"Fuck. What the fuck? I'll kill them."
Darkness had invaded my skull, pouring in through my ears and nostrils, and I discovered that grunting (combined with drooling and grimacing really hard) was the only way to force it out. I was waking up (or coming to exist), stuck in a moment that had been formed without my input. I sat on my butt on the floor, hands cuffed together over the pole fixed behind me, surrounded by concrete and shadows and the sponge-painted sable of black mold. At some point, I figured, my attackers must have slid my face through gravel, as I spat the lingering bits of it from my mouth.
"They struck you with metal pipes. Repeatedly. That broke your teeth. I assume you swallowed a few fragments. Even by the standards of a typical three-on-one beating, that was tough to watch. I was rooting for you, though."
"Goddamn it, my hands. They feel fuckin' mangled--"
"I was at home," the voice continued. "An ectoplasmic web dragged me here. A portal opened first, naturally, like a rift in the air itself, and we all tried to fly out the room at once. My brothers--in the chaos, in their haste and, presumably, terror, my brothers--I got pushed to the front of the group. Which, as fate would tragically demonstrate, became the back of the group. Instead of escaping together as a family, there was...I was payment for others' freedom."
"Am I dead? Is this the afterlife? Does the afterlife talk?"
While I waited for an answer, sobs began to pulse from my chest. "I'm so. Annoyed."
A sphere of orange light no larger than a baseball hovered in the corner. That light conversed with me.
"As to what I am, the closest parallel identified in your folklore would be faerie, and I promise you, my brother-in-captivity, we do not grace the afterlife now. Three demon hunters possessing a genuine grimoire, they're the ones who dragged me off my home plane. Stuck me in this dank, fungus-spore hell. The binding sphere they placed around me is powerful. I cannot cross its boundary. My magic also cannot cross, which--to my rising detriment and outrage--precludes any spell I might use to annihilate those who keep us."
"Who. Fuck this. Who are you talking about?"
"Jeremy, Lucas, and Mateo. Their plan is to slice your neck open, collect your blood in a bucket, then submerge me in that blood. If they succeed, they gain control of me. My magic will be theirs to wield."
I had no reply, and, at least from the talking orange light's perspective, the silence pouring into the timeline seemed a bit cavalier given the circumstances, which made me laugh. I laughed at how much I didn't care. Laughed at the mountain of shredded punch cards my attention had fashioned from the previous three minutes. Discordant cackling, not so confined as the rest of me, expanded, amplifying with each further element–magic and faeries, Mateo and human sacrifice–until my derision shook the sky.
"That’s ridiculous,” I announced, squinting away tears while fighting to breathe, to re-inflate my insides. "I don’t believe it. How dumb you sound is actually more upsetting to me than my smashed-up face. Fuck you, leave me alone."
"Why argue with me? Refusing to accept your situation will not stay their blade."
Disorientation, a bingo cage, had roughed up my brain, synergizing with multiple injuries to prevent my movement aside from the complication by handcuffs. But I could still glower. I could still logic my way out of any illusion. Or reality.
"Okay, Floating Representation of Some Aspect of Myself, why don’t they use animal blood? Or their own blood?"
"The spell specifies both 'man' and 'sacrifice.' Those ingredients cannot be overlooked. Emphasizing--"
I grimaced. I rocketed blood from my nostrils. One more second of rational thinking had buoyed some clarity above the chop.
"These are death-visions," I concluded. "I’m dying."
"You are not dying."
"I’m hallucinating. I’m a substance abuser who got his noggin bashed a bunch of times recently. Jeremy squeezing my head extruded the last bits of cohesion from my psyche. Mateo is not here. His life has not interwoven with mine. He lied, quite obviously by virtue of the claim, about killing demons, because he cannot be privy to something that awesome. Additionally, my tailbone is drinking from an endless pool of agony right now."
"My strategy does not require you to believe anything about anyone. I need only your cooperation, Greg. You can save me, and my magic will reward the undertaking. Stop being proud of your 'analytical skeptic's mind' and just acquiesce to what your environment tells you. Even if this is all a dream, it is a dream where you have to win, and if you win, you get to acquire something you want. Greg. What recompense shall I devise for you?"
He had not convinced me. I had not convinced myself. But I wanted to hear his promise.
"So, if I manage to save you, whatever that means and however that works, I get a magical prize? Although you are a phantasm?"
"Within the ambits of my power, yes."
I pondered the proposition. Even if everything around me was a figment, I still preferred not to be trapped. Preferred not to be a loser who died in his own dream.
"Fuck it, I'll do it. But I need a down payment. Two separate wishes, total."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you! My gratitude, joy, and relief surpass description. And, yes, I can fulfill that proviso. Gladly! Please, tell me, what may I prepare for you?"
Step, step, step, step. Footfalls. In my delusion, in the real world, they grew louder, doubling as a countdown.
Step, step, step, step.
"Prepare? I need that shit now. I need to be...Zain the Nonpareil. Give me the power of Zain the Nonpareil. Fuck! How do I explain it--"
"Curate the details in your mind, that should suffice. But if we're going to transmute your body, you'll have to find a way to actually, physically touch me."
#
Devin’s expression--the indignation of an autocrat who has been told that the poor cannot be burned as fuel to heat his bath water--tested my regard for the social compact.
He was in bed with Maria. I pulled off their blanket, turned on the light. They squinted like a solar eclipse had been liquefied in a blender then poured onto their eyes.
"I asked you a goddamn question. Who...ate...my fruit snacks?"
A sigh. At the nuisance. "I’ll take care of this," Devin whispered to Maria.
"I know," she said. "Please hurry, though. I’m cold."
#
Two junior zealots knelt before me with Pastor standing behind them. On the right, Jeremy held a gray plastic bucket, ready for the collection of my jugular bounty. On the left, Mateo waited for the command to advance the hunting knife he held. In seconds, the church basement’s conversion to human abattoir would be complete.
My left hand, only partway destroyed, had been furthering the mutilation done to my right, tearing away skin and muscle to shrink the overