gullet, “munch,” she says.

“That’s impossible,” he says. A speck of spittle hits my cheek. “You’d be dead.”

“Huh?” Confusions sets on Susie’s face. “I eat Ha-go-ro-mo, like, all the time. Never died before.”

“You’ve been eating modern Hagoromo,” FOtB corrects. “This is an original Japanese production, one of the last of its kind. This ‘chalk’ is different.”

“See, Kris?!” Berdly shout-whispers into my ear. “I was telling the truth!”

“Well, they seem convinced it’s different,” Ralsei whispers softly in my other ear, “but you ate one too and you’re still fine.”

“Maybe it’s because you and Susie only ate half?” Berdly suggests. “Either way that ‘chalk’ is definitely a ‘cursed chalk’!”

I sort of shrug a little, at both.

Back to Susie and the ASA, “look, man,” she says. “I’m sorry I ate your antique chalk or whatever, but there’s nothing I can do about that, ‘less you want me to puke it out for you. I just wanna make sure, N-Noelle’s not, like, in any trouble. Your beef’s with me exclusively. Go tell a teacher. Another detention’s nothing to me.” She grins proudly at that last part.

“Noelle did her best, given the circumstances,” FOtB states calmly. “You and your friends, on the other hand…”

“Kris, Susie, look out!”

His furry paw yanks me backwards, and his floofy body breaks my fall, letting me roll out of the way of two miscellaneous ASA club members lunging at me. One tackles Berdly to the ground. Susie, alerted to the danger, thinks fast, snatching the box of Hagoromo from FOtB’s desk and barrels through the one ASA member left standing.

“Come on, Nerdly!” she barks.

“No! Susan! I’m slain! O, I am slain!” he cries. To his apparent tackle-er, quickly, “if thou be merciful.”

“Dude, what the hell are you talking about?” Susie manhandles his wing, tossing me the box, caught by Ralsei, alley-ooped back to me, and pulls him from under a blocky guy I presume is at least part Japanese. “Come on, Kris! We’re going!”

She doesn’t have to tell me once. I lunge forwards, land and skid perpendicular to the doorway, then escape into the hallway.

Azzy used to run track back in high school; I facsimile the running form he taught me: back upright with a slight forward cant and a midfoot strike. I’m not entirely sedentary on account of walking a fair distance back from school most days, but it’s a pedestrian performance nonetheless.

That being said, it’s a good twenty seconds or so before Susie and eventually Berdly come barreling down the hall after me. Berdly’s trying to flap his wings like it’ll speed him up, but that only lags his pace.

Our pursuers, luckily, are not so adequate. They tail us by a good ten yards, a gap which lengthens despite Berdly’s shenanigans.

Our feet fly down the large staircase within the center lobby. The secretary at the front desk passes us a cold glare.

I catch a better glimpse of FOtB behind me. He’s some kind of fox. I guess ‘kitsune’ should be more appropriate. In the light I see clearly his hair, light purple from something out of a dream, and dark purple fur. Despite his hostility his face is naturally kind, and I almost feel bad when he slams face-first into the large mechanical push door which previously allowed our exit.

He cradles his snout in his hands, and the other fully Japanese girl, Ceroba, kneels beside him and picks up his glasses.

The secretary comes out to meet them, hollering something that doesn’t reach my ears.

Success setting in, we four collapse onto the pavement. It’s nearly ninety degrees in May with fucking eighty-two percent humidity, so the outdoor air does little to medicate our exhaustion.

Berdly spreads his wings over his head for shade, feet skipping across the concrete like it’s lava, towards the nearest tree. Susie attempts to move, but she’s immobilized on all fours, sweating out all the moisture in her body into that jacket of hers. Yet Ralsei in particular suffers the most from the humidity. A jacket can be shed but thick fur brings him to the ground. My ego denies him the sweet release of death.

“I guess she locked the mechanical door. We got pretty lucky,” Ralsei pants, like a dog.

Suddenly Susie jumps, nearly makes it to her feet, but falls on her back. She crawls backwards, kicking away with her legs.

“Wha—? Who the fuck are you ?!”

Chapter Text

“Okay, so let me get this straight.”

Susie struggles to concentrate, pacing with hands clasped behind her back along the length of the detention room. She stops in front of me.

“You have an imaginary friend named Ralsei.”

Ralsei and I nod.

The next time she arrives at the blackboard she grabs a piece of paper I brought in from home. It’s a crude crayon drawing, the colors diluted and dry, of Mom and Dad and me and Azzy, except I drew myself with long floppy goat ears and small horns to look like them. “And he looks like your fursona from when you were a kid.”

“Yeah…” Ralsei admits sheepishly.

“But now we’ve both eaten half a piece each of this chalk—”

“‘Cursed chalk’,” Berdly corrects from his desk, next to me and Ralsei.

“Yeah, sure,” Susie says. “So Kris and me shared this chalk which is supposed to be ‘cursed’ by a bunch of crazy Japanese people who want it to be World War Two again, and now Ralsei can actually interact with Kris and he can see and hear things they wouldn’t be able to see and hear normally; and now I can interact with him, too, now.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Berdly says.

“Hundy-p,” Ralsei concurs.

Susie frowns. She goes cross-armed for a sec, but then slips a hand behind her jacket. “Kris, stay there. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Ralsei shuffles ‘round her, then gives three fluffy fingers.

“Three,” I say.

She shakes her head. “Lucky guess. How many now?”

“Four.”

“What about now?”

“Two.”

“And now?”

“Three again.”

“Now?”

“Still three.”

This goes on for probably another hundred rounds, her sanity slipping away with each feeble try to retain tenancy over the land of the sane and able-minded, yet Berdly points out that one hundred attempts ought to be suitable evidence. ‘Null hypothesis rejected’, or so says he. It’s worth noting that his initial belief in us is pure faith. He hasn’t eaten any chalk and therefore cannot see or hear Ralsei.

“In other news,” he says, changing the subject wisely. Susie nonetheless trudges over to him. “I couldn’t help but notice how lecherously you were eyeing up Noelle yesterday. Could it be that—aieep!”

Berdly shrinks into his chair as Susie pretends to rear up for a punch. She takes a moment to grin, as much a gesture of sombre friendship as sadistic glee at his wet-noodley flinching, but then something gives and her shoulders droop.

“Yeah, man. I-I know she’s kind of out of my league, but…” Her scales burn bright red, mouth pursing tightly. For a second I think she’s gonna cry.

“She’s out of everyone’s league, sister,” Berdly reassures her; his face tears away to hide something, that I suspect he knows the feeling personally. “I mean, she’s the most popular girl in school. And unlike her sister for only the right reasons.”

Ralsei kicks and giggles a bit. “Don’t be blue, Sue. You gotta go for it. I believe in you.”

The bird in question adds without prompt. “But, um, you know, Irish folks are very hot nowadays. All the rage. Ever seen Peaky Blinders? Cillian Murphy? He was in Batman Begins, too. Or how about Liam Neeson? I guess he was also in Batman Begins, but he’s very Irish, you know.”

“It’s Cillian Murphy. It’s a hard ‘C’ sound,” Susie says.

“Oh, you would know that,” Berdly says. “You white ethnics and your esoteric culture.”

“Man, everyone knows how to pronounce the name ‘Cillian’!”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh!”

The two argue like this for a while.

It turns out the Japanese ASA went through with tattling on Susie. She’s the only one with detention this Wednesday. I’m just here upon her and Ralsei’s insistence, and for moral support.

Yesterday, after Susie realized she could see Ralsei, we hadn’t any time to figure things out because Mom’s SUV came screaming into the parking lot with hell close behind. Apparently she’d gotten home from her choir practice and realized I wasn’t home yet, so she drove all the way back to school looking pretty mighty pissed off. Had to clean up a lot of fur when we got back.

Oh, and I made sure to ditch the chalk the first chance I got, by the by. Threw all the pieces down the first storm drain I came ‘cross. I know it kind of reduces the whole ASA incident and everything else to a grand waste of time and effort, but my mood was sour from the chewing out Mom gave me and I was honestly ready to wash my hands of the whole ordeal. Noelle, by her good grace, dropped off a new box of Hagoromo at Miss Alphys’ this morning. Made in China.

Berdly was actually pretty mad I dumped it. Said he wanted to eat one himself and get, quote-unquote, ‘cool powers’—if by cool powers he means depression-induced schizophrenia manifested as a bitchy personal attendant with a fetish for grandstanding every single little thing you say and do and think—which is what I told him, to which he responded something bawdy and boldly gay in the way straight guys are; I’d rather not be remind of the particulars. Big talk for a guy who made a big fuss about not eating it in the first place.

He’s distracted himself with other pursuits now anyhow, namely stealing my goddamn job.

“You know Susie, Multicultural Night is coming up soon,” he says on this occasion. “You could try asking Noelle out.”

Like, the fuck? Who the hell asks someone out to a multicultural night? That’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve heard in my entire life, in the history of the whole wide world. Like, I figure he’s got Asperger’s or something—did he just, like, blurt that one out by accident?

Ralsei conveys to Susie the gist of my thoughts.

“Yeah, dude. The hell are you smoking?”

“Me?” Berdly appears dismayed. “I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas. I’m your best shot at getting with Noelle and you know it.” He begins to pace, a hand behind his back and a finger wagging towards the ceiling. “I’m very young, you know. Enterprising, too. My mind is shrewd and I’ve watched enough Love on the Spectrum to know how these sorts of things work.”

Susie scratches the underside of her chin, an otherwise lethal manoeuvre if not for the resisting power of scales against her clawed finger. It elicits imagery of an artisan chipping away at a marble slab, steadily uncovering the David within. In other words, Susie was thinking long and hard.

Berdly occupies himself with a Nintendo Switch procured from his bulletproof backpack. Only presently do I notice he’s wearing pants today—taupe cargo shorts really bring the school-ID-on-a-lanyard look together. We’re playing Super Smash Brothers when the gears in Susie’s head slip loose of their inertia and get to turning.

“Uh, Kris. How close were you with Noelle exactly? I know you don’t hang out much nowadays but, uh, what about when you were kids?”

“Their parents are friends with her parents,” Ralsei clarifies, adjusting his glasses with a pointed finger. “But they were really close childhood friends. Kris even had a c—” I slap a palm across Ralsei’s mouth. The one upside to this ‘curse’, as it seems, is that I can now by authority of hylic force make Ralsei to shut up for sure if I want.

As Berdly’s tearing me three new assholes in Smash, I further consider the utility of the ‘curse’. I mean, here I am allocating one hundred percent of my focus to the game while Ralsei converses with Susie in my stead. By the toll of one hundred billion deaths, our gods of ambition—our gods of men—sculpted this globe in their image by only the power of their own biology. But I’ve taken one step beyond that, as has Susie. The capacity to remotely scry, to covertly correspond, a level of clairvoyance rivaling the most sophisticated technologies of our modern age, lesser minds should fill the world with chaos and death, and those of greater stuff would bring it to its knees.

With this in mind, it’s exquisitely fortunate that my own ambition ends at mild convenience. Like, imagine if Bin Laden had a Stand. Zero Dark Thirty’d be a totally different movie, that’s for certain.

Anyways, back to Susie’s plan: “What if Kris starts being friends with Noelle again?” she says. “If Kris and Noelle are friends again, and me and Kris are friends, then I could be friends with Noelle, too!” Susie gestures animatedly. “It’s genius!”

“ Ingenious , Susan. Your former is a noun, and mine latter is the adjective which you seek.”

“Uh, ‘kay, but the plan’s rock-solid, yeah?”

Ralsei giggles a little. “You could just go up and talk to her, you know.”

“Huh? What are you,” and then she calls him a bad word, “or something? She’ll think I’m some kind of gay weirdo.” Incidentally I happen to know Noelle Holiday a bisexual by an anecdote involving the largest yuri hentai folder I’d ever before seen (my brother is Asriel Dreemurr). “This is obviously the easiest way to approach this.”

“I concur,” Berdly announces very matter-of-factly. “Very intelligent. Very clever. I can think of no flaws in your thought process.”

“I see,” Ralsei says. “Well, Kris’ brother Azzy’s gonna be home on Friday. He and Noelle’s older sister Dess go to the same college, so the Dreemurrs and the Holidays always get together at church the following Sunday.”

“Dude!” Susie clambers over the desks. Berdly’s Switch slaps the desk face-first. “Dude,” she says again. “That’s actually perfect! Kris can make me friends with his brother, who then makes me friends with this Dess girl—which is basically easy access to Noelle.”

Ralsei and I raise an eyebrow in unison. “That’s a lot of moving parts, Susie,” he says. “And besides—”

“I’m, uh, not really sure you want to be making friends with Dess Holiday,” Berdly cuts in as he inspects his Switch screen for hairline cracks.

“Not her sister? How come?” Susie’s face falls an inch.

Ralsei starts to speak, and, knowing what he’s about to say, I opt to butt in for once.

“Uh,” I begin, agonizing the best way to explain things gently, eying the Dead Kennedys shirt peeking out between the columns of her unzippered jacket. “You know Holiday in Cambodia?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s say she sings along to all the lyrics.”

“ Every word?” Susie’s face falls a mile.

Berdly and I nod. “Every word, that foul woman. A very foul woman, she is. Very cruel,” he says.

“W-wait.” Panic sets in on Susie’s face. “Noelle isn’t like that, is she?”

“Not in the slightest,” Berdly says, and if the last five seconds aged Susie forwards twenty years, Berdly’s reassurance brings her back to the present. But then he adds, “though I’ll posit that through inaction Noelle’s ambivalence is a direct endorsement of her sister’s tendencies.”

“Wait a sec,” Susie says, pulling over a chair, legs and arms crossing over each other. “How do you know about Noelle’s sister?”

“Everyone does.” Berdly shrugs. “Holiday family business becomes everyone’s business eventually.”

“I’m surprised you hadn’t heard already.” Ralsei’s atop a table now, again swinging his feet between its legs.

“I’ve only been here a year, you know. I, uh, moved in from New England, uh, Boston, but ‘fore that New Hampshire.” Susie goes back to scratching her chin.

“Do they really call water fountains ‘bubblers’ up there?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Barbarians!” Berdly scoffs.

“Hey, man, at least I know how to say ‘watah ’ fountain. The hell’s a ‘wooder’?”

“The same ‘wooder’ in ‘wooder ice’.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense! Water and ice are the same thing!”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-huh!”

They’re off to the races again.

I slump back in my chair and spectate, my allotted speaking for the day way over-budget. The consensus is that neither the near-utopian denizens of southeast Pennsylvania nor the troglodytes of New England have been taught to properly speak, and things move on to the news of the world.

In the meantime, I set aside this moment for introspection. By all means it should be a bizarre thing for me, sitting in my chair so comfortably, closing my eyes and listening to Susie and Berdly prattle. I’ll reach a point where my social battery empties out, and I’ll drift off into a peaceful stasis. Not quite asleep but not completely awake, the ambient conversation wraps around me like a blanket.

It’s nostalgic. I haven’t felt this comfort in years. To close my eyes, to fail to keep them open and feel safe at the same time is a privilege I haven’t felt in years.

Visions of a distant past flash behind my eyes. It’s Christmas Eve. I’m not sure how many years ago—maybe five, maybe more than five—but I’m sitting in front of the TV between Azzy and Noelle, and next to Noelle sits Dess. I breathe deeply, and filling my young lungs is the faint scent of cinnamon and butterscotch. We’re tuning in to that annual twenty-four hour Christmas Story marathon. Noelle’s long since nodded off, letting the side of her antlered head rest against her sister’s shoulder.

Little Ralphie Parker’s just opened up his Red Ryder BB gun when Dess’ face goes through a familiar routine. She scurries over to her parents. She wants her own Red Ryder BB gun, like Ralphie Parker has in the movie. Her parents tell her she’ll shoot her eye out. It’s a rare moment of mutual, cordial agreement between the two that’s only appropriate for this time of year. Dess pouts and pretends to cry, but Mom quickly dispels her tantrum with a slice of pie. Dess does this every year.

My mouth waters as the spicy sweet smell fills my nose. I consider getting a slice myself, but Noelle has nowhere else to lean without Dess, so she sways from side to side in a hypnotic kind of way before finding a home in my lap. I stiffen and freeze. Pie is presently the very very final thing on my mind. A smile creeps up my face and I can’t put it away. In spite of the room’s warmth I feel my face burn even hotter as her resting form subtly rises and lowers with each of her breaths. It’s the best Christmas gift my younger self could’ve asked for, and I’d treasure it for the years to come.

I still do, even though I shouldn’t.

The thought snaps my eyes open and I gasp for air, suddenly restive. A long snout covers my view.

“You’re Dreemurr, yeah?”

I scramble out of my chair. It’s Ceroba, from the (Japanese) ASA.

Getting a better look at her, she’s wearing this fashionably off-white crop hoodie, unzipped, matching-colored shorts, and under the hoodie a black tank top. She’s got her hands in her pockets like she’s hot shit or something, but since it’s a crop hoodie the pockets are halfway up her midsection and she looks like she’s doing the chicken dance. A muted ‘pop’ draws my attention to her mouth, where a flash of pink bubble gum retreats behind her teeth.

It takes all of five seconds to get the ABG memo.

“Um, hello?” Vexation drips from her voice. “I’m talking to you?” Not a question, but presented as one.

“Ah—” Berdly attempts, but a sidelong glance sharpened by her done up eyelashes reduces the poor bird to a bumbling mess.

The room goes quiet for a couple seconds. Susie starts picking her nose.

“Okay, like, I guess I missed that today was act like a braindead moron day? But I’m gonna need to borrow Dreemurr for a few minutes. That okay?”

Crickets.

“Cool. Thanks.” She grabs my arm and practically drags me out the door, to my impending doom.

“I know you don’t have the chalk on your person, bee-tee-dubs,” Ceroba says. “Else you would’ve made a fuss when I came to get you.”

I sort of shrug.

Outside the detention room, just past its windows, waits Fresh Off the Boat, whom Ceroba introduces properly as Chujin Ketsukane.

Away from the shadows and up close, he presents himself rather cordially. His thick glasses labor earnestly to neuter any notion of coldness. Being in the twilight weeks of Spring, he wears dark cargo shorts in a similar way to Berdly, but politens his demeanor with a white short-sleeved Oxford button-down and a tight Spring vest, white knee socks and loafers.

“We are, however, still very interested in having the Hagoromo for Multicultural Night,” he says.

I hadn’t picked up on this before, but he speaks in an accent marked by a forced American domestication, for his normal way of speaking is certainly not so deep. Each syllable is calculated with a meticulous precision that refuses to conform with colloquial habit; even the way he enunciates his own ‘Hagoromo’ is unnatural, stilted.

“But before you make a hasty decision, Dreemurr, please consider that we are willing to barter,” he says.

“We’re not dumb enough to expect you to just hand it over,” Ceroba takes it from here. She stops to scritch under Chujin’s chin; he wags his tail and taps his foot and I swallow a laugh. “That O’Brien girl,” she, who apparently deals exclusively in surnames, continues, “she’s got a thing for Holiday, right?”

I nod.

A hand goes to her hip. “Well, I was eavesdropping in on your ‘scheming’ earlier and figured you’d need my help.”

“If you surrender the chalk. We will play ‘Cupid’ for her,” Chujin nods.

“I,” forcing the words out. “Berdly and I have it under control.

She grins slyly. “Come on, Dreemurr, d’you seriously want to make a fool of her that badly? Think you’ll bring her down a peg so you’ll look good in comparison?”

I put on a cross face.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. You think that sped Eugene is some kind of Casanova?” She laughs loudly. “You’re lucky I happen to know Holiday’s a,” and she says a bad word, “to begin with. Give me the chalk and Susie O’Brien and I’ll give you back a brand new girl. Teach herself a little fashion, lose herself a lotta weight, make herself take a shower for once in her life—maybe by the end she’ll be less than fifty light years out of Holiday’s league—like, oh my God.”

This time my anger is real.

My right hand clenches into a fist. And before I know it I’ve punched her ‘cross the nose. Things move towards the speed of light. She yells, clutching a nosebleed. Droplets of ichorous red stain her clothes, seep into the material and begin to spread. She tries to swipe at me with her free hand and nicks my left cheek—those claws are no joke.

It’s fairly fortunate we hadn’t gone more than ten yards or so from the detention room, ‘cause Susie’s able to come to my aid before things escalate. Charging with a broom, the same from before, she strikes Ceroba’s solar plexus. Seemingly untrained in any sort of combat, she falls like a rag doll, or that maybe her fur is so soft as to cushion an otherwise violent fall.

“Kris! You alright?” Susie says.

I’m fine, and I tell her I’m fine. Ralsei appears beside me, apparently alerted Susie to the imminent danger. Presently Ceroba remains on the ground, clutching her stomach. Chujin kneels over her, a look of soft concern about him.

Susie gives me a once-over before grabbing my arm. “C’mon, we gotta bounce, dude!”

“Right.”

Berdly’s already locked up the detention room by the time we’ve passed him. His hustle is the stuff of legends, I think to myself.

I’m returned sovereign autonomy over my arm once it’s clear we’re not being followed. Though she shrinks further and further in the distance with each step, I feel the full intensity, the frozen chill of her stare. It haunts me even as we round the bend, straight into the lobby. Even as we break through the air conditioning and into the outside humidity a cold flash strikes my back. Looking back as we leave the school behind I swear I see that same pair of eyes watching me through the windows of the front lobby.

“I didn’t know your last name was Eugene,” I’m telling Berdly at some point or another.

He doesn’t reply. We’re headed towards his place on foot. It’s ostensibly hot out and he’s the closest.

I say ostensibly because I feel like I’m going insane. The weird coldness from before’s only magnified in intensity since leaving school. Susie and Berdly step and occasionally stagger, mouth-breathing from exhaustion; coversely my arms stiffen and shiver, hands rubbing a fervor to stay warm, yet stinging all over at the slightest touch.

But anyhow, I’ve just finished up explaining the whole incident with Ceroba—with Ralsei’s assistance, of course. His gracious kindness lends him foresight to omit the intensities of the kitsune girl’s biting insults.

“Man,” Susie grunts. “The hell do they want that chalk so bad in the first place?”

“Maybe because of the magic powers?” Berdly offers his supposition. Presently I realize he heard little of our explanation of the scuffle. I’ll have to fill him in later when I’m less cold.

“I dunno, man. They thought that eating the chalk would, like, murderize us, right?” Susie says.

“Lies. Deceit,” Berdly quacks. “Clearly they know something we don’t. There’s a greater conspiracy at play here.”

“Not like it even matters,” Susie scoffs. “Kris ditched the chalk down a storm drain. All we gotta do is tell them that and they’ll leave us alone.” A grin creeps up her face. “Maybe they’ll even go sewer diving for it.”

“Oh, Susan. Again, your ignorance knows no bounds.” Berdly smirks in his classic way. “You’d do well to know that the sewer and the storm drains are completely different systems.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Nerdly.” She whaps the back of his head.

“Either way, it was awful kind of Kris to stand up for you back there,” Ralsei speaks up. His compassion radiates warmly even in the compounding summer heat. Not that I can feel it.

“Yeah, man.” Susie turns to me. Her arm hangs from the back of her neck. “I, uh, guess I wasn’t treating you so good yesterday morning, but you still went and clobbered her real good.” I try to offer a smile, but a sudden shiver droops my expression. Regardless her hand falls on my shoulder. “Thanks Kris. I really mean it. Like, super for real.”

The warmth of her touch is discomforting. It sends my brain the message of something foreign, an intrusion. My stomach squirms, and my eyes want to squeeze shut, but I keep them open.

“Oh, man, I didn’t even realize you got cut back there, dude.”

Susie jabs a finger at the cut I got from Ceroba. She brings back a bit of blood with her, wipes it on her shirt.

“That’ll make for a pretty wicked battle scar.” She grins.

I feel myself matching her, as does Ralsei, as does Berdly. I rub a thumb across my cheek and get the last traces of blood, letting it scab over from there. And the moment the wound begins to close—far too shallow to actually scar—so, too, does the frigid chill down my back.

Unfortunately, that means I start profusely sweating like a dog in a sauna.

We make it to Berdly’s after another block of walking. Ralsei’s on his knees, practically dragging himself across the pavement. He looks at me and Susie, doe-eyed, pleading yet again for the sweet release of death. He’ll thank me later for opting not to indulge him.

Susie, in her two layers, looks like she might give up the ghost herself. Reptiles don’t sweat—but I guess monster ones do, judging by the dark stain spreading around her collar, or in general have a hard time regulating their body temp. For a moment she grabs the shoulder of her jacket, tempted to pull it off, yet resists.

Our breaths grow increasingly strained. Berdly’s house is in sight, our objective near, but not clear. The sweat pours from my brow into my eyes, but I haven’t the energy to even wipe it from my face. My legs are failing; my mind is failing; my sight is failing. I can feel my life slipping away. I can feel the cracks forming from the center of my soul, spreading and branching and threatening to split me in two. My eyes stay open. I trade looks with Susie and Berdly. If they’re to fade to dust and I’m to keel over and die, then at least it’s among friends, I think to myself.

But then comes an oasis. At first I think it’s a mirage. It has to be, a sight so fine out here in the sleepy suburbs.

I rub my eyes. I blink. The oasis still there. Susie and I turn to each other in tandem. She sees it too. It’s water. Pouring from a hose, accompanied by a chipper tune—it’s the second most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day.

Followed only by the one holding the hose: a remarkably tall woman with a lush coat of bright blue feathers. They peek out in tufts around a form-fitting t-shirt and high-waisted curve-hugging denim short shorts, and two slender legs ending in flip flops.

“Oh, hey little bro!”

“Hello Marty,” Berdly calls back.

Susie and I share a look again. Our jaws hit the fucking floor. Berdly facepalms.

“You and your friends need some help cooling off?” She points to the hose.

“No—” Berdly grunts, trying his damnedest to shove Susie and me through the front door. “We’re, uh, we’re good.”

“M’kay, then. I made some lemonade in the fridge if you like.”

“Yep! Thanks!”

He rams us into the air conditioning and slams the door with all his might.

It takes a moment to air ourselves out. The cool climate-controlled interior takes a while to lick away each drop of sweat down to the last, but once it sets in it’s the greatest thing since two minutes ago. The newfound energy snaps me back to my senses. Reality sets in, and I realize it wasn’t all a dream.

“HOT DAWG!” Susie and I exclaim in unison.

We jump and high five. We lock opposite arms and dance around in a circle. All the suffering and loneliness in the world—I’ll have it all again a million times over if it means reliving that encounter.

“Dude!” Susie’s manic. She grabs Berdly, kneading her forehead all up in his face. “Dude,” she says again, “is your sister, like, single?”

“No!” Berdly squawks crossly. “The heck is wrong with you?!”

“Dude! Are you kidding me?! Have you like, seen your sister? She’s fuckin’ hawt !”

Berdly sighs, gently pushing her away. “Look, Sue, I know you’re one of those inbred patty-mick-bog-jumpers and purportedly— somehow —not at all an immigrant, but here in the United States of America we usually frown upon lusting after family…”

“Oh, yeah? Well my mum’s a fat tub o’ lard and an ugly bitch. At least I know a hot rod mama when I see one, you, um—oh, uh, I mean…” She stumbles over what to call him.

“Oh, boo-hoo! Cracker can’t say slurs!” he taunts back.

The two bicker and pretend to kill each other until Berdly decides it’s time for lemonade.

“And for your information,” Berdly heel-turns and pivots, “she has a boyfriend already.”

“ Who ?!”

Susie punches her open palm. I grab a knife lying on the counter.

Berdly massages his beak. “You know the guy who runs the corner store that used to be a Wawa? Next to the diner.”

“Sure.”

“Well he’s got a younger brother. Been out of town, but they’re weathering the long-distance pretty well. He’s on-site contractor for Saudi Aramco is all.” It gives me thoughts of San Diego.

“Huh? Saudi oil, you mean? Didn’t we just bomb that country?”

“Uh, no.”

“Well I hope he gets bombed so your sister can be available. Or maybe I can just swoop in now…”

“Susan.” Berdly glowers. “Shut the fuck up—you’re a stupid bitch I’ll kill uou.”

We all collapse on the nearest couch and Berdly passes me a glass of lemonade. Then he pours one for Susie, and then himself. While the air condition cooled my exterior facilities, the sugary lemonade with just a hint of bitter aftertaste running down to my stomach radiates outwards and cures the rest of my interior body.

“So now what?” Berdly says, peering over me at Susie. “You’re just giving up on Noelle, then?”

“Hell no,” Susie laughs. “I just know how to enjoy the better things in life.”

“She was awful pretty,” Ralsei remarks.

Presently he appears, perched atop the arm of the couch. He’s fully resuscitated, back to kicking his feet with a happy innocence that conceals the absolutely vile diabolical lust I know lurks just below the surface.

We all quiet ourselves and enjoy the better things in life, as Susie said, sipping our lemonade, letting the sleepy afternoon pass by. Even Ralsei gets his own glass from somewhere.

“Yup.”

“Yep.”

“Mhm.”

“Yup.”

“Yo, Berdly, dude.”

I’m not sure how long it’s been since we sat down, but Berdly’s older sister arrives at the front door nonetheless.

“Do your friends want to stay for dinner?” she asks. “It’s been a while since you’ve had anyone over and I don’t mind cooking for two more.”

“Yes ma’am!” Susie and I and even Ralsei snap to attention. Our excitement forces out our most polite homely smiles.

Berdly sighs. He’s got a long night ahead of him.

“…amen,” Berdly’s sister concludes the mealtime prayer.

“I, um, didn’t know you guys were so religious, Miss Berdly’s Sister—ma’am,” Susie stutters. Ralsei, in my stead, begins pointing out the various instances of Protestant iconography littering every nook and cranny of the Eugene household—the Bible on the coffee table, the slightly ajar God’s Not Dead 4 DVD case next to the smart TV, the black Jesus nativity scene in a glass cabinet, among other things.

“Oh, Susie, just call me Martlet,” Martlet says, and Susie blushes. “Marty for short.”

“A-alright Miss—er, I mean, Marty—um, Martlet.,” Susie says, unsure how exactly to address the woman whom I pin around twenty-seven.

“Anywho, I take it you’re not too big on God, Susie?” Martlet flicks a bit of food off the sleeve of her ‘Women in STEM’ t-shirt.

“Uh! No, I like Jesus, and stuff.” Liar. “See, I’m Irish so my extended family is super Catholic, and I don’t go to the church in town.”

“That’s good. It’d be the biggest blessing to have Berdly read his Bible or go to Sunday service even once.” He rolls his eyes when she says this. “It’s all the same heaven anyhow,” Martlet shrugs. “Well, s’long’s you’re not Muslim or Jewish, that is. We’re Baptists, by the way.”

Berdly’s sister—Martlet—made beef stew. With its thick consistency, tender meat, and potatoes that aren’t overdone, it’s pretty damn good. She sits at the head of the table; Susie and I sit next to each other along the side, and opposite us sits Berdly and Ralsei, the latter of whom eats a slice of imaginary cake from his empty place. A stack of mail, magazines, and whatnot clutter the far end opposite Martlet—cleared away from the center to make room for us.

We sit and eat in silence for some time, but soon the initial mania of hunger lulls.

“So, Kris. Susie.” Martlet starts. “How long’ve you been friends with my baby bro?”

Susie fight the urge to crack wise at ‘baby bro’, who’s been pouting and sulking on account of his two wonderfully loyal newfound friends harboring horrible fetishistic lust towards his own dear older sister who’s selflessly sacrificed so much to raise him in lieu of their parents. He shovels beef stew into his beak while giving Susie an incomprehensible look.

“Susie’s got a reputation as a troublemaker, and I know Kris from class, but we never really talked until just yesterday,” says he.

“Troublemaker?” Martlet reaches out to Susie, touching her shoulder. “But you seem like such a nice girl.”

I see war reflected in Susie’s golden yellow eyes. Her feelings for Noelle clash against the physical contact of right now. Granted, there’s no telling which side’ll win out—which infatuation is closer to love and which is like a vain, carnal thing. I haven’t a single clue what specifically draws Susie towards Noelle Holiday—I can only suspect it’s her status, her family wealth; her kind meekness which oughtn’t be mistaken for innocence or ignorance; the exterior untouchable shell of quiet elegance, sophistry, of the most popular girl in school, and the unabashed nerdiness that lies within; or, to be perfectly banal, her slender body, long legs, her b—

Ralsei cuts me off with a stare across the table. It’s a bit tricky, not that Susie can hear him. And I know what he’d say, like how it’s a sign I should be more open with my friends—same song, different whatever. I implore him to leave me the hell alone, and when he doesn’t I tune him out.

Dinner concludes without a hitch. Susie makes promise to swing by the local church this Sunday (conveniently a crucial step in her love quest with Noelle). As soon as we’re done eating Berdly shoves us both out the door before Martlet can ask about dessert, but not without a heartfelt thanks for hanging out.

We’re walking back to the center of town, where we’re destined to part ways, shooting shit, and making a number of colorful comments about Miss Martlet Eugene, many of which borderline on completely and utterly unacceptable. The blood of a dying Spring paints the sky a pastel yellow. The humidity’s died down a bit, and the sun’s heat will be gone within the hour. As an added treat, a gentle breeze blows through us. Susie opens her mouth wide, taking in the cool air.

“So how come you like Noelle anyways, Susie?” Ralsei says, speaking on my behalf, ambling gay and happy.

“H-huh?” Susie stammers. Her red face glows in the setting sun.

“Well you and Kris just went on for twenty minutes about all the ways you’d want to, um,” he hesitates, “you know, um, ‘befriend’ Berdly’s mom. What about Noelle? You want to do those things—which, quite frankly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting—with her, too?”

“Oh!” Susie looks away. Ralsei grabs her trembling hand, gives her a sympathetic look. “Well, Berdly’s big sis is, like, hot , cuz she’s older and her, you know. Noelle, well—she’s different. It’s like, with Berdly’s sister you wanna,” and she pantomimes something lewd. “But with Noelle—she’s the kind of gal where you want to, um, like,” her cadence quickens with her beating heart. “With Noelle,” she repeats, “you wanna, like, hold her hand, and stuff.”

Susie buries her face in her hands.

“You know, go out to the movies or something, maybe share a tub of popcorn,” she says into her palms.

“Aw, Susie…” Ralsei goes all mushy. He gets up on the tips of his foot paws and pats her on the back. “You’ll get your movie date some day. I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah…”

Susie emerges from her hands, still bright red with embarrassment.

“That’s why I got you and Kris, right?” She crosses her arms. “Gotta figure out what kind of movies she likes, first.”

“Uh…” I stop to think. “She really liked Saw X when it came out, I think.” Saw (pun intended) it in theaters a couple years back with Azzy and Dess.

“Awesome!” She punches my shoulder. “That’s why I gotta keep you around through all this, dude.” I feel nothing. My eyes stay open. She bounds ahead, already gushing about that fated day. My eyes stay open.

Ralsei lingers with me a moment, watching Susie’s silhouette against the setting sun.

“You know,” he says softly, nearly a whisper. His silky, delicate, gentle kindness sends a tremor down my spine. “You don’t have to be so selfless all the time. It’s okay to want to be happy.”

The wind sends ripples through Ralsei’s fur. I breathe deeply. The smell of nature whelms my senses. It sounds cliché as hell but I bask in the serenity, the rustling leaves, the suburban ambience of cars rolling through stop signs, the uneven sidewalk beneath my feet, and how even the weeds on each side dance in the breeze. He’s right. There’s one thing that would make me very, very happy right now.

I step up to him, so close that our noses nearly touch, so close that I can see my own reflection in his glasses, eclipsed by the afternoon sun.

“K-Kris?” He whispers again, shrinking back.

His breathing hits my face something warm and moist. It’s the only validation I need to proceed. Ralsei knows, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He knows what’s coming.

He closes his eyes, grits his teeth, plants his feet, and lets loose a whimper as I punch him so hard in the face his glasses shatter into a million pieces. And when it’s not enough I punch him again.

Chapter Text

KAMALA IS BRAT

Only in one storefront in all of Hometown will you find such a sign nearly half a year post-election season—whether from neglect or adamance, I do not know.

When I push open the door a rush of cool air nearly topples me. I slip inside and let the door close, a shiver running up my arms as my body habituates to the air conditioning. It’s a small place inside; maybe three or four patrons walk about. Evening-pink walls and Autumn-colored linoleum flooring cooperate with a grid of tactically warm overhead ceiling lights to create an illusion of strolling through the park on a November evening. In point of fact, as the park directly borders the shop, it’s as if the building is open to the air, the lines between building and nature blurred and unclear.

Well, I guess that vibe only works during a certain time of year.

Dad, who’s tending to an admittedly impressive flower wall thing at the far end of the store, offers a glance over his shoulder as a small bell announces my entrance. He notices me, and in an instant that quiet melancholy that accompanies the dawn of midlife flushes out of his face. He bounds over, man-tits breasting boobily, and lifts me off the ground in a vice-grip hug. I get a nice whiff of his BO.

“Hey, Kris!” He says, smoothing out his unironed floral shirt, untucked, hanging down over a pair of those fat guy jeans with the elastic waistbands.

I breathe freely, released from his clutches.

“I know there’s been a bit of a heat wave lately, so I turned down the thermostat so you’d be comfy!” He takes a moment to tousle my hair with a meaty hand. “Always glad to have you around, kiddo.”

Without a peep I follow him down the short length of the store. We pass the register briefly, manned by a Japanese dude with a long face and dark hair. He sports a wispy goatee and conversely a meticulously groomed parted pencil mustache. A pair of dark green shorts ending mid-thigh sit below a baggy Castellanos jersey. The jersey is that awful new blue gradient design with the white and yellow, and his hairline is mature, but not receding.

“Heya, Kris-mas,” Mr. Holiday waves to me as we pass. “Thought I’d give your old man a hand today.” He helps him every day.

Today is a Thursday, so I’m visiting Dad. I won’t lie and purport I do it from the kindness of my heart—nor does there remain the requisite sympathy in my mother’s that she’d have me do this, either. This I do for Azzy, who deludes himself that I’m the light of my father’s life, and that by stopping in to visit him on Thursdays I’m somehow deferring a grave chapter in his mental health journey.

Because it’s Azzy, or perhaps because I’ve grown so accustomed to coming here on Thursdays, it occurs as a part of my weekly ritual as mindlessly as does dressing myself.

I told Susie and Berdly I wouldn’t be hanging out with them, and Ralsei isn’t talking to me because I decked him in the schnoz yesterday. It might be a fundamental change—being separated from an imaginary friend whom you’ve immutably cemented a deep psychological dependency with should be by all accounts a fatal ordeal. But it’s also Thursday, and I my focus is utterly preoccupied with Dad, in case of any sudden ‘incidents’.

The shop has its spells of business, but they are not usually among Thursdays. As the last few customers file out, I pull up a stool beside Mr. Holiday at the counter where there’s a small TV between the register and the wall.

We watch baseball. Castellanos is up to bat.

“You know,” Mr. Holiday, appropriately dressed for the occasion, says. “Castellanos has always been known to hit a home run during some awful tragedy.”

“What, like 9/11?”

Castellanos hits it out of the park.

“Ha ha! That’s my Kris-mas! Hey, Azzy! Your kid’s a natural-born [ph]an!”

The game winds down with the waning sunlight. I get a text from Berdly: he and Susie are watching through the first two Saw movies—‘preliminary training’, according to him. The final inning arrives before long—bottom of the ninth. Castellanos comes up to bat again, and the humble flower shop bordering the park, scarcely a hovel, erupts into a series of raving incantations of ‘9/11’ (me), ‘Holocaust’ (Mr. Holiday), and ‘January 6th’ (my father).

Castellanos hits another home run.

The ride home is quiet. The sound of rain raps gently against the roof of the truck.

It started raining at some point. I’d enough foresight to bring an umbrella with me, but Dad nonetheless insisted on giving me a ride home. ‘For the sake of his mental health,’ said I to myself.

“So,” he starts. His face scrunches. Maybe he had something to say but he doesn’t now. “You’ve got that new teacher at school,” he says instead.

“Which one?”

“The Jewish one.”

“Which one?”

“Ashkenazi.”

“ Which one ?”

He thinks for a sec. “The one that’s friends with Officer Undyne.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

“Well I swing by the Police station every now and again and yesterday I saw her lurking outside. She was asking about you, said she gave you detention.” He could have just told me it was Miss Alphys. Dad gives me a sideways glare, the authoritative, parental kind which he hasn’t forgotten.

“Yeah, she did.”

Dad sighs. “Kris, I know things might be a little tough at home all by yourself, without me or Azzy or—” Here he stops dead. I nod, knowing what he means. “But I’m trying to work things out with your mother—I promise.”

“I know.”

Part of me wants to shake my head and tell him the reality of things, of this detention being a uniquely isolated incident—to save face and explain myself—but my superior faculties of logic wrest control away from impulsiveness. If Ralsei were here he’d stress the importance of empathy. For in spite of Asgore Lachlan Dreemurr’s failed career and failed marriage, he wakes up every morning next to his Thirty-Eight Special and resists the urge to point it inwards, owing to a fickle premise that by living he provides a single, small utility to this cruel world. If he wants to lecture me then I’ll relent him that tiny luxury.

On that note, I wonder why they let him keep his cop gun. Seems like an oversight for an active suicide risk.

Dad goes on a bit more about how the kid of a Police chief ought to be more behaved, and how Mom’s always a bit too soft on me—and jokingly, that he’ll have no choice but to straighten me out in her stead if I keep acting up. As he talks there’s a twinkle in his eye, some fragment of his former self piercing through his medication.

I stiffen and say a stiff, ‘yes sir’, which gets a good laugh out of him.

“You’re a good kid,” and he reaches over to mess my hair, as is his habit.

I put on a smile and close my eyes and let the close sound of rain assure me that I’ve done the right thing. Some music fast and upbeat comes softly through the speakers, so soft it’s more like a lullaby.

“I took your mother to see this at a drive-in theater for a twenty-fifth anniversary screening,” Dad says, voice dripping with remorse. “She always said it was her favorite as a little girl. Sometimes,” his voice begins to falter, “I remember you and little Azzy as kids, too, singing along.”

An image forms in the darkness of my mind’s eye. I don’t know how many years ago this must be. We’re in the living room, me, Mom, and Azzy. I’m pushed back on the old sofa—brand-new then, my legs so short they barely reach the edge of the cushion. My eyes are transfixed on a sextet of coked-out zootheads and one autistic guy in a suit as they jump and sing and dance about the square television screen front and center. Mom and Azzy move in the foreground, holding hands and stomping to the beat. He can’t be more than ten here.

The piano man’s fingers prance along his piano’s piano keys. Mom and Azzy match the screen, facing each other, strumming invisible guitars, hopping, wide-stanced, from side to side.

Azzy’s gaze peels away from Mom’s. He holds out a hand; he invites me to join, but I shake my head no. I want to keep my front row seat. Far more than I’d ever desire to participate, I want to remember every detail of this day for the rest of my life.

It’s a futile effort. Those days my addled toddler brain barely tolerated staying up past seven. It’s not long before the memory blurs, a swirl of jumbled sensation with no chronology. I feel a knock at the door, Azzy’s warm fur as he pulls me close for a hug. I see Mom and Dad dancing; I compare Dad strong frame to the man in the big boxy suit. The sound of music, however upbeat, approaches my young ears on tiptoe.

And I hear it sneak away, from me in my father’s arms, as his weight creaks the steps below us. My bed is soft. It’s a cold winter, and the small nest formed from my blankets pulls me under instantly. The last thing I hear is Mom and Dad, laughing and dancing, the sound rising softly through the floorboards, so soft it’s more like a lullaby.

“Azzy’s coming home tomorrow, isn’t he? Your mother doesn’t share much, but I remember his schedule.” Dad’s voice is a whisper in my dreams. “I’m so happy—I’ve been looking forward to having you two around the shop all Spring—since last Winter.”

The way his joy accelerates reminds me that he’s probably been bursting to talk about Azzy all day, only now finding the moment for it.

He chuckles a minute. “I remember, last time he was in town, when he—”

Something taps my shoulder. My eyes fly open. “Dad, look out!”

He swerves the truck, but not in time to avoid the slaughter of a passing deer by its front bumper.

“Shit,” he mutters.

Sighing deeply, we unclasp our seatbelts and shuffle out of the car. The rain’s thickened since we left. My shirt grows heavier. I forgot my umbrella inside.

Before the truck’s headlights lies the deer, dead and mangled, its legs bent in ways contrary to its skeletal autonomy. My mind wanders to Noelle. She’d probably throw a fit if she were here. Dad switches on a flashlight. The paint around his front bumper is speckled and chipping.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” Dad says pensively. His eyes are fixed to the front of the truck.

I turn my focus elsewhere, to the corpse. Squinting, meticulously separating the image from the sheet of rain, I notice a wispy fog emerging from the deer. Here among the trees, the scenic trail which extends the ride home, the petrichor boils, smelling acrid, like burning flesh.

I think Dad smells it, too. He sniffs the air. “What’s that— ow !” He relinquishes his hand’s advance toward the deer, which I now see’s a doe. We share a look. “Hand started burning,” he mutters, shining the flashlight over his paw. “That hurt.”

He says something else but unintentionally I tune him out. I’m timid about it, but some odd curiosity inches my pointer finger forwards. Distal phalanx facing the sky, following the whims of only a hunch, I threaten close to the corpse with gritted teeth. My eyes stay open, feeling the wet impact of each drop up and down my arm’s flesh. I edge closer, closer, finger jitters in anticipation.

It crosses some threshold, and a drop of rain hits my outstretched finger. It burns, scalding, like touching a hot kettle.

“Dad!” I call out. “The rain, it’s boiling, or, like, acid.”

“Acid?”

The gears start turning in my head. “Yeah—uh, look at the front of the truck!”

He waves a hand over the front of the truck, near the corpse, wincing as he crosses the threshold. He swears quietly, grabbing his hand. I check my own, using the light from my phone. It’s red, probably a blister by tomorrow, but not remotely serious.

I want to tell Dad something but he’s staring down the road. I see the shadows dance across his face, his expression ghastly, as if arrested by a specter, or some distant illusion.

I see what he sees. Struck by the headlights, fur given a pale sheen, a ways down the road, stands another deer—male this time, antlers like Autumn trees in the dark. The light striking the dirt road at its feet fascinates me like it’s floating, potentially inches off the ground.

But it’s not. Its head tilts, curious.

Presently a twinge of guilt beats against my heart. Was this dead doe its mate, or otherwise a close friend or relative? I’ven’t the first clue about the interpersonal culture of deer, but the way its beady black eyes swallow up its dead kin is sort of somber. I don’t know if animals cry but it’s the closest I’ve seen one come to it.

The deer trots forwards. The line of melting paint creeps up the truck.

“Dad—”

“I know, I see.” He grimaces.

We make a break for the doors, but it’s too late. Dad burns his hand on the handle. I don’t risk it, acting to save my own skin.

Meeting at the rear of the truck bed, he runs his hands along its bottom, finding nothing. “Damn,” he says. “I could’ve sworn it was here.”

I peek around the edge. It trots ever closer. In just a few seconds the entire truck will be engulfed by this ‘acid rain’. I consider we maybe wait it out, wait for it to run and flee, but the rain’s picking up. Once a steady barrage, presently it screams down around me, obfuscating my senses by a dense haze. Time is a scarce commodity. It was chipping paint, but if this weather keeps up the truck—and potentially our lives—could be in danger.

We need to think fast. “It looks like the range of that ‘acid’ is around ten yards,” I shout, voice straining. It’s the only way to make myself heard. “Got any ideas?”

“Not sure,” he shouts back. “If we can scare it off, somehow, we can at least make it inside. These things are timid.” He struggles to stand. So much fur holds so much water. It comes straight down with the rain’s gravity. “Kris?”

But I’ve vanished off to the side of the road. Following my father’s conjecture, I break a stick off the nearest tree and hurl it—adrenaline guides my aim relatively well—straight towards the deer. My heart breath hitches for a moment, but no respite comes. It blows out in panic. As the stick crosses within the deer’s range I see its form melt away in the light of the headlights.

“You need a rock, Kris!” Dad hollers, words drowning in wet fur. “Use a rock!”

God damnit. I fall on my hands and knees, mud seeping into my pants. My hands grab at roots, grass, but nothing hard. The muddied ground pulls my palms in deep, refuses to let me go. It takes effort to clamber over vines I can’t see, backlit only by the ambience of the trucks blaring headlights so far away. The rain pounds against my head. I can’t think. I can’t see. All I can smell is wet rain. This is hopeless. I want to scream. I want to keep my eyes open but the rainwater stings. So badly I wish Susie was here; her scales might offer better protection against that burning rain. Or Berdly, who’d probably have some roundabout idea. But more than anything, I wish—

“Kris! Here!”

I pick up the rock. It’s larger than my fist and heavy, takes two hands to hold, or under one arm.

I heave myself upright, knees and legs and shoes dripping with mud. I can’t hear anything—my world is soundless, save for my labored breathing. The target’s in sight. The trees give way to the dirt road. The truck is completely engulfed, the deer kneeling beside its fallen friend, and the rain only continues to pour. I hurl the rock as hard as I can.

It makes it as far as the front hood, but the sound does the trick. The deer jumps and runs down the length of the road, away from me, away from the headlights. I lose a shoe trying to make a break for the passenger side door.

Dad gets in after me. He’s dripping, but we don’t talk. He puts it in reverse for only a second, then to drive and floors the gas.

“You’re gonna kill it?!”

“Can’t have it terrorizing some other poor sap,” he mutters, and then the airbag blows out in my face.

The damage is bad, but the truck still moves.

“Carol’s been trying to get me one of those big four-by-fours anyways,” he tells me.

I lower my head into a nod I can’t come up from. My eyes feel heavy. I feel the water dripping down my back, the mud caked on my hands and knees and legs. The air conditioning is blasting, and my entire body trembles as the mud crusts solid and the water runs cold.

Dad’s still sopping wet, like a mop, or a waterlogged rag yet to be wrung out. Sliding down every inch of his seat, the floor below him puddles with water. Though his eyes lock onto the road ahead. He has this method, I’ve come to notice, whereby he enters this mode of operation lacking complex thought. Though he drives, and though he performs a complex swerving manoeuvre around some jackass stalling in the middle of an intersection, and though we occasionally trade words, I’m keenly aware that there are no further thoughts beyond the here and now.

It’s a skill I desperately yearn to learn. I speculate it’s something middle-aged men earn by tenure, once the world’s kicked them in the balls enough times to where it stops hurting. Or it could be a cop thing. I figure you need a psycho switch when you’re beating the shit out of some homeless person—or, now that he’s in the suburbs, taking noise complaints from the same family every week for three years.

It’s times like these he talks the most about Mom. “Kris,” he says. His voice is breathy, monotone. It stays steadfastly loyal to his intentions. It’s like he’s the power to invoke his medication on command, to weather his feelings so profoundly dull that his world’s gone grey like the eternal wastes of the Fugue plane. “Do you like your old man?”

“Sure,” I say automatically. There isn’t another correct response.

But he persists, dead to the world. Between the gaps in the windshield wipers’ oscillations, the greens and yellows and reds of the traffic lights lurk behind a curtain of rain, dusting his face, and when the water’s wiped away burns fiercely against the white of his fur.

“I’m really glad,” he says. “I know we don’t see one another too often. Haven’t seen each other too often, but I’m glad you’ve enjoyed our time together.” His words carry something ominous, but I can’t interject. “I can’t say your mother has, but she’s a good woman, so she has a good reason for feeling the way she does. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in life, but I’m proud to think you’re not one of them.”

I see his eyes reflecting in the rearview. They’ve taken on a bit of color.

“I always fool myself,” he says in silent way. “I imagine one day I’ll sweep your mom off her feet like I used to, get her hot and bothered with some chocolates and her favorite vinyl. The music’ll play and she’ll sit back in that chair of hers and—well, you know how women have that little ‘button’ right above—”

I slap my hands over my ears. I’m not quite a prude, but frankly this is absolutely not a conversation I wish to be having with my father on the topic of my mother whatsoever. Like, if it were Susie—or even Berdly—it’d be different. Among adolescent peers of any generation we’re unified by the brave new world of our incoming and outgoing pubescence, but I share no such solidarity with some forty-one-year-old cracker bragging he knows how to eat pussy.

Dad laughs. “Sorry if I’m embarrassing you.”

“It’s ‘k.” I laugh, too.

The rain relents by the time we pull into the driveway. The door opens ‘fore my hands gets the knob. Mom’s large frame consumes the entire doorway. The indoor light creeps around her head, the white fur glowing in the dark. At first mildly cross, arms arranged similarly so, her eyes scan me head to toe—a flash anger erupts as hot air from her nostrils—but she isn’t so cruel a woman, as my father’s said—so eventually resigned bewilderment. She pinches her nose in a way that makes her glasses droop, and sighs deep and condescending.

“Heya, Tori! Sorry we’re late. Got caught up in the rain.” Dad puts on a strong face and braves the mother judge.

“Asgore.” Her face hardens. Behind her eyes I feel a deep terror, a woman’s rage pulling against its chains, begging to be unleashed. It gives her a tallness, like Dad’s no more than another one of her children. “By caught in the rain, I’m assuming you meant outside your truck. And that you’ve forgotten to mention pushing my precious child into a ditch.”

“Ah, yeah.” He does well not to falter. “Well, uh, they’re my kiddo too,” he laughs. “And uh, we were just having some bonding time is all. Hope you don’t mind—”

“Asgore, I did not take you to court for you to continue to claim fathership.”

“Well, it’s really up to Kris, you know?” He laughs again.

His eyes dart to me for validation, and I do something I’m really not proud of—I stay quiet, fold to the threat of my mother’s scorn. The way her eyelids lower, lashes meeting in a steeple, as she, a good foot and a half my superior, keeps my entire self beneath her. I haven’t my father’s stones; by the toll of a messy divorce many preceding years imminent he’s veteran to a million screaming bouts fought on equal ground. I’ve never so much as talked back to Mom, nor shall I ever, or at least it will never be my intention.

Dad looks hurt. As a man with few allies in the middles ages of his life, at a time when a world full of tribulations announce their conspiracy with knives in the open day, he turns to his single confidant and finds himself stabbed by they, too.

The immutable facade buckles. He’s waterlogged from head to toe, so it’s not until I hear him speak that I realize he’s crying.

“Tori, I—”

“ Go .”

He leaves quietly, faintly whimpers. I likewise retreat inside. In the final, as I duck under Mom’s arm that’s propped open the door, I feel the sting of two wet, heterochromatic eyes crawl up my back. But I can’t turn back, in spite of the guilt. Because of the guilt. I don’t turn back even as the door closes, nor after I hear the old truck peel away from the house.

“Kris, I am not going to ask why you are covered head to toe in mud,” Mom says from behind me. “Tomorrow we’re going to share a wonderful afternoon with your brother, but tonight we’re going to clean ourselves of this whole little incident—you, in the bath.”

I bow my head. “Alright, Mom.”

I feel a warm hand squelch my damp hair. “Thank you, sweetie. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I say automatically.

I feel ashamed, so it’s not until the shower that I weep bitterly, to hide my tears.

Chapter Text

When I was a kid, Dess, Azzy, and Mrs. Holiday always watched TV Land re-runs of this show called The Dukes of Hazzard. Then one day Azzy made a joke about ‘The Gooks of Hazzard’ and got grounded for a month.

It’s not remotely an indictment of his character; he was maybe fourteen and knee-deep in the edgy doldrums of puberty. Also the whole premise of the joke was generally kind of unintelligent and stupid: Carol’s white and Rudy’s not that kind of Asian.

Azzy laughs at the memory. “I remember.”

Mom scowls. “As do I.”

We’re about the dinner table, just us three. One long end pushed against the wall, it’s opposite the kitchen Mom had remodeled on Dad’s dime a year or two before their separation. The countertops are a sleek quartz—there was a tiresome debate about granite but a stony grey quartz was their decision. The cabinets beneath are vibrant cherry with brass hinges and rubber stoppers which fell off very quickly, resulting in abrasions against the rich wood. Next is the deep stainless steel sink, and next to that sits the radio—we’re listening to Fresh Air—and a liberally-used dishwasher—the only relic of the old kitchen. There’s a lazy Susan (and I think how Susie’s doing at this moment) in the corner where we keep the Tupperware, and a stainless steel stove with an integrated overhead microwave and fan. Five months ago the hood vent came loose and now it’s held in place by black magic.

Mom’s made her ‘Toriel-ini bake’, a recondite nosh whose method of fabrication she keeps under lock and key. She goes so far as to forbid anyone from coming into the kitchen until it’s reached the oven, which only further starves one’s curiosity. There have been a few vain attempts in the past to pry, but time convinced the Dreemurr consensus of ignorant bliss—lest we discover Mom vomits into the pasta sauce or something. Grandma Dreemurr swears it’s just a normal tortellini bake.

“So uh,” I address my brother slowly between bites. Vomit or no vomit, Toriel-ini is still pretty good. “How’s college?” I ask.

Azzy straightens up a bit. The first thing he did after hugging Mom and initiating our secret handshake was scurry up to our room and exchange his jeans and green-and-yellow striped hoodie shirt for a pair of boxer red plaid shorts and a tank top from his childhood dresser, both of which fight valiantly to accommodate the freshman fifteen he never managed to doff. Yet they are slain.

He changes each time I see him. Maybe he’s had a late-coming quarter inch of height, or his blonde hair’s a little longer or shorter than usual, but he’s always still my same older brother. An even five feet, eight and one half inches, over the years his string bean arms and torso filled out into more mature crop. His face is our family’s long bottlenose, given shape by a pair of floppy ears. His horns are short, barely nubs beneath a mop of kempt blonde hair deliberately askew in places to maintain the illusion of casual negligence. He’s clean shaven so he bears no resemblance to Dad, for Mom’s sake.

“College is going alright,” he says between mouthfuls of food. “About the same since Winter.”

“That’s nice, sweetie,” Mom says. She eats her food in the British style, fork stationary to her left hand and knife glued to her dominant right. She insists the way we United States of America juggle knife and fork with a single hand is counterintuitive and incorrect, but the only outcome of her flippant postulation is doubt in the devout patriotism she claims to harbor. Even more dubious is how her two children eat according to no culture’s etiquette, who never evolved beyond a certain primitiveness. “Did you taking any interesting classes?” Mom asks Azzy.

“Nothing remarkable,” Azzy says. He’s formerly a psychology major, but as that decision was informed by the undergraduate field’s abundance of his opposite sex, he now studies communications. “Oh, but there was one professor that was a little weird, I guess,” he says.

Mom raises an eyebrow. “This wasn’t that Marxist quack? The Chinese one?”

Azzy shakes his head. “I don’t believe he’s a Marxist. Or at least he never said anything about it. But he was a really weird guy in general. The class was supposed to be Gnostic philosophy.

“Okay, well, let me backtrack a little. I took the class because it was a prerequisite, and his was the only section. I don’t remember his name exactly, maybe something foreign, I don’t know. I feel like this is something I should remember as clear as day considering how odd a story it is, but I just can’t. It’s escaping me. But I do recall his RateMyProfessor—one review, five out of five rating, promising a ‘life-changing experience’, whatever the hell—”

“Language,” Mom snaps.

“Sorry, whatever the heck that meant. So I thought to myself, okay, what the he— ck , I have to take the class anyways, so I might as well change my life while I’m at it. So I take the class—which goes from six-thirty to nine-thirty on a Monday, by the way.

“But I arrive on Monday night and there’s maybe forty kids in the room. This is sort of bizarre because the room it’s in is built for half that many. It’s one of those back rooms down three flights of stairs from ground level, dim lighting, naked flayed ceiling, and wooden wall panels from the sixties. It’s empty save for a crusty blackboard and a small platoon of desks. Like, maybe twenty people get to sit but the rest of us—including me—have to stand all awkward at the perimeter. And what’s even weirder is that it gets to be way past the scheduled start time—it’s probably six-forty at night or so and everyone’s generally upset and wants to go back to their dorms or eat dinner, so they do.

“Now, I forgot to mention this earlier, but Dess was also taking this class.”

“Oh?” Mom’s ears perk up at her name. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s okay, I think.” He scratches his cheek. “Actually we, uh, don’t talk so much anymore.”

Mom drops her fork. “Is everything alright? You didn’t have a fight, did you?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Azzy says. “We’ve got different majors is all. Have less and less chances to take classes together. And then there’s her friends.”

Mom and Azzy trade looks. Their ideas charge like cavalry, except in civil society we don’t shed blood. Both emerge nicked, but Mom being of sterner stuff and demanding more respect holds her ground better.

So Azzy relents. “Well, you know how she was in high school,” he says. “And her friends don’t really like me, so…”

Azzy trails off. He’s got a final forkful of nosh waiting before his open mouth, yielding to some hypothetical consolation from Mom, but she’s wiser than he gives her credit for.

“Okay,” he says, setting down the fork. “I don’t like them either. Bloomsburg is in that part of the State. The campus population trends on the saner side than the townies, but Dess’ friends—they’re still pretty looney.” He deepthroats the last glob of Toriel-ini down his gullet.

“So they’re Christian,” Mom says. “That’s a good thing. Too many college campuses nowadays are trying to erase God from the hearts of the American people. I heard about it on the news.”

“Mom, one of Dess’ friends swears his grandfather was Heinrich Himmler.” He points with his fork. “Like, I don’t even think he’s German.”

“So he has special needs,” Mom says. “God loves all his children, you know. Even Muslim apostates and Indians. Just like he loves your little brother.”

Azzy throws up his hands. “Sure. You’re probably right, actually. He’s neurodivergent.” Mom’s face scrunches at the word. “But the point is me taking the class came up while me and Dess were texting, and she decided then and there she’d be taking the class, too.”

“So, uh, back to my story—”

“Hold on, Sweetie. Would you and Kris like some pie for dessert?”

We nod, and from the oven, kept warm, Mom pulls out her famous cinnamon butterscotch pie. The hot aroma topples me and Azzy immediately. It’s a very nostalgic thing, you see. From birthdays to Christmas to just about any trivial occasion one could think of, my Mother would celebrate with her pie. Her motivations I suspect partly relies on her cultivated talent—thirty something years of making the same pie have sharpened her talents to catch on diamond—that she may partake in the savory sweet product of her labor; but more in part so she can see the smile creep up my face, and pull me in for a greedy hug. I bury my face into the crook of her elbow, and no matter how bad things may be, I’m given a few scarce moments where nothing else matters besides my mother’s warmth lulling me into a stupor, and the wonderful smell of cinnamon and butterscotch lacing her fur.

Grandma Dreemurr insists she doesn’t know how to make any other kid of pie.

“Sorry, dear, please continue,” Mom says.

“Thanks,” Azzy says, taking a slice of pie for himself. “So me and Dess stay behind a while. Between arriving at class and people leaving, I found a seat for myself and started working on some other stuff since I’m already out. Dess sits on her phone and I offer her to leave if she wants since it’s pretty clear the professor isn’t showing up any time soon, but she insists on staying if I’m staying, so I kind of shrug whatever.

“Eventually the last guy besides us gets up and leaves. And the moment the door mechanism snaps shut I hear Dess scream—more like shriek—and I turn to check on her, and I see this crazy dude bust out of a closet from the back of the room, rush to the door, and lock us in. Looking back, I’m not really sure of his race or ethnicity, or even what kind of monster he’s supposed to be. His body was mostly black, though it could have been some kind of robe or suit jacket. His face was akin to a theater mask, white, eyes and mouth hollow black, empty, and static; the right eye almost looked like it’s closed with what I think must’ve been a crack running up his face, and the left eye wide open and oval, with a black tear streak—or perhaps another crack—running down. This was the professor, of course.

“At this point Dess is freaking out. She’s grabbing my arm and shaking me and saying all this nonsense, and I’m pretty spooked too, I admit.

“And then this guy starts talking, hobbling all around like he’s possessed by, like, a demon or something. He’s got something in his hand; his hand’s have got these holes through them like he’s Jesus—‘cept these holes are ‘bout the size of grapes; he’s got two pieces of chalk in his right hand.”

I nearly choke on my pie.

“And he puts one piece in front of me and the other in front of Dess. At this point she’s let go of me, thinks maybe this guy is more a weirdo than trying to kill us, so she picks up the chalk and goes up to the board, thinking he wants us to write something. I guess I do, too.

“And the chalk is weird. Not like chalk you’d see in another classroom. Instead of powdery to the touch, its surface is like wax, and there’s a word monogrammed onto the side which Dess claims is Japanese.”

“He didn’t make you eat the chalk, did he?” I say suddenly. Slamming my fork and knife down rattles the glasses and such on the table. Mom frowns.

But Azzy knits his brow quizzically. “I was just getting to that part—how’d you figure, Kris?”

I shrug.

“But yeah, we’re getting ourselves ready to write on the board when this crazy professor rushes over and starts waving his hands around like a Baptist preacher. What follows next is a crazy game of charades I won’t get into, but—yeah, like Kris said—basically we figure this guy wants me and Dess to eat the chalk.

“And to my shock, Dess does, like it’s nothing. She just looks at me with that goofy grin of hers, the kind that shows her two front teeth, and just pops it in her mouth. And I’m so utterly bewildered at this point that I follow suit.”

“ Asriel !” Mom scolds him.

“It’s fine, Mom,” he says. “Eating chalk is, like, not exactly normal, but totally safe.”

“Uh-huh.” Mom’s eyes shrink in disbelief. “Please don’t tell me you succumb to the same peer pressure so easily when someone solicits you to smoke marijuania.”

“Mom…”

She’s done her slice of pie by now, shuffling over to the sink to drop her plate and utensils. She stops to reach over, scratch the top of his head. “I know, sweetie. My sweet, God-fearing child could never.”

“Um, yeah,” he says. This is a lie. He tried it once when he was sixteen and was so paranoid of the smell he showered three times and ate an entire tin of Altoids for breakfast the next day. “A-anyways,” he continues, “the chalk did taste a little weird. Like, kind of sour, or metallic? But it did go down kind of crunchy…

“Regardless, the professor leaves right after that, his body or coat or whatever flapping behind him as he dashes out the door. At that point me and Dess decide to leave, too. Dess tries to strike up a conversation but I’m just so weirded out that I push past her, and maybe she feels kind of hurt, but I’m kind of done with everything and just want to get back to my dorm.

“Now, after all that nonsense it’s a wonder we decide to come to class next week, but we do. I figure at the very least I should get some work done away from my dorm—easier to stay disciplined that way.”

“Nothing weird happened after eating the chalk?” I butt in again.

Azzy pauses. “No, uh, least I don’t think so. Well, this next class was pretty weird. After the no-show the last week, there are maybe fifteen people there this week, but the professor actually comes on time. He strides in through the door at exactly six-thirty and just talks non-stop for three hours straight. Doesn’t even wait for the class to settle down. I’ll clarify—he was screaming his head off. His voice was real weird, too. I don’t know if he was Indian or East Asian, or he almost spoke with this static to his voice. I dunno. But he basically spends three hours—and not once does his volume dip below shouting—going on and on and on about the ‘three orders of man’: first, the highest order, the ‘pneumatics’, the spirituals with knowledge of God whom by their enlightenment escape the material world; then the lowest order, the ‘hylics’, a material people anchored to physical pleasures, like clay they come from the earth and return knowing nothing beyond what their senses convey; and finally the middle of the hylic or pneumatic individual, the ‘psychic’, who is mentally and psychologically active, yet still strongly clings to earthly securities and thus, too, fall short of the glory of God.”

“Asriel,” Mom says slowly. “Aren’t you a little concerned what they’re teaching you at this school? You’ve only just finished your second year—there’s still time to transfer to a less apocryphal institution.”

“Yeah, I mean, I know it’s a bunch of hokey baloney,” he says. “Like, the ‘Book of Judas’—I know all that is purportedly sacrilege and bad, and stuff.”

“Either way, I hope you’ll be coming to proper church with us on Sunday,” Mom says.

“Of course,” Azzy says.

Mom smiles. “Good.”

“But yeah, so basically he goes on and on about this Gnostic crap. For the sake of metaphor he calls the townies ‘hylics’ and we students ‘psychics’. And then he calls on me and Dess and has us stand in the center of the room. Once we’re front and center and blushing like crazy for being singled out, he starts raving on how we’re, quote: ‘Psychics whom, by their resilience to the temptation of material impatience, have ascended beyond the exigency of time. To Asriel Dreemurr, I bequeath unto thee time in excess, for I know you shall turn your nose up at it. To December Holiday, as your enterprise refuses to conform to the rapid urgency of our modern world, you will know the rotation of the Earth itself.’ Unquote.

“The following week he rambled on about the Japanese Imperial activities during the Second World War, and how New Korea is posturing to ‘take its revenge’, and then the week after that he was arrested in the middle of class for possession of child pornography, and that’s all anyone ever heard from him.”

“You’re sure nothing weird happened right after you ate the chalk?”

Azzy rolls his eyes playfully. “No, Kris. These stubby horns’ve always been here.”

“What about Dess?”

“What about her?”

“Did she experience anything weird after the chalk?”

“Dude,” he says. I dodge a pillow thrown from his belongings. “What’s your major malfunction? First time I’m seeing you in four months and all you care about is munching on vaguely phallic objects—I’m doing very well—no thanks for asking.”

I slump onto my bed, rolling like a Seven-Eleven taquito ‘till I’m face up. Azzy dives back into the sea of his belongings, rummaging through these big plastic tubs full of clothes. I stare at the blank ceiling given a dull radiance by a warm lamp as he moves this thing and that between the plastic tubs and his dresser. It’s silent like this, for a while, save for when Azzy occasionally grunts and my hands-folded thumbs rub against each other in circles.

“Okay, so there’s this girl.”

Azzy groans.

“It’s not like that. She made me eat chalk.”

I hear a plastic lid snap closed and a shuffling of fur on carpet. A shadow looms over me. The eclipse hides his features. Hands on his hips, “and by ‘made you eat chalk’, you mean…?”

“You’re not listening to me. I just told you it’s not like that. This is like, an actual important thing.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure it is.”

I throw up my hands, but he’s already turned his back. I’m really trying to help him here, but he just won’t listen. I’d call Ralsei over, but he’s spending the day with Susie. I like to think we’ve patched things up, but he adamantly claimed that he’s known me for the past decade and Susie for only a day or two. In general he’s begun to act on his own accord. Before the curse his every word and action should be bound to my most trivial whim, but presently he’s gained a queer autonomy, authority to defy me outright.

I’ve considered the chance I’ve truly gone off the deep end, and this refusal is somehow a complex psychological repression, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way.

There have been isolated incidents here and there—like last night, for instance—but for one I’ve been sleeping better these past few days. Rather than endless hours of tossing and turning, my head hits my pillow and I’m out like a light. In general I think I’m sort of chipper. I wake feeling rested and my stomach is aching for food at all the right times. This is to say that Ralsei’s sudden individuality—I think—owes more to the curse than my personal psychosis. For that reason I’m willing to bide my time and observe its mechanics as they emerge.

That’s how I’ve come to view this curse, by its functionalities. With the emotional rollercoaster of tumult that was last night, I hadn’t the time to really process the full sequence of events.

For it’s abundantly clear to me that that yesterday’s deer was a part of the curse, or, rather, a vessel of its machinations. I’m not so daft I can’t make interference. My folly lies in the disposal of the chalk. In my haste to repudiate myself from the Hagoromo, I emptied it into the storm drain, whereupon the subsequent storm came to flush it away. The rain in this town empties into the creek and then the lake, so my suspicion is that the chalk made it as far as that when the deer bent down to sup.

The curse is the only reasonable explanation for all the phenomena since Tuesday. And I’m left wondering whether the strange chill after the encounter was Ceroba was the result of my own curse, or something else entirely.

“So what happened with Dad last night?”

“Huh?”

Azzy’s done unpacking for now. There’s a lingering plastic tub filled with non-essentials; I spy with my human eye a cracked frisbee, a Nintendo Switch away from its carrying case, a desktop framed photo of Mom and Dad and him and me, a four thousand-piece Hogwarts puzzle—unopened, a threadbare beach towel, military surplus entrenchment tool, rolled-up Tetris poster, minoxidil, Goo Gone, and a hard over copy of Hillary Clinton’s memoir he’ll never read.

He paces down the spacious alleyway between our beds. “When Mom called me earlier this morning, she mentioned something about Dad causing a scene last night.”

“Oh, that.”

I explain the general of yesterday night, sans the weird acid rain deer. I figure it’s not worth introducing him to this curse business right now if he’s not gonna listen. But I shortly describe the spat between Mom and Dad, as well as my cowardly inaction, which I confess openly as selfish. My recollection loses confidence proportional to Azzy’s deepening scowl. I finish shrinking away once his arms go akimbo low against his hips.

“Wow, you’re a fucking asshole.”

I groan. “I know.”

Asriel sits back on his bed, crosses his arms, brow furrows. “Goddamnit, Kris. This is really ass. We had better check up on him, make sure he doesn’t kill himself.”

I hang my head. “Sorry.”

He sighs. “Don’t apologize. I won’t pretend I’d have done any different. Mom’s a scary bitch.”

“Did you say something, dear?” Like the devil incarnate, our good Godly gracious mother dearest cracks the door halfly, from which her snout pokes into view.

“Uh, I have a crazy itch?” Azzy stammers.

“Well, there’s Cortizone-Ten in the medicine cabinet if you need it,” she says, pushing the door the rest of the way open. “I was going to suggest we find a movie to watch on TV.”

I pretend to exchange deliberative glances with my brother. “Sure, Mom. We’ll be down in a sec,” he says.

“Alright. I’ll be waiting.”

Azzy waits ‘till the door shuts, then sours his mood again. “Tomorrow morning you and me are gonna go check on Dad.”

“Affirmative.”

All of a sudden I’m convinced my earlier apology wasn’t enough; I want to apologize more profusely. But first the loud blare of music cuts down my well-natured ambitions, cuts through the stealthy tension. The source is evident, a glowing rectangle askew on Azzy’s dresser. Intro 2 by NF.

It’s not a ringtone that came about by any interest in white Christian rappers. For if you listen closely you’ll intermittently hear the distinct hollow percussion of the Locus bolt-action sniper rifle from Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Indeed Intro 2 is a mere accompaniment to the true art: three minutes and twelve seconds into a quickscoping montage.

Azzy lets it ring as far as the triple collateral with the SVG-100, waits for the unique mechanical cycling of the bolt, before picking up. “Hey, Dess. What’s up?”

In the silence that follows, I faintly hear the squeaky voice with a subtle nasal sting that sends me back to more stable times.

“Um, I was gonna visit the Flower King with Kris tomorrow, sorry.”

He waits some, and for a second the phone retreats from his ear, thumb hovering over the button to hang up. Its bold color covers the side of his face in a thin red film. He pussies out.

More quiet, then: “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, too. Bye-bye.”

His thumb lingers on the hang up for a good five seconds, and then some more until the screen goes black. In its reflection his eyes squeeze shut.

“Trouble in paradise?” I ask.

“Shut the fuck up, man. It’s not like that.”

“You’re late.”

“Says who?”

There were younger years when I only knew chaos and strife, where the parameters of my life were rewritten and redefined on a weekly basis. One day I’d know my family upon which my house stood to be immutable, like rock; and the next I would find my house without a father, and within a year without a brother. On such lonely nights I’d draw the shades and kneel over Azzy’s bed and pray, the moon’s white light pouring down on me. I’d ask God to quit this sick joke of his and keep everything the same, and when my plea fell on deaf ears I supposed his son would be kinder, and when Jesus too forsook me I took to the devils Beelzebub, Satan, and Abaddon. It was to my dismay—and my mother’s horror—that even Hell denounced possession of my soul. This was the beginning of my sympathy for the secular humanists. I made a brief detour through an atheist subreddit, and within the year I stopped going to church so often. But at my lowest points, when the material world arrested me and wrung me dry of all my tears, I’d again beg for mercy from a dead god. I figured December Holiday was my consolation.

For she appears today before me exactly as I’d left her all those years ago: short antlers; short, dark hair in a messy bob; short, dark fur with patches of lighter fur about her face, traveling down the front her her torso and extremities; and a red button nose like her father and sister.

I used to have a crush on her when I was about ten or so.

Hanging baggy over the waist of her ripped jeans is a black shirt with a bramble-clad lich-looking fellow I presume is from an album cover, but then there are many like that. The stringy cuffs of her jeans rest atop a pair of red sneakers made specially for hooves, a construction that’s very alien to me.

Dess attempts to scowl, but her father’s strong genes leave every conceivable arrangement of her mouth advertising her enormous buck teeth. I’m compelled to stifle a giggle, even after all these years.

“Where’s Azzy?” she says.

I’ve already decided what I’ll tell her: “He has to return a library book.”

She considers what I’ve told her, almost hopeful that it’s not possibly a fib, but her eyes droop. “He flaked out again, didn’t he?”

My brow raises, as if to ask, ‘ again ’?

Pink dusts her face. “I-I dunno,” she mumbles. However forward she may be, my brother never fails to reduce her to the timidness of her primal ancestors. “He’s been avoiding me lately. Not, like, all the time, but every so often he’ll just bail when I ask to hang out.” Her eyes go half-lidded for a sec, and her mouth scrunches up at the corner of her cheek.

There’s a bench just outside Dad’s shop that’s more within the park’s boundaries than his. When I first arrived she was bent over, elbows perched atop the knees of her spread legs, but presently as the topic of Asriel creeps further to the forefront, she retreats back, legs together, shrinking towards her chest.

Incidentally Dad isn’t here. According to a piece of paper scrawled over in the blocky caps print I know to be uniquely his (son of a carpenter), he’s retreated to Oreland for an afternoon of fishing. As is his habit, I assume Mr. Holiday’s accompanying him.

So I find a place next to Dess on the bench. For a time, the only sound between us is the rustling of the leaves by the Spring breeze. The rain swept through in a flash, leaving behind a cooler, albeit more humid, Hometown. Off towards the lake a few kids run amuck, skirting the water’s edge. Their parents keep an eye from the shade, conversing softly. An old couple strolls by with a brisk energy that exudes life more than my pallid youth ever could. A pair of catfolk around Dess and Azzy’s age hang their legs off a tall rock. Maybe they’re home from college as well, celebrating with nuptial rituals.

Dess sees them, too. She sighs so wispy I think it’s the wind. “This sucks.” She pouts. “I’ve literally been his best friend for, like, forever. I’ve done everything to get his attention. Why doesn’t he just like me already? There’s gotta be some reason.”

What, you mean besides your washboard tits and flat ass? I haven’t the foggiest.

I don’t actually say this, but I think it hard enough that she might recieve it telepathically.

Dess keeps complaining nonetheless. “Did you know he gave away his first kiss over a game of truth or dare? It was that bitch, Bratty—I dunno her real name, but she’s the lanky lizard living down the street from us. Up until that point I might’ve considered us close. We played softball together, got cut from the team together, spent that night egging coach’s house together—if you ask me on the right day I might’ve suggested we were inseparable. So naturally as teenage girls do I confide to her that I’m just a wee bit,” and she presses her thumb and forefingers together, “obsessed with my hot piece of work next-door neighbor, and then she goes ‘now way’ and then I go ‘yes way’ and then we both squeal like a couple of [COMEDY]s and rush to her house and lock ourselves in her room and I, like, spend the entire night gushing to her about this thing and that—how his fur smells like wintergreen right after a shower or how his eyes are just the cutest things ever or how I used to bribe you for his used underwear back when you were too young to have any idea what I was doing with it, and Bratty hears this and goes out of her way to offer me and him over to one of her big parties she used to hold when her parents went away on business. And, like, I’m super excited, because we had this plan—and it was this super duper calculated thought out plan—where we’d play truth or dare and I’d dare him for a kiss. Not too out of the blue—Bratty said she’d help me ease into it with some lead up rounds. And it was just gonna be a kiss on the cheek. I’m not like a slut or anything—unlike that fucking skank bitch whore piece of—” here I’ll abridge her words which are equal parts impolite and politically incorrect.

“So, I get to the sleepover and I’m literally on the verge of bursting with glee like some [COMEDY]—gy-ass zipper schoolgirl. Like, there were a lot of people there and the party was pretty crazy, like the kind you see in movies. Her living room during the day is one of those super modern looks—hardwood floors, white walls, a white couch, white tables—white everything. But that night it was dark. Stacks of magazines, a houseplant in the corner of the room, the skeletal metal-and-glass home entertainment system—things that should have been utterly familiar to me danced like demons in the dark, shadows cast by the hot light of a few candles here and there. It reminded me less of the soft-glowing homely place where her Mom’d lounge and read Vanity Fair and more of Mos Eisley’s dark alcoves and scratchy, hostile walls. And then there was this intimidating, bitter smell that put your childhood innocence in danger. Red Solo cups dotting your sight, stoners out back, couples stealing upstairs on tiptoe—honestly, a part of me was kinda stoked ‘cause I’d never been to one like it before—but the rest of me squeezed my eyes and hands and spat a quick prayer hoping that God would forgive me for stepping into this den of sin if I promised to see, hear, speak, do no evil, get my peck on the cheek and haul ass out of there and never look back.

“Azzy’s there, too, of course. We bond over how out of our element we are, passing the time sitting on the couch smushed together a little too close ‘cause there’s a couple making out right next to us, and trying with all our might to keep our gazes low and chaste, away from the myriad temptations. A few people stop and say ‘hi’ but I’m too busy trying not to lose my shit because I can feel this body heat. My fur’s damp with sweat and accelerant, and the spark is a few of our classmates whispering amongst themselves in confidence, stealing glances our way, like gossiping about a us as a couple—it sets my fur on fire and I can hardly think.

“Eventually it hits midnight and I jump so high my head hits the ceiling when Bratty taps me on the shoulder. She takes me by the hand and I feel Azzy’s fluffy paw over mine and I’m actually melting.

“We follow her up into her room, up the stairs at towards the end of a narrow hallway past some couple having a little fun in her parents’ bedroom with the door open. Azzy covers his eyes like he’s never walked in on his parents doing ageplay before, and I sigh and tow his cute blushing face the whole way.

“In accordance with our premeditation, Bratty’s already put them through a few rounds of the game and few rounds of drinks. We sit on the carpet in a circle; I’m up against the base of Bratty’s brass bedframe. The truths and dares already gotten a little bewildering. Stuff like, ‘who do you have a crush on’, or ‘sit on my lap’, and then some guy takes off his shirt and I’m digging my nails into my skin that I think I’ll bleed.

“And then it gets to Bratty. She’s next to me, and I’ll go next. Azzy’s sitting opposite us, so we have direct eye contact the entire time. I’m so trapped in his gaze that I’m practically leaning forwards. Having spent the night so far strapped to the couch, neither of us have had anything to drink yet, but I felt looking into his eyes alone was gonna make me lose my mind. All I could think about is how his lips would feel against my cheek. I’d rehearsed the encounter that entire morning: how after the dare I’d flit my eyelashes just once in a teasing-your-bestie kind of way, the kind of way that assures him it’s all good fun and the next girl’s gonna take off her shirt anyways so we might as well do this. And then he’d get on his hands and knees like a good little puppy boy and crawl forward across that dark room, that carpet dank with the smell of weed and liquor and beer, and then he’d close his eyes and pucker his lips and inch closer. And I’d lean into it, jerk my left cheek forward. I’d picked the exact spot he’d kiss, practiced lining up to intercept his lips. Made sure my fur was soft and trim, plush. Stole five different conditioner samples from the mall and deticked my fur to the point of genocide. And he’d seize up just an inch apart, and I’d feel his hot breath hit my eye and blink and keep them closed. And he’d think ‘am I really about to kiss my childhood best friend I’ve known my entire life?’ or ‘can things really be the same after this?’ And no, things will never be the same because he wouldn’t ever be able to see me without thinking how soft my cool, silky fur felt against his lips, and how the addicting taste would fill his mind with thoughts of only me, soon obsessed with the kiss, thinking about it every moment of every day, so desperately wanting to taste me again. And he’d do it anyways because he’s caught up in the moment, damnit, and there’s nothing to do but kiss me—and worry about the rest later.

“But then Bratty says something, and I’m trying to figure out what I missed when she pulls him—she pulls Azzy in—and kisses him right on the lips! He looks like hates it at first. His eyes go wide, and I’m halfway to pulling her off him and smacking the shit out of her, but then he leans into it! He leans into it!” She repeats herself for a reason beyond my comprehension. “And then, and I know this because her mouth is pretty long, I see it from the side, and then she goes for the tongue!

“I don’t remember what happened after that. I remember feeling so utterly shocked. I was so hypnotized by Azzy that once he was ripped away from me it was like a veil had been rent. I remember running. All around me was sin, wicked evil sin. The black creatures dancing against the walls—by my tears as a lens their forms melted into terrible, horrible shapes. It’s like they were jumping at me. They spat on my quintice-conditioned fur, rubbing it ripe with the smell of dope, and ripped away my skin. Dark crimson lines of blood corrupted into something black in the midst of those dancing devils. My scratching claws finally broke skin, gouged at me until there was nothing left. I remember feeling scared. There’s a standing mirror I came across, and I saw myself in it. Indeed I’d torn away all my flesh. My bones were black and nestled within my ribcage was a red, pulsing eye—a seed, an icon of sin, growing, festering unchecked. I remember feeling alone. I fell to my knees, smushed the side of my face against the mirror, and I screamed as loud as I could. But the raucous chaos of the party swallowed it up. I screamed some more, for my father, Obaasan, and then to God. I said I was sorry in so many ways, that I’d be a good little Christian girl and never think a bad thought ever again.

“That my first kiss would go to Azzy, on our wedding day. Until then I’d hold his hand and hug him from behind in the roughhousing way that I do, and I’d not let greed and lust tempt me. I’d never masturbate; I’d never read any of Dad’s inappropriate books; I’d resist every lewd thought until the day comes when Azzy and I want to have children. I remember feeling cold, so very cold.

“And I remember the opposite. I don’t know how much time had passed, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. His hand. I felt His presence by His courier, whose kind pale face enveloped my vision, a somber, innocent, incorruptible concern about him. I kept crying, and he held my hand a while. Eventually I settled down enough and he got me up on his back, and I cried all the water in my body into the nape of his soft neck that was like a pillow. He kept saying ‘You’re drunk, Dess. You’re drunk.’ I threw up on the side of the road.

“I never talked to Bratty again after that.” As an aside, here she detours. “Did you know she’s Ukrainian? That’s how we became friends—she had an Azov sticker on her MacBook and I thought she might be one of the only sane people in this stupid woke school district, but, like, I guess she’s just a whore.”

Here December Holiday’s voice hitches in her throat. She gazes off wistfully, fixating on the cat couple on the rock. There’s a glisten about her eyes, a glisten which refracts the noon sun at me as it dribbles down her cheek to the base of her chin. She’s been yapping for what feels like half an hour.

To clarify, I’m thoroughly aware of this entire debacle. The night of, Azzy came home looking a little out of it, and Mom smelled the beer on his breath right away—wherefore I consider this minute aspect of Dess’ recollection an embellishment, a likely projection of her ideal Azzy’s utter innocence, but as my understanding of things match the fundamental details of hers, it’s neither here nor there. Basically Azzy folded instantly and started bawling his eyes out, and Mom spent the entire night at his bedside thanking God for bringing her sweet prodigal baby boy out of ‘that swirling infenomicon of sex and sin’ safe and sound. Dad let me stay up late watching Basic Instinct so I wouldn’t have to deal with the psychobabble.

Indeed, both Azzy’s and mine forever changed that night.

Henceforth Mom proclaimed that Asriel should never again speak to Mother Harlot, Bratty, the Whore of Babylon, and that was the end of that. Hearing Dess’ side of things might elicit a shred of sympathy, if not for the multitude dubious persuasions defining her reputation.

I think she, being of better social caliber than I, senses my apprehension, so she keeps this next part quick.

“Anyways, yeah, um,” she coughs awkwardly, as if she’s only now realized Azzy’s my brother. “That was the start of his scalie phase. Stayed by his side for that whole ordeal. Even picked up drawing to indulge his ‘interests’.”

She cringes. I do, too.

“But it’s basically been that my entire life. He’s always chasing some normie thot when I’m literally right in front of him begging for even a shred of attention. Like, my Mom’s Carol Mars—fuckin’—Holiday! I have a trust fund! He’d never work a day in his life—just has to sit there and look pretty!”

She stands up, arms crossed. She starts doing this stomping thing that I nearly get up and leave.

“Like, what do they have that I don’t? Slimy fucking scales? A fat fucking ass? ‘Cause it didn’t stop at scalies, you know.” I know. “He’s gone after fish-folk, vegans, one time even a stupid,” and here she shouts a very very very bad word that turns every head in the park.

I consider running, but I’m a stupid brain-dead idiot with a penchant for being nosey.

“You know one time he asked me to help him write a love song for Catty? Catty?! Fucking Catty, man. He’ll go after a three-hundred pound fat fucking cow before he picks up an average-to-decent-looking deer girl on his radar. And you know what? I wrote him the fucking song! ‘Cause apparently I’m a fucked-up cuck fuck who gets off to helping the guy of her dreams ask out other girls.”

She continues like this for a long, long, long while. The way it all kind of spews out messy and unrehearsed conveys the impression that she hasn’t really talked to anyone about this before, at least not to the depth in which she’s going. If she wasn’t such a terrible bigot she’d have earned my unconditional sympathy by now. Yet by merit of her being a treasured presence in my earlier life, one of few small luxury commodities in a cruel wasteland through which a young child was tortured to wander, she’s earned something resembling tenure.

So I slump back into the bench and let her yap some more. The more she whines and complains, the more she moves lighter as she paces circles around Dad’s beat-up truck.

“Must be nice, getting that off her chest after all these years.”

I nearly startle. Ralsei’s paws greet me a cheery two-handed wave. It’s bizarre. Before his form was always something amorphous, like a cloudy concept of a person floating around your imagination, but presently his shape is rigid. It has a permanence that doesn’t waver.

Of the same monster as the biological Dreemurrs, he’s a good foot shorter than Azzy, fair few inches below me as well. His fur is long and his ears hug the sides of his face, occasionally hopping to the beat of his mood. A pair of reddish-pink horns curl up from the top of his head, and a pair of green wire-frame glasses square off his face, keep it from looking too lanky.

His clothes are simple. A pair of cuffed jean shorts and a striped blue-and-green t-shirt with white sleeves. Around his neck is a dainty red scarf. Serving no function in this humidity and heat, it makes him look like a super-uber queer.

“Susie’s doing well, by the way.” He keeps his voice low. And somehow I hear him over Dess.

On the topic, she’s literally screaming at a wall right now, like that song from Minor Threat, but literally. She looks like she wants to punch something, and a bag of topsoil leaning against the wall of Flower King is her unfortunate victim.

Ralsei continues. “She was talking all about how she wanted to show up to church tomorrow so she could see you.”

I nod. Haven’t seen her since yesterday at school. We spoke briefly in the halls, but Berdly was absent and I was preoccupied with Azzy’s coming home to talk more than a sincere ‘how do you do’. It’s likely Marlet will drag Berdly to church, so I anticipate that’s when I’ll inform them of the strange deer in the rain, among my other findings. At this point I suspect synthesis will occur, and we’ll make our decision from there.

“So Azzy and Dess also ate the chalk?” Ralsei tilts his head.

I stare. For him to know that, he’d still have direct access into my thoughts. He has the unrestricted clearance to poke and prod at my mind, intrusions unbeknownst to me, even, and extract any close-to-chest secret from the darkest recesses of my mind. And presently there exists no countermeasure; For Ralsei’s new individuality gives him freedom to disrespect my whims. Thus, I’m at his mercy. How the turn table.

A cheery hum from the goat in question corroborates this musing. “You owe me that much for breaking my glasses,” he chirps.

I let out a low hum, though there isn’t a purpose. If he knows everything I think I needn’t move or speak. In fact, I needn’t actively think at all, for so long as he’s tapped into my noggin he has the freedom to fish and retrieve the primordial suggestion of thought. So there’s still some benefit to be had. If anything, a long-term childhood friend with intimate knowledge and full context to my most nefarious thoughtcrimes will have developed countermeasures to the common prejudice against weirdos like me.

Meanwhile, Dess is still fucking bitching at a brick wall. I can’t even comprehend what she’s saying anymore, but it’s so frantic and unorganized that it’s closer to an angry mob all speaking over one another. It’s sort of impressive in a way. For the emotions on display are exclusively vain, and never before has the phrase ‘blown a gasket’ applied to a situation more.

Ralsei must sense my subconscious desire to be done with her nonsense. For he cups his hands around his mouth, leans forwards, and—his eyes dart over, meet mine for a second, as if to say ‘watch this’—and taunts her something very rude.

Nonetheless Dess whirls around. “Shut the fuck up, Kris! I’ll kill you! Fucking meatbag piece of shit!” She screeches.

I blink and Ralsei’s gone with a snap. I’m alone on the bench and December Holiday stomps heavy-hoofed. Her nostrils flare. Her eyes glow red with hate, as does her nose. She snags a shovel leaning against the side of Dad’s truck; the spade’s scraping against packed dirt is like the toll of the grim reaper.

I compose myself, motionless on the bench. I’ve accepted I’m to be hospitalized by the machinations of a misfit goat.

Dess flinches at the passing of a local. Some dude glued to his phone nearly collides with her. He sees me, then Dess in that order—the deranged lunacy in her eyes, makes her hair like it stands on ends. And then he sees the shovel.

“Keep your phone out,” she says unto him. “You’re about to witness a hate crime.” And then she’s upon me.

Chapter Text

In the twenty-seventh year of the twentieth century of our Catholic Lord, the Pentecostal Christ bestowed unto the planet Earth a wide-bodied man with large yellow eyes and a curving beak with an orange-and-pink striped pattern running up to his face and down the length of his body. His name was Chuck Smith.

Thirty-eight years later, Chuck Smith came to know a small church in southern Kali-Fornia they called ‘Calvary Chapel’ of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a nineteen-twenty-three-founded denomination with roots in the evangelical tradition. In someplace betwixt the following rapid changes he forsook his Pentecostalist ties for charismatic evangelical Christianity; and, erupting out of the incoming phenomena of Jesus freaks, therefore came to a missionary empire spanning coast to coast, a new, contemporary Protestant religion, united under the Calvary Chapel name. For the good God of Luther gave Smith forty-eight years more to cement his legacy internationally. And from it came some of the nation’s premiere megachurches, one prominently landing a forty-minute drive out of town. Chuck Smith erroneously predicted the world would end in nineteen-eighty-one.

But for our humble unincorporated community Hometown, we’ve known a small chapel by the wayside, a narrow green, sickly building front-and-back-adorned with a progression of stained glass depicting the Passion. Erected between World Wars, for one hundred years the families flocked in the morning to worship, the homeless in the afternoon to sup, and those lost and smelling of liquor at the darkest times of night to cry. The original color was of the red oak that built it—by the whims of God, painted a number of colors throughout the passing years. Its chief proprietorship fell into the hands of a young veteran of the Pacific Theatre, an adored man named Gerson Boom, whose name shall be preserved for his acclaimed ‘Legend of the Hammer’ book series—more accurately for the messy plagiarism lawsuit filed on behalf of the Tolkien estate on the eve of probate. Legal fees left his son penniless, and the place fell into disrepair. The stained colors of the Passion became black with grime—a more historical punctuation of torture; the walls, all wood, fell to rot and left the nighttime service imagining a dead raccoon hanging from the rafters; no longer were needy fed. Then things came to pass five years ago, whereupon one tear-ridden final service concluded in a rancorous arson-suicide. They say, as there were no further casualties, that the sole tragedy of the night was that Father Alvin would struggle to make heaven with so much hate in his heart. Initially the township sold the land for real estate, but the buyers were not so cruel, and remembered the kind place by a small headstone in a field of golden sunflowers.

So we go to the megachurch instead.

I’m in my Sunday best, a collared black button-down hinting at green and a pair of khakis. Incidentally this place is very open-minded to the t-shirt-and-jeans ideology of dress, but I fail to stand out amidst a smattering of three-piece suits and fancy dresses—at least not for my clothes.

The building before me is sprawling, proud. In some places it’s up to three stories of rectangular modern design, large plate glass windows, coarse exterior walls—skin to a metal skeleton. With a keen eye, you can easily spot the breaks in uniform design, which wings are additions, and which pavement is a darker, newer shade than the rest. For an onslaught of acquisition and renovation over the past two and a half decades has nearly doubled its size and quadrupled the parking space. Yet still we had to park in front of a random driveway. The stencil insignia of a dove in downwards flight, an icon of the religious franchise, always confused me as a dumb kid. To me it always looked like a backwards Texas, or some kind of crest. Over the years I’ve thought of the particulars less and less, and habituated the symbol to be as synonymous to Protestant Christianity as is the vacant cross. Or the fish thingy.

Of twelve thousand in weekly attendance, we are merely six: Mr. Holiday, Dess, Noelle, Mom, Azzy, and me. Dad is a devout atheist. There are three services and we’re attending the second and most populous one.

From the parking lot to the back entrance there’s a bit of blacktop protected from the roll of tires by a line of orange traffic cones where some parishioners intermingle. I see Susie among them, her Dead Kennedys logo shirt proclaiming her presence from a mile away. Instead of her usual she’s got a tan suit jacket, unbuttoned.

I want to call out ‘hi’ but I’m compelled to watch the unfolding scene:

Susie O’Brien pulls at the lapels of her suit jacket. Checking once, twice, to ensure they’re neatly in place. The morning still retains the coolness from Thursday’s rain, but the weatherman predicts another heat wave this week. Her large shoes hobble around the black tarmacadam, each step prompting her to yank down the tail of her jacket, thus beginning the cycle of checking her lapels once more.

A man approaches her. He takes long strides. In his lime green hand he holds a clipboard, and his face is a permanent smile. He’s comfortably dressed: a red polo and khakis, like Jake from State Farm. He’s not black.

He gives the time-worn succinct upright wave of the suburban Caucasian male as crucial part of his greeting. “Hey there, sister in Christ!” His voice booms. “Now, I’d recognize that look anywhere. Either you just got mugged—or you’re a new member.”

“Um,” she starts.

“I’m Chet Bryce.” He grabs her hand and shakes. “I’m the liaison for newcomers. Now tell me, little Missy—what brings you to our fine neck o’ the woods?”

“Oh,” Susie yanks her hand away, “I’m, uh, waiting—”

“Boy, I love waiting!” Encircling her, he slaps her on the back hard. “I coached high school softball for ten years ‘waiting’ for my small business to take off. But you know, what people don’t tell you about being a high school softball coach is two things: one, the easy access to cocaine—whoo!—and, two, the temptation of adolescent women. I’m very lucky, you see. By the good Lord’s grace, he sent my wife to break my kneecaps in the girls’ locker room with a softball bat. She was very good to me—praise the Lord! That is, of course, until she started seeking the company of ‘women’. But now my life’s turned around and I’m livin’ for Jesus! I lead a youth group for high school girls now. Praise Him! Hallelujah!”

Susie looks so confused. She gives him an insane look, like he just admitted to being a pedophile or something. Her eyes flood with regret, dart around, anywhere but Mr. Bryce.

Eventually her they fine me. They widen, gaining life.

“Dude!”

She dashes over, shoes hitting hollow against the parking lot. Upon reaching me both her hands clamp my shoulders and shake me like a rag doll.

“Is this a friend of yours, Kris?” This is Mom. She’s wearing a lavender collared button-down blouse and a a long skirt in a darker purple that matches her glasses so tactically that it can’t not be a coincidence.

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Dreemurr! I’m Susie—Kris’ friend.” Susie stiffens, fixes her slouch.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Susie, but please,” and for an instant she flies into bloodrage, “call me Miss Finlay. Dreemurr was my ex-husband’s name.” She resorts to a monotone to suppress her anger.

“O-oh…” Susie’s remorse is apparent. She offers me one of those condolent looks that blurt ‘I didn’t know your parents were divorced—sorry!’

I next flinch at an elbow from Azzy. He slides me something smug, like the something I give him when he forgets to clear his search history. He’s defiantly casual today, a grey long-sleeve collarless polo shirt with a wide blue transverse stripe spanning his breast. And jeans. Moving to his right, Dess stands stiffly, arms behind her back, finding any excuse to take just an inch closer to my older bro. Her idea of Sunday best concurs with he, a pair of chinos and an old Vacation Bible School t-shirt. Atop her head is a bright red SnapBack hat fashionable to these kinds of places, with two holes cut out for her antlers. The last two of the sextet are Mr. Holiday and Noelle. The former wears a Kelly green worship garb of the local folk hero Saquon and a pair of gym shorts so short Mom and Azzy were trading snickers in the car mocking the gayest man they’d ever laid eyes on.

On Noelle, she’s wearing a white sun dress in which I’ve rarely seen her. Frills line the straps which leave exposed her slender shoulders, as well the hem of the skirt showing off most of her long legs. I’m infected by the wicked notion that she looks remarkably handsome, though I keep myself from ogling at her too long for Susie’s sake. For the infatuated dino girl steals occasional glances while she talks to Mom.

Eventually the group fractures. Noelle wants some hot chocolate in the middle of fucking Spring for some reason, and her father escorts her. Azzy and Mom go ahead, too, on the pretense of finding decent seats in the main auditorium. And of course wherever Azzy goes Dess follows like a lovesick puppy.

“Yep,” Susie says.

“Mhm.”

We loiter some. The masses pass around us, like a river’s current around an outcropping rock. A train passes nearby. A track runs close to the church, separated by a chain link fence and barbed wire. I’m growing bored, so I pass some time counting red hats. Dess makes one, and within the next minute I’m at twelve when Susie asks me: “Wanna head inside?”

“Uh, sure, okay.”

The river erodes the stone, and we’re caught in the current. Susie’s got about a foot on me, so by instinct I follow her close.

The indoor carpet is coarse, scratchy ‘neath my rubber soles. Parishioners dot the length of the hallway leading towards the sanctuary. Intermittently they’ll wear a radio and ear piece—the ushers and other important folks.

The church offers a Sunday school for the youth, a nursery for infants all the way to the fifth grade, held in the classrooms belonging to the weekdays’ private Christian academy. For the middle school grades six through eight, there’s this auditorium to the right of us where a handful of kids filter in. Each year they’ve got some new theme to appeal to their addled minds. This year it’s Skibidi Toilet.

Susie taps my shoulder. I swat her away. I already see. As does he, us, Berdly.

He scrambles away from his older sister and this portly skeleton guy who runs the corner store that used to be a Wawa. He’s a friendly face around the church, between running the ministry for the middle schoolers and helping with the main service. The lines beneath his eyes remind me of Dad’s—scars as proof time was so unkind to him. Each rattling laugh of his echoes hollow against his insides. His soul is gone, too much time in the city took that from him. Consumed by a pitch-black evil that loomed over his bedside with twisted horns and a dripping maw, he spiraled into a deep depression curable only by the grace of the Judeo-Christian God. Or so says my father. They were partners, back in Philly, and we learned about the megachurch through him. And I guess his kid brother is Martlet’s long distance boyfriend working for Saudi Oil.

Berdly smoothes out his white button-down. Its sheer material lets Sonic the Hedgehog’s rich blue quills bleed through from a t-shirt underneath. He isn’t wearing any pants.

We exchange the appropriate greeting formalities, and at this point Ralsei’s joined us. His Sunday best is this shit green frock thing, with black sleeves, and he’s still got that gay scarf. “Wouldn’t do to have Dess spot me,” says he.

We walk, and I quickly fill the two in on the latest developments.

“So,” Susie says, holding up her palms parallel, “you’re telling me when Ceroba scratched you, you started feeling cold in the middle of a heat wave.”

I nod.

“Then on Thursday night you ran into this deer that was turning rain into acid in, like, a ten-yard radius around it.”

“The acid wasn’t very strong,” Ralsei clarifies.

“Okay, sure, but now you’re telling us that your older brother and Noelle’s older sister got fed the same chalk we did by some crazy pedophile professor, but none of this weird shit’s happened to them?”

“Mhm,” I say.

“I hypothesize,” Berdly says; he pauses and glances at a café we’re passing. An exchange of gestures decides that we’ll enter. Berdly continues. “…that the chalk fed to Dess Holiday and Kris’ brother Azzy was not the same Hagoromo that are causing these incidents.”

“Nuh-uh,” Susie snarks. “Remember, Kris said yesterday that Ralsei called out to Dess and she heard it. So at the very least her chalk was cursed, too.”

“It’s doubtful that Azzy’s isn’t,” Ralsei pipes up. “Kris and I haven’t had the chance to test him yet, but the way that creepy professor was talking, he probably gave them both the same chalk. Not to mention how he described the whole thing. That Azzy would receive ‘time in excess’ and Dess would receive the Earth’s rotation—whatever that means.”

“Maybe it has to do with how the curse affects them?” Susie says.

“Nay, I say,” says Berdly. “Because it hasn’t affected them—at least not yet.”

“Right,” she hums.

Her hefty hand forces open the door to the café. The church’s primary structure observes the Protestant whitewashing aesthetic, but the café breaks away from this to offer warm wooden panels and minimal lamplight. A glass front counter boasts a selection of homemade pastries donated by the parishioners, and behind the counter stored in a diagonal lattice coordination, a fancy array of coffee beans and teas and whatnot. Noelle and her father sit near the back corner in a six-person booth. She waves over to us.

Susie seizes up.

“Uh, Kris,” she whispers, so quiet it barely rises over the ambience of hushed conversations. She pivots towards the wall, finds a travel mug on display to fidget with. “You two can go ahead. I’ll, uh, I gotta use the bathroom.”

“I dunno, Sue,” Ralsei approaches beside her. “This could be your chance to get to know her a little better.”

“What? Are you crazy?!” She hisses through her pointed teeth. “I can’t just do that right away! Plus, her Dad’s here—he’ll think I’m some kind of bumbling gay idiot! What about our plan?”

She looks to me and Berdly for validation but we’ve already seated ourselves beside Mr. Holiday, leaving the only empty space next to Noelle. Susie’s eyes narrow. She turns away. Her foot taps in anxious rumination. Her hands run through her hair, fix the tail of her suit jacket and get her lapels looking presentable. Then takes a deep breath and heads over.

Mr. Holiday’s just about finished catching me up on the mundanities of his and my father’s weekend fishing excursion when Susie slumps down. She hangs off the edge of the booth, leaving an enormous chasm of space between her and Noelle.

And presently I stand up. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say. “Berdly, too.”

“Me, too?” He adjusts his glasses quizzically.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s good to have a bathroom break before the service.”

It takes a sec for his [COMEDY] brain to get the memo. “O-oh, yes, indeed! We’re going to the bathroom, just the two of us. Together!” He announces.

I extend him the courtesy of waiting ‘till we’re outside to slug him in the shoulder.

“Ow! Hey! What the heck, Kris?”

But I ignore him, heading deeper into the hall ending in a small alcove and a pair of bathrooms. As it happens I actually do have to piss.

The following account is transposed to me by Ralsei, who, having stayed behind, permits me entry into his senses while I’m sitting on the toilet:

Susie tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, presently acutely conscious of every idiosyncrasy pertaining to her appearance. With her palms she flattens her wrinkly shirt and untainted jacket. Timid fingers pick at the dirt beneath her nails. Her hands fold in her lap, snout at a subtle downward cant in deference to her crush’s father.

“So, Sue,” Mr. Holiday ends any chance of her suffering the ordeal in awkward silence. “You’re good friends with our Kris-mas?”

“Uh—Christmas?” She stutters. Knowing Noelle would be present, I noticed earlier she made an effort to improve her dental hygiene, but years of neglect leave them stained yellow to their core, beyond short-term repair. As such her face dips into her chest to speak.

“Just a nickname I like to call them,” Mr. Holiday clarifies. “Kris, I mean.”

“Oh, uh, right. They mentioned them and Noelle were close as kids?”

“Oh, yeah,” he chuckles. “I’d always tell my Azzy—Kris’ dad—that we’d be brother-in-laws one way or another.”

“D-Dad!” Noelle’s face sours, and as hard as I can I bash my head against the side of the stall.

Susie’s hands, beside her thighs, grip the end of the booth cushion. Nails scratch inaudible against the wood. Mr. Holiday squints. The corners of his mouth play up, retreat back to widen an emerging grin. At the same time his forehead wrinkles, like he’s deep in thought. Ralsei specifically notes his eyes—how they dart from the Dead Kennedys shirt to the lapels of her jacket to the growing conflict on her face. He sees envy, disappointment, and just a hint of betrayal—and immediately my gut slips and flips and I nearly throw up all over my lap. He digs and digs, with a fine chisel chipping away at the contours of her complex emotions. As King David hid beneath the marble, Mr. Holiday traces around every semantic, every detail of the situation, and once he finds what he’s looking for, he crosses his arms and leans back.

“Alright, alright. I’m sorry, Elly.” Next, to Susie: “You seem like a real decent girl. But tell me, Sue—you believe in God?”

She wants to lie. Ralsei and I know it. But she’s shifting tactics, thinking long-term: to lie now would complicate things down the road. Or maybe it’s just chance—the random paralysis of fear. “No,” she mumbles.

“Well that’s alright. You wouldn’t find so many friends here, anyways,” he says. “They’re good people, most of ‘em, at least—dunno about that one youth group pastor—but they’ve got this solid way of thinking that isn’t easy to shake.”

“Uh-huh,” Susie nods slowly. She stops to think for a sec. “Do you believe in God, Mr. Holiday?”

He laughs. Slaps a knee. Noelle’s small hand comes up to stifle a giggle, and Susie’s beaming. “That’s kind of an odd question to ask someone that’s goin’ to church, yeah?”

“I guess.”

“But enough of that,” Mr. Holiday says. “I saw you know Berdly, too?”

“Yeah, we’re chill,” she says.

“That’s good. Berdly’s a weird kid—pretty sure he’s got Asperger’s, actually—but he’s a good kid, too. His sister’s a saint, raising him all alone after his parents bought the farm.”

“Yeah.” Susie gulps down a forming lump in her throat. “I was watching Saw I and II with him the other day—”

“Oh, I love the Saw movies!” Noelle interjects. Her eyes twinkle like polished silver. “I saw Saw X—get it? I saw a Saw movie—in theaters and it was sooo good. Like, I love Saw VII but Saw X was a total return to form for the franchise. Tobin Bell carries, as always. Like, Hoffman was a great villain but if they keep doing prequels like this I’m so onboard for it. People online are saying Saw XI’s never coming but I totally trust the process.” She crosses her fingers on both hands. “Honestly, like, I think it’s only up from here. Saw X is, like, on par with the original movie. Like, from my favorite to least favorite is probably, like: I, X, V, II, III, VI, and IV. I hate hate hate Jigsaw and I think Spiral is kind of better, but like, still pretty bad. Did you know that Chris Rock himself was the one who approached Lionsgate with the idea for Spiral? Like, he was trying to take his career in a new direction, but then he decides to do a Saw movie! Ha! Like, has he seen any of the films past the third installment? Total miscast, too, by the way. Like, he’s trying to be this tough cop but the way he delivers his lines is, like, a parody of someone trying to play his character. Like, they had Samuel L. Jackson in that movie and he was, like, fine, so it’s not like the movie itself was, like, the worst—actually, it had, like, potential as, like, a spin-off, but, like, Chris Rock was just, like, so bad! Aaack!” She squeals.

“Elly, honey, if you say ‘like’ one more time I’m gonna wash your mouth out with soap,” Mr. Holiday laughs.

“Very funny, Dad,” Noelle deadpans and rolls her eyes. “But, l—” She full-stops, takes a good ten seconds to figure out what she actually wants to say. “But anywho—what’s your favorite Saw trap, Susie?”

“Me?” Susie points at herself, provoking an eager nod from Noelle.

She pauses for a second, eyes wide, stunned by her tirade. Of the important things to coach Susie, I consider how we’ve dodged the crucial matter that she conceals a high-functioning autism that puts Berdly’s to shame. Mr. Holiday’s brow rises curiously, as if to ask Susie, ‘what, did Kris not tell you about that part?’ Indeed I hadn’t.

“Well, I—I’m not really too sure. I only watched the first two movies,” Susie stumbles. Noelle’s face flattens, and Susie winces.

Noelle buries her face in her hot chocolate, downing half the mug in seconds. “Oh, I didn’t realize. I’m just a really really big fan, and like, I don’t know anyone besides Kris who’s watched any of the movies before, so maybe I got a little carried away. Ah, and I like, totally spoiled the Hoffman thing, didn’t I? Sorry! Well, I guess you might not’ve noticed if I didn’t just bring it up again just now cuz at first he’s, like, just this white cop—and now I’m still rambling, and I should probably go now, shouldn’t I? I’m super late for rehearsal.”

Noelle chokes down the rest of her hot chocolate and shoves her way past Susie, head hanging as she speed walks out the café. Her eyes crease, letting the embarrassment pass through her like cold water before the shower turns hot. She blinks away the initial shock—maybe tonight in bed she’ll cringe and try to suffocate herself with her pillow—but presently she trots lightly. There’s a hopping skip to her step by the time she reaches the door.

Mr. Holiday sips his hot chocolate. His snout emerges, mustached by cocoa. “Don’t let it get you down, Susie-girl,” he says, gingerly dabbing his upper lip. “Everybody’s gotta strike out a few times.”

“I—I see.” All pretense cast to the wayside, Susie’s arm hangs from her neck, her crush exposed.

“It’s a lot of work courting a Holiday, you know,” he says. “Elly’s Mom—I gave her the runaround for two whole years of high school. A stubborn, young bull, I was.” He takes another sip, takes another gander. Susie’s begun to pout a bit, her sulking evident by the way her mouth opens and closes without speaking, a rehearsed enacting of all the ways she could have handled things differently. “I’ll admit, if you were any other girl I’d probably not give you the time of day. But if you’re okay with Kris-mas, you’re okay with me,” he says finally.

“Thanks?” Susie says. “I mean, it’s cool that you’re, uh, cool with me being, you know. Thanks.”

“I’m cool with you being what, exactly?”

Susie pauses. She checks the booth behind her—empty. “A girl,” she says finally.

Mr. Holiday takes another slow sip of cocoa. He repeats the ritual of dabbing his lip. “I’m a millennial, you know.” Pearly whites flank the sides of his buck teeth, dancing into a grin. “Thirty-eight years young, little Sue. I’m hip, dude. I’m cool. I’m punk rock. I’m a card-carrying communist, for your information—but don’t tell Elly’s mother that.” He gives Susie a wink.

“What’s a communist doing at an evangelical church?” She says.

This gets another laugh out of him. “Funny kid,” he keeps saying to himself.

“So, are you gonna help me get with your daughter, then?” Anticipation rises in Susie’s voice.

“Hell no.” Mr. Holiday chuckles. “Why’d you ever want to make the game so easy?”

Susie shrugs.

“Susie dear, you’ll come to learn that the chase is half the fun.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But for now,” he says, “we’ve got to head into the sanctuary. Almost time for service.” He downs the rest of his mug in one chug, and without another word abandons Susie to dumbly slouch. Her gums smack once or twice, and I give her a good five minutes to decompress and chew on what’s occurred before Berdly and I go fetch her.

JACK MEHOFF

AGE: 21

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS

USMC

CURRENTLY STATIONED IN OKINAWA, JAPAN

The megachurch sanctuary foregoes stadium-style seating for a more homely feel. In contrast to the black skeleton city grid of overhead studio lights, tinted holographic blues and reds, the large boxy speakers that look like overturned ottomans, and the air conditioning vents sprouting from the ceiling in tubes like roses with concentric petals; the same scratchy carpet so packed down by the trod of feet that you’d still snap an ankle if you fell the wrong way; the way the floor glides gently down from the edges of the room, stopping at landings here and there for handicap accessibility; it opts for an armada of traditional wooden pews, hand carved walnut, the staining dark in places where a pattern of vines creep up the shoulders.

JENNA TALIA

AGE: 27

RAV SAMAL

ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCE

CURRENTLY STATIONED IN WEST BANK, ISRAEL

The sea of pews is partitioned into eight sections. Each fits two columns of pews, and more rows than I can count. They all face towards a five-foot tall stage with a cobblestone wall foundation enclosed by wooden panels. More carpet insulates the top, and it retreats back into the rear wall, a mosaic of jutting rocks with the wood stencil logo of the downward-facing dove front and center. In three neat rows, a choir backs the stumbling of feet and murmuring conversation with soft hymns. It’s subtle, almost forgettable if you’re not paying attention. But it gives the downward trip to the base of the sanctuary an ominous sort of vibe, like in a fantasy RPG where you’re approaching the dungeon of the mad Halaster Blackcloak and the vocals kick in and you know shit’s about to go down.

HUGH JANUS

AGE: 64

STAFF SERGEANT (ret.)

USAF

OPERATION DESERT STORM - SAFELY HOME

PRAISE BE TO GOD

Dess and Azzy saved a pew of seats for our entourage, second row from the front of the third section. The first of each section is usually reserved for the Parishioners with handicaps and special needs. On this occasion one among them eagerly waves at me, a kind-faced girl stricken with cerebral palsy whom I recognize from school. Temmie’s her name, I think.

I slide next to Azzy, and Susie and Berdly—as well as Martlet—pile in after. Mr. Holiday sits opposite, next to Dess. Ralsei goes away to wherever he goes away to on account of December and possibly Azzy. Best to figure that out another, less crowded time, says he.

The sanctuary is nearly at capacity. There are a few ancillary chambers serving as overflow rooms, though I’ve never been, as well as three large auditoriums for live translation into Spanish, Chinese, and Korean. The authority by which we’ve reserved seats so close to the front is thanks to Mom and Noelle, who wave to us from the stage between verses. Noelle passes over each of us with the same fondness, even Berdly—all save for Susie, whom she skips over with a quiet sort of low-liddedness, the exact disappointment you have when you realize you aren’t quite connecting with a friend-to-be. Susie looks like she wants to kill herself.

MIKE HAWK

AGE: 19

PRIVATE

USMC

K.I.A.

THOU SHALT NOT WEEP

FOR THE LORD HIS PROMISES KEEP

GOD’S PRECIOUS SHEEP

HE ONLY SLEEPS

ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

Is the final dedication to the armed forces that flits across one of four large projector screens situated that give clear view to all in attendance. It’s carefully timed to end at nine-forty-five on the dot, whereupon the choir steps down from the stage. Mom hurries down the steps and slides next to Susie, and the two talk softly. Susie points a curious thumb at Noelle, who, rather than disembark from the stage, inches closer to the edge. Noelle approaches the shaft of a microphone stand, freeing the clamp to raise it to her height.

Three more emerge from backstage. First is a very easygoing kind of man, the kind with a loose unbuttoned red plaid flannel with the sleeves rolled up around his bulky black wing feathers, carrying an electric Telecaster; next a lanky spindly looking girl with long stringy arms that remind me of the remains of a blanket I had as a child, on bass; and finally Chet Bryce, the green-bodied guy from earlier this morning, on a drum set guarded by a tri-fold plexiglass shield.

“Didn’t you guys just get finished singing?” Susie whispers at my Mom.

“That was just while people are still coming in,” Mom whispers back. “The main worship is led by a smaller band.”

They talk some more, and at nine-fifty exactly the large projector screens flash up a stock image of a stone brick road made in Blender, or at least so elaborately post-processed that it looks like it’s made in Blender. The congregation stands, the drummer counts off four, the music starts, and lyrics fade into the screen—in that order.

The song’s familiar, BarlowGirl’s Never Alone, ‘cept the piano and more complex parts are tactfully abbreviated by the guitar and some basswork. Then three songs by Chris Tomlin I know by sound but not by name. With loose fingers I rap against Susie’s shoulder next to me, on the verge of a wisecrack, but the knock is hollow, inflexible; there’s no give. Her neck juts forward, literally slack-jawed staring like a moron—and I swear I see her drooling.

Of course she’s staring at Noelle on stage. And I admit maybe I am, too, a little bit. Especially that the stage lights seem to single her out, a lone white spotlight amidst a dim sanctuary. It makes her white dress glow like an angel, or a vampire in the pale moon’s light. Her hands hand near her waist, clasped loosely, swaying gently side to side like a blade of grass bends to a summer night’s wind. It’s only during a concluding eight-minute parody of American Pie (‘Parable Guy’) that I tap Susie again and she snaps out of it.

“Dude,” Susie says. “I gotta join that band.”

“Huh? Are you stupid, or something?” Berdly quacks.

“Yeah,” she says. “But that’s beside the point. I’m joining that band. I’m so serious about this.”

“You aren’t even Christian,” he says back.

“Well I’ve gotta be closer to heaven than that Epstein Jr. on the drums,” she says. “All I gotta do is make up some story and call the cops, and then he’s out and I’m in.”

He thinks for a second. “You have a plan. I like plans.”

“See? Just trust me on this.”

“Wait, do you even know how to play drums?”

“Uh-huh. I mean, I’m good enough to perform, yeah.”

“You’ve convinced me, then. I’m one hundred percent on board. This is a smart idea. Shrewd, even. What say you, Krissy?”

Don’t fucking call me that I’ll kill you and cut off your head and have a dog fuck your dead eye sockets. Instead of telling him that I shrug. “Sounds,” and then I say a bad word that has Mom reach over three people to smack me.

She mutters something about my father’s poor influence, about the shallow, lonely lives of secular humanists, and maybe I laugh too and she smacks me again—but lighter this time. In another universe she’d cross paths with Sage of Sages, Scholar of Scholars, Fair-Haired Son-out-of-Wedlock of a certain Prince, and God’s Gift to an Awakening Generation, Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, D.N.S.c., conversation derailing into barbarian fisticuffs almost immediately, and the world shall perish. On a completely unrelated note, I think to myself about American Pie and The Saga Begins. There’s that story how Don McClean himself mixes up the words of both songs, and with this Christian parody in the mix the song for me’s become this amorphous mixture of lyrics; in the same breath I’d go to Theed to see the Queen, my widowed bride, and junior high.

The song ends and the humble quartet file out quietly to polite applause, heads bowed to make way for Martlet’s boyfriend’s older brother, whose name I’ll now mention is Sans—as in, a sans serif font. In his arms he carries a wobbly trio of milk crates stacked on top another.

“Heya brothers, sisters.” With little grace he assembles a staircase with the milk crates so he can reach the microphone. “We’re gonna do some collections while I ‘rattle’ off a few announcements. Get it? Rattle? ‘Cause I’m a skeleton.”

The congregation laughs. Mom slaps her knee I swear it’s gonna bruise.

Mr. Sans goes on like this for a while, knocking off a women’s prayer group; a middle school retreat; a Christian singles eighteen-to-twenty-seven speed dating program; they’re showing Hacksaw Ridge tonight at ten-thirty, and for the kids the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie; intramural flag football; a Second Amendment firearms safety course—know your rights!; paintball excursions every weekend from now ‘till September; the Israel vacation program is suspended another year until things cool down over yonder; a father-and-son Men’s breakfast next Sunday before service, entrance fee five dollars, reservation only; gay conversion counseling; gay conversion camp (the one where my younger brother's staying); a parents’ guide to making sure their child’s AI girlfriend follows the teachings of Christ; Jews4Jesus; Joel Osteen’s doing another book tour; the gift shop’s restocked the flags and banners and red SnapBacks, to which Dess wonders aloud if they’ll have better antler holes in hers than her shoddy scissor work; Christian tattoo parlor; Christian paper goods; Christian cryptocurrency; Snappy the Dog is getting his own Tubi original miniseries; ‘Evolution in Context: God Loves Science and You Should Too!’ ($49.99 plus tax); the first Saturday of each month there’s a baptism pool party and potluck at the Kuriakose’s house in Media; and to pray for the Lord’s courageous knights braving dangerous missionary expeditions to Satan’s strongholds in Uganda, Nigeria, Peru, Serbia, Turkey, Ndola (Zambia), Kenya, the indigenous Northern Russian in Yamal, Kyiv (God bless), and nondescriptly the Middle Eastern Wilderness, particulars undisclosed so the good people don’t get raped and buttfucked and murdered by Islamic jihadist extremists; a lime green Kia Soul is blocking some guy from getting out of the parking lot; prayer vigil for all the Christians stuck in evil Communist New Korea; a seminar for transgender women on surrendering to men and altogether understanding their new place in the kitchen; and laser tag.

The offering plate reaches us. Mom contributes a check—ten percent of Dad’s alimony, as is her ritual. Martlet throws in two Jeffersons for her and Berdly; Berdly throws in a five-shekel coin and presently I’m wondering why the flying fuck he’s got shekels. Then it gets to Susie, who stares at it, looks left and right and all around and sees that everybody’s giving something, and tosses in an unwrapped red Life Saver. I grab the bowl and pull it out and it almost gets to my mouth when Mom rather quite crossly smacks the shit out of me and makes me go throw it in the trash. She puts in two Lincolns for me and Susie.

When I get back Mr. Holiday is explaining to Susie how they pay tithe electronically. Every two weeks the church gets forty grand straight from the family coffers.

Mr. Sans eventually finishes his spiel and leaves. He’s got to go teach the middle schoolers, after all. And from the front and center row some old guy with these big wiry glasses steps up onstage. His height is that of a muppet’s; can’t be over two feet, he has to pull himself up, feet waggling over the lip of each step. He’s some kind of cat, but his peculiar size and stature makes me think something else. His fur coat is uneven, ungroomed. Greasy matting reflects the overhead light in shears across his body. If not for the pictures on the church website, of his years before Khe Sanh, you’d never guess the deeply bruised blue-ish purple was once a fair lavender. His skin breaks here and there, pitch-black fabric swallowing the gaps, stitched in with taut cord too rigid to be cotton. His right eye similarly is sewn over with a porcelain-smooth covering. It looks like a button, and from beneath a trail of more broken fur, at the canyon’s floor a river of cracked necrosis, splintered and jutting like rock. His good unscarred eyes droops. His lids sag under the weight of a million things I’ll never understand. It’s hard to see his pupil, a hermit locked deep inside his sanctum, a world only God knows. Indeed it’s more like an empty socket, but sometimes if the light hits just right, if he’s gaze cants upwards towards heaven, you can see a twinkle reflected through the dark cavern of his eye. It’s heresy to consider, but the void tells me his God is only his second fear in life.

An usher brings out three more milk crates, enlarges the staircase to accommodate the old man.

His name is Seam. Pronounced ‘Shawm’, the same pronunciation scheme as ‘Sean’. It’s stupid and gay but that’s just the way things are. Year round Seam dresses in these short-sleeved Hawaiian shirts, usually darker tones. It’s a look so synonymous with him that within my family and the Holidays, we call Hawaiian shirts ‘Pastor Seam shirts’. Like a certain friend of mine he doesn’t wear pants.

“Good morning everyone,” Pastor Seam says into the microphone. His voice gargles, hasn’t been cleared—an intentional manoeuvre, as Noelle revealed to me in a scandalous whisper one day, to begin service presenting himself unlike a Catholic authority, but an ordinary man of God.

The congregation echoes. “Good morning, Seam.”

Pastor Seam clears his throat. Even without blockage his speech is dark, wet. He breathes heavily through his mouth which the microphone pick up. It gives me daydreams of excruciating humidity, boots waterlogged and trudging through six inches of water, bugs chewing skin down to the muscle and leaving you a shriveled raisin from how much blood they’ve drunk. “Everyone, if you could please, bow your heads.” His head’s already dipped low, and we follow suit. Heads bow, and hats are doffed. Dess’ cap gets caught in her antlers, and Azzy makes a joke about cutting out the back part to look like Jotaro. “Let’s pray, folks,” Pastor Seam says.

His prayer is like deja vu. It’s different every time, yet I can’t help but feel like I know every word to come, like I’ve heard it a hundred million times.

“Heavenly Father, we come to You with heads bowed seeking guidance, Lord. For You to lead this ministry, and this country, out of the hands of evil and into the light. This country was in a bad way, Lord Jesus, and by Your grace you’ve set us back on the straight and narrow. Lord, we pray for the President of the United States of America, that he may continue to make the most correct decisions to bring our people closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. We pray for our boys in blue, and for our armed forces oversees, and fervently we pray for our military contractors in Israel, Lord. For they are Your knights, Lord, and You shall do with them as You see fit. For their Christian faith is under attack by lawless gangs, madmen, terrorists, the cartel, and the Islamic Jihad. You are their guardian. Keep them safe, and bring them home.”

I peek an eye open, catching Susie with hers open as well. She shrugs, then I shrug, and I wait for her to close her eyes before closing mine.

“Lord God we pray for the poor, the drug-addled, and the needy. That You may touch their hearts and open them up to the good news. I know I was among them in my youth; it was my greatest tribulation. That evil jungle, my heart of darkness, my apocalypse now—the slope devils of the orient seduced me with cocaine, filled me lust for adolescent women and the desire to take, steal, kill. Those vile, wicked people, their black society; the chink culture hypnotized me with its phenomenal evil power; it infected me. I brought it back home. I trampled on Your Holy Earth, Lord. Yet instead of casting me into the Lake of Fire, You chose mercy.

“For my dear, sweet wife, Lord. She’s an eternal gift from heaven, she is. You sent her into my life, my exorcist. With a kitchen knife in hand, Lord, You sent her to me in my sleep, and I was cured. Wherefore I beg You earnestly to give the lost and Godless a similar intervention. You are our shepard, and we, your sheep.

“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.”

“Amen,” sayeth the congregation.

“All right, folks. We’ve been chipping away at our comprehensive look at the scripture for ‘bout ten years now, and I’m happy to say that, Lord willing, we’ll be wrapping things up very soon.” Atop his pulpit is an old dusty thing almost as big as he. He flips it open with startling precision. “Now, let’s all turn to the The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to shew unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John. The very end. We’ll start from the eleventh verse of chapter nineteen. Now, as always, as I’m reading the King James you’ll have to forgive the anachronisms, but feel free to follow along in your own books.”

About a third of the congregation flips open their bibles, to the very end. As is our tradition, Mom sets in my lap the Bible belonged to Grandma Finlay, the New King James, enclosed in a thick leather case, sealed by a zipper; I thumb the edge, where the pages give way to a staircase of small alcoves with abbreviated chapter names, all the way to the bottom. From the beginning of Revelation I turn, and lifting each page gingerly, one by one, I’m arrested by a wave of nostalgia that sends me to many years ago—visions of a younger me nestled in my mother’s fur, Bible in lap, flipping one by one the same way as today.

To my left Susie watches intently, hypnotized by the sea of minuscule text. To her left, Berdly cracks open The Unofficial Holy Bible for MINECRAFTERS: A Children’s Guide to the Old & New Testaments. It’s seen better days. Susie makes a snide remark about Berdly being a sped, and the two bicker for a spell.

Presently Martlet pulls out her phone, sets it to Do Not Disturb, and opens a Holy Bible app—The New Jerusalem Translation—known for its robustly modern diction that doesn’t sacrifice scholarship or accuracy. I pass along the family Bible back to Mom, and to my right December withdraws the two thousand twenty New American Standard from a small pocket in the back of the pew in front of us, insisting that she and my brother share. Mr. Holiday has a printed copy of the KLV, an ambitious relexification of the world’s most translated book into the Klingon tlhIngan Hol.

“vaD joH'a' vaj loved the qo', vetlh ghaH nobta' Daj wa' je neH puqloD, vetlh 'Iv HartaH Daq ghaH should ghobe' chIlqu', 'ach ghaj eternal yIn.” (John 3:16 Klingon Language Version).

And in the Republic’s Galactic Basic, speaketh Paster Seam: “And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.”

Pastor Seam takes off his glasses. Starting from the back most right corner, his eyes sweep the entire auditorium.

“Now,” he says. “As we’ve been talking these past few weeks, these passages regard the end times, and the second coming of Christ. Like a thief he’ll come in the night, and it is not our place to know exactly when. But with a good grasp on the theology we might see the beginning signs, so that we may heed His warning and evangelize our lost husbands, wives, sons and daughters and cousins—lest they suffer.

“Presently,” and here he clears his throat into the microphone again. “God’s promised land is overcome with conflict. The devil’s pawns move against the Jews. The nations of the world fix their eyes towards Israel. If you’ve been paying attention to these sermons then this shall sound very familiar.”

A bit of sharp static fucks my ear. Pastor Seam’s switched off the mic, and emerges from the pulpit with a portable thing clipped to his shirt.

“Let me take you back a bit,” he says. “And I’ve told this story a few times in the past so if you’ve heard it before you’ll have to bear with me. Let’s go back twenty years, to the year two thousand five. The young Bush was beginning his second term and Revenge of the Sith had just come out. I was sitting in the sanctuary—yes, this very sanctuary—and with me was my good friend Jerry. He went to see the Lord just two years later but before that I’d known him as a good friend and mentor. And a good friend.

“On that day we were sitting in the sanctuary, discussing the latest warfare, when he said to me: ‘Seam, do you foresee the end of the world?’ And foolishly, I replied: ‘Well, yes, Jerry. Perhaps I do.’ And then I began to list off many things I’d read, from Daniel and Thessalonians, and the text of Christ’s Revelation you have in front of you, but at this Jerry shook his head. He spake to me this, that: ‘a good Godly man of this Holy Earth such as [my]self oughtn’t be wrapped in the technical knowhow of the Lord’s book. For the Kingdom of Heaven is beyond human comprehension.’ Now, it’s worth mentioning that Mr. Falwell—my Jerry—was not an uneducated man. For he had spent his University at a Bible college and over the course of his life received three honorary doctorates in divinity, theological seminary, and law. And let’s not forget fathering the greatest political revolution this country has ever seen.”

“Amen,” sayeth the congregation.

“So let’s understand that this profoundly wise man of God was telling me to not concern myself with the particulars. For God demands faith, and faith alone. And my faith was tested by God that night, for I’d grown awfully prideful in my worldly comprehension of the Word. I was sleeping soundly, and I awoke with a start. The room was dark, wet, and my world shimmered a dark red. For a moment I feared I was back in the jungle, but I soon was wishing to be there more than here. For my eyes flew open and I saw a horrid beast. He was as tall as the ceiling, maybe ten feet, and he was black. His arms and torso were long, and he was naked—remarkably masculine. A human body gave way to the head of a goat; long, long fur came down and mixed with the darkness like a robe. His horns were also black, gnarled, twisting. His long snout dripped of a viscous white fluid from his sharp front teeth like water from stalactites. And his eyes shone red; beams of light dove into my eyes, and fear took me. Here came my temptation. For my first impulse was to strategize, to identify the devil and its meaning and the best scheme to counteract its presence—to agonize every parable and miracle and know its overthrow in a single moment of utter knowledge. And then I remembered my earlier conversation with Jerry, and then I knew my pride.

“I cried out: ‘Lord, save me!’ And I was saved. Suddenly Jerry was next to me in my bed. And he sat at my side and explained the things I’ve just explained to you. And I was ashamed, so I wept bitterly.”

Pastor Seam is pacing as he tells this story. His ghastly recollection elicits gasps here and there.

“Now I’ll tell you why I’ve told you this story. And next I’ll guide you, as is my God-given directive. Even though you might see these events in the Middle East and think to yourself, ‘now, surely, the good Lord our God shall come and sweep me off my feet’, it is important to divest yourself from such thoughts. For the Lord rewards action, not reaction. It is your distinct prerogative as Christian men and women to uphold the word of God, to act in the interest of his final plan to the end no matter if it will conclude right now, or one hundred years from now. It’s important in this time of need to be unconditionally loyal.

“For we are the Lord’s most important servant—his emissaries. We will be the sword that comes from the mouth, that will slay the nations. There is talk of further U.S. operation in the Middle East, and to that I say, yea, the youth will go forth into this new crusade, and the Jews will return to Israel, to have it completely again, to prepare it for the Lord’s coming. But remember that He will surely exterminate the Jews also, in accordance to His prophecy. We are His truly chosen people, and the youth shall be our spear. That’s why I want every one of you teens, tweens, those in between—”

Briefly he makes eye contact with Susie, who hasn’t moved or spoken in a while, then moves on to whomever he can find that looks sufficiently young.

“—to put away your selfish worldly ambitions and enlist, either in the armed forces—or, if you are one of the prideless Jews that Jesus adores, to reclaim your birthright, give your life for the Lord. You will go into the den of sin and raze it. It’s a hive swarming with the devil’s advocates, and you must eradicate them to the last, for they are less than people; they have no culture, no intelligent society, only rightful land to be acquiesced by their superiors. The world will not weep for they, whom have failed to evolve beyond an elementary primitiveness—a stupid, insular, bumbling people that never knew anything but chaos because it lacked intelligence, the valuable bearer of culture. Therefore it is misguided, contrary to the Woke Left’s prescription, to presume that they will be intelligent enough to know how to accept a tax-subsidized missionary enterprise. How we’ve let these people, nay, things of Satan rise to such authority, that we may offer them a shred of sympathy, is a charity that shall never again be offered. No thanks to the radical Marxist Democrats…”

At this point I start to zone out. I’d forgotten how boring these things can be.

Susie nudges my attention with an elbow. “Dude, uh, is this how church usually goes?” she asks, an air of distress about her.

“What did you think it was gonna be like?” I say.

“I dunno—James Brown and the Blues Brothers?”

“You’ve got good taste in movies, Susie girl.” This is Mr. Holiday, crossing the aisle with a sharp, pointed whisper. He wants to say more but Mom cuts him down with a disapproving glare.

“Okay, but like, I’ve done the Catholic thing maybe once or twice with my older relatives,” Susie says, “and I don’t remember anything like this.”

“That’s because the Catholic Church doesn’t follow the Bible, sweetie,” Mom says. “With their Bishops and Cardinals and Popes—the Catholics embed themselves in politics and lose sight of the simple compassion of the story of Jesus. That’s why this church is non-denominational and apolitical.”

Some more time passes, and I’m starting to fall asleep. Susie notices and keeps me awake with aimless conversation, spoken in whisper. She brings up how she kind of messed up with Noelle, and I suck in air through my teeth and offer a consolatory pat on the shoulder. Berdly then suggests that we might use this moment of utter defeat to our advantage, to go gung-ho and overindulge Noelle Holiday’s autistic nerdities. For once I agree with him. We’ll start with immersing Susie in the world of the Saw movies and move on from there.

At this point Mom gets upset and tells us to quit yapping. Martlet scolds Berdly also, and the two siblings quietly argue for some time. Pastor Seam unwinds into another racist rant—this time on the Chinese. By the gentle Mr. Sans’ suggestion—who emerges from backstage alongside the band (Noelle included)—he wraps things up from there.

Mr. Sans rattles off (Get it? Because he’s a skeleton? He gets another crowd full of laughter) a few more announcements—apparently that Kia Soul had to be towed (a lizardlike fellow bolts out of the sanctuary at this)—and absconds as soon as he came.

Susie looks like she wants to say something to me when the band spontaneously breaks out into music. The soft guitar that she mistook for noodling is actually the intro to Relient K’s Sadie Hawkins Dance.

Noelle grips the microphone with both her small hands while the song’s energy rocks her hips side to side. Like a pendulum, they hypnotize a very down bad Susie.

Meanwhile people around us start to get up and leave. Temmie traps Berdly in conversation; even though he explains he has to use the bathroom she keeps talking. Azzy also says he has to use the bathroom and breaks away from Dess for the first time all morning. Mom gives her a sympathetic look. Martlet finds Mr. Sans and continues their conversation from before.

Susie, however, stays frozen in place. Her hands stick to her knees while she stares at Noelle. Her eyes grow wider than I think physically possible, wet with awe. Noelle catches her staring but keeps singing (‘I took off down the next hall running’). Confusion befalls Noelle’s face, which brushes past a slight curiosity to more confusion and now discomfort (‘Only to get stopped by a girl so stunning’).

Susie fails to accommodate her reaction in a way most would consider ‘sane and normal’. Her jaw unhinges. I swear she’s drooling.

Noelle, now locked in on her, scrunches her face like she’s clueless—continues without a hitch nonetheless (‘You’ll go with me to the Sadie Hawkins’).

This goes on until the end of the song. The band recovers moderate applause from those left on the sanctuary, and takes a bow.

“Dude!” Susie grabs my arms, starts shaking me. “Did you see that?” she asks me.

“Sure,” I say. She was only painfully obvious about it.

“Dude,” Susie says again. “She was totally staring at me!”

Hold on—

“Dude,” a third dude, “you saw how she made eye contact when she was going, something something ‘girl so stunning’, and ‘come with me to the Sadie Hawkins’? That’s totally a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Are you an idiot?” I blurt out.

“Huh? Sure, yeah, but listen—she’s totally into me, dude. I must’ve made a good impression after all.”

I have no idea how to respond to this. I do not possess the requisite experience to inform Susie that this is a grievous miscalculation and a blind leap in logic. In my dissociation, I pick up a part of Berdly’s conversation with Temmie.

“Tolkien was a respected philologist and intellectual,” he says. “Gerson Boom was no such man. In point of fact his juvenile ramblings are an insult to Tolkien’s sophistry.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole.” And I punch him, but not hard.

Susie does as well, but hard.

“I dunno,” she tells him. “Kris hit you, so I wanted to hit you, too.”

“Right.” Berdly makes a big show about rubbing his beak. “I’ll just overlook this blatant hate crime and turn the other cheek like a good Christian boy.”

“Not a hate crime if I’m not racist, dude. I, uh, listen to rap music.”

“Sure you do. Who?”

“Um,” Susie pauses. “Kendrick?”

“And was this before or after Super Bowl LIX?”

“Uh, after?”

“That’s right.” Berdly frowns.

“Hey, man. I’m not racist!”

“I’m sure you aren’t, Susie.” He folds in his wings, juts his neck out, waddles around and starts doing the chicken dance. Susie tries to kick him between the legs, but birds don’t have testicles on the outside of their body.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Noelle

She sits back, legs tucked into the corner of a pew. Berdly and Susie are still fighting, Martlet’s gone off somewhere, and Dess to stalk the outside of the men’s bathroom, so it’s just us two. She pats the space next to her.

I oblige her, for lack of else to do. “‘Sup?” I cough out.

“Hey,” her eyelids droop, almost like she’s sleeping.

Long lashes drift gently down, like maple seeds swirling in the Fall, only to spring awake with each blink. We sit together like that, letting the world pass by. One of Noelle’s bandmates passes and attempts to trap her in some small talk about the latest immigration roundups; she taps her fingers against the wood pew and squirms, looks anywhere except making eye contact, and when he—the guitarist—sees she’s not exactly jiving with him, he briskly strides off, leaving behind a cordial wave.

Noelle hugs her shoulders. “Thank goodness you’re here, Kris. Sometimes I drive myself crazy thinking nobody gets me, you know?”

“Mhm,” I hum.

“Like, I was talking with Susie while you and Berdly were in the bathroom, and she mentioned she watched some the Saw movies. So, like, I obviously get super stoked ‘cause the only people I know who like those movies are you and Dess and Catti, and I’ve, like, definitely already talked all you guys to boredom about those movies so I, like, maybe got a teensy-weensy bit super excited and started rambling in the way that I do when I get super obsessive. And I could tell right away that Susie, like, just wasn’t having it, so then I basically walk away ‘cause I’m, like, so embarrassed of making a fool of myself.”

“I don’t think you’re a fool,” I say.

“Ha, ha.” Noelle deadpans. “I don’t think you’re a fool either, for what it’s worth—even if you try really hard to prove me wrong sometimes. But, like, Mom and Obaasan keep wondering why I don’t have more friends, and, like, it’s kind of impossible to explain to them how I scare everyone off because their precious little trust fund baby actually isn’t a normal functioning member of society and, like, a total train wreck.”

“She gets along just fine with Berdly.” I point to Sue, who’s trying to tear his head clean off.

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s true,” I say. “I’m sure you could be friends, too.”

Noelle turns. Her buck teeth stare at me a long time. “You never really were good at all that lovey-dovey stuff, huh?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well obviously Susie and Berdly are different because they’re, you know. Together?”

I opt to defer what ungodly calculation led her to that conclusion so I might address the here and now. “Uh,” my mind scrambles to correct course. “I don’t think,” and here I lower my voice ‘cause we’re in church, “I don’t think Susie is into guys like that. They’re just friends.”

Noelle smiles. “Well I guess you’re down any competition, then. Good for you.”

“Beg pardon?”

Noelle giggles a bit. “Well, like, I’m guessing there’s some reason you decided to get all buddy-buddy with Susie of all people, like, completely out of left field. I mean, with her reputation, and all.”

“She’s nice.”

Noelle’s buck teeth stare at me some more. “I’m sure she is, Kris,” she says very monotone.

“No, I meant—!” My voice peaks, and I squeeze my eyes shut, shutting out extraneous sensory input, that I might swallow my frustration. I do with a painful gulp. “I meant to say that she’s a nice person.” I gesture with parallel hands. “And that she totally wouldn’t mind your rambling, and you could totally be friends.”

“Well, gee,” Noelle says. I try to force eye contact, but her buck teeth keep distracting me. “Look, Kris, it’s, like, so okay if you’re a little bashful.” Presently I regret coming off cross. “But, like, I’m rooting for you, for whatever that’s worth.”

I resist the urge to facepalm. Noelle retreats soon after—before I can find a way to remedy her misinterpretation of things. I’m left a mess of frustration and anger; my fists ball at my lack of gumption, that I might’ve yet spun this in a way to yield a positive result, but the truth is I’ve gone and screwed things up big time. I myself want to run, to find the family restroom that has the couch and scream my bloody guts out into one of the throw pillows; but Susie plops down next to me, and swings an arm across my back—which Noelle sees and flashes me a quiet thumbs up—and I want the sanctuary’s carefully engineered acoustics to carry my rage to every parishioner’s ear and punch Susie’s face in for making things even worse, then crack my own skull open against a wall and be done with everything. But I don’t.

“Dude,” Susie says. “What was all that? You were talking with Noelle, right? Did she say anything about me?” Her face is alight, glowing at any prospect that things are going just swell and dandy. Berdly nods, also excited, and presently I’m overcome with the idea that they’re both incredibly daft.

“Let’s try your idea,” I say. “But do it my way.” At the moment I can’t trust anyone to fix this mess I’ve made but myself.

“Huh?”

“You said that drummer guy was a crack addict, right?”

Chapter Text

Maybe this is the ignorance of a relatively sheltered seventeen-year-old social outcast on full display, but procuring cocaine in our humble suburban unincorporated community was concerningly easy. For it was a simple matter of soliciting a gram from December Holiday’s least favorite person in the whole wide world, the reptilian neighbors ‘cross the street. The conversation that unfurled after my knocking on their door was a long and laborious drama laced with an insincere promise to ‘let Asriel know [Bratty] says hi’ and the false assurance that said Azzy Dreemurr’s greatest regret in life was fumbling a bad bitch like her, and didn’t even get any cocaine out of it. For instead she set me into town, on a brisk walk that took advantage of the last Spring breeze before yet another heat wave, to the Castle Township Police Department. As the noble child of their former chief, I footed the solicitation of the drug as a joke, something trailing a ‘how-do-you-do?’, and ‘what brings you around?’, yet to my surprise Police Officer Undyne—a spicy Latina with fins flanking both ends of her blue face—matched my laugh and tossed me a Ziploc bag filled white powder. “Tell Carol it’s all there,” said she. Presently I wondered if this was Mrs. Holiday’s vice—but it was an unusual thing. Not that a woman of Carol Mars Holiday’s luxury would never deal with the stuff, but I knew cocaine to be measured by the gram—not a freezer bag probably close to two pounds. I was meaning to ask her—ask Ms. Undyne—about this, but then she offered me to shoot her P320, and many of my immediate concerns departed promptly. She even offered me to keep it, as they were due for new pistols soon. Words cannot describe how tempted I was to indulge her generosity, but then I considered how livid Mom would be if I brought a gun home. So I settled for a green gas-powered airsoft pistol she confiscated from some ruffian. 

Whereupon I noticed how long the blind-filtered sun cast shadows onto the floor of their small office, so I withdrew myself from the police station and immediately ran into my first-period teacher. 

“O-oh, hi Kris!” On a Sunday afternoon she wore a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt of some anime I didn’t recognize. About thirty-one, she tends to present herself as someone far more juvenile—to her credit she fools most to think early twenties. But presently she saw my Sunday best I still had on, my airsoft pistol, and the Ziploc bag. “Um, whatcha got there?” Ms. Alphys said. 

“Fifty thousand dollars worth of cocaine and a Glock Forty-Five,” I said, deadpan. 

“Um, sure! Good one!” Uneasy, she laughed. 

It was my misunderstood impression that the conversation ended there, so I went about my merry way, arms swinging gun and coke in opposite hands, down quiet Main Street. But then her hand caught my wrist—the one with the pistol—and I stopped on a dime, finger teasing out fantasies of murder and homicide from the trigger safety. 

“Um, before you go, Kris,” she said. 

I nod for her to get out what she wanted to say. 

“Officer Undyne—is she inside?” 

“The Chief of Police is inside the Police Station, yeah,” I said. 

“Oh,” she said. “That’s good. I, um, would’ve gone inside to check, but I didn’t want to go in and have her not be there—that, um, would’ve been pretty embarrassing.” 

“Okay.”

Her hands rubbed together. The spikes flaring out from the back of her head quivered. Her eyes darted quickly between me—contact which I made a point to not reciprocate—and the shuttered blinds of a rectangular window blocking the only view inside. This went on for about thirty seconds, and presently I wondered if it was too late to ask Ms. Undyne if I could have that gun after all. 

“Okay,” I said again. “I gotta go now.” 

“Okay. Um, stay in school, Kris.” 

“Okay.”

“Man, I love Hacksaw Ridge,” Susie announces with a blank face. 

“Yup, Hacksaw Ridge is my favorite movie.” I nod. 

“Like, yeah!” Noelle stammers. “Mine too!”

Asriel frowns. “Is this some kind of joke I’m not keen on—or otherwise not,” and he says a bad word, “enough to comprehend? Last I checked,” to Noelle, “your favorite movie was the latest Saw.” 

“Nope.” Dess shakes her head. “Elly’s always been a big fan of Hacksaw Ridge.” 

“Okay, like, well actually it was Saw VII, not Saw X, but yeah, like, I’ve always loved Hacksaw Ridge. It’s, like, the best movie ever.” 

“It’s got James Garfield,” Dess adds. “You like James Garfield, right, Azzy?”

“Dude, shut the fuck up,” Azzy says. He nudges Dess’ shoulder with his as he pushes past. “You guys are so weird—I swear to God.” 

The poor cow (only deer are does, female deer, but also sometimes rabbits and antelopes but not reindeer) looks like she’s going to explode from that much physical contact alone. She cradles her face with both hands, and her eyes fire imperceptible laser beams at the floor just before her hooves. Noelle rolls her eyes and checks her sister’s shoulder as well, sliding me a quiet assurance that I’m glad I’m not so hopeless, that I might yet be saved—et cetera, et cetera. 

And again I’m reminded of this morning’s fatal blunder. I’d like to dwell on it and let it eat me from the inside out, but my eyes are open and my body is rooted into the clay of the material world. As Ralsei was expounding to me in his cheerful way, I’ll save the agony for tonight, so it may torture my dreams—and I’ll focus the rest of the evening on fixing my mistakes. 

And I won’t take credit for our scheme, either, for it was his solely. One could argue that as a child of my imagination any of his ideas are ultimately mine, but his recent independence says otherwise. In any case, by his tactful eavesdropping we happened to overhear that Chet Bryce—the Christian Rock drummer, (ostensibly) reformed pedophile, and crack addict Susie’s hoping to usurp—had plans to be at the church for a movie tonight. Hacksaw Ridge is rated R and I’m seventeen, but the spears of the Protestant church revel in restriction and regulation, so I still had to beg Azzy to take me in order to appease them. Susie’s eighteen and some change from being held back once, and Dess dropped everything at the chance to go see a movie with her future hubby-to-be (in her dreams, amirite?), and of course once she caught wind of our plans, Noelle appointed herself third wheel to make sure I don’t screw up my ‘movie date’ with Susie. 

The tangled network of misunderstandings and ulterior motivations results in my and Susie insisting to my brother that Hacksaw Ridge is the greatest movie ever made, and Noelle insisting to me that she’s totally okay with seeing Hacksaw Ridge when everyone knows she’d much rather see the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie. And since Noelle’s a big fat blabbermouth now Dess has received her little sister’s false propaganda, promising to do everything in her power to ‘help me’ in exchange for letting her vent the other day. And on top of all that I don’t even care a little bit about seeing the goddamn movie. Susie has expressed an inkling of an interest. 

Dess drags us into the gift shop. She wants a replacement hat, and promptly drops forty-five dollars and forty-seven cents for one specially designed for antlers. She makes a big deal of showing it off, doing a little spin for Azzy and making me feel the embroidered lettering. I indulge her for the sake of my ship; Susie and Noelle wander off behind a shelf without anyone else to speak to. The gift shop isn’t exactly quiet—more than a few folks are here for the movie—but I nonetheless hear their outline of conversation. 

“So? Whatcha think, Kris-mas?” Dess does another twirl. 

“It looks good,” I say. It’s not a lie. With her twirling I don’t have to read the text, and the red cap is generally becoming—completes the jeans and open plaid button-down. Though the reds don’t exactly match. 

Dess stops on a dime, gives Azzy a big ol’ smile. 

He sighs. “Sure, you look just fine, Dess,” Azzy says. 

She’s beaming, and makes a big scene of giggling like the archetypal zipper schoolgirl she tends to behave like. A passing old guy compliments the hat, also; he’s got a net hat version—the trucker kind with holes in the back. He pulls out his phone and begins showing Dess some pictures of his entire collection—different colors, sizes, for different types of heads, and then some. Apparently the entire thing’s worth two hundred fifty grand. 

“I think he’s trying to steal your girlfriend,” I joke to Azzy from aside. 

“Shut up.” He punches the side of my arm somewhere between playful annoyance and trying to give me a bruise. 

I’m too petty to let it drop. “Okay, but what’s your long-term plan, here? You can’t just keep leading her on forever, right?” 

“I said shut up.” He speaks through gnashed teeth. 

“Dude, but I was talking to her the yesterday and she’s still super down bad for you. You gotta give her a firm ‘no’ eventually.” 

Azzy looks like he wants to punch me for real for real, but Mom raised him better than that. He stops to think for a moment.

I grin a little, taking advantage of his charity. “Keep stalling like this and soon she’ll be Mrs. Dreemurr, and then you’ll have little Dess and Azzys running amok, and before you know it—”

“Kris,” he says, then promptly begins ushering me out the gift shop, out of earshot. “Look, she’s still my best friend, you know. It’s—it’s complicated. She’s can be very sensitive. I don’t wanna break her heart.”

“She can be very bigoted, too,” I say, overcoming his stride by a few paces. “And racist, classist, and misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, a psychopath, probably a sociopath; she didn’t wear a mask during Covid; she’s clinically insane; she’s paranoid, a mongoloid, cultish, paranoid-schizophrenic, a lunatic—”

“Kris, can you shut the fuck up for five seconds?” He rubs his temples. “Like, holy shit, you’ve gotta be the second most most,” and then he says a bad word again, his second in twenty minutes, “—ed idiot sibling in the entire multiverse.”  

“—and she voted against that referendum in May—”

Azzy grapples me. He rams his head all up in my face, and I push back with mine, in the gap between his horns. I grab onto his shirt sleeves—as does he, mine—and bring my left leg back for better leverage. We roughhouse like this for a while ‘till he wins over. As I tumble and my arms scrape the rough carpet, he stands over me looking mighty proud of himself. I let out a laugh, as does he. 

“By the way,” he says, helping me up. “What’s the deal with your new friend?” 

“Susie?” 

“Yeah, her,” he says, then pauses, holds me there for a sec.  

“I’m trying to hook her up with Noelle,” I mumble, defiantly throw his helping hand away, and stumble to my feet on my own. 

Azzy snorts. “I’m sure she’s in good hands.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“What’s what supposed to mean?” He crosses his arms. “That literally everyone—even Noelle herself thinks that you and Susie are a thing? What,” and here he copies my prior flippancy, “am I really gonna have to tell Mom that her precious youngest child is still a ‘late bloomer’ after all?” He dons this shit-eating grin karma’s prescribed to me. “And she was so stoked to meet Sue—you absolutely know what I mean.” 

I let the silence hang for a fashionably late, “touché, asshole.”

His smirk softens into something more genuine. An arm wraps around my neck, pulls me close. I get a noseful of soft fur that gives like powder snow. “Aw, you’re a good kid. You’ll be alright,” he says. “Just promise me you’ll not ruin Susie’s love life completely, yeah? She a nice girl; she deserves that much.” 

“Mhm,” I mumble into his shoulder. 

“Speaking of…”

He releases my neck, hand slips down to my shoulder and twirls me one-eighty, and as this night’s in the mood to see me manhandled at all its parts, Susie accepts his relay and begins dragging me by the arm down the length of the hall. The soles of my shoes skid across the hard carpeting, and I hallucinate the smell of rubber burning, and she further arrests me and shoves me into the nearest unoccupied prayer room. The inside is large, about the size of a family room, dimly lit, as if by candlelight, and comes fully furnished with four plush couches, a lonely shelf with some non-perishable snacks, a large coffee table with The Grapes of Wrath and a multilingual bible as thick as a phone book with the old and New King James as well as Spanish and Russian, perched atop an even larger behemoth of text claiming to be a comprehensive concordance of the Christian Bible, and a smart TV with a screen saver of the dove in downwards flight bouncing about. 

Susie makes one round of the place. She grabs a box of Baconator Cheez-Its and flips through The Grapes of Wrath like she gives a shit before plopping down on one of the couches. 

“Dude, what the heck,” she says. 

I take a seat across from her, and Ralsei, next to me. Presently I feel very much like a suspect with their attorney. “What the heck, what?” I say, pretending to be clueless. 

“Okay, well first things first, I was talking to Noelle in the gift shop—and like, pretty big milestone, I know—and, like, we’re looking at these CDs and talking about the band and how she’s a singer. And she’s yapping about this time Catti had her get all dolled up for some CD cover whatever, and unlike last time I’m taking her dad’s advice and nodding along and listening and trying not to get super distracted by how, uh, howcuteshe’sbeing—but every so often she brings Kris up, and I think to myself, ‘oh, well they’re good childhood friends or something, so that’s all well and good’, but then she does it again, how Kris and Catti used to hang out until Kris’ mom found out she was a Satanist. And again some more, like how Kris still uses the same apple-cinnamon baby shampoo from when they were a kid.” I cringe to myself. Gonna have to kill Noelle for that one. “And all of Kris’ baby pictures and pictures from when they were younger. And before I know it it’s literally all she’s talking about—like, needing to inform me every single little thing about Kris Dreemurr. And I ask her why, and she says she’s trying to ‘put in a good word for them’, and that I’ve got her ‘full support’, so now I’m left wondering…”

Susie gets up. She tosses the now empty Cheez-It box onto the couch, orange crumbs dusting its fabric. She carefully steps around the coffee table, and I stand up to meet her, but then she grabs my shoulders. 

“So I’m left wondering,” she says, and then she starts shaking me so hard my eyes roll about and quit seeing coherently. “Why Noelle thinks we’re supposed to be a thing! Like, what the fuck, man?! How the hell did that happen?”

She lets me fall back onto the couch. “There was a misunderstanding. It’s under control,” I say. 

“Man, clearly freakin’ not.” Susie stomps about some. “Here I am thinking I’m making super great progress when actually she’s only giving me the time of day because you,” she points a pointy claw at me, “you gave her the furthest possible idea from me being into her!”

I want to parry and riposte, but Ralsei smiles at me with a cold authority that insists he’ll take it from here. For he knows me so well, that I’ve not been taught to properly fence—at least not with the requisite grace needed for this particular moment. 

“Well, Sue,” he says slowly, setting pace. “For one, I think it’s real swell that you’re comfy enough to start being conversational with Noelle. I think all these convoluted plans are a bit,” he pauses, “a bit much.” 

“Nope. Nuh-uh,” Susie says. “We’re still gonna ruin that guy’s life. Kris, you got the cocaine?” 

“Mhm.” I withdraw a small plastic baggie with a small portion of the original white powder, which Susie snatches up. I dropped the rest off with Noelle’s mom, as it was originally hers anyways. 

“Good,” she says. “If this works out, Kris, we’ll be back to square one and we’ll be even-Steven.”

“Now—now hold on!” As he abruptly stands, Ralsei’s knee hits the coffee table, which presently I’ll mention is somewhat low to the ground. He catches his thin glasses with a thumb and forefinger before they fall. He puts on a rare frustration. “Look, Sue, I don’t think I need to explain why trying to get a crack addict to relapse is even remotely a good idea. What if he dies? What if he goes crazy? What if he hurts someone?” 

“‘Kay, one: he’s a pedophile and I don’t care what happens to him; and two: last I checked this whole operation was your idea to begin with!” 

Ralsei sits back down, takes a deep breath. He lets idle hands grab at his knees. “Okay, but that was then and this is now.” 

“Nuh-uh, dude. If you’re gonna go and commit a felony, you gotta have your mind set on it. None of this wish washy business.” From the shelf, she grabs another box of Baconator Cheez-Its, then makes her way to the door. 

“Where are you going?” Ralsei says. 

“To the sanctuary,” she says. “The movie’s starting in three minutes, dude, and I doubt they’ve got half an hour of previews like the AMC.” 

Ralsei and I watch her disappear past the threshold of the doorframe. I’m presently feeling a little crummy about myself. Ralsei knows simply by merit of his emotional intelligence—ironic that it’s something I lack utterly. He doesn’t even have to pry into my thoughts to know, and he doesn’t even have to tell me he doesn’t have to pry into my thoughts for me to know that he knows. 

“I have it under control,” I say to a room empty of anyone besides myself. “It’s just a misunderstanding.”

“I know, Kris,” I pretend to hear Ralsei say. “I know.” 

The movie was ok. 

By Asriel Clair Dreemurr’s strict command I commandeer December Holiday away from the others after the movie’s conclusion. According to him she kept trying to hold his hand, or lean against his shoulder, and after two hours of this he announced emphatically that he wanted some hot chocolate, and insisted Dess wait for me to get out of the bathroom while he took Dess and Noelle and Susie to the café. 

The only issue is that I was informed of his scheme by text—only after I’d been locked in idle conversation with Ralsei. 

“Well, it’s based on a true story, you know,” Ralsei was saying to me as we left the small alcove that held two gendered lavatories as well as a family restroom. We were moving single-file, him trailing directly behind me, and as such he had no opportunity to alert me to the girl’s presence—leaning with a foot against the wall just outside. 

Her small mouth shrunk to a point. “Friend of yours?” she asked, and hastily I made a decision and said yes. 

Having already established that Dess can hear Ralsei from yesterday, her seeing him as well made perfect sense. I doubted she’d simply brush it off if he disappeared from sight in an instant, and as she was bound to find out eventually, I decided now was good a time as any. 

“My name’s Ralsei,” Ralsei says. “Nice to meet you!” With a gentle middle finger he pushed his glasses deep into the fur of the bridge of his nose. 

“Ralsei, huh—what is that, Jewish?” 

“Uh—oh, yeah! Ralsei, uh, Ralsei Gold—berg—stein. Yup. Ralsei Goldbergstein.” 

At this point I saw the text from my brother to keep Dess away so he might have some breathing room. I pocket my phone and continue walking and talking with the other two. It’s very fortunate there are few stragglers, lest someone point out a certain reindeer having a conversation with empty air. 

“Well it’s nice to meet you too,” Dess says, skipping his offered handshake in favor of a cool salute from her brow. “December Holiday, but you can call me Dess,” she says. “So you know Krissy here from school or something?” 

“Yup. We have, um, Spanish together.” 

“Sounds neat.” Dess crosses her arms. “I personally took German myself.”

“Of course you did,” Ralsei says. 

“Beg pardon?” 

“Nothing.” The corners of his mouth trace up the sides of his snout. 

We’ve passed the gift shop again, and on display outside is this cage-looking fixture with a few wooden bats—baseball and softball—slotted in through the top. She picks one, and with reckless abandon befitting a Mars she takes a few wide practice swings dangerously close to the plate glass window looking into the shop. As she attacks the air with real force usually saved for the field, she explains to Ralsei how she played softball all throughout her stay at Castle Township High, indulging herself with a story of a grand slam that never happened. In reality she never lasted past freshman year—getting cut from the team for her ‘lack of gumption’. In line with her nature, the mother Holiday angrily petitioned to reverse the decision, but the previous night Dess had already vandalized the coach’s house, placing the matter beyond the reach of the family’s influence. 

Ralsei knows this but keeps nodding along. He fabricates a dumb story about how his Bar Mitzvah had this batting cage thing. It’s so stupid I have no doubt he’s a child of my mind, or some other me. Principally different, he and I, certain things bleed through like wet Sharpie on construction paper. 

“Wait, you had a Bar Mitzvah?” Dess says. “How come you’re here, then?” 

“Jews4Jesus.” 

“Ah, okay. That’s good. One of those ‘prideless Jews’.” Setting the bat to her side she leans on it like an old man does his cane. Her other hand sits on her hip in a fist. “You know, all your type o’ people are always going ‘Holocaust this’ and ‘Holocaust that’, when really, if you follow the paper trail you start to realize that six—”

“Oh, I think I see some Christian-themed softballs inside,” from his compunction for letting her speak that far, he marches us into the gift shop, hoping that the company of public opinion will fight against her outspokenness. I have to giggle to myself—for he really is as stupid as I am. 

“Ralsei? What is that, Jewish?”

Asriel fiddles with Dess’ new softball, fingers examining the stitching of a Bible verse I don’t care enough to know. 

Susie chokes on a laugh, presents it as glee. “Oh, yeah, Ralsei! He’s a real cool guy, yeah.” 

“Ralsei?” Noelle’s mouth twists around her buck teeth. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

Dess lowers her voice. “Well he’s probably gay, the way he was talking. For sure frequents different circles than richest, most popular Christian gal in school.” 

Noelle laughs, mind presently on other matters. “Right, of course…” The expression across her face is familiar, nostalgic, but altogether unpleasant. In her place I see a younger girl, fingers quivering, itching for comfort. Before her the shadow of her sister looms, face dark and flat like stone. The girl gets no respite from their association; receives no shelter or refuge. I distinctly recall from a few years ago a cold winter’s night, when our youth and whimsy led us deep into the woods, and off the trail into the trees. I hardly remember why—some stupid promise I made to her about a strange set of metal doors I’d found in the hollow grounds between the cemetery and the park. Coming down in twinkles when we departed her house, by the time we reached the park the snow painted our entire world white. For Noelle, the fur under her heavy jacket offered an additional degree of insulation that I envied in that moment. But she refused to let me envy much longer, for it’s a wicked sin. Very soon our dire situation was the smaller of my two concerns, inferior to the embrace of my childhood friend that drove my freshly pubescent senses into overdrive. I recall little of what happened next, how much time had passed, nor whether the snow let up before or after Dess and Azzy came barreling into view, scooping us off the ground and towards the safety of Mom’s SUV. But I do remember drying off in front of a space heater inside the Holiday family manse, how despite December making a big fuss of combing her sister’s hair, Noelle clung desperately to Asriel—the same as me. I also remember how timidly she spoke when they left to the other room, in whisper that not even the mice would hear, a whisper for only me. ‘Kris,’ she said, ‘can I tell you a secret?’ And in that instant my fourteen-year-old brain feared stupidly, like that she had the hots for Azzy or something. Looking back with my current mind that boasts something resembling maturity, I had no idea the weight of what she told me next. ‘I’ve always been jealous of you,’ she said. In the living room my impatient eyes wandered past her to a framed family photo above her head. ‘I’ve always wanted Azzy to be my big brother, not Dess. He’s so kind, and caring, and compassionate, and understanding. You could tell him anything and he’d listen, and smile and give you a great big hug. I always figured we’d make good siblings,’ she said. ‘Because you and me—we’re both…, and we both like, you know, and I know he’d be such a good big brother and hug me the way he hugged you.’ I’m ashamed, that I was too stupid to notice the way her fingers dug into her folded arms, feeling a different kind of cold only love could cure. I’m ashamed, that the only thought on my mind was how Noelle said we’d make ‘good siblings’, and how that’d complicate my immediate relationship ambitions. 

“Hey! Kris!” Susie wrenches me out of the past and into the present. She snaps her fingers a few times and I lock in. “That drummer guy—we gotta act, now.”

The dragon girl speaks the truth. Some time during me zoning out we must have crossed paths with that Chet Bryce guy, as presently he’s engaged Noelle in some small talk. Her arm clings to her side, other arm dangling limp, and she forces her mouth into a smile that hardly rises above a flat line. We’ve moved into one of the pantries at this point, for some water and snacks. Asriel voices a slew of moral objections about eating food that’s supposed to go to the poor and homeless, but Dess says that better we eat it than some hobo sell it for drug money. Azzy’s trying to explain to her that she’s literally making no goddamn sense whatsoever but Dess has already torn open a box of Very Berry Cheerios, compelling my dear brother to surrender his high ground for a late night snack. “Dude, my family already donates two million dollars to this church every year,” she says. “I swear we practically own half the place by now.” When he hears this Azzy calls her ‘literally Hitler’ and when that doesn’t work he finds a bottle of Diet Coke—the ‘drink of the northeast’ according to him—closes his eyes, and downs half a bottle before letting out a massive burp. Dess giggles like a [COMEDY]. 

On the opposite end of the long pantry Susie and I huddle together atop a high counter beneath a shelf of Chef Boyardee. 

“So, uh, how do we give it to him?” Susie says. 

I shrug my shoulders. Didn’t actually think so far ahead. 

“Shit, well, I guess we can’t just walk up to him with the little plastic baggie.” Susie gropes her own ass for a sec, first finding her back pocket, then pulling her phone out—a 6S in this day and age. 

“What’s that about?” I say. 

“Huh?” She points to herself. The other grabby claw wraps around the small rectangle glowing white from the Safari screen. “Oh, I guess it’s pretty old, yeah. My Mom always tells me the carrier company offers free upgrades, but like, all the new models are so titanically big—it’s just, like, no thanks, man.” 

“They still make small iPhones. Uh, the Mini or SE or whatever,” I say. “Also I was talking about your, uh,” and I point to my own rear end. 

“Huh?!” Susie quickly yanks down the back of her jacket, running a hand behind like she’s checking something. 

“Your back pocket,” I say. “You keep your phone in your back pocket.” 

“Uh, yeah? That’s where you’re supposed to put it.” Reaching back she withdraws a lump of folded canvas. “Wallet, too.” 

I think for a moment. “You’re gonna get back pain.” 

“Maybe your flimsy human ass.” She stabs my shoulder with a pointer finger, then bounces back a thumb at herself. “I’m the picture of health,” she says, then goes back to slouching over her tiny phone screen. She squints, and glowing in the blue light I see parts of her lower eyelids appear heavy and grey—it’s closing in on one in the morning. Clumsy fingers mash the keyboard, and a Google results page follows the return key. “Uh, based on Google—I’m getting some mixed signals if you can like, like, slip it into a drink. The AI explanation thing isn’t being helpful either.” Her brow furrows. 

“Wanna try it anyways?” 

“Sure. Couldn’t hurt,” she snorts. 

The process is easy enough. A percussionist and a cracker, Mr. Bryce is one of those folks easily entranced by meaningless drivel. It was very easy for Susie to add herself to his and Noelle’s conversation, whipping up some pretense about the drums. And for me to announce that I’d refill their three glasses of water.

Filling the first two was easy enough. I leave the sink on so the static of its high pressure conceals the sprinkling of white powder across the bottom of the third glass. I get most of the small baggie Susie passed back to me, then lower the sink flow to fill it more gently. Stealing a glance over my shoulder, my nerves settle when I see everyone’s attention is trained on Dess, who’s trying to goad Azzy into throwing the Bible verse softball so she can take a swing with her new bat, but they swell again when I see the white powder fail to assimilate, even after some stirring. My knowledge of science isn’t perfect, and presently I’m regretting not being a better student, but presently my options are limited. 

I’m debating whether or not to just dump it out and find a plan B in all this when a dread omen sends a chill down my spine. 

“Hey, there,” the booming voice of Mr. Bryce at one AM emerges dangerously close. I turn with a start, glass still in hand, to see him right behind me. “You’re Kris, right? Noelle’s friend?” I backpedal till the small of my back hits the lip of the counter, and my brain enters a serious of rapid-fire calculations to identify the best path away from him. 

But he doesn’t give me the chance. He grabs the glass which I appear to be holding before him in offering and downs it in one go without looking, white residue and all. I let out a comical sigh of relief. 

“Huh, that’s some weird water,” he says. His brow does a flip, his eyes following its trajectory. “But, hey, Noelle tells me you’re good with the piano.” That bitch. “You ever think doin’ a little razzle-dazzle for the church—”

And all at once things begin to happen. Mid-sentence Mr. Bryce keels over, clutching his stomach, and I jump at the opportunity to scramble over to the others in case he’s trying to attack me or something—knocking into Dess who purposefully falls into Azzy’s arms. She isn’t given much time to steep in the utter bliss, because then a bloodcurdling scream rips through the room lengthwise, and we all presently bear witness to Mr. Bryce clutching his square green head. Though his hands cover his eyes a blue light shines through in a strobing way, and he begins to shudder. Susie and I are the first to vacate the premises, Azzy after us to get away from Dess, and Dess herself in pursuit. Noelle follows last, and as she’s within the doorframe she’s flung to the floor by a high pitched whine that I think is an explosion, followed by a pillow of white dust that makes the whole hallway a blizzard. 

“HOLY FUCK!”

Chet Bryce’s voice booms, backed by an echo like a dark chorus. A black silhouette becomes clear through the settling snow, legs dangling, toe a good foot off the ground, it appears to be levitating. My vision returns as the dust clears, and indeed he’s levitating off the ground. Strands of lightning twirling from his fingertips give the impression of electromagnets, but what’s captured me more is his new appearance. 

Previously green-faced with a disproportionate brawn to his chest, he’s now thoroughly lanky, skin a patchwork of red and white, and his face a stiff grin. 

“Dude, the hell was that?!” Dess shouts, pushing to her feet. She fondles her bat lightly, ready to spring to action. “You nearly killed my sister—augh!” 

Suddenly Mr. Bryce—or whatever this new thing is—lashes out with his arms, and a streak of white lightning erupts from his fingertips. Dess, first seeing the tell of his rising shoulder, instinctively swings her bat from toe to crown, and miraculously the lightning follows the prescribed trajectory of her swing, following the arc of its motion. It collides with a three-panel painting of the parable of the prodigal son, and the middle part is vaporized into a fine white powder. 

“Ack!” Directly under the painting, Dess’ forearm catches some of the white, and she retreats a ways down the hall. “The hell is this stuff?” She grabs at her arm fur. 

“Cocaine, my dear,” Mr. Bryce begins to move through the air towards Dess. 

On his opposite side, Azzy helps life me to my feet. “Dude, Kris, are you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” I say forcefully, uncharacteristically, in a way that viciously disarms his brotherly concern. My mind scrambles, tries to think of a way to explain what I’m thinking to a layman. “I’ve seen something like this before,” I say. 

“No kidding?”

“Shut up and listen. It was in the forest on Thursday, on the way home with Dad. We came across this deer in the woods that was making acid rain wherever it walked.” 

Azzy probably studies me for a second or two, but it feels like hours. “I believe you,” he says. 

“Really?” 

“I just saw a Christian Rock drummer explode and start levitating and turn a painting into coke,” he says. “And also I recall Mom saying that the paint on Dad’s truck was real streak-y, and in general the thing was a wreck.” 

“Well this is probably a similar thing,” I say. 

“How’d you stop the acid rain?” Azzy says. 

“We killed the deer. Ran it over with Dad’s truck.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, well while you think of a solution that doesn’t involve murder—Susie!” 

“Uh, y-yeah?” Susie clutches her head, legs sprawled out on the ground. 

“Get Noelle,” he says, and points to her prone body, likely unconscious, still near the pantry door. “Get her out of here.” 

“Right!” 

“I’m gonna see if I can help Dess,” Azzy says. “She’s trapped on the other side of the hallway.” In his hand he’s still clutching her softball—squeezing it like a stress ball. 

So we spring to action at once. Azzy and Susie advance towards the Cocaine-Man, as I’ve now christened him, the latter of whom quickly scoops up Noelle in a bridal carry, pivots, then comes barging back towards me. As Azzy’s away I want to test something; I withdraw the small baggie, where very fine particles of dust still line the sides. I stick my finger in—I make sure Susie sees me do it—and give it a taste. 

“Susie,” I say as she passes. “This isn’t cocaine. It’s ground-up chalk dust.” 

She nods, then carries off with Noelle. The situation fails to keep her face from going through a few shades of red. 

Rejoining Azzy with at a gentle trot to conserve stamina, I see him attempt to charge the Cocaine-Man, but a stray arc of lightning strikes a bench nearby, melting the entire thing into heavenly dust. On the other end, Dess seems to have gotten the memo, and is swinging her bat at random, intercepting the incoming arcs of lightning and sending them at chunks of wall, ceiling, light fixtures, other miscellany. 

The Cocaine-Man relents. “Cocaine!” He shrieks, and his head begins to spark. Something purple like wires shoot out and writhe to and fro. I try to speak with Azzy, but all of a sudden I find my nose burning with something. Azzy envelops my face with a paw, and pulls me back. 

“I think,” he says, coughing. “I think he must have started turning the water droplets in the air to cocaine as well,” he says. His hands brace against his knees, hacking out a bit of spit with the next cough. 

“That makes sense,” when reason left out the door ages ago. 

“Maybe we can charge him while he’s like that,” Azzy says. “Or at least one of us regroup with Dess.” The glisten of spit still trails from his chin. “Kris, you do it—and make sure to hold your breath and plug your nose.” 

“Why me?” 

“Because you apparently have experience.” 

I don’t protest. Tapping into my reserve of willpower I push off; the hard carpet is a good surface for my explosive footwork. The Cocaine-Man, whose transmutational phenomena stems from the cursed chalk, is neatly within my reach when he turns and meets me eye-to-eye, and presently the sweet nectar of the god of the New World. The sweet ecstasy of its Lord and Savior, the instrument of human will by which we shall surpass the gods. Forty virgins sacrificed on the altar of speed, I feel their heat culminate in the ultimate power, the one true substance, the cracks, the impurities in the very fabric of space and time itself—its euphoric, the electricity in me as time fades away and my habitat is no longer constrained by mortal values. I would sooner choke on the plastics from my shoes than begin to comprehend the feeble plane of existence my former self traveled. There is only speed. There is only my new god. There is only—

“Kris—Kris! Snap out of it!” Dess slaps me a little more, and I return to my senses completely. We’re a little bit further down the hall, and Azzy’s still on the opposite side, clutching that softball like his life depends on it. 

“I think he must have turned my brain into cocaine,” I decide. 

“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“I know, but you were repelling that electricity or whatever with your bat. It gave me an idea.” 

“I’m all ears,” Dess says. The Cocaine-Man is still hovering in play, the tesla of energy still coming from his head. 

“It’s no use trying to get close while he’s turning the water droplets in the air into cocaine,” I say. “But it looks like it has a limited range.” 

“Maybe five yards or so,” Dess says. “We’re maybe a few more than that right now. 

“Do you think Azzy can throw that far?”

Like her sister’s Dess’ buck teeth stare at me. “Okay, listen up Azzy,” she calls out. “You’re gonna have to throw that softball to me, and I’m gonna hit it as hard as I can.” 

“You sure?” He cups a hand around his snout to carry the sound better. 

“I’m sure,” she says, legs separating and sinking low into a batter’s stance. “It’s been a while, but I think I can hit it at him hard enough to at least snap him out of whatever trance this is.” 

Azzy doesn’t say another word. Untrained in the sport of throwing things, he timidly fingers the ball, staring at the inscription. The Cocaine-Man doesn’t stir, harmless at this range, but it’s clear we can’t leave him unattended for just a minute longer. I crouch behind Dess, hands out to catch in case it’s a bad throw, then maybe toss it up for a follow-up swing. 

But I’m not needed after all. For Asriel’s grip spontaneously strengthens, and lunging forward with all his might he throws the softball with all his might. It clears the hall with ease. 

“Ora!”

Dess lets out a battle cry, and I hear the crack of impact, but what I see next is strange; the ball begins to rotate. 

Now, obviously I know that balls are supposed to rotate when traveling through the air, but this rotation was different. As it spun it appeared almost pearlescent, like a seer’s orb or a portal to someplace magical. Like an Aleph it warped the space around it, winding illusory bands of reality around it like a spool of thread. The Cocaine-Man’s eyes shoot open and again he lashes out with his fingers, but as the lighting arrives the spinning softball sucks it up. I follow the trail of light as it disappears into the iris of the storm. It’s headed straight for him. He tries to dodge, contorting his body grotesquely while midair, but then the ball does something miraculous. Its path curves. It follows him. 

And a blink later it’s collided with his midsection. And the skin of his body begins to rotate as well. Like a whirlpool, only on the surface of his skin, the red and white stripes rotate about the ball as their center, start to resemble a peppermint, if a peppermint swirled around a void. And looking into the void I saw many things. I saw my hometown. My Hometown. I saw the surrounding Castle Township, then the Greater Philadelphia area, and soon the great state of Pennsylvania. I saw the United States; I saw North America and the planet Earth. And I saw each and every one of her children: different sizes, shapes, races, ethnicities—flashing across my mind. I saw how the ball spun in tandem with the Earth’s rotation, one thousand miles per hour about their equators. I saw a grid of Earths, parallel Earths, all spinning the their own way. I saw myself on a park bench, older, my head leaning against Noelle’s; we’re holding hands, and her thumb runs across a bit of metal wrapped around my finger. I saw the same scene again, but with Susie in my place. I saw another self, skin peeling away into a shade of haunted blue, as I fell down a bottomless pit. I saw a child like me and a child like Azzy, trapped deep underground. I saw a long hallway; the child holds a knife. I saw one thousand years from now, when the last king of Earth would breath his last, god of nothing, and one million years later I saw that enigmatic Time Traveler sit on a lonely beach at the end of the world. 

All these things I saw in that instant, but now I see how the spinning doesn’t stop, it warps the Cocaine-Man’s skin. It jerks him violently, whips his body around like it’s caught in a cyclone. Or the blades of a fan. First blood, then dust, and then the room is quiet. 

Dess drops her bat. Her mouth hangs open. “Oh, shit. He’s not dead—is he?”

Chapter Text

Chet Arthur Bryce was pronounced dead at the scene. Ms. Undyne responded to the call personally, and to our surprise slew the dread expectation of an even longer night by sending us all home early without further questions. Without ceremony the cause of death was officially ruled an overdose, and his ex-wife, whom he was solely survived by, did not make arrangements for a funeral. His dust got mixed up with a lot of the cocaine, so I imagine it was a hassle to separate. The car ride home was quiet—more from tiredness and crashing adrenaline than shock—and I conked out the moment my head hit my pillow.

Mom ended up making a big fuss about the whole thing. Kept saying we were gonna ‘get through this’ as a family—but, as I kept explaining to her, Mr. Bryce was generally kind of a bad dude, a fact that became more evident over the following week as allegations came to light in the wake of his passing. It’s like seeing Hitler die—you don’t get upset over Hitler dying, I told Mom. If you’re traumatized by seeing Hitler blow his brains out deep inside that bunker, then you’re either a Nazi or a very disturbed and messed up individual. And probably also a Nazi.

In point of fact, my mother insisting I come straight home after school for a non-stop onslaught of ‘family time’ began to piss me off before long. For this chalk conspiracy has only continued to unfold, and it’s now Friday—and I’ve yet to discuss things with Berdly or Susie outside of a few texts and some fruitless correspondence via Ralsei. It’s for this reason that this morning I implored my mother to give me some goddamn space for once, and to my surprise she obliged without another word—maybe looking a bit guilty as she did.

The moment the final bell rang, Susie and Berdly and I forewent a detention room meeting, marching in a straight line through this new heat wave to the front black iron gate of the Holiday manse. In two wide parts, they engulf an entire street, which extends past and becomes their driveway. For the primitive layfolk there’s a small box that sprouts out of the ground, hooked up to an intercom system to request entry, but my family’s been trusted with a key to come and go as we please—though not as far as their actual front door. It slots into the box, and upon turning the mechanism an electronic clasp on the gate disengages, and the bars swing open.

Past the gate the road continues, flanked on each side by the natural forest. By the backbreaking labor of dozens of underpaid undocumented immigrants the grass is punctiliously trimmed to not grow an inch beyond four, and in the Fall not a leaf so much as grazes the blacktop. Reaching the end of the corridor of trees I stop and say hello to Ángela, a short, wide-faced woman of the same species as Undyne the Police Chief, who’s trimming some hedges. She says hello back, and asks me how my Mom is doing, testing my Spanish here and there, crow’s feet pulling at her eyes to match her smile as she does. Bien, I manage, and I try to wrestle the conversation away from the topic of her kid who goes to Castle Township High—ostensibly some peppy band kid enby bloke—whose name I pretend to know but have actually never met before.

The hedges give way to a large driveway where a black suburban is parked, as well as one of the nineteen-seventy-four Dodge Monacos used in the filming of the original Blues Brothers (Susie geeks out a bit when I tell her about it) and veering right is a wide cobblestone path leading up to the house itself. Valued a well over three million dollars and spanning seventy-five hundred square feet, it’s painted deliciously off-white, two stories, five bedrooms, three baths, and decked head-to-toe in every Christmas decoration imaginable. ‘Cause when you’re daughter to one of America’s wealthiest families you can do whatever the hell you want.

“What the fuck?” Susie blinks twice to make sure she isn’t going crazy.

“I’m surprised this is the first you’re hearing about this.” Berdly comes up beside her. “A couple years ago it was featured on The Great Christmas Light Fight on ABC. Won the grand prize of fifty-thousand dollars.”

“Sounds like chump change to them,” Susie says.

Indeed. They blew the money sending themselves and my family on a trip to Disneyland. Fifty thousand dollars between nine people—this was before Mom and Dad separated—doesn’t travel far in a place like that, but dipping into their own coffers was less than an afterthought for the Holidays. I remember fondly how Noelle and I made lightsabers at the Star Wars place—we were so unbelievably stoked—Dess got in trouble playing too rough with some random Chinese tourist’s kid, and that’s about all I remember.

Arriving at the front door at last I take the lead, striding up to their Ring doorbell and defiantly using the brass knocker. My childhood was spent dreaming about growing big enough to use it—and I’m gonna enjoy it now that I can, damnit. The impact is powerful, resolute. It rattles my spine even in this heat. And almost immediately the door opens.

The one answering is neither December nor Noelle, nor Mr. or Mrs. Holiday, nor the Grandma Holiday—but a timid vulpine girl, a messy amber redhead with calm beige fur and a pair of blocky glasses resting atop her snout. She’s wearing an overlarge Temple hoodie and a pair of shorts that it envelops, tempting me to stare at her legs. As she tenderly adjusts her glasses with a clawed hand I push my attention to her face, at her wide brown eyes that flit with a gentle innocence beneath her thick frames. She’s got the kind of homely warmth that turns your heart to mush, that makes you wanna fall into her arms and never let go. Today I’d stutter and stumble, make a fool of myself, but not without leaving a lingering impression of fondness upon her—that I’d invoke it next we’d meet—and make her laugh—which would lead to a first date ending in an excruciating uncertainty. I’d agonize over it for days, but then the next week she’d approach me and ask to go out again, and from there we’d hit it off. And her parents wouldn’t approve, I’m sure. They’d want her to date a boy, but she’d clutch my hand under the table at the TGI Fridays and say she loves me, and she’d keep saying it through college and after, and we’d marry young but adopt a few years later. She’d be strict but I’d let them live a little, and we’d be happy. Maybe when we grow older and the kid’s’re off to Stanford or Harvard or wherever her ambitions point them we’d buy a small home in Doylestown. We’d open up a small selling whatever, passing each day watching the youth patrons get further and further away from us. And we’d be happy.

“Dreemur? The hell are you here for?”

I attempt to vomit the lifetime I imagined at her feet, but what comes out is a futile series of coughs, and I just wind up hurting my throat. In horror, I lift my eyes to her again.

Berdly speaks for me. “You’re not…?”

She scoffs. “What, never seen a girl without makeup before?” She puts a hand on her hip, then rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it’s me, Ceroba.”

“I see. Where’s Chujin?” Berdly asks.

Ceroba scowls. “What, just cause he’s my boyfriend I’ve gotta be clinging to him every waking moment of my life?”

“No, I was just—”

“And God—like, can you please look anywhere besides my legs? Like, I know this is more skin than any girl’s ever shown you, but it’s creepy as fuck.”

“Sorry,” Berdly mumbles. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“No, you’re not sorry,” she spits, “but you’ve got some kind of fucked-up shame kink that no matter what I say you’re gonna go home and fiddle with your—er, or whatever birds do—so I’m gonna pretend to forgive you anyways, like I forgave your bitch friend here for decking me in the schnoz,” and she looks at me. I’m heavily considering doing it a second time. “Like, you’d probably manage to flunk out of a class teaching basic feminism ‘cause you’d be too busy gawking at all the girls in class way out of your league—to whom you’re less than the worms in the dirt—and generally revolting. Honestly, I kind of feel sorry for your parents. They can’t even enjoy heaven right knowing their son turned out to be this much of a incel virgin loser who gets passed up for sex over a Clydesdale fucking horse.”

Berdly looks like he wants to cry.

Ceroba spares him no remorse. She heel turns and grabs the door, moving to close it. “I’m guessing since you made it past the front gate you’re here for some stupid reason that just had to ruin my day—but you’re letting out the AC,” she says, then disappears inside. The ajar door is inviting, yet as we approach a wilted Berdly shrinks back, flinches at the thought.

“Uh, don’t feel bad, dude,” Susie tells him. It does little to soothe his insecurities, so she gets that famous brain working. “You know, if I was into guys I’d probably give you a chance over the horse,” she says proudly.

Berdly sniffles, lets the remark hang. A worried Susie moves to correct herself, but then he says, “that doesn’t make me feel much better in the slightest, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.” Forcing himself upright, he gets up on his tiptoes and weakly lays the end of his wing on her shoulder. “You’re a good friend.”

Susie laughs, head bucking back as she does. “Whatever you say, Nerdly.”

The inside of the Holiday house is as equal a part of my childhood as my own home, and it is not exempt from its exterior’s Christmas obsession. Atop every unoccupied table is some kind of festive bauble. From the crown moulding green-wire vines sprout flowers of yellow, blue, green, and white lights, and the boutique wallpaper is snowmen, each with their own name and personality obsessively described to me by Mrs. Holiday one rainy day.

“Yeah, I dunno what I was thinking hoping it was gonna be normal on the inside,” Susie says.

“Nicer than your shitty studio apartment,” Ceroba bites back.

“It’s a condo, asshole.”

“Same difference.”

“Nuh-uh, dumbass,” Susie says. “My family’s building equity.”

Ceroba’s claws come out from hiding, and I’m shot full of adrenaline, the air conditioning a stark reminder of last week’s Winter phenomenon. My eyes narrow, and I think about initiative and drawing first blood when Mrs. Holiday steps into view, passing through from the kitchen. At fifty-five, she’s spry in a way that’ll give her another forty years before winding down. Her face is long and narrow like her husband and daughter, but her antlers are this ethereal blue that can’t be natural, that I’ve never asked about, and none of her offspring possess, in a shade that’s too consistent to be a dye job, but then considering her other obsessions I wouldn’t put it beneath her to just be really hardcore about it. Her hair is a platinum blonde that’s made Mom jealous more than a few times, and at all times of the day she wears black slacks that end above the ankle, a blue suit jacket matching her horns to a degree that encourages the dye theory, and a pitch black top accented by a pearl necklace.

Ceroba sweetens immediately. “Mrs. Holiday,” she says in deference. “These three were knocking at the door. I let them in, but—”

“Oh! Kris-mas! It’s so good to see you!” Discarding a half-full bottle of water into a small wastebasket, she rushes over and embraces me, leaving a cordial peck on the cheek.

“Christmas?” Ceroba says aloud, then makes the connection.

“Oh, it’s just a silly nickname,” Mrs. Holiday says with a wave of her hand. “Kris’ family are long-time friends of ours.”

The kitsune girl removes her glasses under the pretext of wiping them, and uses the opportunity to better glare glaives from her eyes that whirl and aim for my throat. “Is that so?” she says.

Mrs. Holiday ignores her, pressing firmly on my shoulders, in a strange way almost another embrace. She looks past me. “Are these your friends, Kris?”

“Uh, hi, ma’am,” Susie suddenly becomes stiff. “I’m Susan O’Brien. I’m friends with your daughter Noelle, too.” Acquaintances, maybe. “You, uh, you have a very lovely home.”

“Why thank you, sweetie.” When she smiles her chin dips into her neck. “And your other friend, Kris-mas—are you okay, dear?” She sees how Berdly lags behind, pretending to closely study few of the myriad snowmen, at arm’s length from us, and light-years away from Ceroba, shaking at the mere concept of her, arms cradling his midsection.

“Uh, he’s not feeling too well,” Susie says, and Ceroba rolls her eyes. “School lunches—Aramark—you know—that’s why I always pack my own.”

“Oh, well feel free to lay down, dear.” Mrs. Holiday lets a gentle hand on his shoulder guide him to the sofa. “Here,” she says, and pulls out a candy bar from her pants pocket. “Have a Snickers.”

“Mm, thanks.” He unwraps it and without another word sinks into the plush couch cushions.

“Do you also want a Snickers, Susie? Kris-mas?”

“Sure.” Susie nods, and receives two from Mrs. Holiday’s pants pocket. With careful ease two claws slice open the packaging, and she tosses both into her gaping maw. She’s chewing and by sheer chance the packaging claims her interest when her eyes go wide. In the middle of chewing (Ceroba pretends to gag), she says: “Wait, you’re that Mars family?”

“Oh, yes. She says. Franklin Clarence Mars was my great-grandfather.”

“Huh,” Susie says. She swallows a lump of Snickers. “Neat.”

“You ever hear about the six degrees of Kevin Bacon?” I ask. And playing along with me Mrs. Holiday extends a hand to Susie, who takes it.

“Yeah, sure,” Susie says.

“Well now you’re two handshakes removed from Jerry Seinfeld,” I tell her.

“Oh, shit, really?”

“And Alan Dershowitz, and Cab Calloway, and—”

“—Frank Oz,” Dess announces aloud, trotting down the staircase centered in the middle of the family room. Hitting its head against each new step is a whiffle ball bat dragged behind her, and under her arm a tube of tennis balls. “And the President of the United States of America, and Jill Biden, both Clintons, Harris, Al Gore—Jimmy Carter before he bought the farm—”

“She’s a big sponsor for the DNC,” I explain to Susie in a whisper. ‘Oh,’ she opens her mouth and bobs her head, but doesn’t vocalize it.

“—three handshakes removed from Aretha Franklin, Oprah, New Korea’s Great Successor Kim, Joe Biden—Ghislaine Maxwell, Toby Fox, and Jeffrey Epstein—four from the guy who made the Simpsons—and two from Burt Ward, Tupac Shakur before he died, Ye, the King of Kali-Fornia, and the late and great Chinua Achebe.”

“Cool,” Susie says. She calls over her shoulder. “Hey, Berdly, d’you wanna be two handshakes removed from Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“Three degrees is enough,” he moans and groans from the sofa.

“Suit yourself.” Dess shrugs. To us, “come on, let’s bounce.”

“Have fun, kids,” Mrs. Holiday sees us off, shrugging past Dess, who bounds past us into the kitchen, up the stairs to her office. “Ceroba, are you coming up?”

“Um, of course!” She says. A foot makes it onto the first step, but something makes her hesitate. “Well, actually, I’ll be a minute or two. Was gonna ask Kris something.”

“Okey-dokey then.” A soft click signifies her departure, and immediately Ceroba is upon me. Grabbing near the collar of my shirt she yanks me close, that I can feel the hot air flaring through her nostrils, that I can count the individual whiskers waving to me up and down. On impulse I blow on her nose, and with a hand she squishes my face. An index claw scrapes across my cheek, threatening to perforate my skin and draw blood.

“Uh, maybe let’s calm down,” Susie starts.

But their shoes scuff entirely different linoleum planes of existence. “Like, I don’t know how the hell you got so buddy-buddy with the Holidays, but so help me God if you get in between me and this opportunity I’ll, like, actually kill you.”

Giving credence her own threat, she demonstrates by sinking her claw deeper, causing a small bubble of red to spring from beneath my skin. She lets Susie shove her off me, and she sprouts a smirk when I lose my footing and have to rely on Susie to keep me upright.

“Dude.” She gasps. “Uh, your body is, like, super freezing right now.” Indeed, but I hardly hear her, for the cold strikes with an edge far sharper than last time. In a matter of seconds I’ve got my hands ripping at her lapels I can’t keep steady, and my blurring vision anchors on the neurotic way she keeps the back of her jacket from riding up too much. “Uh, Kris, just hang in there.” She tries holding me up by my upper arms, but she flinches—opting instead to scoop me beneath my arms with her radii. And though my sight is fading and my nerves are freezing numb, through the vibrations in my bones I can feel the way her body shakes, buzzing with rage.

I think Ceroba says something but I’m not sure. But a few seconds I’m back to, and she’s gone. Though my brittle skin is still stung by the air conditioning set to sixty-two. “I’m okay now,” is all I say to Susie, and she lets me go. My joints creak lifting me up, like two blocks of ice rubbing together, but at least I’m in an operative state.

“No, by all means, keep doing—whatever it is you two are doing.”

Susie and I separate each other by three steps apiece, and my frustration peaks.

“You’re really doing a great job, you know,” Azzy says. “Like, imagine if you hadn’t been so lucky and Noelle walked in instead of me.”

“Man, shut the fuck up,” Susie says.

“Womp—womp.” Azzy smirks. “Whatever. Dess and I’ve been waiting out back for you three.” Susie watches him saunter back into the kitchen, shoulders swaying with this lackadaisical self-assuredness typical of an unemployed college kid on summer break. He’s humming some gay and probably homosexual tune to himself; the house’s good acoustics carry it to us until he exits out the back.

“Wow, your brother’s kind of an asshole, Kris.”

“He’s a jackass,” I correct her through chattering teeth. “And he’s mostly alright when he’s not being one.”

“Uh huh,” Susie says, then, “yo, Berdly—you coming?” She lets the silence linger a while. She maybe thinks it’s awkward but from where I’m standing I can see him slink off the couch, blue phone light bleaching his face for a second or two, then with a slouch shambles onwards.

The Holidays actually own a sizable patch of the woods behind their house. We go a ways further than that, into municipal territory, such that it winds up adjacent to our own property. Mindfully I step over the splintered bark of a fallen tree, then double back to see that, rather than an army of cragged rocks jutting from the earth like blades, the wood at the point of injury bends queerly, like Chris-Chan’s erection.

December Holiday stands in a clearing that wasn’t there prior, chin up, a whiffle ball bat by her side, crooked, like Chris-Chan’s erection. Surrounding her is a bloodbath—or I suppose trees shed sap not blood. Trees slain in a similar way litter the ground, their flesh rended in a circular way, and in places where skin was not broken the parallel bark swirls inward around the depression marking the point of impact. The afternoon sun finds an angle into the clearing and beams its light directly onto her, accentuating the lighter patches of her fur, making them glow with the earth beneath her. Her shoulders raise and lower at a rhythm; she pants; from exertion or simply the heat I do not know.

“We’ve been at it all day,” Azzy says, and I pretend to be scandalized by his poor choice of words—he rolls his eyes. “And we’ve learned a couple things,” says he. Presently Dess swings her bat up to atop her shoulder. I note her other, softball bat leaning against a tree someplace near. “On the nature of these ‘curses’, as you’ve named them. If what Berdly said was true,” he pauses a moment, and the bird-boy hums quietly, “you get a curse when you eat this Hagoromo chalk, which is how Dess got hers, and how that crackhead got his, and presumably how Kris got theirs.” His eyes linger on Ralsei, who has appeared beside me. My cursed friend offers Berdly a sympathetic look, but only that, maybe remorseful that he can’t otherwise interact with someone who does not bear a curse themselves. One night a few nights ago I had said the hell with it and introduced him to my brother, who immediately clocked Ralsei as my childhood ideal. It led to a night of wisecracks, and I considered smothering Azzy with a pillow in my sleep.

“Well, I also ate half of Kris’ chalk,” Susie reminds him. “So Ralsei is my curse, too.”

“That’s true,” Azzy says, “but the crackhead didn’t require much chalk dust to manifest his curse, so I suspect maybe you’ve both—” me and Susie, “—been curse separately. Ralsei, being Kris’ curse, can only be seen by others cursed, and yours might be something entirely different.”

Susie blinks. “So I might also have some crazy thing happen to me?”

“Not sure,” Azzy says. “Because demonstrably I’ve been cursed as well, considering I can see Kris’ fursona.” Said fursona gives him a cute lil’ wave, and Azzy tries his best to not visibly cringe. “Maybe there’s some kind of delay involved. Because Dess ate her chalk months ago, and her ball thing didn’t start happening until just last week. Likewise I haven’t noticed anything amiss in my own day-to-day.”

“Or maybe the trigger is just super specific,” Dess herself says. “Like, remarkably, I don’t think I hit any spherical objects with sticks between eating the chalk and last week. So maybe it’s something you just gotta figure out on your own.”

“Right,” Azzy says.

“I—” Here Berdly speaks, and I feel a twinge of excitement that he’s recovered at least that much. For the temptation of the topic at hand has overridden his previous anguish. He adjusts his glasses. “It’s also very clear that each chalk confers a ‘single’ ‘ability’—”He starts slowly, gradually picking up speed. “—and I think that’s really how we ought to be internalizing these ‘curses’—per person—only that one’s application of said curse might be incredulously vague.”

He’s lost Azzy, so he clarifies.

“For example,” he says. The more we indulge his train of thought the faster he accelerates to his usual cant. I contribute a nod. “The crackhead’s ‘ability’ was solitary in nature in its ability to turn ‘things’ into ‘cocaine’. But from what Kris has told me, a ‘thing’ could be something very precise, like the water vapor in the air, or even a ‘conceptual thing’, like turning Kris’ thoughts into cocaine—in other words injecting them with a brief high.”

“That makes sense.” Dess nods. “Likewise my curse is to hit a ball with a stick—and we figure that just about anything resembling a ‘ball’ and ‘stick’ will work—and imbue with the ‘rotation of the earth’, or whatever that professor guy said.”

“I—I see.” Berdly strokes the underside of his beak. “Then what are its applications?”

December shrugs. “Mostly breaking shit,” she says. Azzy throws the ball—and I guess I can throw the ball up in the air myself but it’s easier if he passes it to me—” And she gives him a wink, “—and I hit it and it starts to spin and arc to where I want it to go. And it goes about as far as it’d go if I hit it normally; so even though you could theoretically activate my curse using a pebble and a tree branch, I reckon I’d get a good seventy-five to one hundred yards with a proper bat—maybe more if it was aluminum. But when the ‘ability’ finishes its business the ball is always destroyed.”

“Sounds expensive,” Susie says.

“More like a pain in my ass,” Azzy says. “Money’s not a problem when you’re a Holiday, but imagine her asking me to lug around twenty softballs in a knapsack.”

“That’s assuming you expect to be wrapped up in combat,” Berdly points.

“I mean,” Dess says, “we’ve already run into two of these curse ‘abilities’.”

“Three, actually,” Ralsei says. And suddenly everyone realizes I’ve been very quiet, more than my usual habit, and ten eyes beg me for an explanation. But I’m still feeling rather frigid, so I let Ralsei rescue me. “Twice now Ceroba has scratched Kris with one of her nails, and twice now they’ve been hit with a freezing cold right after.”

Azzy nods. “Then I think this—Ceroba?—must also have a similar ‘ability’.”

“Ceroba Kim,” Dess clarifies. “The kitsune girl shooting for Mom’s Japanese heritage whatever scholarship.”

“Kim?” Azzy frowns. “That’s a gook name.”

Dess puts her arms akimbo, sliding a shrug from shoulder to shoulder. “Beats me, dude. That’s just what I know.”

“Anyways,” Azzy says. “You still feeling frigid now, Kris?”

I nod.

He shifts to Ralsei. “How did it go away last time?” he says.

“I’m not sure…”

“Does it have to do with time?” Berdly offers. “Or maybe so long as they’re bleeding?” To him, I tap my cheek, the small crevice where Ceroba jabbed me. No? I’m no longer bleeding. “Then maybe something to do with time, or duration?” he says.

“Does it matter?” Dess says. “Kris isn’t dying, are they?”

“They were on the verge of collapsing earlier.” Susie crosses her arms. “So I think it matters a fair bit.”

“Well they seem fine now,” the reindeer girl says back. “Maybe your friend’s right, and it goes away with time.”

The conversation from there goes nowhere. Dess explains some more about her curse, how she’s learned to regulate its destructive power so she’s not murdering every single person one of her balls happens to touch, but also how meticulous it is to reach the minimum threshold of knocking someone out without spilling over into serious harm. ‘It’s like trying to take a shit, but you gotta hold the shit so just the tip touches the toilet water, and no more’—is how she chooses to illustrate the process to me. This is the reason she gives for lowballing (pun intended) rather than putting her back into every swing. Animatedly, she explains the process by which she violently abused my poor brother with a barrage of swelling intensity. I cringed thinking what she might have done to his body while waiting for him to regain consciousness.

Some time later I decide I’m pretty fed up with my present chilliness, cast a stick I’d been fiddling with to the ground, and announce angrier than I expected that I’m going to jump into bed with a blanket until it passes. Azzy wants to join me, but December’s already slunk an arm ‘round his, inviting him for dinner and to stay the night. He’ll excuse himself home sick with a stomach cramp minutes before Dess spontaneously decides that every couch and guest bed in the house is in need of de-ticking—selflessly surrendering half of her twin-sized mattress to him.

The march to my place from these woods is short, a march I know by heart. As I pump my arms and legs to give myself some semblance of circulation in these Winter times, behind me I hear Susie’s heavy trodding and Berdly clumsy waddling close behind. It’s a mystery to me why my body temp approaches homeostasis the further I stray, and in my curiosity I make a fatal error; I look back at the two seeing us off, and my brothers begs me for help with wide puppy eyes. He gives that guilt-injecting look he’s mastered from Mom when she needs from me something direly tedious; he doesn’t need words to remind me how many scrapes and cuts he’s closed with a Band-Aid, nor how many assignments, social tribulations, bouts of loneliness he’s supervised me through—I sigh and nod, and ask if we can tag along.

I share a glance with December, donating my full sympathy; to call Azzy the love of her live at twenty-three is a little preemptive, but I feel rare twinge in my heart knowing that she’ll never have him without the pretext of me as a third wheel, and for a brief millisecond her face matches the splintered wood by her feet, but then she gives me a tilted grin. ‘At least you’re good company,’ as if to say to me.

And then, “yo Berdly, Sue—you wanna stay the night, too? We can make it a sleepover.” There’s conflict waged in her voice, but Azzy’s smiling and that’s all she really cares about, it seems.

“Uh,” Susie says, “I actually told my dad I’d be home before nine—” And this time Berdly is the one to slug her in the arm for failing to grow past a primitive intelligence. The cave-dweller within her discovers flame, and she must recognize that a sleepover with December means a sleepover with Noelle. “I—I mean, yeah, I guess he’s been nagging me to get out more,” and she adds, “that asshole,” for further effect.

“Nice save.” She earns a thumbs up and a whisper from Azzy.

“Hmph, man, whatever.”

I want to slap her on the back myself and try a bit of smugness on for size, but on the flat trail back to the Holiday house I lose my footing. Up until now I assumed that Ceroba’s curse would be leaving very soon, but then like a stake in my back a ghostly shard of ice jabs itself through my ribcage.

I swat away the others’ compulsory offers for help. I tripped over myself, is all, I say.

I lag behind them claiming my foot hurts, and as I do I feel like hunted prey, Ceroba’s stare growing more deathly with each step.

Chapter Text

“Sue, calm the fuck down.”

“I am calm!” She kicks a trash can into the tiled wall.

We’ve convened in the bathroom, she, Berdly, and I—a precautionary powwow to coach her on tonight’s itinerary. The moment it was set in stone that this sleepover would be commencing, we three matched single file into the upstairs bathroom, not a word spoken between us till the doorknob button was depressed and clicked into the ‘locked’ position.

Due to our fortunate proximity it was only a short walk to double back to my house and knock on my front door to summon my mother, and mysteriously the curse-induced coldness faded just as I came to our front doorstep. For a while Mom waxed poetic how glad she was that Noelle and I are reconnecting. I hadn’t mentioned the others simply for lack of need—and her breath caught in the top of her throat when I mentioned Azzy too would be staying the night. Very quickly she moved to compose herself. She pulled back hands that cupped her face in a way that amplified an excitement I wouldn’t have otherwise detected, and whispered a quiet, yet stern instruction to keep out of their business should they sneak up to her room or something. I rolled my eyes and told her that if she was so eager to have grandkids she’d be waiting a bit more than just nine months. At this she played coy about the marriage of the two ideas—of her precious child and fucking—yet as I threw up my hands and left I saw her dash off to the kitchen, tugging at drawers in a familiar sequence. The scent of burning incense played at my nose long before the pie would be ready.

“Look, I think the path forward is abundantly clear,” Berdly is saying. “You’ve already gone through the trouble of killing the guy. The hard work’s done. Just go talk to her, impress upon her your latent musical talent—as Kris has so dutifully informed us of Dess’ instrument collection—and we, all present for your performance, clap and gas you up and sing your everlasting praise, at which point she will have no choice but to recommend you for the empty drummer spot that direly needs filling before next Sunday,” he says in one breath. “And then from there you basically have a date with her every single week.”

“And that’d be all great and cool,” Susie says. She steps over to the gently dented and prone trash can. She picks it up and hurls it at me. I dodge, and it clangs empty against the wall—a grid of patterned stonework. “If not for this dumbass.” She’s talking about me. “Who just had to make things a million times harder by giving Noelle the idea that me and them are a thing!”

“I see,” Berdly says. “Have you considered a public breakup?”

Two clearly hands envelop Berdly’s skinny neck and shake him to and fro. “We. Aren’t. Dating.”

“I—gah!” He manages to pry her off him, mostly from her charity. Wings clutching his chest, he heaves a few times. “Okay. Proceed as planned, then. If, Sue, you start coming on to Noelle, she’ll realize naturally that you and Kris aren’t a thing after all—and that’s that.”

“Dude, don’t be a dingus.” Susie bares her pointy teeth as she continues to pace. Maybe she thinks about hitting Berdly the way her claws tuck into her palm, make a fist, but she doesn’t. “Noelle isn’t gonna let me ask her out if she thinks Kris likes me,” she explains without inflection. “Kris and Noelle are childhood friends and she’d definitely look out for them like that. I’m not—” She hesitates. “—I’m not against the idea of being a little more assertive once we get the ball rolling, but Kris.” And she makes eye contact that I’m tempted to shy away from. “Man, you gotta clear up this whole mess. Please.”

It takes a second for me to reply. “I have it under control,” I reassure her.

“Good,” she says, and for the first time since we got here her shoulders soften and ease back into the slouch that’s so disarming to look at.

Berdly hums a content affirmation, and the two exfil. For a moment we briefly discuss the prospect of snooping around Noelle’s mom’s office—in relation to the couple pounds of chalk dust trafficked by Ms. Undyne. The two shake their head no. It’s too risky with both Mrs. Holiday and Ceroba on the premises, but maybe some other time. So I urge the door close behind them, as for one reason or another I need to piss, and and I’m a quarter way to unbuttoning my pants when Noelle pushes through the door—which in retrospect I forgot to lock.

“Sorry, Kris,” she says. “I wanted to, like, talk to you in private and I figured this’d be a good place.” As opposed to what?

Her buck teeth stare at me a while. Behind her long face her long arms dip down with her bad posture. I skip laughing at the image of a knuckle-dragging gorilla, more enamored with her loungewear that floors me with its simple appeal. A well-fitting tank top and gym shorts paint her a black-and-white duochrome. Her collarbone protrudes clearly beneath her fur, and I study how they move with her anxious fidgeting.

“A-anyways,” she coughs. Her left hoof traces a drain set into the center of the room—a laborious necessity when the shower floor and the bathroom floor are one and the same. Her line of sight catches the dented trash can as well; her hoof taps a rhythm against the hard tile, and she decides finally to fix it back to its proper place next to the sink. “I was just, like,” she says, forcing the dent out of the pliable aluminum with a pop, “looking for some advice.” Her thumbs twiddle, and I’m starting to be fed up with the way she’s skirting around things.

“What is it?” I say, maybe a bit too mad.

“Oh!” Noelle goes rigid. “It’s, just like—we’re having this sleepover and—you know Ceroba? She’s staying the night, too.”

“That bitch?” I let out accidentally.

Noelle puts on a rare crossness. “Don’t call her that,” she says.

“It’s true.” I don’t pull back with a lie.

“It’s—” She takes a deep breath. “It’s just not very nice.”

“But she’s not very nice.” My teeth grind behind my sealed mouth. The dam cracks and I haven’t the courtesy to fix it. “She’s kind of a piece of shit. I’ve spoken with her a few times and I genuinely don’t think she’s capable of feeling any sort of remorse. She’s like liberal Hitler the way she’s so utterly entitled to the high ground in every single conversation she contributes a single word to—just because you’re supposed to think she’s hot or something. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so utterly boring and stupid—in the half-witted way—and vain. She’s the picture of an ugly bitch—on the inside—the type of girl who marries early and winds up being written about in those American classic short stories where the wife goes crazy and murders her husband or buys an umbrella or hangs herself after roasting her newborn in an oven. I know that’s kind of belligerent, but I swear to God she deserves it. The way she’ll go out of her way to snipe your deepest insecurities and put them on blast for everyone to gawk and laugh at is, like, actually evil. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone to kill themselves more in my entire life. And not from depression or anything that’ll get her sympathy—closer to how that crackhead that died last Sunday went out, where every waking opportunity for remembrance gets besmirched by some new allegation of misconduct. So that even burning in hell she can’t even have the respite of knowing the material world’s sympathy. Like, she’s such a stupid bitch. She’s a big, fat, stupid bitch. She’s the biggest bitch in the whole wide world. She probably has pockmarks under all that makeup, and I hate her.”

An awkward silence hangs between us. Noelle passes the time staring at me—blinking with her eyes—but staring with those massive front teeth. “You know, Kris,” she says finally. “You don’t have to be such a cunt.”

“Huh?”

“Like,” she puts a palm to her cheek. “I know we’ve known each other a while, and, like, I know you like to mess around and stuff, but, like, please read the room for once,” she insists. I watch her hands tremble by her sides, tips of her fingers sliding across her thumbs. I heed her. It’s frustration, laced with something subtle. Embarrassment, I realize, seeing the way she sighs—primarily from exasperation but also with the aftertaste of something sweet—and the tip of her snout blushes a bright red.

Oh.

Oh, goddamnit.

“Look, um, Noelle, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I guess I didn’t realize she hurt you in the past. I’m not denying she can be a bit of a ‘mean girl’, but—that’s kind of, like—hot?—you know?” Her nose glows madly red. “Isn’t it like—kind of exciting, being talked down to?”

What the fuck.

She continues. An odd smile that’s wide but not very deep creeps across her features. “Like, Ceroba’s the type of girl who’d put you down and make you curl up in a ball and cry in the worst way possible. But deep down she thinks you’re really cute when you cry, and, like, it embarrasses her. So when you follow her around like a lost puppy she’ll keep hurting you until her words beat you black and blue, hoping that you’ll leave her be. But you keep following her around, and eventually she’ll give in and give you a chance. And she’ll hate you, but you’re cute, and you do what she tells you. And because you never stop loving her, even when she gets mad and—and she when she hits you...”

Dude holy shit.

“A-anyways,” Noelle says, suddenly self-conscious. “I figured since you’re into Susie you’d get what I’m saying.”

“Uh, no. I already told you Susie and I aren’t like that.”

“Oh!” Her eyes widen, face flushed fully. “Well, I always had Susie pegged for—I mean, I guess I can see her being one of those mushy girls.”

“Dude, are you even listening to me?” I’m careful not to raise my voice too high, lest she gain some weird gratification from it.

But she isn’t listening. “But yeah, like, I, like, like Ceroba—like, like like her. Gosh, that, like, sounds super embarrassing saying that out loud—”

“Dude.” I slap a hand over her bare shoulder. “She has a boyfriend.”

“That’s okay,” Noelle says.

“And I’m pretty sure she’s not into girls,” I say. “Actually I think if you tried to ask her out she’d call you a slur.”

“You really think so?” Like a doe, her eyes glaze over, and this is my limit.

“Yes. Sure. But, um, I still gotta use the bathroom, so…”

“Oh!” Her usual slouch deepens, and she smiles cutely sheepish such that I forgive her immediately. “I’ll get out of your hair, then.” She scurries over to the door, turns the knob to disengage the lock. But before she leaves me another goofy grin. “Thanks for listening to me ramble a bit, Kris. It really does mean a lot.”

“Please leave,” I groan.

“Right. Thanks again,” and she’s gone.

I do some deep-breathing exercises that’s definitely not me hyperventilating. Just to dig up some of the sanity I buried to keep it safe. Moving to the sink I lift the cold metal lever to its upright position, and a clear fluid emerges from an abstruse spout, trickling down an angularly divited slope, and eventually onto my hands. I cup some water and wash my face clean of immediate concerns. Another blade of water slashes my hair. My fingers assimilate the cool liquid into my scalp.

Sighing deeply I let water drip into the sink drop by drop. I’m feeling very calm. And then the door opens again and I glare daggers at the water swirling into the drain.

“What do you want?” I spit. It’s Ceroba.

“Well,” she sits a hand on her hip. “As everyone’s coming in here to get head I figured I might have a look-see for myself.”

“What?” I say into the sink bowl.

“Kidding,” she scoffs. “As if I’d let you anywhere near this,” and presently I imagine she gestures at herself inappropriately.

“What do you want?” I say again.

“I’m just wondering if this ‘sleepover’ is another one of your schemes to get Holiday and O’Brien together.” She flips her hair and I fantasize about caving in her head with the toilet’s ceramic tank cover. Her slender body would break apart so easily. Then I’d stomp her broken skull into a dense gravel and let the blood seep between the cracks like a riverbed. I’d sit at the shore and let the iron smell of blood awaken a deeper, more primal hate inside of me. Indeed her death was only for the utility of turning me into a more vicious killer.

But we live in this odd place called ‘suburbia’, and in suburbia we’ve moved past the need for violent resolution; only by the Investigation Discovery channel do we feed those bestial senses.

While I’m agape at the sweet image of her dead corpse Ceroba’s been talking. “I figure you’re behind the crackhead at the church, by the by. Dunno how that was supposed to make Noelle Holiday fall in love, but whatever.” Her vulpine eyes narrow at me. I see their hidden meaning: I don’t know how much she knows about what happened that night, but she knows I’ve eaten the chalk, and likely figures I’m aware of its basic functionalities.

She’s still eying me. “Why are you here, anyways?” I ask.

She blinks, shrugs a single shoulder. “Maybe I’m curious whatever deep shit you’re about to dig O’Brien into,” she says.

“Is that all?” I say.

“More or less,” she says, emphasis on the ‘more’. I swear her claws sneak out, ready to brandish that ability of hers. Part of me weighs getting nicked a third time to maybe unravel more of its mystery, but without Berdly and Susie by my side I shake the idea away. “Like, I know I offered to lend you a hand matching up those two,” and here she says a slur. “But I think I’d rather just see you crash and burn over and over again.”

“I threw out the chalk,” I say.

“No shit. We figured that ages ago.” I let my back relax a bit; presently I realize how guarded I’ve been.

“Wait, ‘we’?”

“The ASA,” she says. “You know, the whole reason why we went and bothered with you? Multicultural night is tomorrow night and we’re down an exhibit, no thanks to you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No you aren’t.” She laughs. “But,” and for once her sharp eyes blunt out at the corners, “in all seriousness, Dreemurr, I’ve got a scholarship to network for tonight, and I’m telling you this so you know in no uncertain terms—” She struts past me, teases the skin of my cheek with a claw. “—to please not make this miserable for me. If your stupid autism can manage at least that, then we’ll be even.”

She reaches out with a limp hand. I take it.

“Cool.” She yanks back, reaches over me to run it under the faucet. “See ya.”

I watch the door snap shut behind her. For a second time I go through the ritual of rinsing my face, and relish in my freedom to finally sit down and take a leak.

“…calls herself, quote, ‘The Liberal Hitler’, unquote, and claims she will continue executing FedEx employees until Congress votes on a resolution to consider deferring the controversial and inhumane—”

Dess switches the TV input from HDMI1’s MSNBC to HDMI2. “Bo-ring,” she whines. “Anyone up to pass and play some Call of Duty?”

The yeas amount to five (Dess, Azzy, me, Susie, and Noelle) with the nays outvoted, numbering only one (the Nintendo kid Berdly). Berdly pulls out his Switch from somewhere—I’m not sure exactly where—and entertains me and him with some Smash Brothers. It’s a tactical decision for me to sit out, that the two pairs of lovebirds share a few rounds of zombies. It turns out a four-way split screen works fairly well on the Holidays’ colossal one-sixty-inch TV screen. Despite the accommodating couch, December presses Azzy into the corner, practically smothering my poor brother in his baggy loungewear—gym shorts and a neon green t-shirt he got from a second-hand store as a joke. The wonderful girl trying to lay her head on his lap is dressed in a similar comfortable way—an old bootleg Red (the South Park character not the Pokémon trainer) t-shirt and a pair of soft leggings. Berdly and I share a glance and make ourselves obnoxiously wide, leaving little room for Susie and Noelle. The dumb reindeer gets the exact wrong idea and leans her weight into Susie, trying to push her into me. I naturally do my civic duty and lounge lengthwise about the couch, pushing back with a foot. The result is one Susan O’Brien smushed up against her crush on the verge of exploding, and she goes down with Jugg on round four. I’m a bad person, so I make sure to make fun of her.

Time passes and we shoot the shit. Sometime after picking up a distracted Susie for the fifth time—she swears she’s usually not so terrible—Azzy tosses the controller into my lap, telling me to keep him alive while he’s in the bathroom. I down on purpose, and when he sees what I’ve done leaps over the back of the couch; I hit the floor under his weight and tap out after five seconds. Without me Berdly’s begun to play Splatoon, and he voices his frustration at we pair of troglodyte morons after our ruckus causes his Switch to fall forwards off the coffee table.

“Better not be broken,” Berdly grumble, kneeling down to retrieve it.

“You’ll get the new one in—” Susie begins. “—when’s it coming out again?”

“Next week. Wednesday night,” he hums contentedly that his Switch isn’t damaged. “Already got my preorder in.”

“Dude, isn’t it five hundred bucks or something?” Susie says.

Berdly shrugs. “A paltry sum. Plus, it’s been a couple years since the last one.”

“More like eight,” Noelle chimes in. “I also preordered one, by the way.”

“O-oh,” Susie coughs. I suspect her opinion on the Nintendo Switch 2 has undergone a drastic, inexplicable, and unforeseen change. “Is that so?”

“Uh-huh.” Noelle nods with wide eyes, past Susie and me to Berdly. “Say, like, which Game Stop are you getting yours from? I did mine at the one down the road from Q.C.’s.”

Berdly nods. “I’m the same. The only other Game Stop is in the mall, and the mall isn’t gonna be open for a midnight release.”

“Huh,” Noelle’s mouth hangs open a bit; her tongue fiddles with the back of her front teeth. “Like, we should totally run that together.”

“That’s a school night,” Azzy comes in from his corner of the couch.

“Uh-huh.” Noelle lets her mouth hang subtly agape again, and presently I realize it’s that slack-jawedness that gets me so fixated on her buck teeth. She turns back to Berdly. “Like, Kris, Susie—do you guys wanna come, too?”

“Uh, me?” Susie says.

“Sure,” Noelle says. “It’s just to hang out—not like anyone’s asking you to drop all that money.”

“Broke-ass bitch,” Berdly snickers.

“Man, I have money!” Susie reaches behind me to smack the back of his head. “It’s just that my mom keeps it all in one of those PA 529s, and stuff.”

“You and what college?” Berdly quacks.

“Uh, community,” Susie scratches her chin. “Get my Associate’s then decide what to do from there.”

I sense another futile and long-winded spat, so I interject. “You said it was Wednesday night? Sounds fun. I’ll go.”

“Just don’t bitch and moan when it’s Thursday morning and you’re too tired to wake up for school the next day,” Azzy says.

“Dude,” Dess swings one leg across the other, breaks into a tiny grin that reminds me of her dad. “Just call in an anonymous threat saying that you’ll bring in a pound of C4 if they don’t start recognizing Columbus Day again.”

“A show of weakness.” Berdly shakes his head. “There’s a certain glamor to arriving at school with that dogged look in your eyes—that the layfolk will watch in awe as you show off the trophy of your suffering—except for Susie and Kris who are broke-ass bitches—and they shall bow down and worship your awesome coolness.”

On the topic of midnight releases, the conversation moves to the third Modern Warfare in twenty-eleven—Dess was only about nine or ten but Mr. Holiday took her to get it anyways—and from that to a rather heated discussion about Call of Duty that Berdly pridefully bows out of. To him, such barbaric propaganda for the military-industrial complex and the dehumanization of Arab peoples is so far beneath him, but Dess and Azzy like the respective third installments of Modern Warfare and Black Ops; Noelle voices rare praise for Kevin Spacey’s performance in Advanced Warfare, and Susie swears by her father’s physical copy of Call of Duty 2 on Windows. I’m smart enough to keep my trap shut and memories of Infinite Warfare to myself.

“Okay, but, like, hear me out,” Noelle is saying. “Like, he might be a suicide fame-monster loser, and a loser pedophile type-of-freak, but he’s, like, a really good actor. Like, Seven, Baby Driver, a Bug’s Life—all great movies.”

“He was also in Fred Claus.” Heads turn and spy Ceroba ambling down the steps, hands deep in the pockets of her oversized hoodie. Noelle’s face blanks at her arrival. “What?” she says. “If you wanna fuck Kevin Spacey that bad you can just say it.”

“I—no! I just think he’s got talent, is all.” Noelle’s red face would be mistaken for embarrassment, but the creepy-ass smile spreading ear to ear suggests otherwise.

“What’s your deal, anyways, man?” Susie edges close to Noelle on instinct.

Ceroba either doesn’t see the gesture or doesn’t care enough to insult it. “I’m hungry and it’s getting late,” she says. From her hoodie pocket she pulls out a black Centurion card from American Express. “Mrs. Holiday says Mr. Holiday is usually the cook, but he’s out of town for the weekend—” I know him to be down in San Diego with my father visiting my bro. “—so she says we can DoorDash whatever we want.”

The prospect of free takeout with no limit on price calls a swift and immediate armistice, and, to her dismay, places Ceroba in the center of the couch—the rest of us scrambling to huddle around her phone.

“Like, can you please give me a little personal space?”

The kitsune’s pleas are lost on a rabid sextet such as we. She manages to tap out an order from one of those gentrified Asian fusion joints that’s local to our town before Dess swipes the phone and gets herself a French dip cheesesteak from a dive we gatekeep from our parents and Noelle. She passes it to Azzy who orders a burger with an unseeded bun and yellow American cheese and a side of fries—hold the lettuce tomato onion—and lunging at the opportunity to splay her body across Ceroba’s lap is Noelle, who copies the fox girl’s exact order. She passes it to Berdly who in record time taps out a box combo from the Raising Cane’s that just opened up down the street from the school. Then Ceroba’s phone gets to Susie, and my loose grip on reality shatters into a million tiny pieces as I bear witness in comprehensive horror as she navigates to the listing for Q.C.’s Diner and selects the baked Virginia ham and mashed potatoes. Berdly also sees.

“Sue.” He gingerly doffs off his glasses and wipes them with the hem of his Red (the Pokémon trainer not the South Park character) t-shirt. “Did your mother drop on your head when you were an infant?”

“Dude, lay off,” Susie parries without delay. “You don’t see me joshing you around for eating chicken.”

“Okay, first off, that’s very prejudiced and I resent that,” Berdly scowls and I think he’s half-serious. “But you get a free meal from literally any place your imagination can conjure, and you get a diner entree?”

“Uh, yeah,” Susie says. “I mean, haven’t you ever gone to Q.C.’s and seen, like, the chicken croquettes or baked meatloaf for like twenty-seven bucks?”

Berdly puts his glasses back on. With a wing he pushes them far up his beak. “You could could’ve gotten a fillet steak or something but instead you want a grocery store ham and instant potatoes.”

“Okay, but, uh, haven’t you ever been curious about those? I mean, it’s gotta be the twenty-something for a reason.”

During their cordial spat I decide I actually want a fillet steak and put it in. Not that I expect the transportation to uphold its quality, but the decision’s been made and Ceroba’s already snatched her phone back, making her hate known via those sharpened eyes of hers.

Ceroba gets something for Mrs. Holiday and sends off the food for some poor sap to round up. In the meantime Berdly and Susie continue to fight, turning right on the topic of Raising Cane’s and down the path of ordering desserts at a family restaurant (Susie for, Berdly against).

A few more minutes of this and Dess announces that she’s retiring up to her room ‘till the food arrives, triggering an onslaught of convoluted and exhausting manoeuvres. To no one’s surprise December’s intention is to claim Asriel for some alone time upstairs, an idea he unremarkably isn’t so fond of. He denies the offer, and to convince him Dess asks Susie and me to join them—because she’s still misinformed that I like her. Noelle encourages this, and tries getting Berdly to join them as well, such that she’ll have Ceroba all to herself. This is obviously a colossal fail state, so I grab Susie and Noelle and insist we play some more Call of Duty—which Ceroba will certainly want no part in—and will also rescue Azzy from the horror of Dess’ room behind closed doors; but Noelle gets the wrong idea and insists that just Susie and I share some time to ourselves. There’s a sparkle in her eye not dissimilar to the prurient gaze a fujoshi might offer a duo of male BFFs in her class, and at this Dess and Ceroba roll their eyes. Loudly, they share a slur together—and for some reason instead of being hurt by her crush so cruelly attacking her gayness, Noelle begins to bounce in her seat, and I want to throw up. Azzy is a good older brother and moves to cover my ineptitude. He claims that Noelle ought to spend more time with her sister, a prospect only I notice her flinch at, and that Susie should also get to better know Dess because they’re both—and I need to preface that these are his words—‘punk’. This ignites an obdurate tangent that I very much don’t care for, but involves Susie expound with excruciating conviction how being ‘punk’ is mutually exclusive with someone like December. And by the time that detour takes us back to our original conversation, after all that nonsense, an electronic chime sounds through the house, signaling the arrival of our food.

The steak was kind of wet and dogshit.

“Was it worth it, Sue?” Berdly had said to the dinosaur in question after finishing dinner.

“No,” said she.

Apparently the baked Virginia ham and mashed potatoes was not priced proportionate to the meal’s quality. In all fairness said twenty-seven dollars usually includes an endless supply of soup and salad—by delivery Susie only gets one French onion soup—but even when dining in it’s very unlikely that someone would be eating more than one soup anyways.

I’m eagerly explaining the scam to Azzy, who may or may not be regretting not following Noelle and Susie and Berdly with Dess up to her room. I’m laying prone across two dining room chairs as he tidies up the kitchen, sequestering leftovers into labeled Tupperware and washing the silverware by hand. For maybe a second I considered sparing the Holiday’s garbage disposal from a blizzard of white fur, but my innate sloth cripples my most basic moral values and keeps me inert. For a very, very long time I let the circular ceiling lights overhead bake my face until six become twelve, then twelve become twenty-four. I feel like an elf in its nightly trance the way the ambient heat burns away the discomfort from the gap between the two seats. It’s meditative, and presently I’m understanding how socially drained I am. From eight hours of school to two hours in the woods and another three hours mucking about the Holiday house, these few minutes of respite are like burning in hell and having Lazarus dip his finger in a plate of water and press it onto my tongue. My world continues to spin, slow at first, and eventually in perfect tandem with the analog clock on the wall.

I’m so entranced that when I jolt upright Azzy’s nowhere in sight, and the clock high on the wall is a little further ahead than I last checked. The worry fades the moment my socks hit the hardwood. For I stride—basically glide—with a profound vigor—out from the vacant kitchen and into the living room, where I’m suddenly frozen at the threshold. Not by any physical matter, but by a high ponytail of Autumn orange peeking from behind the back of the large sofa.

Taking further advantage of the hardwood I skate down the living room without disturbing the scene. The vapid demon girl brings her left ring finger up near her temple—to push those nerdy glasses of hers up her forehead. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not a bad look. Her piercing eyes are disarmed by the strong prescription, and the absence of paranoid upkeep and perfection gives her an unexpected charm that I suppose isn’t to the fancy of the boys she likes kept wrapped around her finger. But at the same time I’m so utterly revolted by the ugly persona that lurks beneath her skin.

Inches from her face she holds her phone; the night filter makes the screen glow closer to a candle, matches her fur. A diligent thumb swipes up at even intervals, panning down a column of text. Continuing to skulk about my heart rate spikes up to the roof of my mouth when I accidentally hit my leg against the table. On reflex my eyes squeeze shut. I expect the worst, but seconds pass and my feelings are still intact. I peek, and she’s still scrolling her phone at a snail’s pace. She’s locked in so absolutely that her nose practically touches her screen, so close that her breath fogs the screen and she has to pull back to wipe it with her sleeve. I take the opportunity to move closer still, that I might catch a glimpse of the text on the screen, and I do.

‘…then he put his hand in his and pulled him into another kiss. his open eyes were like wet pearls and he smirked.

‘Oh, hold me, he sighed, falling into hhis arms. His voice was like melting choclate in his ear, and the arms were as wide as logs and strong like iron bars and his inner goddess got into a cheerleder getup and did a cartwheel. His breathes labored. His cheeks flushed. I must be the color of Kim Kardashian, he thinks to himself. He was so handsome, he thinks to himself, and they stayed that way for about 30 seconds and then he pushed him off him. Then they got intheir pyjamas and shared a few more stories together and another hig before they fell asleep together.

‘This is the best Christmasd ever He Said. And I love—’

A shrill scream rips through my eardrums with a serrated dagger.

The phone slips out of her hand, and Ceroba scrambles to catch it and stuff it into her hoodie pocket. She stuffs her hands in as well, then tucks her legs under its bagginess. Her glasses fall down atop her snout, her eyes peeking over the frames as her face shrinks down into her sweatshirt.

“Tell anyone and you’re dead!” She shrieks into the fabric.

“Tell anyone what?” I say. “That you read gay fan fiction? That’s, like, really super tame.” I dry out my voice to resemble something condescending.

“Maybe to a gay freak like you,” she grumbles. “Like, can you imagine having to explain yaoi to someone like Jockington?”

“Dude, what? Jockington likes dudes.”

“Yeah, he’s gay, not a fucking f—!” And she finishes the rest of the three-letter word. “Unlike you I have a reputation to uphold.”

“But isn’t anime mainstream nowadays?” I say.

My apparent ignorance beckons Ceroba out of hiding from her hoodie. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” Circling around the couch I find the corner opposite her and sit down, cross legged.

“Look,” she withdraws her arms from her hoodie pocket and crosses them. “It’s like, anime is totally mainstream—you’re right—but yaoi is supposed to be a thing for—”

“Why do you go around telling people you’re Japanese?” I find myself asking abruptly.

“What the fuck?”

“Everyone’s under the impression that you’re Japanese. You even had it on your ASA name card thing.”

“Because I am?”

“Your last name is Kim.”

“So? What kind of stupid fucking logic is that? I’m not a communist.”

I blink thrice. “Okay, sure, but you’re still Korean—maybe like, half?”

“I was born to two Japanese parents.”

“Adopted then,” I pretend to ‘ah-ha!’ with the raised pointer finger and everything. “…which explains the last name.”

“What? No!” Her long mouth parts to reveal a row of teeth. But you know what they say about foxes. “My parents were born in Japan!”

“Oh, I see. They’re Japanese nationals, but ethnically they’re Korean. Which explains your high cheekbones.”

“Dreemurr.” With gentle fingers she pries off her glasses so she can use her piercing death-glare to its fullest. “What. The fuck. Are you going on about?”

I save my credibility by swallowing a rising giggle. “Well, Japs have rounder faces, you know. Koreans have a very distinct look about them that’s unmistakable from other slopes, and likewise you’re unmistakably a gook. Not to mention your canthal tilt—”

“Nope!” Ceroba springs off the couch. “Not the race phrenology. We’ve reached the line and you’re not getting me to cross it.” She swipes her hands parallel in front of her chest. Furiously she stomps down the living room to the front door. “If anyone asks—” They won’t. “—I’m going out to take a walk.” She yanks the knob and the door hits the stopper loud. But before she storms out, something compels her to look back.

I face her blankly. My head cants slightly.

“You know,” she says. “I can never get a read on you. It’s like one moment you’re less than a fly on the wall and the next there’s literally an endless river of bullshit spewing out your mouth.”

I think to myself for a moment. “You ever watch that Fat Albert episode with the retarded kid? It’s like that.”

The door clicks shut without another word.

I share a look with Ralsei. “I thought she’d never leave,” he sighs.

Then he laughs, and maybe I do, too.

Chapter Text

You are the heart dotting ‘i’

In the word ‘apologize’

Scribbled drunk on a postcard

Sent from somewhere volcanoes are

I am the heart with no name

Airbrushed on the license plate

Of a Subaru that was

Registered in Pennsylvania

Susie’s singing is a surprisingly gentle affair. It’s got that deep bass that predates each word of her normal speech, but it only follows a savory wealth. The evening sun illuminates her side profile warm and gold, calculably diluted by it peeking through the forest beside the house. As she finishes up the final lines a shrug runs from shoulder to shoulder, a laugh that traces down her hair like her fingers trace the bottom string of Dess’ guitar. I can’t help but match her.

“Like what you’re seein’, Kris-mas?” Dess whispers.

“Yeah, actually,” I whisper back, speaking before thinking.

“Wow, you’re, like, pretty good at this, Susie.” Noelle sits beside her at the edge of the bed. Her legs continue to sway with the beat of the music long after it’s ended.

“N-nah, I’m still super rusty,” Susie stutters, a rare face for her. She cups a hand to her face, pushing her eyes away. She’s exceedingly fortunate that the sun’s opted to strike that side of her so flatteringly—else Noelle have not have mistaken her attempt at hiding her blushing face for shielding from the sun’s rays.

The reindeer lurches off the bed to go close the blinds, and Susie exhales so sharply it could cut paper. At first its relief, evident by the way her height loses a full inch as she deflates back into her usual bad posture. But then she clutches her heart, and locks on to the apple of her eye, who shimmers as the sun peels across the edges of her silhouette. I know she’s enamored by the girl’s perpetual idle happiness—the wagging of her tail—by the pendulum swing of her pupils. But from a certain point of view she’s just gawking at her ass.

Berdly notices, too, and he also decides that he’ll adopt the funnier conclusion, and we convey our decision to her via a smug smirk and honed eyes.

Susie wrestles her attention to her feet, probably a little self conscious, and I’m starting to think she was staring at Noelle’s ass just a little bit. But to chastise her again now would be that classic accusation of the kettle by the pot. Azzy sees, too, I think, and he joins our quiet dogpiling.

Susie shakes her head, passes the guitar back to Dess, who returns it to her closet. “I’ve gotta agree with Elly, Sue,” she says, clapping away some dust caking the guitar case. “You’re not half bad.”

“Uh, thanks,” Susie manages this time. “I used to take lessons back in middle school. Haven’t really had a chance to play since.”

“Well if we were down a guitarist I’d offer the Christian Rock band at the church is down a member,” Noelle says. The room is a few values darker with the blinds closed. I see the outline of her finger play with a creased Sabaton poster.

“Uh—well I can do the drums, too!” Susie says. She hops off the bed; compulsively she tugs down the rear hem of her jacket. “I dunno, I mean,” with equal compulsiveness she runs her claws through her messy hair in a vain attempt to straighten it. “I’m thinking I wanna try playing again.”

“Right,” Noelle says, dumbly staring with her teeth. “But, like,” and she does this thumb-twiddling thing at her lap, “I’m, like not super sure, like…”

“Yeah?” Susie’s eagerness nearly disarms Noelle.

“Well, like,” she says. Her head dips low. “I’m just not, like, super sure it’d be your ‘thing’, exactly.”

“Oh.” The base of Susie’s jaw gives, giving a long look to her face. “Well, uh, that’s totally okay. I mean—”

“Aah—I didn’t, like, mean it like that. I think you really were great. Really!” Noelle emphatically assures her. “I just think the whole Christian Rock might be a little much—especially since you’re not, like, Christian—or, I mean, not Protestant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but like, the others might think you’re gonna burn in hell or something.” Dess gives Susie an apologetic look, that her sister’s apology is unfurling to this length.

But Susie shakes it off. “I—I see…”

The room is still for a while, the only signature of life is the sun’s finale sputtering out through the half-lidded shades.

“Oh! But, like, I did hear that Catti needs a drummer.”

“Is that so?” Susie says.

Noelle shifts her weight from one foot to the other, rocking, hands shaking and folding into one another. Our sights align momentarily, and her eyelids droop limply. I know her well enough to receive her plight—‘see, Kris? This is why I have, like, zero friends,’ she says. I’m not sure how to encourage her.

“Uh, you know, like, Catti Cattenheimer—” Noelle blurts under pressure. “—she somehow convinced the principal to let her play at the Sadie Hawkins dance coming this June. And, like, I think I overheard her talking about needing a drummer. I just figured, like, you two would be a good match since you’re all ‘punk rock’.” A nervous smile creeps onto her face.

“Catti?” Susie shoves both hands in her corduroy jacket pockets. “Uh, I’m pretty sure she’s emo, dude.”

Noelle blinks. “Oh, yeah! Sure, a she’s emo! Sorry—I didn’t mean to imply that they were, like, the same. But you two would get along! Um, but like, not that we wouldn’t get along either,” she continues to stammer. “You know, like, like I always say—any friend of Kris is a friend of mine, too!” In point of fact she does not regularly say that. “But, like, you should totally talk to Catti, too.”

“Uh, right, yeah,” Susie says. “Uh, well—”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure Catti is ‘scene’,” Berdly pipes up from a beanbag chair across the room. With good discipline he lines up the sights of an airsoft AEG modeled after an AKM with Susie’s left ear. “It’s her hair, you know. All the pink and crap.”

“You mean Catty’s little sister?” Azzy pauses Minecraft on Dess’ computer. “But she’s goth, right?”

“Dude, is there even a difference?” Dess finishes filling a magazine with small plastic white beads and tosses it to the Berd. “Like, they’re all gay and stupid. What’s the point?”

“Uh, of course there’s a difference,” says Berdly. He slots in the mag and teases the idea of shooting Susie’s eye out. “Punk is like, anti-establishment or whatever, and emos are all like, slitting their wrists and singing about wanting to blow their brains out because they’re gay and have no taste in music, and stuff. Scene is less depressing, but scene and emo kids both shop at Hot Topic. And the goths are the ones you see on the local news burning down the Hot Topic.”

“What?” Susie says. “Dude, that’s definitely not right.”

“It’s true!” Berdly insists. He squeezes the trigger and the electronic mechanism cycles, firing a BB at her check that fails to buckle her scales. It ricochets somewhere. “I saw it on TV. Chris Hayes did a special on it.”

“Who?”

“Oh my sweet baby Protestant Jesus.” With a wing he massages the flat of his beak. “You really were dropped on your head when you were a kid, weren’t you?”

“Dude, shut up, man!” She starts stomping over; a quick burst of BBs fails to meet or exceed her armor class. She grabs the AKM and starts a tug-of-war wresting bout. “Sorry if I don’t know every single goddamn talking head under the sun!” It’s their usual song and dance, and within five seconds the airsoft rifle’s been discarded for a more symmetrical bout—a melee of shoving and yanking feathers and whatnot. We remaining four watch it unfold in relative silence.

“Wanna go to Wawa?” Azzy says eventually. “Just to pick up some snacks and stuff.”

“That’s just an ordinary corner store now—the one next to Q.C.’s?” Noelle says, her buck teeth unblinking from the dinosaur and the bird roughhousing. “That Wawa moved closer to the high school.”

“We’ll go to the corner store then,” Azzy says dryly.

“Blasphemy,” Dess calls out, but I know for certain she’s a hypocrite: Bloomsburg is Sheetz territory and she’s not devoid of sin.

“We’ll go to the corner store,” Azzy says.

In just a few quick minutes the sun has already forsaken us. What a horrible night to have a curse.

Nights like these, I’ve a habit of mapping out my footsteps. My legs are the perfect length to keep a precise pace of two per the first sidewalk tile, one squarely in the middle of the next, and repeating the pattern henceforth.

We walk in a rectangle two-by-three. Dess already has Azzy covered at the front, and Berdly and I hustle to the middle of the pack, leaving Susie and Noelle in the back. I lock the hopeful couple-to-be out from the rest of the group by whipping up an intellectual conversation with Berdly on how anime as a cultural export is actually a psyop by the Japanese rats to make people forget about the infinitude atrocities they committed during World War II.

“S-so, uh,” Susie scrambles for a good topic. “You go to Wawa often?” I can almost hear her mentally facepalm. “Or the corner store or, uh—you know what? Never mind.”

“Oh,” Noelle says. “Well I don’t think I’ve ever really gone to either. Besides the ASA I usually just head straight home after school. And, like, I always figured stopping by a convenience store is something you do when you’re hanging out with a friends—to, like, buy a few more minutes of time before you’ve got to head home for the day.”

Susie scratches her chin. “I think you might be overthinking it, man. You go into a random Wawa and you’ll see plenty o’ lonely folks at all hours of the day. Even more at the corner store we’re headed to. You’ve never come in for, like, a soda or something?”

“No,” Noelle says slowly. “Like—I dunno—I’ve always had snacks stuff at home, and, like I said, not really anybody to go with.”

“Man, what’s up with that, Kris?” Susie shoves my shoulder from behind. It’s a playful gesture, yet throws off the rhythm that my feet find the sidewalk. Presently I want to remove Miss O’Brien’s eyes from their sockets and shove her in front of the unmarked white van flying fifteen miles over the twenty-five mile speed limit. “I thought you and Noelle were supposed to be childhood besties or whatever,” she says. “You don’t hang out with her at all?”

“N-not lately, no,” Noelle says. “I guess we, like, used to, but then—” Her voice breaks. And I feel a pair of nervous front teeth bore holes into the back of my head. “Some things changed,” she enunciates with the slowness of an acrobat about a tightrope. “Some things changed,” she says again, clearer.

“Well, uh, me and Kris and Berdly usually hang out in the detention room after school. You should totally swing by if you can.” I pause my rant just before the good part where I reveal that the ‘Cool Japan’ strategy is secretly a ploy by C.I.A.-backed oriental chipmunks to hypnotize American dogs into not chasing them—and whip my head around. It’s only then that it dawns on Susie. “Um—well, actually, I’m not trying to force you or anything. I just—”

“That sounds nice,” Noelle says softly. Her voice barely rises above the nighttime breeze. Her lips part and lets her buck teeth dig into her bottom lip.

“Oh, awesome!—uh, I mean—yeah, that sounds really cool!” Susie lags, and puts some distance between her and us. “Berdly watches over detention—but you probably knew that already—but we’re usually watching a movie or something.”

“That sounds nice,” she says again. They’re far behind us now. Noelle’s echo comes at me in pulses. Susie flicks her eyes sideways, but Noelle’s looking elsewhere. Her eyes glaze over. If her pupils are the gates to her soul, then her corneas are the frozen lake trapping them in stasis. They pierce through me without resistance, less of a rending motion and more like how a specter phases through a wall. They land on December. Far off now, her hands play with the long strings of a hoodie she’d put on. Her antlers dip low, talking in a low, low voice that’s too low to hear even with the clear night wind carrying it halfway down the block. Azzy keeps pace. His stride matches her perfectly, ears stiff at attention, but not once does he look at her. “That sounds nice,” Noelle says, or I think she does. Her breath carries with it a shiver.

“Uh,” Susie quickly swallows. Berdly does a quick turn, and she locks in right away. “Noelle, uh, you good?”

“I’m okay.” Noelle hangs her head. “I’m okay,” she says again.

“You don’t sound okay.”

“I am.” Noelle shakes her head, a mix of dejection and normal declination. “I promise I’m fine.”

“I see,” Susie says. I catch how her fists clench and her eyes squeeze shut for a flash of a moment. She stands before a set of sealed doors, the poor girl, doors which I now realize have been locked for a long, long time. I’m tempted to flagellate myself, to stamp and grind my foot into the scratchy concrete while the guilt tries to pull my eyes shut with the gravity of the Earth.

But as Noelle hurries past, and Berdly scurries to pull her back from accidentally jaywalking into a speeding car, I’m soon left on the opposite side of the street with Susie, the wide gulf of Main Street isolating us from the others. We don’t speak. The red traffic light gives her eyes this sinister glow. Only now do I realize by their sheen that they’re wet, on the verge of tears.

“You don’t sound fine,” she whispers at me, but not to me.

The light changes and we cross the empty street. The sides of Susie’s face are still red, evident by how the green light clashes against it.

My guilt deepens. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of the past year or two moping and making a big fuss about being lonely. Maybe it was a little short sighted or maybe it wasn’t—this time of night is when logic goes to bed, when decisions lack context and only keep you up at night, tossing and turning at every angle. All’s that’s left is to feel, feel that strange weight pressing down on my stomach, stoking my reflex to vomit yet keeping it from rising up into the throat.

“Hey, uh, Kris?” I hear Susie nearby, but my world’s started to blur. “Are you okay, man? You’re crying.”

I bring up the back of my hand and rub my eyes until the feeling of skin sliding over skull is too much. “I,” I begin, then feel a warmth around my shoulder. It’s odd, but I’ve never quite internalized just how tall she is—maybe six feet or more. Her hand alone covers my entire shoulder like a pauldron. “I really need to take a shit,” I tell her.

“Dude—what?!” She jerks back. “Get that hell out of here, man!”

There used to be a Wawa here. I know it moved just a few blocks up the street, but the new location isn’t haunted the same way this place is. These hallowed grounds, this holy earth, where a million younger memories of me racing down the aisles to the cold freezers in the back, and standing on chilly tiptoe as I grab the store brand chocolate milk off a high shelf. The corners of my mouth express a creepy glee as I remember the strange combinations I’d make with the deli kiosk. I remember the city scrambled eggs, the weird cornbread, the chicken noodle soup that wasn’t at all spectacular but very still very homely. Those were the days, or so says Archie Bunker.

December squints at the red ‘Black-Owned Business’ sign posted on the glass door before pushing inside.

I slouch back, hip-forward, watching wistfully through the window more memories of the past. Dad presses a fluffy finger to his lips as he ushers Azzy and I down the aisles, out of Mom’s sight. She’s run into a friend of hers, and now’s the perfect opportunity to act. Azzy grabs a large bag of those twisty barbecue Fritos, and I rush to grab six bottles of strawberry and double Dutch milk. Dad at the deli puts in a meatball hoagie with extra sauce and extra cheese and bacon, and a second one for me and Azzy to share. Like secret agents we sneak to the register, and the purchase is finalized long before Mom will ever get a chance to see and interject. I remember Dad’s smile tinged with just a bit of regret. Mom’s gonna give him hell for this, but to him it’s worth it, just for a single moment more of our happiness.

I leaf through the scenes of the past with the storefront window as my dashboard. Next to my translucent reflection Susie arrives. Her eyes squint, like she’s trying to see what I see.

“What’s up?” I ask her.

“Uh, didn’t you say you need to use the bathroom?”

“Aw, nah, man. Not anymore.”

We’re headed in now. She holds the door for me and I slink in under her arm.

“Nope.” I hold open the second set of doors for her in turn. “I had to go to the bathroom really badly a few moments ago, but now I no longer have to use the bathroom.”

“Right.” Susie tracks my trail of thought for a while.

Eventually she shrugs her shoulders and marches inside with the others. She beelines for Noelle, who stands before a menacing wall of kettle cooked Herr’s potato chips—Pennsylvania local, of course. Her buck teeth hang limply. A hand at her side reach out to the shelf, but flinch at the concept of making a decision. She’s already clutching a bottle of mineral water, the same brand I’ve seen lying about her house.

“I, uh—I always go for the salt and vinegar.”

At Susie’s sudden suggestion Noelle jumps with her elbows tucked into her armpits. She shrieks in a high-pitched, quiet way that reminds me of a mouse. I have to dampen my quickening heart so it doesn’t echo throughout the small shop.

“I—” She stammers. Susie watches her deflate. “Thanks,” she says, picking a bag for both Susie and herself. “They luckily had the same water my mom gets from the Whole Foods. She shows Susie the bottle, only to have the dino girl swipe it.

“The hell?” Sue shakes the bottle, a narrow, crystalline vessel. “You’re paying, like, five bucks for this?”

“Five fifty,” Noelle clarifies with a shallow nod. She reaches to get it back.

“No. Nuh-uh.” Susie pulls it in close. “We’re, uh, we’re friends now.” She says it with so much uncertainty. “So I gotta look out for you, and stuff.”

“Oh,” the cow’s (remember that only deer are doe) eyes widen slightly. “Like, thanks, but money’s not really an issue—”

“It’s not about money,” Susie says. She leads the sheltered girl back to the freezers, makes her watch as part of her sadist ritual as the esoteric mineral water trades places with a Pepsi Zero Sugar.

“Sue, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Presently Asriel comes storming down the length of the freezer aisle. He arrests her hand before she can hand off the Pepsi.

“Dude, what? Get off me, man!” A light caramel-colored fizz begins to slosh around as she shakes out of my brother’s clutches. Here she lowers her voice to a pointed whisper. “I got the zero sugar ‘cause it’s healthier, you know? Thought she might like it better.”

“Susan.” Azzy crosses his arms. He speaks very slowly. “I’m vaguely aware you’re a fresh immigrant to this utopia or otherwise not fully adapted to our robust culture. But here in Pennsylvania, we drink Diet Coke.” He shoves a silver bottle at her. It’s controlled, and the soda doesn’t fizz.

“You know, at first I thought you were pretty normal.” Susie frowns. “Had doubts you and Kris were even remotely related. But now I see you both got the same sped upbringing.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“My family goes out to eat about the usual amount, maybe more on account of the fact that my parents aren’t great at the whole food prep thing. So we’ll go to a sit down place like Q.C.’s and when the waitstaff comes over to ask for drinks, my old man always asks for a Coke. And you know what the server always says next, without fail, nine times out of ten? ‘We only have Pepsi, is that alright sug’?’”

“Your girlfriend’s getting away,” Azzy says. Indeed, during their momentary spat Noelle moved to find me. We’d only spoken for a moment, not for awkwardness or lack of conversation, but a mutual and unspoken agreement between us to simply exist. And also watch Berdly chat up his future brother-in-law’s older brother.

“So I guess you work really long hours?” Berdly is scratching the back of his neck.

“Huh? Oh, I work the night shift.” As he is a skeleton, Mr. Sans does not emote save for a variable twinkling of the whites inside his eye sockets.

Berdly’s face shrinks. “So, who works the day shift, then?” he says.

“Beats me,” Mr. Sans shrugs.

Noelle says to me, “I remember when our families used to go to Whole Foods together,” through lame buck teeth.

“That was my father, remember? He used to do all the shopping and Mom always got pissed at the grocery bill.” She also thought that going there would turn me and Azzy into homosexuals. It turned our younger brother homosexual and that got him nowhere but gay conversion camp.

“Right.” Noelle swallows a lump in her throat.

“Funny,” Susie says, pulling up beside me. She watches Berdly and Mr. Sans make small talk—the latter of whom winks at our eavesdropping. “I always thought your mom would be the family cook. She’s got that warm, fuzzy feel that reminds you of like a dear old mom knitting in front of a fireplace or something.”

“Nah, Dad was, like, a way better cook.”

I’m scandalized by Azzy’s claim. I touch a five-fingered hand to my puffed-out chest and let in a huge gasp that has me choking. “Brother dearest!” I say. “That woman gave birth to you—have a little respect!”

“Don’t get your panties all twisted up,” he says. “It’s not a slight against Mom. It’s just that Dad actually, you know, does a little more than read recipes off that back of grated cheese bottles.”

“...?”

“Well.” He takes a step back. “I’m just saying that Mom has maybe,” he says, rolling around his eyes in a winding, roundabout way, “not quite graduated from relying on the back of the old Aunt Jemima’s box.”

“What?!”

It takes a second for him to register it. “Wait, did you not know that?”

“No! I thought she kept that thing around because she’s like racist, or anti-woke or whatever.”

“Well that’s probably half of it,” Azzy admits. “But, yeah, all her famous recipes are from the backs of various foodstuffs packaging.”

“Dude.” Reality is setting in. “Dude, not the pie...”

“Dude, yes, the pie. Keebler Ready Pie Crust. You’re telling me you never once looked at the reverse side of the packaging?”

I’m stunned. The following seconds happen automatically. I check Berdly away from the front counter so hard that a few feathers flutter at edges of my periphery as I hand over money. A packet of Peanut Chews—Pennsylvania local, of course—falls irreversibly into my possession. And then I’m out the door.

“Leaving already, Kris-mas?” December attempts to intercept me.

I put it in a way she’ll understand. “My childhood is a lie fabricated by a Jewish knife-ear conspiracy,” I explain to her. “I’m going to shoot up the school and burn it down. Then I’ll join ISIS and dedicate the rest of my life to beheading knife-ears live on national television. I’ll kidnap a bunch of American nationals and hold them hostage in a third-world country. The place will be glass within a week. Then when I’m done I’ll turn myself in and work with the CIA to systematically destabilize every single backwater nation that makes these stupid pointy-eared freaks. And then I’ll suicide bomb a Ford dealership.”

The mix of cinnamon and butterscotch playing with the bottom of my normally-proportioned nose does nothing for me anymore. It’s been corrupted by something broad, corporate.

We’re back in casa de Holiday. The time reads five to midnight. Arms full of snacks, Ceroba was there to get the door for us. According to her December and Noelle’s mother had already gone to sleep, but not without her relayed encouragement to come to the Multicultural Night tomorrow at six PM. On the other hand, Ceroba delivers it like we’re obligated, for one reason or another. Her excuse is that the absence of the Hagoromo originals has been such a blow to their war effort against the other more sane Asian Student Association that she direly requires a token human to balance out the odds. I shrug and tell her I might or might not, and Susie tells her that there’s nothing she can do to influence whether we show up.

“Figures.” The ostensible Jap lets a half-cheekful of air. Not that she’s in any position to make demands, given the fresh dirt I’ve got on her. “Well your mom,” mine and Azzy’s, “stopped by a few minutes ago. Dropped off a pie.” Her thumb aims towards the kitchen. She leads us to the dining room table, where it sits in a familiar tin. “Had a slice already, if you don’t mind.” I do. “Not half bad, honestly.”

I can only emote numbly. Ceroba has apparently with a deft hand divided the pie into seven remarkably even slices. The animals charge her personal space. I spectate with the lonely snacks from the corner store as this new cinnamon-butterscotch fad takes over. They pick the pie clean, but not so selfishly that I’m left without a slice.

I’m standing there looking longly long after they’ve vacated the room. There’s something pressing down on my lungs. It sours my air. It makes it hard to blink and it fills my head with a million incoherent thoughts.

“You’re not gonna watch the movie with the others?”

I understand the concept of what’s being said, but the details are sent away to accommodate a new migraine pressing against the skin of my forehead like a tumor. My eyes stay open, wanting so badly to fall shut. My other senses threaten to shut off until only my headache remains, but I have to keep my eyes open.

“Hey, Dreemurr—you alright?”

“Not really,” I say. Though I don’t see her, and though her voice’s signature goes unprocessed, only one person I know calls me by my last name.

“Huh,” Ceroba says. As if to say ‘oh, is that so?’—treating my admission as little more than incidental. “Your mother goes through all the effort of baking you a pie,” she says slowly, “and now you’re sulking. I guess I get why you’re adopted, now.”

“The family recipes comes from the back of a pie crust tin,” I mumble.

The kitsune scoffs. “Yeah, and my mom learned how make orange chicken from a bottle of Mama Sita’s. It’ll still be my last meal when they find your dead body.”

I look down at my feet. “Uh-huh,” I say.

“Anyways,” Ceroba coughs. She takes the tin by three finger at the rim, slides the last piece of pie onto a paper plate, then tosses the tin into the sink. She holds the last slice in front of me. A hand falls out of my pocket to retrieve it. “We’re watching Friday in the other room,” she tells me. “You should join us. Or keep being a whiny bitch.”

“Friday?”

“Yeah. Your friend Eugene suggested it, but I’ve seen it before.” I catch the borders of mouth curl, for once not from her own ego. She chuckles. “There’s this one part where there’s a convenience store with a big sign that says ‘Black-Owned Business’, and then right after this Chinese dude pops up from behind the counter followed by a gong sound.” She stops herself suddenly. Her jaw locks up. Her bottom lip trembles slightly. “Well, I’m probably doing a bad job of explaining it,” she quickly composes herself. She pushes out her usual aloofness with a deep breath out that makes her whiskers wag. “You’ll just have to watch it yourself.”

“Guess so.”

“Um, yeah.”

“I guess we should go join the others, then.”

“Right.”

I stalk behind her into the living room. I’ve missed the first few minutes of the movie, but I can assemble what I’ve missed by what’s in front of me. As she’s hot shit Ceroba leans against the doorframe leading into the overspacious living room. I step past her, and she looks like she wants to tell me something, but doesn’t. For the second time today I’m denied entrance to a world I don’t walk, that I have never known, that I shall never hope to know. She’s like Noelle in that regard. Though unlike the young Holiday she’s cursed. That confers a perilous cold which cripples its foe at even the slightest sign of injury. Twice I’ve been struck by it now, and for fear of it actually following through and killing me if I should come across it a third time, my idle moments are spent puzzling a counterattack. From my experience Ceroba’s ‘ability’ relies on those sharp claws of hers to activate. Such that hers is a ‘short-range’ ‘ability’. Claws of her species can easily rend apart pedestrian clothing, but wearing any sort of armor is too inconvenient to be near the picture. Thinking tactically it reasons that a destructive close-range ‘ability’ must be met with a different ‘ability’ of longer reach. Dess is an easy candidate to rival Ceroba, as the destructive power of the ‘Earth’s rotations’ is immense, but she can’t always be around. Not to mention her ‘curse attack’ takes several moments to wind up. And that it should struggle within an arm’s reach of Ceroba.

And then there’s my own ‘ability’. Using Ralsei in an offensive context seems unlikely to happen. While his range appears to be arbitrarily long, he isn’t very strong and his touch is felt only by other curse-bearers. Ralsei peers down at me from the second floor balcony overhead while I think these things at him. His legs fit snugly through the bars of the railing. They kick up and down. I’ve reason to believe Ceroba knows already about Ralsei, or at the very least has knowledge of his existence. Based on our very first interaction I reckon she’s even seen him. So out of sight he remains.

I continue to think at him. He nods and shrugs lest Ceroba Kim hears him speak. As Berdly has observed, these ‘curses’ are singly-faceted. The deer turned rain into acid. The church drummer turned ‘things’ into cocaine. December can hit ‘things’ with spin by hitting them with a ‘stick’ and Ceroba makes you cold when she scratches you. So I guess I could describe mine as ‘making my imaginary friend real’. But presently I’m wondering if my curse can be applied with the same level of abstraction that others use theirs. For if the church drummer could turn something like my thoughts into cocaine, and December can use her ‘rotation’ to adjust the speed and flight path of her projectiles, then presently I’m wondering if Ralsei’s capabilities extend beyond existing and talking after all. And then there’s the matter of Ceroba Kim.

Ceroba Kim. Her ability to make things cold is puzzling. Can she make anything cold? Can she control the temperature? I’ve been hit with it twice now and I’m still not even sure how or when it goes away.

Again I’m at a familiar impasse, where the more I stare at Ceroba Kim the more lonely she becomes. The way that Susie and Noelle and Azzy and Dess and Berdly and me squish together on the sofa, and the way she sits cross-legged on the floor now, hands in her lap. Every so often she’ll adjust her large glasses whose weighty frames slide down her snout from time to time. I’m so busy with her that I nearly miss the part in the movie she was talking about. It was pretty funny. She sinks into the floor after the following good laugh, letting out air as well as something heavier, like a sigh of relief. Dess keeps laughing every time she hears the n-word.

The movie eventually comes to a close, and we all realize just how late it is. Contrary to December’s pleas, Asriel does not sleep with her in her bed. Instead we all agree to grab some bedding from a closet and set up on the floor around the living room. Dess compromises by setting up right next to my brother, whom I suspect will be victim to a series of nighttime cuddling. Ceroba scoffs and insists that anything but the couch for herself would be far beneath her. But as the grandfather clock in a distant hall strikes thrice, my restless eyes wander to hers. They’re open as well, with a strained liddedness that makes me wonder what’s keeping her up. We hold each other’s gaze for some time, maybe several minutes, and then I close my eyes and roll over, and sleep takes me.

Freakin’ Asian chicks, man.

Chapter Text

The school holds its multicultural night annually, on the last Saturday in May.

It’s one of a few monthly weekend events sponsored by the school administration directly, rather than a particular club or some coalition thereof. Usually something like this would struggle to attract interest, if not for the precious few hours credit it promised to contribute to any procrastinating student’s year-long service learning projects. It was a matter of happenstance I’d been needing to top mine off for the past few month. And it was this single factor that made me decide to lend Ceroba a hand tonight.

I’m walking down one of the main halls leading through the T when Ralsei points out with a fluffy paw a Scottish flag among the ones hanging from a banner in rows. “There’s an Irish one, too,” he says. “It’s too bad Susie couldn’t come. She might’ve liked that.”

Not couldn’t—wouldn’t—I mindfully remind him. Unlike me, she seems to be a little more on top of things. Knocked out all thirty service hours last summer with her mom at a soup kitchen. That is to say, she hasn’t any reason to come tonight.

“Well I figured she’d want to keep you company.”

She’s not my mom or anything. If she wants to stay home and play video games or whatever then that’s wholly her prerogative.

His pace lags a spell. Fiddling with the rims of his gay green glasses, “you sure you’re not just a little bummed?” he asks. “I could’ve tried harder to convince her.”

I didn’t even know he did in the first place. My brow furrows, but the gesture’s redundant. He already knows what I’m thinking. He already knows what I’m thinking before I know what I’m thinking.

“Don’t be like, that, Kris,” Ralsei says. “I’m trying to look out for you, is all.” His cadence quickens. “And I know you’re going to say that it’s none of my business and I should really just butt out and leave you alone but that’s kind of not even remotely possible ‘cause even though you aren’t me, I’m ontologically you in every way shape and form—”

“Actually, I was gonna say those overalls make you look like a [COMEDY].” I frown.

“Gee, Kris.” This isn’t Ralsei, but Noelle. At the center of the T, that hallway junction that’s so suffocatingly crowded during the school day, I meet the girl whom by the universe’s conspiracy happens to also be wearing a pair of boyish denim overalls that threaten to divest my focus. “I’d hope you’d at least call me a [COMEDY],” she says, “seeing as we’ve known each other for so long.”

“Fine,” I deadpan. “You look like a [COMEDY].”

She giggles. “Better,” she says.

A silence begins to grow between us. In its midst Ralsei sidles up beside Noelle. Of course the girl doesn’t see him, but he nonetheless does a twirl in place.

“Alright, you look very nice,” I tell him, though he’s not the one who receives the compliment.

A small smile that’s hinting at smugness blooms on Noelle’s face. “You hitting on me, Dreemurr?” she says with a lot of sarcasm.

It takes me more willpower than I’d like to admit to tell her, “of course not. I said you look like a [COMEDY], remember?”

“Right.” She rolls her eyes. “Well Ceroba and Chujin and the others are waiting for us in the gym.”

I’d almost forgotten about Fresh Off the Boat. Guess it’s likely he might also possess a ‘curse’. But then Noelle doesn’t. She can’t see Ralsei, and in general she seems more or less detached from Ceroba’s eclectic affairs with the chalk. It’s inconceivable that she could be a member of the ASA for that long without even knowing about the supernatural happenings of the past two weeks or so, but the way fate proscribed her from witnessing the battle between Dess and the church drummer has me suspicious. I mean to say—that as the concept of magic ability-conferring chalk is already ridiculous and insane, it’s not unbelievable to think that the ‘curse’ is also preventing her from learning of its own existence.

The thought ricochets around my empty skull while me and Noelle and tentatively Ralsei saunter down the empty hall. In a similar hollow way our feet tap against the tile floor. Partway through I point out to Noelle a Japanese flag like Ralsei pointed out Scotland to me. She shrugs like it’s not that big a deal and moves on. Her buck teeth never break away from straight ahead, I think because it’s six-twenty-seven and all the kids and their parents and our parents are coming in at seven, or maybe for some other reason that I’ll never know, a reason that I forfeited my right to know years ago.

“How’s your grandma?” I ask out of the blue, to stay topical and get her talking.

The way Noelle suddenly stiffens tells me it’s the wrong call. “Obaasan is okay,” she says. “She’ll be back in a few days.”

“That’s nice.” I can’t think of anything to say. Then the silence punctuated by the clicking of her hooves threatens to come back and I say something anyways. “How’s your classes going?”

It gets Noelle to turn. Her buck teeth give me an eyeful. “Um, like, they’re going okay, I guess. How come you’re asking?”

I shrug.

She shrugs back, jerks her neck with this cutesy ‘whatever’ smile. “Well I’ve got math with Susie,” she says. “Makes it a little less lonely now that we know each other.”

“Wait, Susie?”

“Sure, yeah. We, like, don’t talk much—yet, that is—still working on that. But I think we’ve, like, kind of hit it off, like, a few times. I mean, we got along pretty well yesterday, I think, even though I kind of totally blew off the whole band thing. I, like, totally don’t think it would’ve worked out, though. I, like, didn’t wanna bring it up around Dess but I think those guys can get, like, kind of crazy, you know? Like, I could never get past a ‘talking-about-the-weather’—type of friendliness ‘cause then one of them will start going on and on about, like, Charlie Kirk or something—you know, that one penguin-headed guy who does the masterdebating stuff?—and, like, I’ll just be sitting there not knowing what the heck to do because I’m, like, a hundred million light-years from these people because they’re, like, completely ideologically opposed to my existence, and stuff. But that stuff’s, like, basically whatever. I only see them a few hours each week and, like, I’m never ever gonna make a connection with them no matter what so there’s not really a point in trying.” There’s a bit of whining sadness to her words, but I’m a coward and don’t interject. “I feel like I need more girlfriends—er—girl friends. Like, I know I’ve always got you, but, like, if I keep clinging to you my entire life we’d, like, have to get married—fah!”

I swallow a block of lead and nod my head. “It’s just,” circling back to the beginning of her tangent, “you take honors classes.”

“Huh?” She acts all taken aback. “Like, what else would I take? You know how,” some hesitation, “—how Obaasan gets.”

A pause. “I mean that I didn’t know Susie also took a honors classes.”

“Well she’s not, like,” and she says a bad word. “She just gets in trouble sometimes.” A pause. “Okay, maybe more a little more than sometimes.”

I scuff the floor with my shoes. “I guess I never picked up on that.”

“Well if you wanna go out with her I can’t be knowing her better than you do,” she says.

“Right. I’ll work on it.” The rest of the walk is a blur. We’re at our destination before I know it.

The school’s gymnasium is modular thing. The original structure erected alongside the original building, following the end of the Second World War, presently resides off to the side as more of a vestigial room. Over the years the Mars-Holiday family commissioned a vastly larger gym dwarfing the original, as well as a swimming pool, basement shooting range, and a multi-million dollar football stadium even though our team sucks ass. The new main gym has its usual set of bleachers that tuck away to more than double the available floor space, as well as a retractable divider wall to optionally split the place in half. The east wall is also collapsible, joining the new gym with the old; the new gym’s width with the retracted bleachers lines up perfectly with the old’s length.

For the purposes of tonight, the old gym has been opened up to the main floor and the bleachers retracted. Our preparations and storage are sequestered to the locker rooms, not an uncommon thing for these events. Ralsei makes a big deal about refusing to go into the girls’ room, expounding unto me his moral obligation to respect women’s privacy—not that anyone keeps anything in there outside of school hours—and while he’s making a big fuss about this Chujin, who guides us with the intent of meeting Ceroba, steps on a used tampon with his bare paw. He vomits promptly.

Again Noelle and I are left by our lonesome while Fresh Off the Boat’s caring girlfriend facilitates the evacuation of his dinner into a filthy old toilet sitting in an alcove between the lockers and the showers. There was a time where a stall door kept out prying eyes, but that time has passed.

“Just go on without us,” Ceroba says over her shoulder. “We have to be on time.” It’s commanding, but doesn’t have the same bite. I’m not intimidated.

So we retreat back to the lockers. About twenty-five hurry about this side, and about the same amount on the boys’ side. I overheard earlier from a passing aide that over a hundred visitors are expected to be in attendance, all eager to scribble down insincere plaudits for each of our student body’s diverse ancestries. And on that same compulsory worksheet a ranked choice vote for the best exhibit. Matching their typical profile of overachievers, it’s the habit of the ASA to take annually the first place prize (a fifty dollar Cheesecake Factory gift card), and the ASA takes second place (a no-questions-asked excused absence for each participating member). This is how Noelle explains, three rows down, why the gaggle of Asians we pass looks at with a lot of hate. Next row over we meet our prescribed orient of Japs, and their conversation media res.

“Nah, dude,” some short girl I don’t know says. “Chinese people are always all like—‘shitty wok take ah ordah prease’—with their squinty eyes and shitty teeth and squashed-up-lookin’ faces.”

She gets a laugh from her friends.

“I don’t even know what their problem is,” the girl says. “Some stupid beef that happened eighty years ago? Like, let it go, puh-leese. You’d think bythe way they keep bitching about it they had it worse than the—”

Noelle coughs. It’s soft, almost swallowed by the ambient buzz of conversation around us, but the girl’s vulpine ears nonetheless stand at attention.

“Oh, hey Noelle,” she says, composing herself on a dime. She sees me. “Who’s the meatbag? Your girlfriend or something?”

“Their name is Kris,” Noelle says with a clear throat, “a long-time friend of mine. They’re here to help with the setup.”

The girl stamps up to me. The top of her head just passes my chin. Coincidentally she’s the same species as Ceroba and Chujin, another kitsune-looking gal. Except unlike they two her fur is neither Ceroba’s gold nor Chujin’s lilac—but a dark brown closer to Dess. She’s dressed very archetypally: a beige knit cardigan over a white dress shirt and a mid-length plaid pleated skirt with a dark blue scheme. A red ribbon tied in a neat bow from her collar accentuates the look. Her hair is a rich chestnut color, groomed competently, and kept in a complex peacock-looking thing, held together with another red ribbon. A less morally conscionable sector of my head hears an oriental riff.

“So how come you’re not doing your own exhibit? Name’s Kanako, by the way,” Kanako says. She bends down slightly and gives a little wave.

I blink twice. “Dunno,” I say.

“Well that’s probably for the best,” she says, turning on a heel. “Less competition for us—know what I mean?”

I’m less in awe of how directly she chambers each remark and pulls the trigger without hesitation, and more how her tail wags with glee the whole time. I watch it whip the air while she lists off a few things for me to do, some stuff to glue onto poster boards, some Asian import snacks to put out on a tray. Noelle’s time is spent solely on a change of clothes. Kanako gives her a choice between a yukata and another zipperhead schoolgirl outfit and she chooses the former. Ironically she has to leave the locker room to go change in the proper ladies’ room, but she’s back by the time we’re all set to go, and so too has Chujin Ketsukane recovered from his mortal terror.

The yukata is utterly becoming of Noelle—is the only way I can put it to words when I see it. It’s a light peachy color, pink with a hint of citrus, and there’s a green sash crossing her torso that stands out well against the lighter floral patterns. It’s a little odd seeing her hooves peek out from the bottom of the skirt thing. Ceroba—who wears a similar outfit to Noelle but doesn’t pull it off nearly as well—mentions something about footwear that won’t quite work without normal feet.

There’s not much conversation between us as we carry our stuff down to the main gym. Kanako prattles on about the Chinese some more. It’s an instigation tactic; as we’re walking alongside the other Asian folk she makes them catch her with silent contempt, provoking their ire with dumb insults, then does a cute little twirl with her skirt and throws up a peace sign when they finally turn to look. One of them blushes, and she knows she’s won.

It takes a few trips to get everything out. Each group is given a number—ours is twelve—belonging to a thirty-by-sixty inch folding table. After three trips our shrine is looking more complete. There’s the tri-fold poster board with some stuff about Japanese culture, cherry blossoms, ramen noodles, and the latest trendy anime. The snacks go out on a wide plate. A passerby might reach out to grab one, but Kanako’s on them like a barking dog. She takes a sharpie and writes out ‘IMPORTED SNACKS FOR GUESTS ONLY’, at first on one sticky note, moving on to three more from lack of space. Two more trips and we’ve got out a school textbook and some manga. This draws in a girl from the other ASA with arms akimbo. She insists that anime and manga don’t count for multicultural night, an argument that quite frankly ought to have come and gone, but instead Kanako grabs me and sends me off again to the locker room. To double down at the earliest opportunity is these people’s main operation, and the back of my neck goes numb with a chill when I twist in the combo to a red band locker and slip the lock off. The twelve-odd anime figures—all scantily clad to the highest degree of immodesty—validate my anxiety.

I didn’t bring my school bag or anything. The clothes on my back, my wallet, keys, and phone don’t offer much help. The locker is barren except for the top shelf where the figures sit, taunting me.

“Honestly, I’m kind of on their side,” I vocalize to Ralsei aloud. “Not sure how this is supposed to represent Japanese heritage.”

He adjusts his glasses and takes a peek under one of the figure’s skirts. “It’s a bit of a bind,” he admits, humming. “If you walk fast, maybe nobody will notice you holding them. Can’t be more than four or six inches each.”

“I could hide them under my shirt,” I say.

“Try and swallow them?”

“Shove them up my ass?”

“You could let me help.”

I use the force of my rotation to slam the locker shut behind me. The crash of metal on metal stings my eardrums for a few moments.

“Hey, down here.” I step out the way for Temmie Chang to trot over. Rising to about my height from her hind legs, she’s usually on all fours. Her species is something between a dog and a cat, with white fur and big floppy ears and a big floofy head of hair dyed cyan-grey. “Hi,” she gives a little wave. “Kris, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I nod.

“I’m Berdly’s friend,” she says. “I saw you at church last week.”

“Yeah…” My eyes dart to the closed locker, presently anxious if she saw what was inside.

“Who’s this? Are you friends with Berdly, too?”

Ralsei and I trade glances. “Oh—sure! He says. Yup, I’m Ralsei!” says he.

“Ralsei, huh?” She cross her arms, looks down for a sec. “That’s Jewish, isn’t it?”

“Oh, sure, yeah! Ralsei, um, Ralsei Bernstein.” The lie is cleaner this time.

“Oh, that’s Ashkenazi, isn’t it?” Dropping back on all fours she walks a tight circle like she’s chasing her tail.

“I think so—I mean, yeah, I am,” he says. I jerk my chin up at him, signal him to get out of dodge before things get complicated. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he says quickly. “It was very nice meeting you, Temmie.”

We watch him scramble away.

“How’d he know my name?” Temmie asks.

“Berdly must have brought it up one point or another,” I lie.

“That makes sense, I guess—‘less, maybe I’ve got a secret admirer…”

I give her a bewildered look, which gets a giggle out of her.

“Any-way,” she says, pushing herself bipedal again. “You needed help moving your anime girlies?”

“They’re not mine,” I nearly shout.

“Okay,” she says. “But I can still carry them for you if you’re too embarrassed to do it yourself.”

I shift my weight from one foot to another. “Aren’t you with the other ASA? The non-Japanese one, I mean. How do I know you’re not gonna, like, mess them up, and stuff?”

“IDK, bro,” she says. She wobbles over to the locker, swinging the door open. “Let’s see what you got here—how many did you need?”

“Let’s say six.”

“Okey-dokey. Well that means six of your girlies—”

“They’re not mine.”

“Six of these girlies are gonna have a tragic death,” she continues without a hitch. “Which is gonna be super heartbreaking and emotional but it’s okay because it’ll inspire the remaining six girlies to keep on living in their memory!” She punches the sky with one arm.

“Right,” I say. Absentmindedly I grab two and pass them to her.

“Nope. Nuh-uh.” She shakes her head. “You can’t just choose willy-nilly.”

“I don’t think it’s all that deep—”

“You gotta let love make the choice for you!” Temmie exclaims. “You can’t bring a girlie along if you don’t love her. That’s just not right.”

“Okay,” I say, quickly scanning the options available. “Hinata, I guess.”

“You love Hinata?” Temmie eyes shine wide like glitter.

“Sure.”

“Why do you love her?”

Good Lord. “Oh, you know, something, something, dog. Woof-woof, and whatnot.”

“Alrighty,” she smiles. “Who do you love next?”

“I don’t know, man,” I say. “There’s Zero-Two here. Can’t go wrong with Zero-Two.”

She accepts Zero-two.

“Next, uh, what about Makima from Chainsaw Man?” I ask. “Chainsaw Man’s pretty popular, isn’t it?”

“Faggot shit.” Temmie shakes her head. “Make my stomach hurt.”

“Sure, whatever.” I check the next one. “There’s Nami from One Piece here. You like Nami?”

This goes on for some time, but eventually we have six. Temmie gets back on all fours and has me tuck the figures into her oversized hoodie. “I’ll keep them safe,” she says.

I’m not sure how much this discredits my sparkling character, but I don’t trust her. If she can see Ralsei, then she can touch Ralsei. And if she can touch Ralsei, the inverse is true. As a member of the opposing Asian Student Association, she ought to be my ally, but she can see Ralsei. Which means she’s eaten a piece of cursed chalk. I don’t know if this means that the other non-Japanese Asians are cursed, or if somehow only Temmie is cursed, but I’m not about to take that risk right now.

And for the record, I’m not above having Ralsei tackle a girl with a disability.

“Do you watch a lot of anime?” Temmie says at one point, lifting me out of my musings.

“Not recently,” I admit.

“Oh, that makes sense. All your favorite girlies are MILFs, after all.”

I pretend to stop and read a poster. “I wouldn’t consider Asuka a MILF,” I say to the wall.

“Not the character, but all those shows are, like, super ancient, bro. You gotta get on that modern shit. Like there’s this new show where this guy is is in love with his half-cousin’s stepson but she’s actually a devil from the planet Jupiter—”

“You watch any movies?” I cut her off. That conversation was going nowhere but the worst places. “Like that one, uh…” I rack my brain for something oriental. “What about Everything Everywhere All at Once? It was at the Oscars a few years ago.”

“Oh! I love that one! It’s like Black Panther but for Asian people.”

“That makes perfect sense.”

“I like the Ghibli movies, too,” she says, too.

“They’re cool, yeah,” I say.

“So back to the anime where the guy wants to have sex with his stepsister’s infant daughter,” she begins.

“I thought you said it was his half cousin’s stepson?”

“Aha! So you were paying attention after all!”

Temmie pushes herself upright. Our sextet of anime girlies clatter to the ground. I crouch down to begin to collect them, ferrying them back to safe keeping. As I do some stray thoughts creep into my empty head. Temmie’s a nice girl, I guess. Pretty cute. We’re both misfits, she and I. In another timeline where I never knew Berdly Eugene or Susan O’Brien I suppose I would’ve paired off with her, platonically or otherwise.

It’s odd how these things happen. There’s a chance we’ll never move past a short ‘how-do-you-do?’—but in another life we’d share secrets over a sleepover at ungodly hours, gossip crushes as they pass in the hallways. We’d go to different universities but we’d always keep in touch, and as soon as we’re both back in town we’d be inseparable. Tracking the contours of the tacky suicide prevention poster I’ve placed myself before, I find myself giggling at the thought of attending each other’s weddings. That this girl, whom I’ve known and spoken to for less than twenty minutes can resonate so deeply with me. Maybe we’ll be friends after tonight, or maybe I’ll never speak to her again. It’s strange, how fate decides things like that. We both read the suicide prevention poster over and over, shoulder-to-shoulder. On the precipice of radical change, I let my jaw slacken in awe of the uncertainty of it all. It’s only a shame that Temmie decides to break the peace.

“Okay, but the plot is actually unironically really good.”

“Girl, shut up before I kill you.”

Chapter Text

To re-enter things at this point of ensuing pandemonium would add to the melodrama at the costly expense of making little goddamn sense. So I’ll start from the beginning.

It was closing in on seven-fifty-three when Temmie, anime figures in tow, and I pushed through the gymnasium’s double doors. The pace at which our peers went to and fro had hastened, a sense of urgency marked by a seven-minute warning. Orders were barked with little regard for existing friendship structures or relationships. I saw a girl trip and face plant—luckily nothing from what she carried was damaged—picked herself up and carried on with a feral attitude.

It was lucky that I had accepted Temmie’s help, ‘cause carrying a bunch of well-endowed hardly clothed anime girls past the forming line of parents would have been pretty damn awkward. I passed Mom in line. She gave me the usual fussing over. At least she understood my lack of time and stepped aside. Once inside Temmie surrendered my ‘girlies’ and with a low face I quickly discarded them on to our table display. Despite these effort my activities went noticed by an arachnid girl with too many prying eyes, and I decided to move up my imminent suicide a few weeks.

But this is the point where I turned away in shame, only to have one Ceroba Kim come crashing into me. It took us both to the floor, and for a few odd seconds I became intimately familiar with her fur that smelled like lavender.

“Dreemur—!” she said with a lot of distress, pushing herself off me in a painful way. “Let’s go—now!”

I hadn’t the luxury of asking where or why, but the how was being dragged by the arm across the entire gym, out a side door and into an ancillary bathroom. This might have been a dazed hallucination, but I swear the entire place grew extremely quiet—or the sound of my shoes squeaking against the floor in effort to keep up was just that loud.

She let go of me once inside, practically flinging me against the dirty tile like she was ridding herself of something gross. “Get up, Dreemurr, this is serious,” she spat.

I did as I was told, throwing in a mumbled quip about being kept out of the loop simply for drama and theatrics, but then I saw the present scene.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, man!” The cry came from a humanoid chap with a sickly pale purple complexion. His canines protruded in a way that was peculiarly vampiric, and curling horns came out from a head of combed purple hair. He wore black slacks and a clean white shirt with a trim that had to be ethnic. What gave context to his distress was the way Chujin Ketsukane appeared to be in the middle of wrestling him to the ground. In Chujin’s hands covered by disposable gloves was a pair of tweezers. Held within the tweezers was a familiar used tampon.

“Tell them your name,” Ceroba commanded. I noted the way Chujin suddenly released him, keeping on his knees. It left the odd fellow look fellow crumpled on the ground, shivering, a mess.

“Uh—oh, god—do we really have to be in the girls’ bathroom?—augh!”

Ceroba gave her boyfriend a nod. On silent orders Chujin offered him a sympathetic wince as he pressed the used tampon against his skin. It made a gross squelching sound, and some redness began dripping down the poor vampire’s face.

“Tell them,” Ceroba said again.

“It—It’s Dalv! My name is Dalv!” Dalv shouted in a panic. “Okay?—h-holy shit, you people are insane! I’m with the Asian S-Student Association. Er—the other one—I’m Filipino.” Here his breaths grew increasingly rapid.

“Tell them what happened,” Ceroba said.

“O-okay, what the fuck?!” he strained through chattering teeth. “Oh! Oh my God!” Then he keeled over and vomited all over the floor.

“Tell them!” Ceroba was screaming now.

“Okay!” Dalv said with a heave. “I have an ability!” His shout echoed against the cramped stall. “I have this ability—it might be difficult to believe, but I have this—”

“They know about the chalk,” Ceroba cut him off. “Tell them—tell us what yours does.”

“Okay, okay—holy shit.” He was still retching. “My ability is to ‘take’ things and ‘hide’ them somewhere. My ‘cursed ability’ is to ‘hide things’.”

“Okay, Dalv,” Ceroba laid a hand of her hip with an eye roll. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I can hide things! I just told you! I—I ‘took’ your boyfriend’s ‘ability to walk’ and ‘hid’ it somewhere. Oh, Christ Almighty shit on a stick! It’s so goddamn cold, please make it stop!”

I gave Ceroba an inquisitive hum. She just shrugged.

“Okay, so give it back,” she said.

“I c-can’t. You have to ‘find’ it. You have to find the ‘thing’ I ‘hid’! Please, man!”

“Then tell us where it is.” Ceroba’s arms crossed. Her dark expression darkened.

“I can’t—augh!” This time Chujin squished the tampon against his face without encouragement. “I can make it move on its own automatically. It’s an ‘automatic’ ability!” A drop of blood hung at the edge of his lip, but he opened his mouth anyways. “L-look, it only has a range of about thirty meters,” he said, coughing and gagging. “It’s probably somewhere in the gymnasium.”

“What does it look like?” ordered Ceroba. Her sharp eyes sharpened.

“It’s a Labubu doll. I put it inside a Labubu,” Dalv cried. “Please, just let me leave!”

“Which Labubu is it?” Her sharp teeth came out with her yell. Dalv flinched and shrunk back.

“I—I don’t f-fucking know, man. It belonged to one of the other Asian girls. It was, like, p-pink or something.”

“Lychee Berry,” Ceroba’s thumbs flew over the keyboard of her phone, and in seconds I had a picture of it shoved in front of my face. “You heard the man. Go find it, Dreemurr.”

I told her to go find it herself.

“I can’t go find it because I’m keeping him here with my curse,” she said, annoyed.

I asked her what that had to do with anything.

She pinched the tip of her nose. “Jesus fucking Christ. You’re,” and then she called me a bad word. “I’ve used it on you twice and you still haven’t figured it out? Its intensity is directly proportional to my distance from the person affected,” she said. “The cold won’t be strong enough if I go too far away. And obviously Chujin can’t walk right now, so you’ve got to do this for us.”

But I owned them nothing. She knew I owed them nothing. In point of fact, as far as anyone was concerned, I should have very well told them both to go fuck themselves, stop torturing this poor kid Dalv, and left the bathroom then and there. But admit my weakness, that my brain was still a little addled by the smell of Ceroba’s soft fur so close to my face. I wasn’t thinking with my head.

“Okay,” I said, and I proceeded quickly on my new quest.

This brings me back to current events, whereupon exiting the girls’ restroom my mind is torn from one thing to another, as a thoroughly flummoxed-looking Noelle Holiday—in polite terms—choke-slams me into a wall. There’s a queer look of mania about her face, but also she’s really fucking hurting me, so I tell her that.

“Kris,” she says, releasing me. She paces back and forth in front of me. “I’ve been going through this in my brain for a few minutes and I can’t actually think of a normal reason why Ceroba would be dragging you into the bathroom.”

Her fierce buck teeth set me alight by her rage. “So there actually isn’t a normal explanation for that,” I begin, “but—”

She doesn’t let me finish. “Kris, like, I know you might be insecure about your chances with Susie and stuff, but, like, that does not mean you try to come in and steal my girl!”

“…Ceroba isn’t your girl.”

“Kris!!” She shrieks. “I know you’re, like, kind of a little teensy-weensy autistic or whatever stupid disease you caught from being human, but this is, like, the one thing keeping me sane right now and I need you to get out of my swamp right now because right now you’re in my swamp and if you stay there any longer I’m, like, actually gonna rip out your eyeballs and feed them to Azzy in a meatball sub.”

“She wanted me to find a Labubu for her. You should help me.”

“Oh, okay.”

[?+555-5555] fyi

[?+555-5555] idk if any of those chinks know we have dalv.

[?+555-5555] be careful

Whom I presume is Ceroba comes in as an unknown number. How she got mine I haven’t a clue. I fiddle with a new contact for a bit, finally settling on a zoomed-in picture of her in a lineup with the other Japanese kids on the poster board at our table.

I’ve let Noelle do a fair lot of the heavy lifting. At the prospect of conveniencing her beloved Ceroba she told me to eat a dick and took off to find the Gaywad Pinktits Labubu. I know that guy Dalv is suffering, and with a clearer head I understand his rescue is my actual motivation. Ceroba is still an enemy, by the way she’s acted against me thus far, but tonight will have to be an exception. That feisty girl from before, Kanako, guards our table, so I’m free to amble off. Noelle’s haste in excess encourages my more careful search, that maybe I’ll actually engage with the whole point of tonight while I’m at it. Ralsei accompanies me.

It’s worth noting that Kanako isn’t cursed. I suspected all Tojos were, but that proved demonstrably false when I had Ralsei try bumping into her on accident, only to phase through. Indeed this walk has a secondary purpose, to catalogue the cursed away from the sane and normal. For to a cursed individual Ralsei will appear as an ordinary passerby, and said goat boy can probe them with eye contact, brushing shoulders, et cetera.

It’s a good plan, or at least I think it is. But then I hear a squeal from afar that can only be Noelle. I hear Ralsei sigh, and I figure he also adjusts his glasses. “Alright, let’s go,” I say.

Winding through the scattered crowd proves cumbersome, even with tight focus. Off in the distance I can trace Noelle’s path by the dancing of her antlers above the sea of heads. And by analyzing the rippling waves in which they are disturbed, so too can I approximate the path of what precisely she’s chasing.

Eventually we’re in the same row, and the crowd parts to each side of the aisle. For a small Labubu doll, presumably the one desired, is animated, appearing to run across the length of the floor. It’s disturbing, or in other words uncanny, seeing something that oughtn’t move so it anyway, and it’s for this reason that I’m stunned for a few moments. It’s just enough for two Asians whom I fail to identify to come in from each side of me and lunge for it. The sight of Noelle exiting the crowd well off in the distance is enough to snap me out of it—

—and here thought of ‘snapping out of it’ leads to an critical epiphany. The speed of thought is functionally instantaneous in this situation, and so with the flick of a neuron Ralsei likewise ‘snaps’ from beside me to far in front of me, in a way such that his furry paws are already cradling the Labubu. It’s a ‘cursed’ object, so he can touch it. As my thoughts are his he already knows to catapult it to Noelle. She shrieks as the projectile comes at her—two bounces out of her hands and she catches it on the third try. She stares across the scene at me. Her fight of flight chooses neither. And soon the two chinks come up, obfuscating her from my view.

The crowd begins to resettle. In a few moments my traversal will be impeded, so I make a hasty decision and turn ‘round—walking straight into my dear mother’s arms. She materializes from the jumbled crowd and yanks me into a hug. For a few seconds I forget about all this chaos.

“I’ll go on ahead, Kris,” Ralsei shouts above the distant commotion.

“Hello, sweetie,” she says. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”

“Yes,” I get out quickly, and make a big deal of showing I really don’t want to be hugged at the moment.

“That’s good to hear.” She obliges me halfway, releasing me yet still latching onto my hands. “I went and took a look at the exhibit you helped Noelle with.” She pulls my arms with the natural swaying of her body, like a swing. “Though some of the things you had on display were a little vulgar, I think.”

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry, but I’m really in a hurry right now.”

“You can spare a few minutes for your mother,” she says, suddenly stern. “The one who took you in and raised you and gave you food and water and a warm bed—” You know the spiel. It ends soon enough, and I think I’m free, but she’s yet to let me go. My hands start to get sweaty in her clutches. “You know Kris,” she says eventually. “You could have made a human exhibit.”

“Too much work,” I almost shout. I try to sneak a look over my shoulder, but the people have already reset to their usual patterns of walking.

“But I’m sure it would be really popular!” Mom says. “You’d win the popularity contest for sure!”

“Mom, please not now.”

“Kris,” she pulls in close. Her left cheek raises in a goofy smile. “You need to be more proud of yourself. I bet half the people here don’t know the first thing about being human, and you could be the one to teach them—”

“Good Godly mother dearest who could do no wrong—please, I really need to find Noelle and tell her something. Can we please finish this conversation later?”

I don’t mean to whine, but I’m sure it sounds like it. “Alright, Kris,” she says with a sour face. “But when I’m old and on my deathbed you’re going to look back at moments like these and wonder why on Earth you couldn’t spare just a few more moments of alone time with your precious mother—”

“‘Kay. Bye.” I bolt off.

Ralsei appears beside me as I’m pushing through people—moving obstructions, so far as I’m concerned. “I lost track of Noelle,” he says.

How? I think.

“Um!” A lot of anxiety bleeds out of his voice. “Let me start from the beginning. I saw that weird Filipino guy—Dalv—I saw Ceroba chasing him out of the girls’ bathroom. I think he must have disabled her ability somehow.”

That’s inconceivable. Did he somehow figure out what makes it go away?

“I think—and this is just a theory—it must have to do with that ‘proximity’ Ceroba was mentioning. If you go far enough away, the freezing effect ends.”

That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been further from Ceroba than the length of this gym, and I’ve still felt her curse’s effects.

“I’m getting to that, Ralsei says. He yanks me out of the way of some stroller. “Listen to this: Ceroba was stumbling around and bumping into people while she was trying to chase Dalv. I think he must have ‘taken and hid’ her perception of distance!”

The hell? That doesn’t make any sense. He was still, like, five feet away from her. He should have still felt its full effects.

“But, see, that’s what I’m getting at,” Ralsei says. “I’m starting to think all these ‘cursed abilities’ are all in your head. Kind of like how I’m all in your head.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine Ralsei as a three-headed fire-breathing dragon. It doesn’t work. He shoves me from colliding with another person.

“No, you’re not getting what I mean.” His voice peaks, like he’s frustrated. I twist and plant a heel, full stop. “It’s, like,” gesturing impatiently with his hands, “a subconscious ‘thing’, I think. Like, Ceroba’s curse only acts like Dalv is a hundred million light years away from her only if she genuinely ‘thinks and believes’ that. It’s her perception of reality. Hence why Dalv ‘took’ that particular sense from her.”

I ask him next if he caught how it’s activated.

“I did.” Ralsei nods. His glasses droop, and he pushes them back up as a part of his present fidgeting. “He touches his pinky to one of his horns, then sticks his pinky out and fires something that looks like a projectile. And whatever that projectile hits, he can take from and hide.”

I put two and two together. To Ralsei—so you think he ‘took and hid’ Noelle’s entire person?

He nods viciously. “Ye—”

“Kris Dreemurr!” I know the stiff English to be Chujin Ketsukane’s before I see him behind me.

Ralsei and I give him the Spark Notes of our discussion.

“Okay,” Chujin says without another question. “So our goal becomes to find whatever object Noelle Holiday has been sequestered into.”

“Wait, how did you get your walking back?” Ralsei adjusts his glasses. The buzz of Multicultural Night activities weighs down on us. It’s claustrophobic. I guess to everyone else this has all been nothing more than dumb teens horsing around.

“I believe there is a limit to his curse. So you will need to closely listen.” Chujin’s precise pronunciation maintains composure even now. “Two ‘thefts’ total—one per horn. Ceroba and I failed to consider that. It was our failure. When he took Noelle Holiday, he chose to release me in favor of keeping Ceroba’s incredible destructive capabilities neutralized.”

“Okay,” Ralsei says. “But then why did they capture Noelle, then? This whole thing kind of doesn’t make any sense.”

“That,” Chujin says, straightening his back out of our impromptu huddle, “I do not know.”

There’s some silence that comes next. I’m growing more self-conscious of us as a pair of morons slouching in the middle of the aisle. “So now what?” Ralsei says eventually.

“I do not know,” Chujin says again.

“What’s your ‘curse’ do anyways?” I ask him. “It’d be good to know if we’re gonna get Noelle back.”

“Nothing useful.” I’ve a feeling he isn’t going to budge.

“Okay, whatever,” I say. “Where’s Kanako? I know she doesn’t have an ‘ability’, but she’s good at pushing the others’ buttons. These chinks aren’t trying to kill us, right?”

Chujin eyes me warily. “No, but expect a thorough beating nonetheless,” he says. “As for Kanako, I will see what I can do. I will find the other members of our Asian Student Association and make sure they are aware of the situation.”

“O-Kay!” Ralsei shouts, hopping in place. “Kris and I will track down Dalv. We’ll figure out a plan between now and then.”

We part ways with a few nods between us. Taking long, powerful strides now, I outpace Ralsei intentionally. It’s an opportunity I use to practice his ‘teleportation’. As such he darts across my field of view. From atop the table he disappears, and comes back into sight hanging high up from the ceiling. And an instant later right in front of me. And again atop a table. Then far, far down the aisle I walk. Next I try closing my eyes. They flick open when Ralsei lets out a yelp, and I find him stuck inside a pillar off to the far right side of the room. Another snap from off to on in a single neuron and he’s back by my side. “We’ll have to work on doing it sightless,” I tell him.

He nods. “Now that Dalv is loose, he’s definitely back to being our ‘opponent’, but I’m not yet sure he’s exactly our ‘enemy’. Finding Noelle is our main goal. Agnostic of alliances, making everything go back to normal is priority one. Whatever disagreement has the two Asian Student Associations so diametrically opposed we can figure out later, and side with whichever one ideology we agree with the most.”

I nod back. Agreed.

It doesn’t take long to find Dalv. As I’m cursed, I doubt the common passerby sees the same as I see, the pair of shimmering horns which are more apparent against the backdrop of a dimly lit gym than previously in the girls’ bathroom.

His critical error is thinking that a hoodie will conceal his features when those peeking horns tell a lot about him from afar. He’s near his exhibit, table number seventeen, talking with some girl that happens to be Temmie Chang. She sees me, leans conspicuously over such that he reflexively follows. And now a decision must be made.

My train of proceeds in those microscopic moments as follows: Dalv is about to see me. And at present Dalv is my ‘opponent’. Therefore once he sees me he’s likely to have a fight or flight response; this is to say either he’ll associate me with the torture Ceroba and Chujin put him through an try to flee like a little bitch, or he’ll stand his ground and try to use his ‘ability’ on me. It’s crucial moments like these where I lament that correspondence between me and Ralsei is not instantaneous in both directions. My thoughts are his, but his thoughts to me need to be conveyed manually. See, he failed to elaborate on the nature of Dalv’s ‘projectile attack’—speed, precision, and effective range. I’ve no clue if I’ll have a chance to dodge, and so offense becomes my only viable strategy.

In an instant I shunt Ralsei forward in space, he gets the memo and spreads his body wide for a tackle. Dalv turns at that same moment.

“Oh, hey, you’re Kris, right?—woah!” Temmie jumps as Ralsei brings Dalv to the ground. But the dumb goat hardly incapacitates him. He’s on the floor before long, Dalv standing over him. My eyes dart to his pinky; apparently he’s managed to prime it in the scuffle, and so he fires it at me dead on. As my body is slow and untrained, the one thing left for me to do is think—and interpose Ralsei between myself and his projectile.

In a bright flash, Ralsei’s visible form turns opaquely pink, shrinks to a more the size of a grape, then travels to Dalv’s open palm. His eyes widen, appraising me in shock. I suppose I’m the antagonist here, but I don’t care.

Dalv cups the small orb, and presently his face washes white with conflict. The hand trembles, and making a hasty decision smothers it in his fist. It next lunges for a red balloon from a lineup of white and blue at a British exhibit, ripping it off its anchor and sending it into the ceiling. And only then do the implications of these events set in—Ralsei is no longer here.

“The fuck did you do?!” I shout.

Dalv flinches, timid. “I took him,” he says. “I ‘took’ your friend and ‘hid’ him in that balloon. Don’t worry, this one won’t move.” And then he bolts off.

“Bro, what was all that about?” Temmie cocks her head.

“I think he must have stolen my ‘ability’ and hid it in that balloon.” I point vaguely at the ceiling.

“Ability?” she says. I’d assumed since she saw Ralsei she would know. “Oh, you mean that chalk stuff? You’re wrapped up in that nonsense, too?”

“Aren’t you?”

“What makes you think that?” She says, pressing a paw to her chest, as if offended.

“You saw my ‘ability’ earlier today. “Only people with abilities of their own can see other people’s abilities.”

Temmie drops to all fours. We walk and talk. “Sure, yeah,” she says. “I’ve eaten a Hagoromo. Dunno my ability, though.”

“How’s that so?”

“Bro.” And we have a staring contest for a few seconds. “Some of these curses make you have to do a handstand in a bucket of water on a Tuesday while it’s raining outside just to activate. You think I have time to just sit around kicking toddlers or pissing on watermelons just to find out I can turn plastic into peanut brittle? No thanks.” He shakes her head very exaggeratedly. “You’re lucky yours is—was—so convenient,” she adds.

“Touché.”

“Anyways, what’s up? How come you jumped Dalv like that?” She course-corrects the subject.

“He used his ‘ability’ on Noelle,” I tell her. “—and Ceroba. He took Ceroba’s ‘sense of direction’ which neutralized her ‘ability’. But then he used it on Noelle—‘took’ her and ‘hid’ her someplace.”

We stop in front of a Greek exhibit. ‘Greeks are people of color, too’ says a sign. “But then he took your ability,” she says very deadpan, staring at the sign.

“Yeah, he did.”

“Which makes three thefts,” she says.

“Shit, you’re right,” I start. “I think he must have returned Ceroba’s ‘ability’, then. Its potential for destruction is extreme, but he must have taken Noelle specifically for some reason,” I decide aloud. “Have any insight on that?”

“Pssh—what, bro?” Temmie laughs. She gets back quadrupedal and we start walking again. “I’m just here for the volunteer hours. Last thing my life needs is getting on little Miss Kim’s bad side and find myself turned into a popsicle.”

“That can still be arranged.” Of course it’s Ceroba. Her claws are out, head on a constant swivel. Chujin steps close behind. “A quick mauling could even out that fucked-up, drooping face of yours,” she tells Temmie, who uses the nearby table to stand bipedal. “Looks like you were in a car crash and the doctors forgot to stitch it back together.”

Temmie scoffs. “Bitch.” She storms off.

“That Filipino guy—Dalv,” I tell the two remaining Asians. “He ‘took’ my ability and ‘hid’ it in a balloon. It’s on the ceiling now.”

Ceroba stretches her neck. “Yeah, I see it. I was wondering about that.”

“Your boytoy wouldn’t happen to have a ‘ranged ability’, or is he only good for eye candy after all?”

“Excuse me?” Chujin says. “You were not very much help to begin with, and Dalv must think so as well. Note that he chose to specifically remove your ‘ability’. He could have very easily handicapped you in a way that restricted your curse as a side effect—for instance, removing your capacity for creative thought—but he did not, while with Ceroba he did.”

“In other words,” Ceroba says. “He clearly doesn’t view you as much of a threat as he does me.” She smirks.

My shoulders slump a little, but I can understand her perspective. It’s logical, and as I consider myself a solutions-oriented thinker, I have to agree with it.

“Despite this, Kris Dreemurr.” Chujin adjusts his grasses. “You are still useful to us with your current faculties. You will go find Kanako. She was supposed to receive an ability from the Hagoromo box you discarded,” he puts on a rare cross face, “but that is at the moment neither here nor there. Remember that Noelle Holiday must have been stowed inside an ‘object’. Go find this ‘object’ while Ceroba and I pursue Dalv.”

“That makes sense,” I lie. “Okay.”

Kanako receives the summarized events well. I leave out the part where I got a chalk power instead of her, though there’s a chance she already knows. I’m sort of surprised how quickly she gets with the program. Thus far she’s only given me evidence of a carefree and perhaps somewhat slovenly girl. Though I suppose Ceroba maintains her company for a reason.

Regardless, we march as two down the aisles. She’s kind of shrimpy, so although she takes the lead I’ve a clear view of the path ahead. Multicultural Night is scheduled to go for one and a half hours officially, two hours involving stragglers, of which eighty minutes have passed. In other words it’s ten minutes ‘till they tally the votes for best exhibit. Yet as we proceed I find myself lagging, less in tune with my surroundings and more hypnotized by the aggressive batting of her tail. How she’s so chipper at this dire hour, when whom should ostensibly be her friend is victim to an attack from a probable ‘enemy’, I do not know.

“Think we’ve got a good shot at winning?” I ask Kanako randomly.

Her ears perk up. She turns around. “Oh, you talk,” she says. “Here I thought you were just gonna stare at my ass the whole time.”

Instinctively I jerk my head to the side in shame. Yet when I peek back she does a little twirl, and I find my face heating up.

“I’m not gay, by the way,” she says. “Sorry to break your heart.”

I tilt my head.

“I mean, I know I’m probably the first girl to give you the time of day who doesn’t have a fucked-up face, or fucked-up teeth, or weighs two hundred pounds, but try not to get too attached.” She does another twirl.

“Mhm,” I hum.

“But I think we’ve got a shot at winning,” she says, finally deciding to answer my question. “We actually put a modicum of effort into our display, whereas half these exhibits look put together on the fly.” We share a nod. “On the other hand, though, we’ve got limited time to find Noelle, and without a curse it’s gonna be almost impossible.”

“What’s finding Noelle got to do with winning?” I say.

“Oh, well Noelle’s the one who signed the submission form thing and you need that person to accept the prize or you get disqualified,” she says. “I guess you wouldn’t know this ‘cause you’re a junior, but there was this controversy in my freshman year where some rando tried to claim the third place prize.”

There’s a rumbling of the crowd behind us. The tinny audio of a voice speaking into a mic—visitors are encouraged to head to the far side of the gym for the announcement of the winner. “You don’t think that’s why they attacked Noelle, do you?” I say through the people bustling past us.

“Well, yeah, duh,” she says dryly. “Why else do you think they’re going through all this trouble for?”

“Not sure,” I murmur.

“It’s like this,” she says, turning on a dime. “Now, this is just a theory, but just based on what you’ve told me, I figure Dalv got captured by Ceroba on purpose. His plan was to lure Ceroba in, since he probably figured she was too dangerous to battle head on.”

“That makes sense,” I lie. “Okay.”

We idle for a few moments more. Indeed time is running short, and the clock is winding down on our deadline. I check my phone. Five minutes left. Each precious second ought to count, and yet Kanako and I take the time to people-watch. I spot my mother among the particulates filtering out through the sieve. That announcement was like gravity; it pulls back the curtain of layfolk like a receding wave. It leaves behind five people: me and Kanako, the latter standing on tiptoe to peer over the still tables; and three rows down Ceroba and Chujin, the latter’s claws seeking to rend the flesh of the fifth, the kid Dalv. A few parents give concerned looks at the scene that to them (and me) appears like a direly asymmetric campaign by Ceroba, but more in a way that ushers their small children away from the scene than any intervention.

Dalv points his pinky finger, and for a split moment he catches me watching; it’s enough to convince him to move his pinky from Chujin to Ceroba. She dodges the projectile—that’s invisible to me—with incredible speed, so fast I miss it between blinks. She must have some kind of training, I decide. Maybe a sport or something. Though he missed, Dalv exploits the opportunity to put more space between him and the offending couple.

I try checking in with Kanako to see what she wants to do next, but she’s out of talking earshot. I see her off near the other end of the gym, probably searching blindly for whatever Dalv’s hid Noelle in. I try the opposite direction, only to collide with something lithe and soft. I only stumble a little. It’s puzzling that nothing’s before me but empty space, but then I hear it.

“Kris!” Noelle’s voice is a sound for sore ears. “Please tell me you can see me.”

It takes a bit to surmount the shock of hearing a voice without a body. “No dice,” I tell her. Before her invisible shoulders can slouch, “but I think I know what’s going on.”

“Oh, really?” I can imagine her buck teeth rolling their eyes—whatever that means. “Because, like, I’ve been trying to talk to people all night, and all I get are freak-outs.”

“I’m not freaking out right now, am I?” I offer her.

“I guess not,” she admits.

“Never mind that,” I say. Four minutes left. “We’ve gotta move quickly here. There’s a Filipino guy that Ceroba’s trying to attack—you see him over there, right?”

“I see him,” Noelle says. There’s some silence that comes next, allowing the bated breath and anxious murmuring to make it all the way here. “Gee—Ceroba really knows how to move. Like—”

I sense a monologue incoming so I cut her off. “Noelle—focus!” There’s a light gasp, like she’s surprised by my shouting. “That kid’s name is Dalv. And this is gonna sound insane but he’s got a supernatural power that he got from eating cursed chalk.”

“I believe you,” Noelle says.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I think,” she says. “It’s the Hagoromo originals from, like, two weeks ago, right? I tried asking Ceroba about that whole thing when you ran off with it, but, like, she was being really weird about not telling me.”

“I see.” My neck runs cold with sweat. The growing pressure begins to haunt me. We’ve got maybe three minutes and thirty seconds to three minutes and fifteen seconds before Multicultural Night is over. “Look, the point is that this Dalv guy’s ‘ability’ is to ‘take’ something and ‘hide’ it someplace,” getting out the words quickly. “And he used it on you to ‘take’ your ‘physical appearance’. But when he ‘takes’ something, he has to ‘hide’ it in an object. Do you remember what happened when you lost your ‘appearance’? Did you see what ‘object’ it was put into?”

Some more silence. “Kris, why are you talking like that?”

“Noelle, we have, like maybe three minutes until they announce the best exhibit vote.” I cross my arms, lean to one side.

“Fine, gee,” she says. “I don’t actually know when people stopped seeing me, I guess. Like, I can see myself just fine. But after those zippers took Ceroba’s Labubu I was just off minding my own business, and all of a sudden, like, people are bumping into me and not saying sorry.”

Damn. That rules out that possibility.

In the meantime I check back in on Ceroba. In the minute or so that’s passed, she’s managed to gain some ground with a little ingenuity. She moves in sync with Chujin, interposing him between herself and the enemy. It sabotages each of Dalv’s offensives with an undercurrent of doubt. Each forward attack he flinches away from. He takes the second-guessed steeper angle with his pinky every time. Despite the fact that I can see none of its supernatural magic, I can still approximate the details of the fight unfolding.

But however ingenious Ceroba’s protected advance may be, her striking range barely clears two feet. My phone reads eight-twenty-seven and forty-five seconds. A little over two minutes until the vote is announced, a reality predicated by another timely warning over the speakers over yonder.

“Got any ideas, Noelle?” I ask to my right. With no knowledge of what the hidden object even looks like, we’re kind of flailing in the dark. Even Kanako’s given up; or, to not discredit her integrity, maybe worn herself from all that running. Either way I see her slouching off somewhere, watching the unfolding battle same as me. Ten more seconds have passed. “Noelle, we don’t have much time,” I say again.

There’s no response.

“Noelle?”

Even without the facilities of sight, one might yet sense another person’s presence in a vague sense. When someone is being watched, in the absence of more explicit evidence like their spectator’s footsteps, subconscious clues from the periphery will still clue in this unsuspecting person. Whether it be a subtle change of the light, or a subtle audio cue from breathing or the rustling of clothes, the magnificent brain will automatically pick up on these things and prepare a reaction without authorization. By these base instincts working in tandem with its supreme intelligence has monsterkind (humans as well) earned its dominion over this shimmering blue dot.

I suspect this is why Dalv winds his shoulders. To Ceroba and Chujin his profile has slimmed, and by pulling his outstretched pinky local to the center of his abdomen, he is very easily able to pivot with his hips and aim behind him.

But it isn’t enough. For an unseen force buckles Dalv’s legs. It’s flimsy, and only jerks his pinky skyward for a quarter of a second or less, but that’s all Ceroba needs to swing ‘round her boyfriend and scrape her claws against his ribs.

He falls to the ground immediately. “Augh!” He cries out from equal parts cold and pain. Even from here I can see the small amount of blood staining his once-white shirt before he falls to the ground. Ceroba leaps onto him, and Chujin helps her pin down his arms.

“Where did you put Noelle?!” She screams.

Heads turn from the far side of the gym. What must have first come off as odd roughhousing is now undeniably outright battery. As some students timidly step towards the scene, the crowd parts to allow some teacher to make their way through.

I cut through the rows of tables by crawling underneath. Just in time to hear Ceroba say in a lower, glowering tone: “My ‘ability’ isn’t supposed to be lethal, but if you keep this close to me for too long you will freeze,” she snarls.

Dalv gets the memo. “It—” He coughs. “It’s a paper lantern. It doesn’t move. I put it in one of the ones from our exhibit.” His breaths are sharp and short. At this point I arrive behind Ceroba. She sees me, but she also sees that teacher—whom I now realize is Miss Alphys—scuttling towards us.

“Chujin, go deal with her,” she barks, and so he does.

“And Kris,” she snaps at me. “We only have thirty seconds before they announce the winner. You’re gonna have to run.”

“What about me?” Noelle’s voice comes beside her.

Not stopping for anything, Ceroba says, “make your way to the front where they’re holding the vote.”

“On it!” Noelle exclaims.

I hear the noise of her sprinting off, and I prepare to likewise abscond. My heart revs up. Adrenaline begins its production, then spikes. My leg muscles tense, on the precipice of explosion. All that’s left is the ignition. Twenty-five seconds remaining.

And yet before the spark lights my senses ablaze, I’m arrested by my right wrist. My lungs choke and sputter. “H-hang on, Kris,” I hear Miss Alphys say behind me. Under normal circumstances pulling free from her grasp should be trivial; a child could do it. My crashing brain sends the rest of my body into shock. Skin floods with a cold sweat. Chujin stands off to the side, a sorry look about him. “C-can you please get off him?” she asks Ceroba. Signs of an imminent eruption flash across the kitsune’s face, yet she submits to the teacher. Twenty-one seconds.

“Miss Alphys,” I say in a panic. “I really just have to—”

“No!” I wasn’t aware she was capable of such forwardness, and the whiplash in and of itself is enough to neuter another escape. “Kris,” she says so slow it hurts. “Now, I know I’m just a long-term sub, but I—I’m just a little concerned with your behavior recently. First, you’re getting mixed up with troublemakers like Susie, and now this.” She rubs the back of her neck. Rolls her wrist around all nervous-like. It’s lost me a combined twelve seconds. “But, um, when I stopped by the police station I happened to hear what happened with your father.” She takes a deep breath. “And, uh, I just wanted to let you know that the school has resources for this sort of thing.”

I’m beginning to lose hope as the clock ticks down to eight-twenty-nine and fifty-six seconds. The announcer is already in the process of announcing the winner. In just four—three—seconds, Noelle will arrive, but she won’t receive the prize. Her chances of winning that gift card are going down the drain. I’m about to slack my shoulders, hang my head, and tell Miss Alphys that I’m sorry and that I’ll make an appointment with the school guidance counselor, ‘cause maybe I am going insane and perhaps a little disturbed.

Then, at the last possible moment, an opportunity presents itself.

They say to never interrupt your enemy in the midst of their error. The wisdom is time-worn, and for two thousand years and more before its utterance our society has understood it still as an instrumental yet undiagnosed, axiomatic truth. This is Dalv’s fatal decision, for as Ceroba Kim complies with Miss Alphys and raises herself off of him, he takes the opportunity to activate his ability—grazing his horn with a pinky, aiming straight for her stomach. Maybe its some base desire to pursue momentary relief no matter the cost, or maybe he was simply too stupid to think on a higher level. Perhaps he’s one of those hylic thugs who who revels in sensation. That his only concern is the here and now. He’s made of clay, then, and clay is unlike ideas or spirituality in that it’s a purely physical thing, molded by beings of great intelligence and molded by the forces of nature, but never declaring its own shape. It begins and ends in the present. It doesn’t dwell on the past, and it certainly doesn’t peek into the future. Though I don’t see that fabled pink projectile, I see Ceroba’s reaction. She stumbles. At this minute instance in time, I understand that something has been ‘taken’ from her. Which makes three ‘things’ that have been ‘taken’. The single, lonely second remaining before the time reaches eight-thirty could be the lifespan of the entire universe held up against the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second it takes for me to usher along my neurons my next, focused thought.

At the same instant Ralsei appears next to their exhibit and crushes a cursed paper lantern.

Kris Dreemurr (17, they/them)

Curse: Allows for the materialization of the imaginary friend ‘Ralsei’, a small goat boy about Kris’ age. He is beholden to their most subconscious thoughts and desires as they come to pass in real time.

Otherwise Ralsei is considered independent, and possesses his own personality that is not entirely predictable—polite, mild-mannered, and somewhat perverted. His own thoughts and machinations are his exclusively, however, and he must selectively convey them as does any other person. Ralsei can physically interface with other individuals also bearing a ‘curse’ or objects affected thereby. But otherwise cannot affect objects or ordinary people.

Power: E

Speed: D

Range: A

Stamina: A

Precision: B

Potential: A

Chapter Text

Multicultural Night ended on a high note. Ralsei made it to the lantern punctually: he freed Noelle’s physical appearance just as she arrived to the front of the crowd. There was a final desperate effort made by the other Asian Student Association where they pretended to be us—and I know the awkward technique by which I brandish ‘us’, the word, in this context—but it didn’t stick. To celebrate we’re supposed to go out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Ceroba, Chujin, and Kanako this upcoming Friday. I’m surprised I was even invited.

It took a few days to finally lock down Noelle long enough to explain the full story about the chalk. Apparently Dess had tried to touch base with her the night of and the proceeding morning, but nothing came from both attempts. It wasn’t until today when Azzy and I came over for lunch (school let out super early) that we walked Noelle through the whole thing. It was somewhat cumbersome at first, for we had conflicting ideas on how the whole thing ought to be framed—he, glossing over semantics and feeling the need to justify the plausibility of the mysterious oriental curse—and me, like an author of hard sci-fi, explaining the absolute fact of the matter, supported by personal theories on particular nuances to do with the mechanics of certain people’s ‘abilities’, and the curse as a whole. I figured she’d already seen enough that weekend to break apart that leaden prejudice of sane maturity that denies all but the empirically known and quantifiable things walking about this globe. In the same breath I could have told her that Santa Claus existed, and she might have believed me.

That is to say, she took it rather well.

“So, like,” Noelle is telling me in the backseat of our family’s dried-sanguine twenty-eleven CR-V. It’s Wednesday for another half hour, and we’re on our way to the Game Stop for the Switch 2 release. “What’s your fursona look like, anyway?”

“Ralsei isn’t my fursona,” I say with a thin mouth.

“Yeah, like, uh-huh,” she says. With those buck teeth staring at me now, I never realized how much I’d grown to depend on them, even just a few days without. “I think I pretty vividly remember when we were kids—you had this red headband so you could look, like, a monster or something.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I breathe through teeth that retreat into an underbite.

Noelle’s Timmy Turners continue their usual routine. “There’s, like, no need to be bashful,” she says without parting her lips much. “Like, I already told you about Ceroba.” She smiles. “We’re supposed to be friends, right? Friends, like, tell each other embarrassing secrets and don’t judge each other for it. Like how I don’t judge December for sewing a picture of Azzy’s face to a body pillow to cuddle with at night.”

“Elly!” Dess screeches. Her arms reach out from the front passenger’s side to murder her little sis, but Azzy shoves her back into her seat.

“I will crash this car,” he says.

“Tough talk for a [COMEDY] who wet the bed until he was fourteen,” I shoot back.

I called a bluff that wasn’t there. The car jerks and for several seconds I’m forced to confront a grave mortal terror, brought out by the seatbelt digging into the base of my neck. It makes me wonder for the future, if I ought to invest in a remote protocol zero to scrub my immediate search histories and hard drives, as well as bomb whichever data center Comcast uses to store data relevant to my comprehensive Internet activity, as well as any and all redundant buildings within that system—in the untimely event that my heart rate flatlines.

“Now, then,” Azzy says very calm and elated. “Kris, on the topic of your fursona—”

I growl. He ignores me.

“—I can’t help but fixate on that name. ‘Ralsei’. Not exactly a proper Christian name. But then I noticed that ‘Ralsei’ is an anagram for ‘Israel’. Is this perhaps a subtle psychological subconscious endorsement of any contemporary events?”

“I think it’s a subtle psychological sign that you should stop talking like a troglodyte retard,” I tell him.

He swerves the car again.

“But, like,” Noelle says to me, “I always wondered, like, why you didn’t choose something closer to your family, like a pair of fuzzy white ears or something. The horns are kind of an odd pick, no? Your little brother, like, doesn’t even have them.”

“How’s he doing, anyways?” Dess asks Azzy. She pokes at one of his ears.

Azzy sighs. “He’s alright.” He smacks her hand away. Locks on to the road so coldly you’d think they weren’t friends.

Dess doesn’t quite pick up what he’s putting down. “Well our dads are coming back from Kali-Fornia in a couple more days, right? I think next time we should talk to them about all going over there as a group!”

“I don’t think Mom would like that.” Azzy’s soft shoulders freeze over.

Dess winces. In the reflection in the rearview mirror her head hangs, lashes low. Azzy cranks up the noisy AC.

From the back seat Noelle and I watch her weather the archetypal contortions of regret. We don’t intervene. It’s strange seeing the two sisters like this again. Besides their shared species they’ve so deftly borrowed their traits from opposite parents and opposite parents only—and the facets of their personality were inherited similarly. For a long, long while the poorly regulated blast of air through the car vents is the only sound rising above the rumination of car’s engine. Azzy keeps it on, even when I see the outline of his shoulders start to shiver.

“Alright, look, Azzy,” December begins. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

Quite frankly I’m a little shocked it’s got him so worked up. Obviously our brother’s extended stay in the West Coast is self-imposed, else I’d be there myself right now. Yet while he’s there Mother insists that contact be limited so the Lord Almighty can work on reshaping his mind unimpeded. Though she holds no control over the whims of my father, a reality whose manifestation she—er—has never exactly been informed of.

On the Holy Earth she walks and lives, Rudolph Valentino Holiday is in Kali-Fornia for a correspondence with Gavin Newsom on behalf of his wife. Last time it was a meet-and-greet with Hasan, and the time before that Yosemite National Park, although that one wasn’t a lie. Of course, this is a world where Asgore’s activities do not exist even in concept. Although she’s the biggest proponent of the ludicrous supposition that he and the twenty-two-year-married Mr. Holiday conspire in scandalous infidelity, she’s far too nice to Rudy face-to-face to ever question his obsessive visits to—in his words—quote: “…perhaps the most comprehensive display of derogatory, despicable, impudent moral and cultural bankruptcy than any other United State of America—save for maybe Florida or Tennessee; for the latter birthed the Klan and the former gave us Anya Taylor-Joy.” Unquote.

“What’s wrong with Tennessee?” asks the girl who, contrary to her disposition, had a huge crush on Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain in Gods and Generals and the subsequent Gettysburg. She was a weird kid growing up. As we all were.

“What’s wrong with Tennessee?” Berdly Eugene echoes, wings folded. “Their state fruit is the tomato. That’s gay.”

Dess rolls her eyes. “Dude, you’re gay for caring.”

The fabled Game Stop down the road from Q.C.’s is kind of a hole-in-the-wall. Situated below a larger shopping center it’s technically below ground. The parking lot of a Walmart under which another strip of stores sits slopes down via a ramp—or set of steep, compact, winding stairs for pedestrians—is how we reach it.

Here I thought Noelle’s belligerent timetable of a eleven-forty arrival was purely symptomatic of a girl raised only by the toll of upper-class inconvenience, but when we got out the car I counted at least fifty people somehow more [COMEDY]-ed than she. A lot are younger kids accompanied by a guardian, but way more than half the adults proudly parade their Mario and Luigi pajama pants and Legend of Zelda zip hoodies. I suspect theirs might be a purchase for the whole family. There are a few older kids here, too. Two gaggles of collegians intermingle from separate groups. They’re off to the side, clearly unbothered by the hurriedness of the world around them. One of them, a heavyset ovoid kind of girl with a green knit beanie (in the middle of freaking spring!) snug to her head proportions offers Dess and Azzy a friendly wave. Recognition of a fellow peer, I presume. I take careful note of their unpolished features; their once-sharp edges have dulled, weathered by early years of onset adulthood. Azzy shewed the same evidence of burden when he came back from his freshman year. And next to the early twenty-somethings are a couple kids from Castle Township High. Two are twins, equally tall yet fraternal, maybe six foot apiece, and then some other kids whose details glazed over once I spied Susie and Berdly.

“Y’know, Azzy,” Dess is saying. She says many things. “I’m thinking I want to get a Switch 2 for myself if they’ve any left over. Or maybe swing by tomorrow morning. You should get one, too.”

“Dude, what?” he says. “I don’t just have half a grand lying around.”

“Pssh—obviously I’d buy it for you,” she says. “Or—you know—we could share one. That way you’ll have no choice but to keep hanging out with me.”

“I’ll think about it,” Azzy hums.

“Besides, spending a thousand dollars on a whim is kind of nuts,” Berdly quacks off the cuff. “Especially if you’re not a major Nintendo gamer like me.”

Dess’ nose twitches. “Hey, Berd-Brain. I dunno if you somehow forgot, but my family literally invented the Snickers bar. If anything, I ought to be asking how you got your five hundred dollars.”

“I work at the library,” he says. “And my sister pitched in half.”

“You mean Martlet Eugene? The girl a couple grades above me? That’s kind of surprising.”

Berdly adjusts his glasses. “Say what, now?”

“Well, It’s just a little weird she has that kind of money lying around. ‘Cause, you know,” Dess says with a straight face. “She’s black.”

Berdly’s pupils swipe over to Noelle. The poor girl puts up her hands, shrinks back. “So, what do you mean by that?” he asks Dess with a flat tone.

“Oh, well I’m just saying she probably got the money from someplace else. Cuz she’s probably lazy, in stuff.”

“December, we’re in public,” Azzy shoots a sharp hiss into her ear.

Berdly’s beak does this opening-and-shutting routine, as if he had lips. “So, again, what did you mean by that?”

“I already said what it means,” Dess says. “She probably got the money from someplace else. Because she’s probably lazy.”

“Are you implying she stole it?”

“No,” Dess scoffs. “Just someplace else.”

“And where is ‘someplace else’, pray tell?”

“I dunno, man,” Dess says. “She’s your big sis. You don’t know if she, like, walks the—”

A fluffy paw clamps over her mouth. “Alright, that’s enough out of you,” Azzy groans. She tries to say something, but his paw insulates the sound well. We remaining four watch dumbly as he sequesters her away, dragging her heels. Evident by the way she melts in his arms, I can’t imagine she’s learning her lesson.

“That girl needs to be put on a leash,” Berdly says.

“I think that’d just make her worse,” Noelle sighs.

“And for the record,” Berdly says, “my sister works at Kenvue. Not to mention the life insurance from my parents.”

Susie blinks. “How come I’m the only one without a rich family?”

“I mean, I don’t think Berdly’s hot sister’s like Oprah or anything,” I say. “And besides, my—”

Susie cuts me off. “Dude, don’t even start. Your dad was the chief of police and a Philly cop. He’s like, uh, that Liberal Hitler guy going around in the news, but, like, actually exists.”

There’s some silence that follows. “John Fetterman is a real person, Susie,” Berdly says.

Noelle turns to me. “Remember when he ran against Dr. Oz?”

“Some crazy timeline shit,” I tell her.

She giggles. “I know Mom bought that one RINO ad that was going around.”

“I thought that was that Honor Pennsylvania super PAC for McCormick.”

“No, like, she was explaining it to me at dinner one night.” There’s a face Greg Heffley makes at the top of the thirtieth page of the fourth Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. Presently Noelle makes that exact face. “Apparently, like, that was all some crazy psyop to try to help the Democrats win one of the Senate seats.”

“Holy shit, dude,” I gasp.

Meanwhile Susie and Berdly are still going at it. “Dude, I’m not talking about ‘Far-Left Fetterman’, I’m talking about the Liberal Hitler,” Miss O’Brien says.

They’re on the cusp of a wider argument, and for now I let it come to pass. We’ve still ten to fifteen minutes before any doors should open, yet a tiny girl somewhere between me and Azzy’s age steps out. Five or six dozen heads now snap to attention at her presence. On any other night her wiry frame and wiry glasses might pass through a crowd unnoticed by anyone at all, but presently I’m halfway to wondering if she’d be okay with dating a high schooler. Apparently, according to her, each preorder slip’s been marked with a line number, and whether their holders arrange themselves in that order is solely for their own benefit. For they’ve already marked each console unique to a particular person.

“Terrible,” Berdly shakes his head. We’re walking a bit down the strip mall. His ticket won’t be called for another twenty minutes or so, and Noelle even later than that. “It’s terrible,” he says again. “Too efficient. Too corporate. Bureaucracy will be the death of western society alongside anime entering the mainstream. There’s a reason China’s killing us these days.”

We stop briefly. Susie leans her back against a storefront, crosses her arms, then one leg over the other. “You’re mad ‘cuz you don’t have to wait in a long-ass line?”

“Susan,” Berdly says. “It’s about the thrill. The rush. Not this crude matter. It’s about the excitement of the queue. Each time you take a step closer to the door, how your every thought fixates on how cool you’re gonna be as the only kid with the new console the next day at school.” He pops a squat by the wall next to Sue. “But I can’t even have that, now, either.”

For context, we had a school shooting earlier today, which is why we had most of the day plus tomorrow off. Only one dead, a few in the ER. Something, something, nothing ever happens. If you ask me, it’s kind of a waste to give us off Wednesday and Thursday, but not Friday.

“If you ask me, it’s kind of a waste to give us off Wednesday and Thursday, but not Friday,” Noelle remarks.

I stare at her until she stares back. Plate of shrimp, think I to myself.

“The school year’s almost over, though,” Ralsei picks now to chime in with. “Wouldn’t want to miss too many days and end up delaying Summer vacation.”

“Man, you would say some gay shit like that,” Susie jabs.

Noelle switches from me to Susie. “Who are you talking to?” she says.

“Ralsei,” Susie clarifies. She rubs her neck. Pulls away from leaning against the building’s harsh brick facade. “You’re not cursed so you can’t see him, I guess.”

“I see,” Noelle says. “Well, tell him I said hi, and that it’s nice to meet him.” She waves to the air.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Noelle,” he says, returning the gesture. It’s a bit awkward for a spell, so he tells me quietly, “Kris, tell her what I told you.”

“Ralsei says you’re smoking hot and he fancies you rather nicely,” I say. “He’d like to get married over the weekend if that’s very convenient with you.”

She giggles. With a bared smiled she rolls her eyes. “I’m flattered, but, like, I dunno if I can commit to marrying someone I haven’t seen before.”

“He says love is blind and he wants a big family with four kids.”

“Yeah, uh-huh,” she says. “Sorry, but I think I’m ontologically opposed to finding my sister’s type attractive. No goats.”

We all get a good laugh out of this. Ralsei just pouts.

“People’ve gone to hell for less,” he grumbles.

“If I die first I’ll save you a seat,” Susie snorts.

“A seat where?! The waiting room?” Ralsei yips back.

“Uh, yeah, duh. It’s called purgatory. You’d know if you were Catholic, like me.”

“That’s not how purgatory works. Also, you’re not Catholic.”

We sit around some more and conduct ourselves very lax. And Berdly’s Switch 2 is eventually ready; he learns from a notification on his phone, so off he scrambles. His wings flap like a moron. It leaves me, Noelle, and Susie leaning against that storefront. A certain slouch about us all admits a degree of boredom this sleepy night. Jaws hang slack, hinting at a new conversation, but never actually arriving there. After a few minutes of this Noelle vocalizes the merits of pursuing him, whether it’d be worth the trek back ‘cross the parking lot. She’s reticent to discuss exactly why, but I think if not for ourselves, then to give him company at his greatest moment of triumph. For when he marches out the store, prize in hand, he’ll have a chorus to hail his victory. Noelle, too, once she gets hers.

I look down at my phone’s empty lock screen. From my mouth spews that Azzy’s texted me to meet up with Dess and he. As predicted, tracking down her sister interests Noelle very little, and back to the Game Stop she goes, Susie in tow. By now the lovesick dino’s grown privily sensitive to my calculated attempts to leave her unsupervised with her crush. Her lips purse. She’s pensive about something, clearly.

Hey, Ralsei, I think-shout.

“On it,” he nods, coming from somewhere. Once he’s by her side Susie’s face regains a bit of color. Not that she necessarily lacked confidence prior, but clearly whatever hang up she had is an issue no longer.

As with the conversation between Susie and Noelle with her father in the church café, Ralsei conveys the following to me during my complacent effort to track down my idiot brother and his idiot best friend/wannabe girlfriend.

Ralsei keeps close to Susie’s left side. She tries to keep her eyes from flicking over to him.

“So, um,” she says to Noelle, chin tucking into her neck. “You always been a Nintendo kid?”

Silence diffuses between them. Noelle’s mouth parts vaguely, but nothing exits. There’s a look of regret that wreaks havoc on Susie, followed by a sharp, subtle decompression once Noelle snaps out of whatever funk she’s in.

“Oh!” Her head’s on a swivel, like a kid without object permanence. “Like, yeah,” she says. “My Dad’s a little young for some of the earlier consoles, but he had a Nintendo 64 from when he was a kid, so, like, I got on that train from pretty early on. We both got, like, really into it, actually.” She scratches the side of her cheek. “Started collecting a whole bunch of the consoles and games. Made a whole ‘gamer den’ out of the basement.”

“Is that right?” Susie says. “Cuz when we were all sleeping over, me and Ceroba went downstairs to get some blankets and pillows and stuff and the basement looked, uh, mostly small and empty.”

Noelle jerks away. “Ah, I forgot about that.”

“Forgot about what?”

“Well, like,” she lets out a squeaky laugh. “I actually, um, like—so do you remember all the boxes against the far wall?”

“Not really?” Susie says like a question. “It was kind of dark, and we were fumbling around a lot.”

For once the buck teeth find another target. “I see,” Noelle says. “Well there’s a wall with a bunch of boxes. Except that it’s not a wall. Me and my dad’s game room is behind the boxes. I put them all there.”

The staring contest continues. “Why would you hide a super cool retro game room behind a wall of boxes?”

“Because I didn’t want Ceroba to come across it by accident.”

Susie loses the contest. “Why Ceroba?”

“Uh, well, like,” Noelle stumbles, filling the empty space with nothing in particular. “I don’t wanna look like a complete moron in front of her. Squirrel’s gotta get a nut, y’know?”

“…you don’t like her, do you? Like, uh, like like her?”

Noelle laughs again. Her head hangs lower still. “You like girls, too, right? You get it.”

“I get that she already has a boyfriend,” Susie says. “And that she’s probably into guys exclusively.”

“You know, that’s exactly what Kris told me,” her nervous laugh shifts to a crooked grin.

“Wait, Kris knows?”

“Um, yeah,” Noelle says. “They told me that Ceroba’d sooner call me a slur and hit me, but, like, I told them that’s the best part.”

“Say what, now?” Susie’s eyes go wide.

“Well, I dunno.” The crooked grin melts into something more deranged. “She’s just really, really hot. And—and I think I would, like, totally let her walk all over me if she wanted. I mean, you like girls, too, right?” she says again. “You get it.”

“Uh, I like Dua Lipa.”

“I would let Dua Lipa shit in my mouth.”

“Dude—what?!” Susie’s shout rips through the parking lot and reaches even me.

“Too much?” Noelle squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. “Like, um, that was totally a joke, by the way! I like Dua Lip, too—just not that much! That would be, like, totally gross.”

“Dude, I hope so,” Susie chuckles.

Noelle tests the waters. She lets out a giggle of her own. “Like, what I mean to say is—I would do the worst thing for Dua Lipa. You get it,” she says for the third time, “right?”

Ralsei gets up on tiptoe, whispers something into Susie’s ear that he won’t share with me. Whatever it is has great sway.

“I, uh, don’t get it, actually.” Ralsei fights her urge to look away. Climbing on top of her, he grapples her snout and forces eye contact with Noelle. Then he whispers in her ear some more. “You shouldn’t want to be a pushover,” she recites, potentially verbatim. “Say I like a—” She pulls her head out of Ralsei’s paws. “—this pretty girl.” Yet still she steals a glance Noelle’s way. “She’s cute and precious, and kind of geeky, but, uh, I like her for who she is.” Susie swallows. Her hands tremble at her sides. Fighting through a red face, she spits out the words. “And if she felt like she had to hide her interests or personality or whatever, then I’d really hate that. Because her true self is so much cooler than any of that.”

“I—I see…” Noelle’s gaze hits the ground. “Well, the thing is, I don’t think Ceroba thinks same way—”

“Dude, forget Ceroba!” Susie gnashes her teeth. “If she won’t like you for who you are then she can go to hell, or someplace worse than that. You deserve so much better than Ceroba, dude. I—” Her voice catches. “I can—” She ends it with a cough. Usually so forward, here she struggles to find the confidence to say what she wants. She makes a sound like she’s gagging. “I’m just looking out for you,” she says, very quietly to Noelle, a lie to herself.

Noelle wears her concern vibrantly. She reaches up to rub the back of Susie’s should the best she can manage. “Thanks, Sue, but I think I can handle myself,” she says. Her voice is clean and gentle.

Susie exhales something filled with longing and remorse. “Squirrel’s gotta get a nut, right?”

“You know it, sister.” Hands clasped behind her back, Noelle does a little hop. “And, like, if you ever need to talk to me about anything, I’ll, like, totally lend an ear. Um, like—” Her nostrils flare. “You know, cuz we’re friends?” Her tone raises to a peak.

“Oh—sure!” Susie stammers out, and Noelle decompresses with a sigh. “Friends.” Maybe not the end goal, but for now it’d do very nicely. “Friends,” she says again.

“Yup, friends,” Noelle echoes, beaming.

“I mean, yeah. I meant it when I said it the other night.”

“I—” Noelle’s eyes shy away at an angle. “Just making sure, y’know?”

“Um, of course,” Susie says. “We’re friends. Nothings gonna change that.”

The reindeer smirks. “Oh, yeah? You sure you won’t ditch me once you and Kris-mas finally hook up?”

“Pssh, nah.” Susie scoffs. “They’re pretty [COMEDY]—it’d be like dating a dog with Tourette’s.”

“Uh-huh.” The smirk curls. “Well I’ve been their friend for, like, a while now, so I know all their terrible juicy secrets.”

Susie’s mouth scrunches up. “Okay. I’m listening.”

“Ha! I knew you’d be curious! You’re gonna be a great couple—I just know it.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Susie can’t help but roll her eyes. “Anyways, out with the blackmail material already.”

I make a quick mental note to exact revenge. For Noelle Holiday’s got a few vile secrets of her own.

“Wow, I’m really blown away here. The open-world adds so much.”

We’re in the Holiday living room later the same night—or from a certain point of view the next morning. Berdly and Noelle are playing the new Mario Kart. He’s playing handheld and she’s on the big TV.

“Yeah, the graphics are way better than the old one,” Noelle says. On her own machine, she very casually rips out some oblique stunt off a guardrail or something.

“You know, Berdly says, “a whole lot of folks were really going off about the price, but I think this could really be a valid contender to the PlayStation. Not to mention the handheld portability.”

“Oh, yeah, and it’s not like you can just bring a PS5 wherever you want,” Noelle says.

The two sit on the floor. I put myself aggressively between Asriel and December, who’ve apparently gotten in a small marital spat during their time away from the group. Not that it matters, as Azzy’s fast asleep on his side of the couch. Susie sits next to December.

“I think the small library is good, too,” Noelle continues. “I know there’s only one new first party title, but I really think it’s the quality that matters most.”

“Quality over quantity,” Berdly nods.

“Like, who even cares that this is the second time Breath of the Wild is a launch title?”

“The first Switch only had that plus fucking Snipperclips,” says Berdly.

“And 1-2-Switch.”

“And 1-2-Switch.”

“Also, there’s gonna be a new Donkey Kong game.” Noelle does another crazy trick.

“Yup.” Conversely Berdly seems content cruising down a desert road at a safe, controlled pace. “So many people give a shit about Donkey Kong it’s not even funny.”

“Like, I have a feeling this is gonna be their best console yet.”

“I know, right?!”

“Totally!”

“Dude,” Susie grunts, breaking their dialogue. Half-awake, she massages her right temple to get her thoughts aligned straight. “This is the gayest piece of shit I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” she says.

The two Nintendrones bury their heads in their hands, groaning in unison. “I know…”

Deer (5, it/it)

Curse: If it is raining, the deer involuntarily transforms all rain within a 10-yard radius of it into acid. This acid turns back to normal rain after leaving the ability’s range. The acid is relatively weak, but can peel away paint, burn skin, and damage clothing.

Power: D

Speed: C

Range: D (about 10 yards)

Stamina: D (only when it is raining)

Precision: D

Potential: E

Chapter Text

It turns out they canceled school on Friday, too.

There was another school shooting one township over for a reason that’s a little involved. Apparently—and this may or may not be hearsay—the perpetrating party—comprised of two—were a little more disgruntled than I was, that Castle Township’s school shooting didn’t get them off on Friday. So they shot up their own school. I don’t know how many died on account of the simple fact that I didn’t bother looking into it, but I do know that—not that this something I tuned in on of my own accord, yet something I received as I was coming through the door and bore witness to my mother watching—the President got on Fox News talking about ‘a great big surprise—so great—so big’ for our quiet little county. I hope he gives us the rest of the year off.

But presently my mind wanders to other trite matters. Namely, that Ceroba, Noelle, Kanako, and Chujin makes four. Plus me is five people splitting fifty dollars, or ten knocked off per bill. It dares to bring sanity to these prices.

The Cheesecake Factory has six locations within the Keystone state’s borders. Four of the six lie within our utopian southeast quarter. One in Philly, one in Lehigh Valley, and the other two attached to shopping malls in Willow Grove and King of Prussia. We’re at this final location on account of Ceroba’s overwhelming insistence that going into the city, however expeditious, would sooner lead to a branching series of dramas surrounding a zombie horde from Kensington.

But actually there’s seven of us. Neither do I nor Noelle drive, and the trip out to the Cheesecake Factory is maybe forty minutes more than the five minutes to the SEPTA station and a comparably short trek to Fourteenth and Walnut. Azzy ended up driving us, and Noelle doesn’t know how to keep her stupid mouth shut—that, or she’s developed a new fascination with torturing him—for in a manner of passing conversation she let loose our plan for Azzy to take us, and of course she leapt at the opportunity to—from her to Noelle, and eventually my ears verbatim: “Go out to dinner with Azzy anyplace more upscale than a Wendy’s or our college dining hall.”

Anyways, the actual issue is that Noelle has the gift card, and she wants to give it to Ceroba.

“She’s the club president,” she had told me me. “It makes sense.”

“Like that’s your actual reason,” I frowned.

Dess and Azzy got their table for two a few moments ago. The hopeful new Mrs. Dreemur (in the wake of my mother’s reprisal of her maiden name) made extra sure to attach herself to my dear brother’s arm like her life depended on it, such that none of these strangers could mistake them for anything other than a couple well into their probationary period. It was really gay, is what I told Ralsei in whisper, before shooing him off. He got a good laugh out of it.

We watched Dess drag him along. Azzy peered back at one point, helpless, like a dog. I tossed him a single-shouldered shrug out of pity, and back to me he scowled and mouthed a bad word.

Then they disappeared behind a pillar. I found my thoughts lingering nearby, on this palace of a place. The ceiling is low, or at least it feels very low. The interior glows darkly amber in the absence of natural light. The abundance of dark colors in the ceiling and the tables and the chairs soak up the warmth, keeping some parts muddled, and highlighting detail that from afar creates a feeling in concept. Though I can’t make out the particulars of the pillars and overhead, I can nonetheless feel the way their muted colors dance about my field of view. Probably this place’s only redeeming quality.

It’s the clientele that makes it gauche. The worst people to live, the worst people to have ever lived—I’m not lacking the requisite self-awareness to admit that I technically fall within the income bracket of they fortunate few free of the overhanging torment of life paycheck to paycheck, but I’d sooner pay tribute to the local shithole pizza place than abuse my privilege in a place like this. As for what strange persuasion brought me here to violate that principle I’m not quite sure.

Oh, right.

“Noelle, I really don’t think this is your decision to make, here.”

“Uh, like, yeah it is,” she says. “I’m the one who was supposed to handle collecting the prize for Multicultural Night. You’re not even part of the club—not even Asian.” Her tongue clicks against her front teeth. “You’re like one of those weeaboos who wants to be a slope, learns the languages, goes abroad.”

“Dude, I don’t even like the Japanese.” I cross my arms. “I kind of think they’re dogs.”

“Well woof-woof, then, gosh,” Noelle rolls her eyes.

I stare at her some. “Okay, but at least you admit that you’re only doing this because you’re down bad for Ceroba.”

“Kris, like, why is it even an issue?” she asks very flatly.

“You wouldn’t understand. Your family has infinite money.”

“So does yours!”

“Nuh-uh,” I say. “My mom and dad work for a living. Yours are, like, old money or something.”

Noelle slaps a hand on my shoulder. We go through the usual routine with those teeth of hers. “Kris-mas,” she says. “Like, how the heck do you think your dad pays alimony plus you and your mom’s mortgage?”

“…his flower shop.”

“My family pays literally all your expenses.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Kris, your father, like, barely sells enough flowers to cover the overhead of running his little store to begin with.”

“Stop being ridiculous.”

Her frown deepens. “You have a trust in your name that’ll open up when you turn eighteen.” Her eyes flick somewhere else. “Um, like, actually, don’t tell your mom—or anybody—that you know about that.”

My arms uncross, then recross once more. “And you guys are doing this why, exactly?”

She sighs. Pinches her nose like I’m the dog (she is the dog). “I don’t know if we’ve been, like, living in the same universe—or maybe I need to rethink the last decade and some change of friendship—but we’re practically family, Kris. And in a few years Dess and Azzy are gonna get hitched, and then we’ll actually be family. Whether you like it or not.”

“Azzy and Dess? Married?” I laugh.

Noelle’s head bucks back like she’s been shot or something. “You really are living on another planet,” she says, incredulous. “Have you, like, not noticed that they’re, like, best friends? That they’re practically tied at the hip? That they literally go to the same college together?”

“Nope.” I shake my head. “No way.”

“Uh-huh,” she says. “Now I know you’re messing with me.”

At this certain point we get our table for five. Despite being a good fifteen minutes past our agreed meeting time, it’s another ten before the trio of Japs arrive, looking rather lax and unburdened for being so late.

“Kanako has poor time management skills,” Chujin explains concisely.

“I do not!” Kanako shrieks. “That wasn’t my fault and you know it!”

Noelle and I sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a pair of seats facing a booth. Chujin is the first to slip into the booth. “Failure to accommodate an argument with mother is still an oversight on your part. You know how she gets.”

“Huh? You two are siblings?” I say.

“Yeah.” Kanako rolls her eyes. She slides in next to Chujin, and sliding in from his other side is Ceroba. “He’s my little bro.” An arm comes round his neck for a hug.

“I see,” I say, leaning back into my chair.

“You’re wondering why he talks like he learned English from Google Translate and I don’t.” Her mouth rest into a thin line.

“Maybe a little bit, yes,” I admit, nodding.

“Well we’re not blood related,” she says. With a huff she rests her chin on her hand. “My mom died when I was little, so my dad remarried with this fucking cunt bitch—”

Chujin scoffs. “You will not be talking about our mother that way—”

“Your mother, not mine.” Kanako crosses her arms. “Talk about a bum deal I got. First I lose my mom, then Dad falls under the spell of a temptress witch hellbent on making my life miserable. You know, I even try talking about, maybe, like, some family therapy or something—anything to keep us from the brink of exploding at all times, but you know what she says? She goes all like, ‘Oh, Kanako, why are you sad? You have no reason to be sad, Kanako. Your father and I work very hard to give you a good life. Are you telling me that we’re not good enough for you? Oh, Kanako, you’re breaking my heart!’ And I’m, like, holy fuck, bitch! We’re living in the twenty-first century here! Like, I don’t know what the fuckin’ shit AIDS water they’re drinking over in the Pacific, but I want no part in it. It’s an inferior culture—an inferior race—and I keep saying there should’ve been a ‘Medium-Sized Adolescent’, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.” More like dropping an anvil on my foot.

Kanako goes on like this until the waiter comes to take our orders. Not like he didn’t hear it already the way she was screaming it for half the restaurant to hear.

“Anyways…” Ceroba slings an arm behind the back of her booth seat. Smacks some preppie conformist-looking shithead on the other side but she doesn’t care. “If little Kanako-chan—”

“Bitch, I’m older than you.”

Ceroba blinks. “—is done being seventy-five percent Anglo-Saxon—”

“Better than being one hundred percent Japanese dog,” she pouts.

Ceroba sighs, then reaches over her poor boyfriend caught in the middle and smacks the shit out of her. Through the two girls’ bickering, Chujin Ketsukane adjusts his glasses. He sighs. “Kris Dreemur, for what it is worth, we would like to formally thank you for your help last weekend. I know relations between us have been rocky in past week, but I am eager to move forward with a new co-operative arrangement.”

There’s a certain expectation punctuating his words. And judging by the way four pairs of eyes, including Noelle’s from the side, suddenly lock in on me I think they’re also expecting the same.

“Well—” I cough. “I dunno about joining any club right now. I mean, I’m not even Asian.”

I can feel the weight of Noelle’s shoulders slumping beside me, but Chujin takes it in stride. “Very well,” he says. “Better to be neutral parties than at odds.” After he says this our food arrives. And once our food arrives a lot of hell breaks loose.

It’s times like these that you really start to take inventory on your life.

Maybe a month ago I was in a pretty bad spot. I guess it’s a little cringey thinking about all that so soon after it happened, but it’s the truth. Life was looking pretty grim and I didn’t have much to live for. Not that I was suicidal per se, but if not that one guy who shot up the school it was gonna happen some other way.

Well, not actually. Quite frankly I don’t fancy self-harm beyond sarcasm in poor taste. But it’s undeniable that at this moment I’d sooner murder-suicide than suicide alone. And I think that’s a really good metric of how somebody’s doing mentally.

Anyways, the point is that hippies were a scam and they’re all going to hell. ‘Cause I’m the one that’s gonna be sending them there—if that makes a lick of sense at all. This entire day’s been a mess of abstraction. Thoughts and ideas come at me and my brain can only interpret them in a very roundabout skirting-around-the-issue sort of way. Maybe it’s because I’ve been without school for too long. My head’s mush and two and two is looking like five before the torture.

Our waiter isn’t Asian. Most aren’t, but it’s important that he isn’t Asian.

I don’t know his name, but context clues imply he goes to our school. A different person than the one who took our order, he’s tall, yellow—but he’s not Asian. He approached our table with a bright face, which came with sprouting yellow appendages in the arrangement of a star, with teal markings. Appropriately his name was Starlo. Certainly not a Christian name, but that’s what Ceroba called him when she saw him, so maybe a nickname or something.

The two appeared to be friends. When he came round the bend into our aisle of the restaurant, it was peculiar that Ceroba Kim’s usual resting bitch face jolted upwards. She quickly lowered herself, clearing her throat that only brings attention to the excitement she was trying to hide.

“Oh, hey, Starlo,” she said very blasé. She let her chin fall onto her hand, huffed out a big breath, and glanced up at him with mascara-sharpened eyes.

“Hey,” he said back with an airiness to his voice. I checked the way he swallowed hard thereafter, like he was expecting something more. “Anyways,” he coughed suddenly. “Here’s your food.”

“Thanks,” she said with a fake smile. And then he was gone.

Back to present, Noelle lifted me out of my dwelling with a smack to the back of my head. “What was that about?” she asks.

Ceroba scoffs. “Old friend of mine. Forget about it.”

Kanako is the first to dig into her food, talks with an open mouth. “You sure about that?” She pokes Chujin with a dirty knife. He gives her a comparably dirty look, but doesn’t retaliate. “I dunno, little bro. You might have some competition, soon enough.”

Noelle and I trade glances.

“It’s not like that,” Ceroba insists. “We used to be good friends back in middle school, but then—”

Ceroba’s words cut short. Eyes go wide. For out of her soup bowl, as she’s about to partake with a spoon, a silver cylinder pushes out of the thick broth. The dark, moody light gives it a gold lacquer. Hollow like a straw, she stares down into the pitch black opening, entranced by its gravity. Only then does she realize what it is.

“Shit—!”

A snap bang follows. A bright flash envelops my other senses, and once I come to Ceroba shews more humanity than she’s ever worn. Eyes wide, a hand clutches near the top of her chest as it rises and falls with great animation.

“Are you okay?” Noelle leans over the table. “What happened?”

“Y-yeah,” she gasps out. “Think so.”

“An enemy ‘attack’, no doubt,” Chujin says calmly. He adjusts his glasses while rubbing his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Look here,” and he points to the top of the booth. “Ceroba dodged this ‘attack’, yet it left no mark where it should have impacted. And furthermore the other patrons have yet to react strongly.”

“I didn’t see or hear anything,” Noelle says.

“Me neither,” Kanako nods.

“Then that’s settled.” Ceroba ushers Chujin out of the booth. We all stand. “It’s clear this is one of those ‘remote abilities’, which means we’re gonna have to find the user. I don’t know if the mechanics involve specifically putting ‘guns’ inside of ‘soup’, or something more broad like ‘hiding’ ‘things’ ‘inside’ ‘liquids’, but either way the user’s definitely got some kind of ranged capabilities, so keep on guard.”

“Why,” Noelle clicks her teeth. “Why are you talking like that now, too?”

She ignores her. “As of right now, I’m the only one whose ability is strong enough to actually incapacitate someone, but going up against another ‘ranged curse-user’ might make it impossible to get a good scratch in. Dreemurr?”

I look up from my phone. “What’s this, now?”

She pinches the bridge of her snout. “I just got shot, and you’re on your phone?”

“Well I didn’t get shot at, so it’s less urgent to me. Also, I thought I told you guys I didn’t wanna get caught up in your stupid bullshit?”

Ceroba rolls her eyes. “Well you are now, so you’d better start acting like it. You can summon that one [COMEDY], right?”

“It’s their fursona,” Noelle pipes up.

Ceroba gives me a weird look. “Okay, sure, yeah. Your ‘fursona’. The point is you can use it to start checking the patrons. Go through every Asian you can find. About our age is most likely, but a grown-up is still possible. Chujin and Kanako and Noelle will watch the exits. Even ‘remote abilities’ will have a maximum range, but they might still try to flee.”

“On it!” The appointed three move out.

There’s only me and Ceroba. “Dreemurr, you have your orders.”

“You’re not ‘ordering’ me to do anything,” I frown.

She pinches her snout again. “Just go. And text me a picture of the user when you find them.”

“We’ll see,” I say.

Man, I can’t believe I’m getting roped into more of their stupid bullshit.

“You’re telling me,” Ralsei says. He makes a fist and punches a random Asian bag lady in the back of the head. It goes straight through. “I’m stuck here hitting random people. It’s exhausting.”

What a wimp.

“Easy for you to say—you’re just standing there.”

This process continues for some time. I pretend like I’m finding the bathroom or something while he just around and profiles the oriental patronage.

“Well,” he says, taking a swing at the final patron. “I think that’s the very last of them. Though maybe we should try broadening our parameters. Asians can be Arab, or maybe Russian. Same with Indians. The other ASA is pretty inclusive, so it’s not outside the realm of possibilities.”

True, think I to the both of us. It’s worth a shot. Some part of me is tempted to sit back down and finish my food, especially since whatever ‘ability’ attacked us only seemed interested in Ceroba, but that’s also very near to famous last words. So I take some time to mope about how the food will probably be cold once this whole thing is over, and how Noelle probably won’t end up sharing that gift card after all. All because she too down bad being third in line for some bitch ABG who doesn’t even like girls to begin with.

Speaking of third in line, I’m so wrapped up in my angry moping that I collide with the one holding the spot above her. Luckily the tray Starlo—as his name allegedly is—carries is empty.

“Ah, sorry about that.” Apologizes profusely.

I nod and jerk my head around. “My fault,” I say. “Looking for the bathroom is all.

“Well you’ve just passed it,” he says. He points behind me, to a bathroom sign which I knew to be there. “You’re one of Ceroba’s friends, right?”

I hum a yes. “As were you, formerly?”

He chuckles at my weirding ways. There’s something intimidating the way he clears my head by a foot or more. “Yeah, we had a thing back in the day,” he laughs, scratching the side of his cheek.

“A ‘thing’?”

“I jest,” he says, mocking my previous tone, but not in a cruel way. “This was middle school, mind. You know, one of those remarkably unserious things. But our younger selves didn’t think the same way, and we haven’t spoken since.”

“I see,” I say. “Well, uh, good meeting you, I guess.” I offer him a hand.

“Sure,” he says, taking my offer. “You’re…?”

“Kris,” I tell him. “Kris Dreemurr.”

Then he flinches away, escaping from the handshake crudely, lacking the amicable grace he shewed prior. There’s a long pause between the two of us. His expression quickly turns grim, a mix of regret, self-pity, and a swelling hostility.

For about three seconds prior, I had a doubt about him. It was a small inkling that cost nothing to act on, and quite possibly might have saved me. As we were shaking hands, I made a mental request for Ralsei, whom previously has been idling around, to come forwards and touch Starlo, and that’s when he flinched.

“Anyways,” I say, trying my best to keep things flat. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, sure thing, Kris.”

He quickly strides off. In seconds my message is already queued up, and it’s just as I click send to Ceroba that Ralsei tackles me to the ground. A rush of air passes overhead and an instant later a sharp pain cracks my eardrums.

“He used his ‘ability’, I think,” Ralsei says, pulling me up. “I think it has a limit of once per activation. Otherwise the ‘soup’ would have shot twice and killed you.”

That word ‘kill’ leaves a sour taste. It makes me shudder. The threat of mortal peril has be briefly arrested. O, my hubris. O, my pride. So lackadaisically have I played with forces beyond my comprehension, and now when threatened with permanent death I haven’t the stomach for it.

Ralsei smacks me. “Don’t be a bitch, Kris.”

Right. “Thanks,” I say.

Hopping to my feet, I do a quick scan of our surroundings. I see the receptacle about three yards away, where Starlo must have ‘hidden’ his ‘gun’. Except that instead of soup it’s a glass of water.

“Then just about any body of liquid may be eligible,” Ralsei says.

My gut lurches. I wonder if that means he could spawn a gun inside somebody’s stomach as well.

“Let’s not give him that idea for us to find out.”

Right, I think.

I peek down at my phone. I see Ceroba’s read receipt, but I don’t see the girl herself, even with my head on a swivel.

“Kris—!”

I hit the deck again, and another shot rings out above me. People are starting to stare, but this is (probably) life-and-death, so they can think whatever the hell they want.

“This isn’t gonna work if his ‘attacks’ can come from literally anywhere. There are probably over a hundred glasses of water in this whole restaurant.”

But then why aren’t they all firing one after another? I hear a shot ring out in the distance, and finally I find Ceroba—just before she dives beneath a table someone’s sitting at.

“That’s a good point,” Ralsei says. “It’s very likely that there’s a constraint or parameter we’ve overlooked.”

My head keeps on a swivel, tracking Ceroba as she closes in on Starlo’s position. He’s waiting a table at the moment, and for a second I think that he might be an actual employee here, but that doesn’t make any goddamn sense. We’re about an hour’s drive away from home. There’s no way someone from our school would have a job all the way out here. Which means one of two things: one, that he’s not an actual employee, and he somehow managed to convince the other wait staff otherwise; or two, that somehow the Asian Student Association premeditated their Multicultural Night loss in order to get us better out in the open.

“I mean,” Ralsei is saying as we’re walking. “It’s been about a week since then. Starlo could’ve gotten a job here during that time.”

But—and here’s another thought—are we even sure he’s aligned with the other ASA whatsoever? I mean, he’s white.

“He has a ‘cursed ability’, and he tried to use it on you. Forget Ceroba—this is a matter of self-preservation.”

That’s a good ideological justification. We still need to figure out what their beef even is, but, similar to this past weekend, the only thing that matters right now is defeating this foe.

“Agreed.”

Ralsei and I hop to it. Powerful strides take us close to Ceroba, and her powerful strides take her close to Starlo. I spy the other three posted at the exits still, yet taking refuge on the outside. At least they’ll be safe there.

We only have to dodge a few more ‘attacks’ from Starlo’s ‘ability’ before reaching the aisle. They come from another glass of water, and a glass of some esoteric yuppie drink. It instills in me a murderous bloodrage. That there should be such vanity in my presence during this moment of utter peril. A little self-centered for me to think, yes, but what else is human but a fickle, idiosyncratic egotist?

And presently I come grinding to a halt besides Ceroba Kim. She’s frozen in place, stunned by something. At first I mistook it for the obvious: gross incompetence mixed with her brazenly poor personality and flawed moral compass. But presently, I see what she sees; stopping on a dime is less my independent autonomous judgment and more akin to slamming on the brakes. For before her—and now before me—there is a puddle. And coming out from that puddle is a revolver. Colt eighteen-seventy-three Single-Action Army. Four-point-seventy-five inch barrel, twenty-two rimfire. Not remarkably devastating, but from this range undeniably a campaign against our mortal souls.

“Not another step,” Starlo warns. He stands, legs spread at the far end of the aisle. “Not even I can stop my ‘ability’ once it’s ‘primed’. It’s a ‘remote ability’. Once it’s ‘primed’, it can’t be stopped.”

Ceroba grits her teeth. Clammy hands ball into fists. “Starlo, what the fuck? You aren’t even Asian.”

He scoffs. “You think that’s what this is about? I’ve nothing to do with those zippers. My ‘ability’—I got this ‘ability’…

“Now listen closely, because I don’t want to have you die. I’m only going to explain this once. You’re a good person, Ceroba, and I still consider you something of a friend, even if you don’t think so yourself. You have to listen closely, ‘cause I’m only gonna explain this one single time. It’s true that I became ‘cursed’ by eating ‘cursed chalk’ under the lock and key of the ASA, but that’s not completely correct. They didn’t sanction this, so the ‘thing’ I got my ‘ability’ from is really whom or whatever facilitated my theft. See, I got this ‘curse’ from ‘Uncle Sam’. Not a person, or place, but another ‘curse’. It’s a ‘remote ability’ that lets me ‘lay traps’. Throughout American history, people have been ‘setting traps’ for ‘animals’, but presently ‘you’ are the ‘animals’ in this situation.

“Now listen very, very closely, because I’m about to explain how my ‘ability’ works. How my ‘ability’ works is that I ‘touch’ a ‘body of liquid’. Viscosity or other factors is not an issue. And when I ‘touch’ this ‘liquid’, I can ‘trap’ it.”

“Wait, so you were sticking your hands in my soup?!” Ceroba says. “Like, that’s actually so fucking gross—”

“Ceroba!” Starlo shouts. “You need to ‘listen’! I’m trying to explain how my ‘ability’ works. I’m not trying to kill you. I just need you to co-operate.”

“What?—hell, no!” She shouts. “You literally tried to blow my brains out five minutes ago!” From the corner of my eye I can see a few of the restaurant staff converging on the scene we’re making. I imagine we’ve got maybe thirty or forty seconds before we get in trouble. “Like, forget this. Here’s what we’re gonna do, Dreemurr. I’m gonna charge at him, and you use your fursona or whatever to block the shot.”

“That won’t work,” Starlo says grimly.

“I concur,” I tell her. “Starlo’s trap can’t be more than a yard from us. You were able to dodge back at the table because it was still ‘priming’. But now it’s ‘primed’, and with that cartridge it’ll reach us in five thousandths of a second. ‘Snapping’ Ralsei to a new location is effectively instantaneous under most circumstances, but in this particular instance I think we may be outmatched. That ‘trap’ is on a hair-trigger, and we can’t outrun it.”

Ceroba sucks in air like she’s going to scream, but keeps it in. “Damnit,” she mutters sharply. “What do we do, Dreemurr? This is looking unwinnable.”

“Don’t ask me! This is your mess!”

“It’s yours, now, too,” she says. “If that trap goes off, you’re just as likely to get shot as I am.”

“Not if I don’t move,” I say sternly. “ Now that I figure he’s not out to get me, I’ve no issue letting Starlo have what he wants. I’ve no stake in whatever the hell this is. I’m not moving, but you’re going to have to move.”

“Damnit,” she says again.

“You haven’t even heard what he wants.”

“You haven’t even heard what I want,” he echoes.

“Damnit,” she says again. The color drains from her face, and takes on a number of different colors denoting anxiety, tepidness, and finally stalwart resolve. “Dreemurr, you have to promise me something,” she says to the floor.

I peek over my shoulder. What looks like the manager is closer still. Less than thirty seconds until we get kicked out. “Sure, what is it?” I say.

“You know the other night—last week? You saw me,” she hesitates. “You saw me reading fan fiction, yeah?”

“Yes, I remember,” I say.

She sighs. “Can you please, like, forget about that? Erase it completely? You have that dirt on me, and that’s the one thing keeping me from rushing this [COMEDY] right here, right now.”

“Um,” I think for a sec. “I mean, you’re kind of a bitch, Ceroba, but I don’t really wanna see you die here,” I say. “I was just trying to explain that you should be threatening me to go along with your plan.”

Her eyes squeeze shut. “Just say yes. Please—I’ll owe you if I end up making it out of this.”

I roll my eyes. “Sure, okay. Go get yourself killed.”

“Thanks,” she says. Her heels bounce slightly, idling for just a moment before springing into action. She fronts of her feet push off the ground, and she launches herself forwards. As foretold, at that exact moment the trigger on the Single Action Army engages, and at a blinding speed the hammer hurtles towards the back of the gun. The bullet fires, the flash coming moments before the bang, sending that small bit of metal towards Ceroba’s vulnerable form. She’s not gonna be able to dodge. She’s too slow. In fractions of fractions of a second, she’ll die—or more likely, judging from the angle and probable point of impact, be seriously injured. She knows this. She sees this. And the last few milliseconds before the impact she spends with a face full of anticipated pain. Her mouth opens to cry, tears already chipping at the sides of her sharped eyes. But then, something incredible happens.

The bullet curves. Its trajectory oscillates, jerks, and strikes the floor. Like the sharp percussion that only follows the speed of light, the battle cry that follows gives context to what’s just happened.

“—rah!”

A yellow softball comes tearing through the Cheesecake Factory, collides with the side of Starlo’s head for a perfect K.O. headshot. He falls.

Ceroba Kim (17, she/her)

Curse: Ceroba naturally has sharp claws on the tips of her fingers. If one of these claws scratches someone and draws blood, their body temperature will begin to lower. This effect will technically be fatal, but only after one hour of extreme exposure. Nonetheless physical damage can set in right away or not at all depending on proximity.

The default range for this ability is about the length of a football field, and the intensity of the cold will increase or decrease proportionally to the affected party’s distance from Ceroba. If the affected party moves beyond the ability’s range, then it is deactivated immediately.

Power: B

Speed: B

Range: E (once activated B, 100 yards)

Stamina: A (until the affected party dies or moves out of range)

Precision: B

Potential: D

Chapter Text

“Unbelievable.”

Shadows drape the side of Mom’s face. From time to time a sterile corona outlines the edges of her fur, the light from the street lamps overhead.

“Absolutely unbelievable,” Mom says again. With her shaking head the light dances across her fur some more. A truck headed the opposite direction flashes its high beams for little reason in particular. For a second she looks like a ghost.

Her head swings towards the back seat, away from the road. She scowls, then wisens up and keeps content with the rearview mirror for now.

“Kris,” she says slowly, her voice dripping with low, rumbling contempt that rises barely over the hum of the engine and the road. “A few weeks ago, when I got a call from your math teacher that you were acting up in class, I was really, really praying that this was an isolated incident.” She eases to a full stop at a stop sign. Her eyes peek above her glasses in the rearview. “But now you are making me very concerned.”

Azzy and I trade glances. There’s an explanation she’s owed, but she’ll never get it. It’s a similar principle to why she’ll never get an explanation on matters of our politic. Like, to unhook even a single cord binding her retrogressive persuasions in place, one must first unhook the cord overlapping that cord in place, and so on and so forth. So there is a path to exoneration, for ourselves, for me, for Azzy, for everyone. But the road to reach there involves completely rewriting her perception of reality to accept that magic powers exist and that her darling middle child happens to have one of these powers, as well as her oldest. Except instead of magic powers it’s the economy, or some gay bullshit. We’ve played these games before, or some gay bullshit.

“And you, Asriel,” she continues to glower. The car lurches forward as she rolls through the quiet intersection. “I expect better from you. I have spoken to you a number of times about how I think that college you are going to is a bad influence.”

“Mom—”

“—and you might think: ‘Oh, well, mother—I’m grown now. I’m my own man and I’m free to make my own decisions.”

“That’s not—” Azzy tries.

“But you are still my son!” She raises her voice over him. “And Kris is still your—you are still Kris’ big brother, so you need to be setting a good example. I understand that you are not completely to blame for Kris’ misbehavior, but that’s no excuse to be enabling that kind of behavior. You are supposed to be the man of the family now that your father is no longer part of the picture.”

“Yes, Mom.” Azzy pinches above his snout, bunches the skin between his two eyes.

It doesn’t ease her up any. “You know,” she says like we don’t know, “I know I have been saying that you two need to be going to church more—and I know, Asriel, that you said that you were going to the church in town near your school, but—and a mother hates to think this—but I think you are not being absolutely honest with me.” Her cadence quickens. The further the roll of toilet paper rolls down the hill, the faster and more irreversibly it unravels. “I really do not like lecturing my son who is now turning twenty-one in just a few months,” she says, “but they say that these things begin at home.” At the end of a familiar road onto which we turn, the car glides down, easing into a halt. The engine idles, headlights brightening the facade of the house. In the reflection of the dark first-floor windows, another us stares back. Mom shuts down the car, revealing the tiny chirp of crickets. She sighs. “Maybe this is my fault. A household that is not firmly rooted in the teachings of scripture will always find its children led astray. Maybe I have not been the best in setting my own example.”

I want to say something but I don’t.

“It’s okay, Ma,” Azzy says softly. He says something else, quieter, but the clicking of his disengaged seatbelt overrules it.

It’s not until we leave the car and reach the front door that Mom speaks again. She fumbles with the house keys, forgotten to leave the porch light on. “You’re very sweet, Asriel.” She reaches over and scratches beneath of his ears. They both hum sweetly, and with one hand Mom finds the right key. The lights flashbang me, and I have to blink away the blindness.

In the proceeding moments that follow, Mom’s already planted herself in her living room chair and Azzy’s halfway to the second floor.

“Oh, Azzy?”

His foot stops on the second step. “What’s up, Mom?”

“I just want you to know that I don’t blame you for anything. Nor do I blame Kris.”

“Right, Ma—thanks.” He takes another step.

She pulls off her glasses to see him with her own eyes, probably all blurry. “If anything, it’s your liberal father’s fault. I should have pushed back more when he insisted that you two be free to make your own choices on matters of faith. I was too loose, and I let him have his way.”

Azzy sighs. “It’s not your fault, Mom.” He takes one more step.

“So I think,” she says, voice entering a crescendo, “so long as you’re here for the summer, I’m going to have us go to church every single Sunday. No excuses.”

“Yup, ‘kay-o,” Azzy says. He steps up once more.

“Affirmative,” I nod, still at the door.

“And Asriel, I think I will be talking with December about making sure you keep up going to church once you get back to school. I don’t want to police your life—”

“You’re not policing anything, Mom,” Azzy insists, maybe a bit forceful. His foot stomps up a step.

“I know,” Mom says. “I just want to make sure you know.” Azzy’s about to cross the threshold of being further up the stairs than not, but she stops him yet again. “Oh, and I think it would be a really good way to bond with her. With December, I mean. I know things between you two have been rocky as of late, but I really think that going to church together would be a great way to reconnect. That, and, if you two are going to have a healthy marriage someday, it should have its foundation cemented in Christianity. I made that mistake with your father, and I don’t want the same to happen to you.”

“Of course.” Azzy breathes sharply. “You’re always looking out for me,” he says.

“I’m glad you think that, dear,” she says, smiling. “I’ll be downstairs a while, now. My show’s on in a few.”

Sean Hannity’s ugly mug is just the excuse I need to cross and head upstairs myself. Azzy stays frozen on the steps, and I pass him. His face is locked completely blank, but his mouth clenches a narrow line. He comes into our room behind me. The fur of his paws mask his travel, and I jump when the door slams shut.

“Jesus fucking Lord—I thought the old cunt was never gonna shut the fuck up,” he groans. His ears hang; he faces the ground.

“Yeah,” I say softly.

The trajectory of December Holiday’s life changed irrevocably when she turned just twelve years old.

By the design of some sick, twisted conspiracy, her birthday falls exactly on the minute of midnight of Christmas Eve. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that the then Carol Mars planned her and her then-boyfriend’s doing of the deed to line up December’s (the girl not the month) December (the month not the girl) birth. Not of woman born; from her mother’s womb untimely ripp’d. Right at the stroke of midnight.

But that was Christmas of two thousand two. Twelve years later, the year is two thousand fourteen. People were still doing the Ice Bucket Challenge and Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared off the face of the Earth. Frozen came out around the same time last year, and Barack Obama would be President of the United States of America for another two. Andrew Garfield was Spider-Man, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian began their decade of nuptial error, and on the topic of, there was that photo of the latter going around balancing the wine glass on her ass; Azzy was the one to show me, then somewhere around seven and ten, him grounded by Mom for a week. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) came out this year, soon to win the Oscar for Best Picture that following February, and then nobody talked about it ever again.

Ebola ran loose in Guinea, then Liberia, then Sierra Leone. Russia annexed Crimea this year, too. Taylor Swift released her fifth studio album. This was also the first year of Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. Jodorowsky’s Dune never saw the light of day, and Tetsuo: The Iron Man turned twenty five. As did the twilight of the Berlin Wall. As did the Game Boy.

And this year lived out the rest of his life a man named James Wright Foley. Spent his life a journalist, his head parted ways with his body by the authority of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. On this year, December twenty-fifth, the year of our Catholic Lord two thousand fourteen, a young December Holiday watched this video of ISIS cutting off his head, and so her life was never quite the same.

The details from there are largely up to debate, but I’ve my own distinct interpretation. Speaking on matters of fact, my little bro was the one to show her the video. They were huddled under a blanket with an iPad 2 that was destined to be replaced that following Christmas morning, and then it came to pass. Seeing as he’d just begun the first grade, it was doubtful, according to Mom, that he stumbled upon the damn thing on his own. This blame fell to Azzy. Now, as fickle as my word can be I’ll guarantee that I’m not so devilish, even back then, and the way Azzy went white in the face when he saw it later beside me means he’s a prodigy act, or it wasn’t him either.

Which leaves Noelle. Sweet Noelle. My dear mother, so quick to point fingers, forbade the notion that neither she nor I—her ‘perfect little princesses’—should be capable of such a dark matter.

I remember sitting, shoulders brushing on the couch, legs dangling, our hands atop our knees four-in-a-row. We were wearing matching pairs of corduroy overalls that night—a Christmas gift from Mr. Holiday. Parenthetically sidestepping for a moment—our families both have this recondite custom; it’s a cultural failure of our dwindling American experiment that the sweaters and journals and other thoughtful, sentimental gifts get shoved to the side by our ignorant knaves of youth—that they should shew deeper fascination in the consumer spectacle of our modern era will be the first trumpeter that sends hail and fire mixed with blood down onto western civilization. So clothes and socks on Christmas Eve, then all the toys for the riffraff the following morning.

“Oh, Lord Jesus, have mercy on my child,” she, my mother, had waxed. Her large arms held Azzy close by the shoulders, shaking him side to side.

We waited there a while, Noelle and I. While I was unsuitably lax seeing my mother’s unspeakable ire shoved onto another, the girl whom I should have considered my best friend for a time, writhed in place, never quite detaching her shoulder from mine, but nonetheless held her composure at a steady simmer. Mother continued to wail, which drew in the presence of Obaasan. A stern woman, December and Noelle’s paternal grandmother born Kobashigawa Rin, she married fresh off the boat into a far more domesticated Japanese-American household, one established during the people’s original diaspora during the Meiji Restoration. That was the mid eighteen hundreds, and after a multitude generations, internment camps, the rise of the World Police, two tours in Korea and one in Vietnam, and Desert Storm and an uncle spent six days in Fallujah, the Holiday side of the family was surely more American than even some Mick or Dago could lay claim.

She’s a short woman, as most of those people are. Her hair showed more grey than nowadays, for nowadays she’s known to color it: straight, black, a chin-length bob. Never disclosed her age, least not for me or my mother’s ears, but I can guess her sixties or so—since this is Rudy’s side. Her neck was long and her snout was narrow, a straight-backed weasely-looking weasel.

Without otherwise moving or speaking, Noelle grabbed the old, boxy remote (we fell for Fios) of that era gone, and switched the channel from a commentary on the tumult in the Levant—which, to this day, never seemed to have worked itself out—to a showing of Shrek the Halls. Her jaw hung slack, and for the first time in my small life I really began to internalize her misshapen teeth.

“This is the devil’s influence. Spare the child and scorn the Arab’s weird wicked ways,” the old woman Obaasan had ordered Mom with a stern, pointed finger. Not so fundamentalist by upbringing, she was converted by her late husband and the Chinese-Christian church in Philadelphia. Her later years, as well as her growing hunger to keep her husband’s memory intact, have quelled to nonexistence the less radical moments within her.

Upon Obaasan’s orders Mom softened up, but the way her downcast lashes fell to obfuscate darting looks to her eldest, I knew she still blamed Azzy.

“This is what I keep telling you, child.” This was neither my mother nor was it Obaasan, to Azzy, but the latter to the former. A look of contempt very briefly shone across my mother’s features—in her middle age not wanting to be lectured by, whom she addressed in private as Tojo’s spinster mistress, yet another prideful woman with little else to do with her golden years. She gets enough shit from the mother-in-law Dreemurr, which is about the only time I’ve heard her swear.

Obaasan wasn’t done speaking.

“You need to be more diligent,” she had said. “The devil’s advocates are everywhere. Our modern era is no time to be laissez-faire in moderating your child. It’ll take more work detoxifying whatever poison you’ve let your Asriel sink deep into. You’re lucky I was able to put your daughter in a sound state of mind. Just like my sweet darling Noelle. Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Yes, Obaasan.” Noelle dipped her head. There was a trembling undercurrent of anxiety each time she spoke the word, one she became an expert on concealing over the years, but one she nonetheless carried with her all her years. It conveyed to me, hidden away from her grandmother whose ears knew no nuance, a measure of guilt evident in the self-hating way her lips pursed, eyes looking down on nobody else but her own two knees.

Remember that we were so young, and that I was too dumb to comprehend mature matters of emotion and sensitivity. At my friend’s apparent discomfort, I knew only to scare off the impending awkward silence.

“Psst—Noelle. What does ‘Obaasan’ even mean?” I blurted in whisper.

She seemed to flinch at the name, but then quickly moved to a goofy grin. “Heck if I know,” she whispered back. “I mean, like, what do you call your grandma?”

On Mom’s side, the late Grandma Finlay (died young of self-termination), but on Dad’s side: “Green Hag. Medium Fey, neutral evil.”

At this she giggled, and I was feeling really quite proud of myself.

Those years were simple like that. Barack Obama was still the President of the United States of America and PewDiePie was still the biggest YouTuber. TikTok was still Musical.ly, and DeviantArt hadn’t gone corporate. Azzy, Dess, Noelle, and I would find copies of Advanced Warfare in our stockings the next morning and we’d play them ‘till sundown, and for the weeks to come still.

Barack Obama was still President of the United States of America. ISIS declared an Islamic Caliphate. Modi rose to office. The price of oil crashed. Protests in Ferguson. Protests in Hong Kong. Protests in Venezuela. We lost Maya Angelou and Robin Williams. We lost Bob Hoskins and Richard Attenborough. We lost Shirley Temple. Obama wouldn’t leave office for another two years.

Those years were simple like that. For me.

Not for December Holiday. Her simple years ended that night. No longer were her hoofsteps light as the air of youth. A shadow hung over her face, not fully ripe, but resembling the dog tiredness predicating the vain struggle of the grownups around us. Already was she the oldest of the bunch by two years at least, at most maybe seven; and so it came to pass that she entered this new world of reality solely on her lonesome. We sat with her and played with her, but with her back turned we spake over her shoulder. Shoulders that shuddered, arms curling around herself in a tight hug. We stood at the shore of the icy gulf, unsure whether to tread out. And we wouldn’t make there ourselves until she was long sunken beneath the frigid sea.

This, I think, is the reason why December Holiday perilously relented when sending that softball at Starlo’s head. There was a certain apprehension within her eyes when I say her across the Cheesecake Factory floor, and there was also remorse on her.

It took a moment for Starlo to fall. The softball spun in place against his right cheek, loose skin twisting around its center point. In that time Ceroba Kim had already ended the gap, caught her friend from a nasty concussion against the hard tile. This is what I saw before mall security tackled me to the ground.

“Well, at least we’re not grounded.”

“…yet.”

“Right. Yet.”

Azzy sighs for what feels like the eleventh time tonight, but it’s really the twelfth. His feet scuff at the floor, pulling him in his swivel chair up to his desk.

I’ve got the covers bundled ‘round me, so I inchworm sideways to the edge of my bed. One of the benefits of living in a household of long-haired goat folk is their intolerance for heat. The thermostat’s a cool, cool sixty-eight, and I’m snug as a bug, feeling toasty under a few layers of blankets year-round.

From my cocoon I watch him boot up one of those Pokémon fan games. Charizard-Mega-Y Heat Wave vs. Wonder Guard Tera Electric Shedinja in Sun: 0-0 (0 - 0%) -- possibly the worst move ever. 252 SpA Charizard-Mega-Y Heat Wave vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Excadrill in Sun: 296-350 (160 - 189.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO. Charizard has nine hit points of one-fifty-three. Shedinja clicks Sandstorm. Beside the Charizard, an unevolved Slowpoke clicks Trick and gains a pair of Safety Goggles from Shedinja.

“So how’d your dinner date go with Dess?”

“Don’t call it that.” He slams F12 to reset. The laptop screen wobbles in place.

“Okay, then. How’d your date go?”

“Kris—for Christ’s sake—I’m trying to enjoy my evening, here. Can you please butt out?”

“Sure, whatever, dick.” I scoff and pretend to be all offended. Squirming back into place, I land my head on my pillow. “You’re the one leading her on all the time.”

I can hear him frown. “We’re not having this conversation again.”

“Uh-huh.” My speech doesn’t carry. I’m busy fiddling with my phone. “I’m just saying, you know.”

“Saying what?”

“That you’re the king of mixed signals,” I tell him. “That, and I’m starting to believe you might actually like her deep down, and this front of ‘just friends’ is undermined by your constant capitulation to her every whim.”

Azzy hits F12 again. “Kris, don’t be a jackass.”

“I’m a pimped-out Jedi Knight,” I say. “And you need to face the music, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid. I’ll kill you.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t find her hot whatsoever?” I smother a growing smile with my bed sheets. “Not even just a little bit?”

He swivels around to face me. “Honestly? I think she’s a little scrawny.”

“Damn. Bummer.” I drone.

“You sound disappointed,” he says, then resets the game again.

“You sound sardonic.”

“Fucking kill yourself, retard.”

“Hey, now—”

“Not you, this stupid game.” He slams the laptop shut.

“So I’m noticing you just said that Dess is a ‘little scrawny’. And that nowhere in there was any kind of denial of claim. So you do think she’s hot.”

“Do you think she’s hot?”

“Don’t deflect, dude,” I tell him.

“I’m not deflecting. I’m asking you a question.”

“You literally are.” I sit up, letting the blankets fall past my shoulders. “It’s a yes or no question. Yea or nay. Do you, Asriel Dreemurr, find your childhood best friend to be physically attractive? Yes or not yes?”

Azzy’s arms fold, but don’t tuck into one another. “What are you gonna do if I say yes, Kris? Is it gonna somehow change every other part of her personality? Are you gonna run off into the night telling every single person you see?”

I think about giving the reaction he wants to hear, but then that wouldn’t be very funny. “For the record, I think she’s pretty cute,” I say, scooching towards the edge of the bed. My legs dangle, kicking idly as I dredge up some hidden glee from my childhood. “I guess she’s kind of ‘scrawny’, but there’s this very homely feel to her that I’m all about. It’s very warm, or comforting. Like a girl-next-door or something.”

“…if your idea of a ‘girl-next-door involves getting sent to the principal’s office for coming to school with a ski mask and green headband, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ in the cafeteria and trying to make a Molotov out of a TruMoo carton.”

“Holy radical Islamic terrorism—I remember that whole debacle!” That was a crazy fucking family conversation when we all got back from school. Probably in my top ten favorite conversations of all time. “But besides that,” I say, “I mean, we’ve already established that she can be easy on the eyes. Her family is also super-duper rich, so you literally wouldn’t have to work a day in your life. You’d be an idiot to not go out with her.”

He squints at me. “How much is she paying you?”

“Five hundred dollars,” I lie for no reason.

“Figures. Well since you think she’s apparently so wonderful, you can have her, you know.”

“Dude,” I say. “I’m seventeen. She’s, like, twenty-two.”

“Didn’t stop her parents.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind that.” He stands up from his swivel chair. “I’m heading downstairs. If you follow me I’ll stab you.”

The door slams shut a second time that night. I’m left staring emptily at the smooth painted wood. A few felt letters spell out three names in green, blue, and green. Bumps about its flat surface—uneven paint, imperfections in the wood—cast subtle shadows that keep me and my thoughts cemented in reality.

“You think Azzy’s being a tsundere about all this?” I ask aloud.

Ralsei tries complex thought but the conclusion is too simple. “I have no idea how you arrived there.” He shakes his head. “But no—I don’t think your brother has showed any romantic interest in December whatsoever.”

“Don’t care. That’s my headcanon now.”

Ralsei sighs like I’m a disappointment. But he’s me, yet I’m not him, so maybe we’re both disappointed in me.

Chapter Text

Peter Paul Eugene

June 9th, 2025

Honors English II

M2WIII

This past weekend I was fortunate to find the company of a good friend of mine. Some others within our circle were spending the weekend grounded, so when she called me over to her place, it lifted me out of a destitute boredom that circled over my head like do a kettle of buzzards above a carcass.

We didn’t have a plan, and so we fell into the time-tested plan of our forefriends, and our forefriends’ friends. Slumped on her couch, arms splayed at our sides like Christ himself, we made like the primitive vegetation that reproduced before the invention of seeds—still, silent, inert, diffusing. The man of the house, her father, filled the boredom with Facebook Reels from a brown plaid easy chair in the corner.

We decided to play Call of Duty.

To clear up potential miscommunication going forward and also establish an operating terminology, the game we were playing was 2023’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, developed by Sledgehammer Games—should in no way be confused with Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, released in 2011. The distinction is that the former uses a Roman numeral in its name.

My good friend, for it will be so convenient to speak of her, was expounding this recondite matter. And I told her that while that was readily discernible in written text, saying it aloud—as we were in passing conversation—begins to introduce some issues. For, it wouldn’t do well to call it ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Roman Numeral Three’, and saying ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Three Twenty-Twenty-Three’ is too much a mouthful and features consecutive numbers, which tends to cause confusion. She suggested, perhaps somewhat disingenuously, that we call it ‘Call of Duty: New Modern Warfare Three’—on similar principle to the ‘New’ Super Mario Brothers series of games, but it just didn’t roll off the tongue the same.

Thus, I made my next proposition. ‘Call of Duty: Modern-Two-Warfare Three’. The 2011 title would then become ‘Call of Duty: Modern-One-Warfare Three’. M2WIII and M1W3. Consolidated, considerate, compact, rolls off the tongue, numbers delineated and partitioned by the interjecting series title, adaptable to spoken word, simple, easy, perfect, genius. And so it will be called for the remainder of this musing.

I had never before that sleepy afternoon played a Call of Duty title—no less either of the Modern Warfare series of titles—so my good friend very selflessly set the controller in my lap, and so I played. The game—the main story, that is—follows the wayfaring hijinks of Task Force 141, a multinational counter-terrorism group led by the paradigmatic Captain John Price—though the ‘multinational’ descriptor, upon further inspection, appears more like a suggestion than proper designation, as its primary cast sports peculiarly gross bias for the British.

Being a Call of Duty title, the story is largely incapable of dedicating itself to nuanced messaging whenever not hiding behind the immutable black-and-white of World War II. It dives headfirst into shallow waters and plays out as such: Vladimir Makarov, a Russian ultranationalist domestic terrorist, plans to use chemical weapons in an onslaught of false flag operations to frame Farah Ahmed Karim and her US-backed Urzikatan (a nondescript fictional country in the Middle East) Liberation Force in order to justify an invasion by Russia, or some bullshit. To stop him, TF-141 employs a similar approach as any blockbuster action hero a la Schwarzenegger or Stallone: charging headfirst into the fray, weapons free. Or the infrequent stealth op.

In many ways the game feels analogous to a blockbuster movie. Its massive budget permits incredible graphical fidelity and award-winning sound design; likewise your player character feels supremely capable in any given situation, always monopolizing the initiative—action, not reaction. For this reason Call of Duty: Modern 2 Warfare III feels very ‘fake’. Not necessarily in a bad way; rather, it employs suspension of disbelief at a healthy level to keep the gunslaughter strictly impersonal. Except one mission.

The AC-130 is an aircraft platform conceived by the execrable, ritualistic nuptial fornication of the companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Conceptualized in the skies over Vietnam, it encircles its prey like a buzzard (again, the scavenger bird came to me in passing thought), and rains death from above via a number of different weapons systems. The AC-130’s reign of terror, and its inscrutable iterations’ thereof, toured Panama, Grenada, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Libya, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and its most recent incarnation, the AC-130J Ghostrider, is employed under the United States Air Force presently. To avoid dwelling on contemporary politics too long I want to succinctly describe my feelings. I should call its mere existence a sin, and that every man or woman or person in general even remotely involved in perpetuating such a thing’s existence shall be swallowed up by the darkest pits of hell for all eternity.

Modern-Two-Warfare Three’s penultimate mission, titled ‘Danger Close’, puts the player in control of one of these AC-130s. Not called one explicitly, it’s a fictitiously analogous aircraft that administers a similar death unto the battlefield seven thousand feet below. Now, I’m not so short-sighted as to fail to separate reality and fiction, but what I mean to assert is that if Call of Duty is at most times ‘fake’, then this mission was magnitudes of factors ‘less fake’. Compared to the exaggerated drama and militech fanfare of the previous hours of gameplay, there was a sobering whiplash about Danger Close. Contrary to the previous gauntlet of sprinting and sliding through a hailstorm of enemy bullets, explosions like those in a Michael Bay movie, and enemies so cartoonishly armored that even several shots to the head will not suffice; Danger Close fixes the player in the chair of a nameless, faceless operator, whose name never goes uttered, and whose mouth never utters a word. The ear-shattering backdrop of war replaced by the quiet hum of a computer monitor and the soft air conditioning pushing against their neck—the cold, dry instruction of the commanding officer over the radio—all about playing a game to vanish white blips from a thermal readout. This gamified slaughter is different than the gamified heroics of a Call of Duty man, because the gamified slaughter of Lockheed Martin’s AC-130 is so much ‘less fake’ than its real-life counterpart; and mostly because a Call of Duty man can never actually exist. No living person will ever run so fast, withstand as many injuries from a bullet, or outshoot so many trained adversaries with such ease and grace. Not even when you’re placed in the shoes of Samara, suicide bomb vest strapped to her chest, forced to fight through a plane of terrorists, does the fundamental implausibility of the Call of Duty man-character retreat. My, the player’s, only respite in Danger Close was, strangely, the ontological absurdity of Call of Duty as a concept bleeding into the plot of the mission—

I think Makarov was trying to gas-attack the Chunnel or something.

—and its frequent dissolution of its main antagonists into hackneyed supervillainy: whether that be Makarov and his chemical weapons; Hadir Karim’s chemical weapons; Johnathan Irons’ (portrayed by the disgraced Kevin Spacey) chemical weapons, which target specific ethnic groups; or Jane Harrow’s chemical weapons that cause its victims to hallucinate the existence of zombies and zombie cyborgs and giant three-headed monsters that shoot laser beams out of their mouths as well as ‘weeping angel’ jumpscare mannequins, which were provided to Saddam Hussein by the CIA during Operation Desert Storm to carry out a false flag attack on Congress.

My good friend was explaining this obsessive chemical warfare to me in the stillness proceeding my completion of the game. It was a stillness that felt far too similar to that cold mission chair, and so it was a great relief when my ears de-habituated the noise of her father and her father’s Facebook reels.

I set the paper down on the desk. Ralsei peeks over to read it himself.

“So? What do you think?” Berdly says, leaning over the chair in front of me.

Susie, from a few columns of desks over—“Its cool you think we’re ‘good friends’ and all, but, uh—is there a reason why you left my name?”

Berdly flinches like he wants to snap out with some futile jab—a quip for the feckless futility of these pointless teenage years of ours, but then he must notice how I haven’t told him what I think of the essay yet.

I blink once. “Your name is Peter Paul Eugene?”

He blinks twice. “Did you think my parents named me Berdly?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Why don’t you go by Peter?”

“Because it’s a stupid name, even as an homage. Like, who wants to be named after the biggest pussy in the Bible?”

“But he was the first Pope,” Susie says. “That’s pretty cool.”

“I’m not Catholic,” he says. “It’s still lame, either way.”

Susie snorts like a pig, laughs like a horse. “Like Berdly isn’t the gayest fucking name you’ve ever heard in your entire life.”

“Your essay’s fine,” to—‘Peter’—I interject. “Maybe a little overdone, but it’s not like I’m any profound essayist to have authority on the matter.”

“Huh?!” He quacks. “Overdone? That shit was legendary!—or at least the teacher said so. I oughta be getting a Pulitzer for my exceptional reporting. I’m like—” He stumbles for a topical reference, comes up short and settles. “I’m like, uh, you know. Peter Sagal?” That’s NPR and a game show, but close enough for news.

Anyways: “Maybe if it was seventeen years ago,” I’m telling him.

“Has it really been that long?” This is Noelle, from the teacher’s swivel chair, spinning in bored circles.

Berdly shakes his head. “Wait, wait—what do you mean seventeen years ago?”

“The original games,” I say. “Modern-One-Warfare-One. The whole AC-130 controversy was a thing back then, too.”

“Yeah, like, basically all the stuff you said in your paper,” Noelle says flat through her buck teeth. “But, like, it’s pretty cool you’re getting into CoD like a normal functioning member of society.”

“Oh, puh-lease. I played one game. ‘Getting into it’, implies active interest.”

She stops the swivel chair on a dime, cocks her head. “Like, you wrote a five page essay on it.”

“Uh, yeah?” Berdly crosses his arms. “It’s a school assignment. Just because I chose Call of Duty as my topic doesn’t mean I’m suddenly enamored with it.”

Noelle blinks thrice. “You’re telling me you’ve never, like, ever written a paper just because you were interested in what you wanted to write about.”

“Huh?—now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

“What?”

“Christ our Lord Almighty—I can’t with you cracker people sometimes...”

“Peter—”

“Nope. Nuh-uh. You’re not doing that. The white man won’t deadname me today, this day.”

“Like, huh?!” Noelle says. “I’m not white and I’m not a guy!”

“You’re half white. That counts.”

“Sure, uh-huh. So does that mean Hailee Steinfeld counts, too?”

“She did in Sinners,” Susie chimes in, clambering over some desks to interpose herself.

“Sue, shut the hell up,” Berdly squawks.

She gets all huffy and in his face, grinning between something silly and dumb. She opens her mouth, pretending to take a bite out of his face.

“O, I’m slain!” Berdly shouts. “The Irish Chinese Speaking Vampire has slain me!” Beneath the back of his hand-to-forehead he peeks open an eye. “If thou be merciful,” like that’s the only Shakespeare he knows.

Susie scoffs. “Yeah, that’s me. ‘Least you and Noelle still have holidays for you guys and stuff.”

Four heads plus Ralsei’s snap to a single point. “Okay, bud.” Berdly crosses his arms.

“Uh, it’s true,” Susie says. “Because of woke or P.C. or whatever all the holidays for white people are gone. Like, Columbus Day is now Indigenous People’s Day. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but—”

“Susie.” Berdly swipes up his essay and starts shoving it into his bag. There back’s all fucked up, jagged and protruding; the plate shattered during that school shooting the other day, and I guess he never had a chance to replace it. “Susie,” he says again, “do we somehow not live in the same state where one county over you filthy inbred [COMEDY]—mick [COMEDY] [COMEDY] ginger leprechaun potato-[COMEDY] pot-licking bog-jumping sheep-fucking [COMEDY] [COMEDY] [COMEDY] burn Glenside—” Headquarters of Newgrounds and Friday Night Funkin’. “—to the ground every single goddamn March seventeenth like fucking clockwork?”

“What? What’s St. Patty’s Day got to do with what I just said?”

“Susie!” A mania corrupts his usual range of emotion. “You just fucking said there aren’t any more white holidays.”

“Uh-huh,” she nods slowly. Her bottom jaw hangs in deference of his outburst, and her brow furrows.

“Susie. Saint Patrick’s Day is a white holiday.”

“Uh, no it isn’t.”

Berdly then makes an insane noise impossible to describe with words, hooks his shattered bag over a shoulder, and departs swiftly, without another word.

“It’s green!” Susie throws her hands in the hair. “It’s fuckin’ green, man! Is he, like, a moron or something?”

“I,” Noelle lets out in a peep befitting a small rat. “I think he means that St. Patty’s day is celebrated predominantly by mentally handicapped persons born from consanguineous inbreeding, of Caucasian descent.”

“Yeah, sure it is,” Sue says. “But all those ‘mentally handicapped persons born from consanguineous inbreeding’ spend the whole day wearing green. That’s, uh, kind of the whole point. You wear green or a Leprechaun pinches you.”

“Susie, you’re white.”

“‘Course I am,” she scoffs. “That’s why I’m bitching about how Noelle and Berdly each get a whole month for themselves and I don’t get anything to celebrate myself.”

“But you’re Irish.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Saint Patrick’s Day is an Irish holiday.”

“Yes. That’s the whole idea of it, yeah.”

“Ergo,” Noelle says, “Saint Patrick’s Day is a white holiday.”

Susie blinks quatrice. “It’s green.”

Noelle blinks quintice. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Yeah, of course I’m kidding.” Susie blinks hexice.

Susie busts a gut. As do I.

“Okay, okay, okay—!” I cry through tears of bliss. “What about—what do we think about Ashkenazi Jews?—are they white, too?”

Susie slaps her knee. “Like Miss Alphys?”

“Yeah, like, I’m leaving.” Presently Noelle stands. On cue, the bell rings, signaling the start of the school day.

I think I make it five feet out the door of our early morning detention room hideaway when Ceroba Kim checks me into a wall of lockers. I get a face full of her sharp eyes rending me to pieces.

“Dreemurr.” She slaps a hand against the locker next to my head. I wince when spit hits my face. “We need to talk.”

“People are staring,” I tell her. It’s a lie, but she turns away enough for me to slip under and away—least far enough to backpedal beyond the range of those claws of hers. She lunges forwards anyways and tries. By his reflex, not mine, Ralsei comes to my side and smacks her hand into the lockers.

“Ouch,” Ceroba grabs her paw. “I think you broke a claw or something.”

“Suck it up,” I say. Two more steps back and we’re a comfortable distance. It seems odd that I’m only now making this discovery, using Ralsei as a barrier between her claws and myself, but then that also runs the risk of the damn goat getting nicked; I’m not sure if his blood even can be spilt, or if Ceroba’s ‘ability’ will affect him alone or me as well.

“Whatever—wait, Dreemurr,” she calls to my turned back.

My arms fold, and I give her the time of day. “Class is starting soon. I’m not getting detention because of your stupid shit. My mom gave me enough already from last Friday.”

Her fists ball. She lets out a growl. “Dreemurr, can you please just hear me out on this?” She stomps forwards.

“Hey—don’t you dare.” I heel-pivot and run, good form carrying me to a set of double doors that I ram open; their mechanical inner workings prevent my weight from having too much say, and so a chill—literal and figurative—begins to punctuate a sharp pain trickling down my spine. Bracing against the door, I spin and prepare a back knuckle attack, but she hasn’t moved much, maybe between three or four yards away.

My hand moves to my neck, wincing as I find the point of injury and pull out something small and sharp. It’s a claw. Fake, by the looks of its opaque greyness. One of them types you layer over your real ones.

“The fuck?” I say.

Ceroba stalks forwards. I try to push through the door but strength leaves me exponential to her closing distance. “That encounter with Starlo this past Friday made me reflect on some of my most glaring weaknesses.” She brings up her fingers claw-like, grey save for one from her pinky—natural black. “My ‘ability’ is to ‘scratch’ ‘things’ with ‘my’ ‘claws’ and make them ‘cold’. That claw in your hand is ‘fake’, but it’s still a ‘claw’, and it’s still ‘mine’. In other words, I ‘bought the claw at the store’, thereby ‘establishing ownership’ over it. And just now ‘my claw’ has perforated your skin in a way that’s made you bleed. Sounds a lot like ‘scratching’ to me.”

“Dude, what?! That’s not fucking fair!” I try forceful, but it’s raspy and coughing.

“If it wasn’t fair it wouldn’t be working,” she smiles. “All three ‘criteria’—the ‘scratch’, the ‘claw’, and my ‘ownership’ over the claw—are fulfilled.” Her smile grows. “And now you’re mine.”

“Sorry, not interested.” But I can’t keep the words steady. The cold smites the bone directly, rattling my body from within. “But that’s still not fair. You flung ‘your’ claw, like, twelve feet, with enough speed and precision to embed itself in the back of my neck. That’s not normal.”

Ceroba rolls her eyes. “You really are stupid, aren’t you?” she says. “Obviously it’s a different ‘ability’ that flung the claw.”

A different ability? “A single person can have two different ‘abilities’? That’s still not fair.”

She does this half-scoff half-chuckle. “Of course not. That’d really be unfair. This is from Chujin. I had him use his ‘ability’ on my fake claw tips before coming here.”

Hum. Fresh Off the Boat’s been so complacent during the contemporary incidents that I’d nearly forgotten he had one. “What’s his ‘ability’ then?”

She does the scoffing thing again. “Like I’d tell you. And even if I did your stupid human pea-brain probably wouldn’t grasp the necessary particulars.”

My arms against the door fail completely, and my ass hits the floor. Near my legs a crumply brown paper bag hits the title. Whatever’s inside is weighty and dense—doesn’t bounce—doesn’t rattle or lose composure—and from a supplementary patting feels hard and angular.

“I was gonna give you a whole explanation about what’s exactly the issue,” Ceroba says. “Still would have made sure you’d be in class on time. But now you’re gonna have to trust me.”

“I don’t,” I cough out. She’s looming over me now. The cold is bad, but not fatally so like it should be. Like, what I mean to say is that I can still collect my thoughts and discern them from one another.

“You don’t have a choice.” As if hearing my thoughts she brings a pointed claw to my cheek, her real, pinky one, and pulls slightly, shedding a mote of blood. And then the real Winter begins.

“I doubt you’ve any functions or senses outside of what I’m immediately telling you,” Ceroba says, “so you’ll just have to synthesize that once I’m finished. And be glad that what I’m asking you is so simple. Take the bag, bring the bag to your first period class, then use the item in the bag. I don’t care how the fuck you use it or on whom, even on yourself, but the important thing is that you use it. ‘Kay?

“Now, I’m gonna step away in a few moments, and you’re gonna do exactly what I just said. ‘Kay? ‘Cause if you don’t then I’m gonna be fuckin’ livid and I swear to Jesus H I’ll murder you. ‘Kay?”

She takes one step back, and I have the freedom to unthaw what she’s just said from my immediate recollections. “Fuck you, bitch.”

“You’re gonna be late for class.” Ceroba takes another step back.

And so I heave with my back, pushing past the heavy metal doors and slipping through. They snap shut with a click.

The physical obfuscation has no say in the cold pain throttling my skeleton, but I can check her proximity by my suffering. I’m slumped a few moments on the other side of the door. I feel Ceroba’s distance lengthening, and the vignette tunneling my vision clears up a little.

My breaths are heavy. Muscles are stiff, they groan when I try to stand.

“Come on, Kris.” Ralsei unblurs into sight. Maybe he was always there, maybe he wasn’t, but he’s here now. “You’ve got a single minute ‘till class, which I’d say is close to one hundred fifty yards from here if you factor in the stairs. If you take an amateur’s gait you can make it—even sooner at your usual pace.”

He’s right. My phone says six-fifty-nine and twelve seconds, so maybe less than that, but my fear of discipline shunts me forwards. Adjusting my speed just above Ralsei’s moderate recommendation, my shoes squeak against the floor below me. The world passes in a blur. There’s a momentary hiccup, once I pull myself to the second floor with the railing for support, where I figure I must have gotten closer to wherever Ceroba is at the moment, when my lungs are suddenly spiked with a snap chill.

I hear a snark chuckling beside me. It’s Berdly. Wearing that hall monitor sash of his, he gestures with a feather to his wrist. “Tick-tock, Krissy.”

“Fuck you, [COMEDY].”

Maybe I’d ought to tell him about Ceroba, but without a cursed ability of his own, I fear I’d put him in harm’s undue way.

“That’s awfully considerate of you,” I hear Ralsei remark from the back of my thoughts.

Yeah, fuck you, too, [COMEDY].

“Twenty seconds, Kris. Just ‘round the bend.”

Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there.

A deep breath in scratches the sides of my frostbitten throat, and I’m off once more. I’ve still got that damn paper bag. Whatever it’s got weighs me down like a brick, less so because of its empirical weight, but more because of the way it very subtly tips my balance when I’m already gliding so fast down the hall.

“Um, alright class. That was just the bell. Why don’t we all open our textbooks to—”

I leverage my full weight against the classroom door, forcing through, knocking into Miss Alphys.

“Oh Jesus—Kris! What the heck?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, crouching to help her up. I can feel the dozens of eyes scrutinizing me. They send a shiver down me far more haunting than Ceroba’s ability ever could. But then I catch Susie grinning from the corner of my eye, and I stabilize.

“Hold on, Kris,” says Miss Alphys. My eyes snap shut, bracing for a rasping, but it never comes. “You forgot your lunch,” she says, holding up the paper bag. “Jesus, the heck’s in this thing?”

“Forty-Five ACP and five thousand dollars worth of cocaine.”

“Um, yeah,” she chuckles. “Alright then, Kris. How about you go take your seat and promise not to shoot up the classroom until we’re done going over the homework, and maybe I’ll forget about you missing the bell today.”

I take the paper bag. “Roger-doger.”

I shrug off Susie’s look that begs for context; she’ll have to be filled in later; and use her scrutiny to keep me sane until the back of the room. My chair is cold and uninviting, but I manage to sling my things to the floor and slide in without further ruckus. Miss Alphys’ lecture begins—something about Diophantine equations—and I finally get some respite. Ceroba’s ability is little more than a shiver prodding the edges of my cognition now, not gone, but she’s far enough to not hassle me. There’s that bag she gave me, but even she has to go to class, and I’m not so flimsy that I’ll capitulate to her demands in the absence of a more immediate threat to my well-being. There’s always that curiosity, as to what the bag may contain, but I push it out of mind for now. It’s far too early for this; I’m not yet a slave to the chemical wiles of caffeine, so it’s time to find some shuteye. Diophantus will understand, I’m sure.

Except that I can’t. My sight restrained, the rhythmic percussion of my heart keeps me wide awake. All the running and excitement must have jostled me out of the early morning funk, fine for now, but less fine in a few when that adrenaline cools and I’m stuck helpless in a free fall. It gives me some wincing anticipation like dread, but it’s more annoying than not. Sleep is so efficient a medium to skip through the boredom. I have to settle for staring at the cork board on the wall. In that dim room, there’s a bit of light coming through a hole in the tinted glass above—from that school shooting last week a stray shot hit the glass and ricocheted—nicked in the side of the neck the girl sitting next to me real good. She’s in the hospital, critical, but expected to survive. I’m fine, though.

The boredom continues. Miss Alphys is saying something but I’m so far removed from the context of the situation that I can’t possibly tune in now.

That paper bag’s still staring at me. There’s no harm in opening it, really. Just a quick peek to jolt my imagination and then back to staring off into space. Then again, I really oughtn’t surrender any of my precious autonomy to that Ceroba Kim. She gave it to me, thus opening it would entangle me in a drama I want little part in.

But then again, it probably beats sitting around doing nothing.

…

I open the bag.

Chapter Text

A packet of chalk dust and a 1911.

Very, very calmly, I close the bag and set it gently beside me on the floor. I face front, back straight, hands folded. Every mote of concentration goes to pretending like Miss Alphys has my uncleaved attention.

“Well, she trusts you enough to give you a gun and not immediately blow her brains out.”

I oblige Ralsei to shut the fuck up and let me think.

“Um, nuh-uh. Not this time,” he says, pacing behind me. From the front of the room Susie perks up from her own nap, checks behind her and sees him. I shrug. “We really need to think logically here, Kris,” sayeth the God-King of rationale. “Ceroba said that we should ‘bring the bag to [our] first period class, then use the item in the bag’. She also said that, quote: ‘I don’t care how the fuck you use it or on whom, even on yourself, but the important thing is that you use it.’ Unquote. But there are ‘two’ items in the bag. At first it’s not clear which she intends for us to use, but I think we can use the context clues of her words to our advantage. Again, she said she didn’t care ‘how’ we used ‘it’ or on ‘whom’. Obviously both the chalk and the gun can be both ‘used’ on a ‘whom’, but I can think of one reasonable way to ‘use’ the cursed chalk on someone, and the requisite plurality of ways to ‘use’ a gun on somebody.”

Okay then, Sherlock. What will you have us do? Shoot Miss Alphys and get us out of class early?

“Well that’s just the thing. Ceroba said that the only thing that matters is that you ‘use’ it. I think she’s gunning—no pun intended—for a distraction of some kind.”

A distraction. That would start to make some sense. But then I have no clue what she’s to gain from this. I have zero obligation to follow through with her plan, other than maybe her closing the gap with her ‘ability’, but like—

“She just gave you a freaking gun,” Ralsei punctuates the thought for me. “And not that dinky rimfire peashooter the cowboy wannabe was using—”

—heavy metal, an American Classic.

“Exactly.”

I check the paper bag again, testing the pistol’s weight. Bending out of my seat at an awkward angle, a few fingers aren’t enough to keep it steady, and I have to scramble to keep it from hitting the floor too hard.

“Seven rounds of Automatic Colt Pistol plus one in the chamber,” Ralsei says matter-of-factly, standing on the balls of his feet, head high, hands behind his back. “Ceroba’s a big fat meanie, but I don’t think she’s stupid. At least not all the way. Since she gave you that gun, she has to be pretty confident that you’ll use it the way she wants one way or another. That, or, she’s somehow arranged things such that it poses no threat to her.”

My thoughts dwell on her new ‘ranged attack’. My back was turned, so I have no idea how fast that thing hit me.

“If it’s beating nine hundred feet per second you’d be dead,” Ralsei says. “It stuck you in the back of the neck.”

But this is Chujin Ketsukane’s ‘ability’—about which we know very, very little. For all we know it could involve propelling things at a high speed with a steep deceleration before moment of impact. Like those dart thingies from Dune.

[S. O’Brien] You sure that thing isn’t filled with blanks?

[K. Dreemurr] wat

[S. O’Brien] I overheard Ralsei running his mouth.

[S. O’Brien] If Tojo just wants a distraction, then wouldn’t it make sense for it to be loaded with blanks?

[K. Dreemurr] blanks r still dangerous tho

[S. O’Brien] Yeah, at like point-blank range.

[S. O’Brien] At which point that ‘ability’ of hers starts to be a problem again…

[K. Dreemurr] she can use it at range now

[S. O’Brien] Uh huh. I caught bits and pieces of that from up here. That kind of sucks major ass, considering how strong she was to begin with.

[S. O’Brien] Anyways.

[S. O’Brien] Kris, check if my theory was right.

[K. Dreemurr] about the blanks??

[S. Susie] Yeah. Check now before we make any decisions.

I take another peek inside the bag.

[K. Dreemurr] cant

[K. Dreemurr] mag release is on the ground facing side

[S. O’Brien] Well damn, dude. Guess you better figure that out.

[S. O’Brien] Ask to use the bathroom or something. I dunno.

[K. Dreemurr] with a paper bag in hand???

[S. O’Brien] Stuff it in your shirt or something.

[K. Dreemurr] gr8 advice

[K. Dreemurr] lik thats not the most suspicious thing youve ever seen

[S. O’Brien] Dude, I’m just trying to help you out.

[S. O’Brien] Whatever Ceroba wants, she apparently wants it done during first period, so you’ve got to move your ass, one way or another.

[S. O’Brien] Figure out the sitch with the gun, then text me. I’ll find a way to get myself out of class. My ‘ability’ might be inert, but at the very least I can see others’.

[S. O’Brien] Also, consider giving Dess a ring. She’s about the only one I can think of who’s any match for Ceroba. She’s a Holiday, so I doubt there’ll be any trouble with her getting into the school.

[K. Dreemurr] how come ur super locked in on this

[S. O’Brien] Cuz this class is ass and Alphys doesn’t know how to teach.

[S. O’Brien] Aw, shit.

[K. Dreemurr] ?

[K. Dreemurr] oh.

The phone leaves my hands. Concealing it under my desk, in my lap, Miss Alphys is just the right height to reach over and snatch it.

“Um, Kris,” she says, folding and unfolding her hands. “If you’re feeling bored maybe you can help me run a few errands again.”

I peek over her shoulder. From the front row Susie looks back at me, shrugs.

“Yeah, okay,” I say. “I wanted to stop by my locker anyways.” I gesture vague to the paper bag.

“Oh, um, yeah, okay, Kris.” Miss Alphys’ brow furrows. “It’s just, uh, if you’re gonna shoot up the school—do us all a favor and pass over our classroom. Eh-heh… Get it? ‘Pass over’? As in, ‘Passover’? Oh, but maybe that isn’t so obvious if you’re not—”

“I get the joke,” I say quietly.

“Ah, um, alright then. Well I need to pass this down to the front office,” she says, sliding me one of those manilla folders. The fold is worn and creased, scars of reuse. “But, like, maybe don’t tell them I was making school shooting jokes. I’m gunning for a full-time gig—get it? ‘Gunning’?—and I don’t think that’d help my chances a whole lot.”

“I’ll think about it,” I nod, sliding out of my chair and grabbing the envelope. I take a detour past Susie’s desk. She looks down at the paper bag in my hand, and then up at me. Then past me to Ralsei, presumably behind me.

“Good luck,” she grunts.

I feel like telling her to go fuck herself, but I don’t wanna get into any more trouble, so I don’t. The door’s right there, and I’m sick of all the pairs of eyes crawling up and down my back.

“Oh, and Kris?” Alphys stops me again. It’s not until I’m in the hallway already, turning to see why the door hadn’t clicked shut, when I see her poking her head out. “I just called the office to let them know you’re already on your way. So, um, no detours—‘kay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, step one—”

Secure the keys. Right.

“Check the gun, Kris.”

Yeah, whatever. Luckily the bathrooms are empty. Paradoxically dry and frigid, there’s a permeating scent of chemicals that fills my nostrils. The lights overhead are their usual, sterile selves, but here—from intention or neglect—they’re adjusted slightly to wash the room a dull grey. Such that the grainy pastels of the tile walls are stripped of all their color. Two of the stalls are missing doors. The third is missing a toilet. Under normal circumstances I must absolutely stress that I’m not the type to venture into the handicapped stall, but it’s not like I’ll be there long anyways.

So I slip inside. It’s vast, sanitary, and the toilet’s been shit in, not on. I swear I hear my footsteps echo within, but that must be my imagination. There’s ample room for me to set down the bag and unpack its contents properly.

The 1911 is just overlarge for my hand. Sweat pools in the web between my thumb and forefinger. The grip safety feels tender, and I’m paranoid to accidentally depress it flush with the rest of the metal—even if the manual is still on. My thumb finds the release and ejects the magazine into my empty hand. I almost expect a profile of metal scraping metal, but that’s just a sound effect. Instantly the pistol’s weight in the other seems to halve.

So Susie’s a moron for giving me any false hope of the rounds being fake.

“Don’t say that.” Ralsei crosses his arms.

“Step two: Ascend from darkness.” I say aloud. In that still bathroom, my voice alone is enough to rattle the stall door.

“Kris, please quit messing around.” Ralsei sighs like he’s never heard of the levity benefits of a little trolling. “This is serious.” And yet he knows that I know. “Step two is text Susie and let her know.”

Sure, whatever, Hitler. The message goes out within the next five seconds, and then I find myself also sending a message to December. I’d bet her Summer break ass isn’t even up so early, but it’s worth a shot. “Step three: Rain fire—complete,” I say, sliding my phone back into my trousers. Now that’s done—“But we gotta move on to step four pretty quick—”

“Unleash the horde.”

“Huh?” Ralsei and I turn to the new voice, just outside the stall.

“I said, unleash the horde,” the voice says again.

We swing the door open, Ralsei and I, both. It’s Temmie Chang.

She stands upright. “Oh, it’s you two cuntfuckers. You know, there’s only so many crippled bitches like me at this school, so I was wondering what kind of dicklicking asshole leaves three of the normal stalls unoccupied and goes straight for the handicapped one. But, yeah, this makes a whole lot more sense.”

It takes me five more seconds to realize I’m still holding the gun.

“Oh, no, dude! Please, by all means, I’d love to have the day off school. Just, like,” and here her grin falters, cocks her head, “um, maybe just leave me out of it? Pretty please?”

I pretend like I’m deep in contemplation. “Sure, okay.” I slot the magazine in with a click. It rails in slowly, path guided by the contours of its metal insides. Temmie stares at me the whole way. Our eyes meet, and the blush creeping up my face forces me to avert my gaze. “Anyways, uh, sorry about the whole stall thing.”

“Yeah—I mean, it’s no prob. I—”

Her voice catches, eyes go wide. Her breathing, a person’s breathing, usually so invisible, rockets to a sharp crescendo. I feel the splash of something with weight. But my shirt is fine. Done frisking my shirt, I see the source of her sudden distress. Protruding from her chest, upon which a dark red stain begins its spread, juts out a pointed, angular bit of metal. In the dulled lights its crimson-stained surface feels like the roughness of a dry oil paint.

Then point retreats into the dark crevice in her chest which it formed. More red pours down her shirt, and I find my defensive instincts sending me leaping backwards. She falls forward, face hitting the ground with a sharp crack I can hear.

Standing just behind her, bloodied kitchen knife in hand, is the one and only Ceroba Kim.

“Step five: Skewer the winged beast,” she says darkly, panting once.

My legs buckle. I’m staggered, retreating into the stalls. “Holy fuck!” I cry. “You fucking killed her!” My loose grip on the 1911 hardens. My thumb finds the manual safety and flicks it off, but I don’t raise it. “Dude, what the fuck, man?!”

“Calm down.” Ceroba lays out a careful palm. “She’s not dead.”

“She looks pretty fucking dead to me!” I wince. My ears ring at my screaming words deflecting sharply off the bathroom tile and jabbing my ears. Suddenly the handicap stall I’m inching further and further back into feels so very small. I want to squeeze shut my eyes, but I can’t keep my eyes away from the scene for so long, lest I let my guard down in a moment of final error. “Jesus fuck!”

“Dreemurr!—get your shit together!” She lets the knife fall to the ground with a clatter. The metal ring brings my ears under attack again. Then she lunges. My arms falter in worthless struggle to raise the barrel of the gun to center mass, and so I let her grab both sides of my arms. “Dreemurr!” she shouts again. “You’ve gotta use your head. I’m telling you—she’s not dead!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true,” Ceroba says. “Tell me, do you really think I’m that crazy that I’d kill some random cripple in cold blood?”

“Yes!! Ever since we met, you’ve literally demonstrated that in every possible way!” My upper body jerk against her hold. “You’re a fucking psycho!”

“Dr—Kris!” Clutching my arms tighter, she brings her face close to mine. My eyes nearly cross as her breathing snout comes in and out of focus. “Look, Temmie Chang isn’t dead. This is the result of an ‘ability’—isn’t that obvious? This is an ‘enemy attack’, Dreemurr.”

The room around us screeches to a halt. It becomes utterly still, save for the soundless swinging of the handicap stall door behind Ceroba. There’s the minute clicking of something mechanical in the walls, the rush of water under pressure, the tiptoe skittering of a thousand thousand-legged things going their entire lives in darkness. I hear Ceroba’s breathing, more like panting. I can feel the way her flesh grabs my arms, but I don’t feel anything sharp; she’s being careful not to scratch me. Then I realize how close she is, so close that I can nearly feel the rhythm of her beating heart. That I should damn well be an ice cube by now. She took the precaution to in some way deactivate her ‘ability’ before coming to find me.

“Okay,” I breathe out wispily. Finger off the trigger, I offer both my palms. “Okay, just tell me what the fuck is going on.” Just as I say this I come to realize that Ralsei’s still coming out of being stunned himself. He’s been pressed up against the wall in ghostly shock, taking it worse than me, this whole time. He locks in pretty pretty gradually.

“No—no funny business,” he tells Ceroba, pushing up his glasses with a finger.

“Yeah.” Ceroba releases me. “Yeah, alright.” Immediately the damned goat rushes over to make a fool of me, checking my arms and face to make sure I’m alright. I’m him. He knows I’m alright. “I remember you told me,” Ceroba begins, clearing her throat, “that Temmie Chang could see your—er—fursona—pal—guy…” She tries to make eye contact, but Ralsei keeps coming between us with his fussing. Eventually she gives up. “Anyways,” she says, “that would obviously mean she has an ‘ability’. One that, up until very recently, went unaccounted for. You remember that?”

“When she told me that she had eaten chalk, she specifically mentioned that she had no clue what ‘ability’ it had bequeathed unto her, nor any real way to figure out its parameters, save for, as she put in other words, frivolous trial and error.” My voice echoes. It still rings my ears while I’m coming down from a heightened sense of panic.

“Uh-huh,” Ceroba hums. “Whether she was lying or not makes little difference right now. But here, come see this. It’s easier if I show you.” Finally she leaves my personal space, and for the first time in several minutes I can breathe. Ralsei quietly pats me on the back, and then I blink. Ceroba’s back in a matter of seconds with a paper towel. “Check this,” she says, bending down, then dips a finger into the entry wound where she stabbed Temmie’s body. It makes a squelching sound. I wanna throw up. “See how her blood stains my fur like this? Now see when I use the paper towel—” She wads up the paper towel and dips it into the wound. No blood when she pulls it out. “See? It stuck to me because I’m ‘cursed’. But since these ‘chalk abilities’ can’t interact with ordinary objects, the towel doesn’t pick up any blood. But look, here’s the weird part—” She drops the balled up paper onto the body. It bounces off Temmie. “See this? The body isn’t cursed. Just the blood is. But based off what I’ve seen so far, only ‘cursed people’ can actually see these bodies to begin with, even if they interact with normal people and objects. I’m thinking that must be part of her ‘ability’.”

“I dunno,” I frown, still leaning against that wall with Ralsei.

“It’s an exception to the rules,” she says. “Specific beats general.”

I cross my arms. “But these ‘abilities’ are supposed to be singularly themed, right? That is to say, you could summarize each one with a single sentence. Circumventing the basic rules of the chalk itself seems a little too grand to be a footnote in the layout of somebody’s ‘ability’. It’s too convenient.”

“Well maybe that ‘single sentence’ is something out of the box that we’re not thinking of,” Ceroba says. “Or it could be something meticulously worded.”

“Okay, fine,” I say. Obviously she’s proven it empirically with the paper towel. Any debating it now is pretty useless. “So then what’s Temmie’s ability, then? It’s primary function, I mean.”

She holds my gaze. “Simulacra,” she pronounces, in four partitioned syllables.

“Simulacra.” I echo her.

“Yeah. You know, like, you ever read Jean Baudrillard?”

“No. I’m not a dweeb.”

Ceroba flinches. “Not in my free time. I read it in class last year.”

“Sure. You read a lot of yaoi there, too? What class? Which teacher?”

“It’s a postmodern thing,” she says, moving on. “On mass media, consumer culture, the American way of life. How our reality has become comprised of simulacra. Like Disney, how a Disney theme park is a simulacra of a Disney movie, which in turn is a simulacra of whatever the fuck fairy tale, which is in turn is a simulacra of its original inspirations; or, in another example, you could look at the present Middle East. See, American culture doesn’t perceive the Middle East; rather, it perceives the media’s portrayal of it. In other words a simulacra—an imperfect copy of actual fact. Temmie Chang’s power works in exactly the same way. Her ‘simulacra’ don’t actually exist in the same way the Middle East doesn’t actually exist to the median American. This thing bleeding out on the ground might seem like Temmie Chang, but in reality it’s a facsimile, a portrayal of her real self.”

“So she can make copies of herself,” I say, dog-tired.

“She can make copies of herself.”

“And you brought up all that philosophy nonsense just to be a show-off cunt.”

“I was trying to give background stuff. Like, you know, context and stuff.”

“Okay, fine. I get it,” I say. “So what’s all this nonsense with the gun?” I hold up the pistol. “Or the paper bag with chalk dust?”

“I needed a distraction,” she says.

“I figured as much,” I say.

“That’s not chalk, by the way. It’s cocaine.”

“How the fuck is cocaine gonna help me create a distraction?”

“Well I put it in a paper bag for you,” she shrugs. “I was thinking you could’ve stashed it somewhere then reported it to a teacher. Would’ve caused enough of a fuss for me to make it past that security guard watching the old basement under the gym.”

“And you needed me to do this,” I say.

“Yeah, what’s the matter with that?”

“You really are insane,” I tell her. Arms slack, I lean left and right, looking for an angle past her. “I’ve gotta drop a folder off at the front office,” I say. “I’m probably already in trouble taking too long to get there.”

Ceroba blocks me off. “Once we get the distraction going you won’t need to worry about that any more.” She points down at the simulacra. “So shoot her in the back of the head and let’s get a move on.”

“What happened to reporting the paper bag, or whatever?” I say. “Firing off a gun is gonna cause a whole ‘nother kind of issue.”

“Yeah, well change of plans.” She jerks a thumb back to me, still holding the gun. “Your grubby human fingerprints are already all over it. Step six: Wield a fist of iron.”

“She’s already stabbed through the chest,” I say.

“Double tap, motherfucker.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Her eyes sharpen. “I’m dead fucking serious, Dreemurr. Shoot her.”

“Wait.” Finally Ralsei snaps out of his funk the rest of the way. A spectator until now, he interposes himself between Ceroba and myself. “Now wait just a moment. Kris is the one with the gun. Why’re you the one bossing them around? What’s to stop them from just shooting you?”

“Because I know you’re not a killer.” She says this straight through him, directly to me. “And since I know that you’re too vain for that—your friend Noelle’s found herself in some serious trouble right now. And I’m sure you’ll help me save her.”

I catch the look in her eye that’s mostly serious, but there a humming undercurrent to it that’s almost teasing. Where she’s wrong is that while lingering feelings may give me a certain resolve in times of action, my decision is made on the grounds of her being my dear, dear friend, whom I would want nothing for but safety and well-being.

Without breaking line of sight through Ralsei, I aim the gun to the back of Temmie’s head and pull the trigger.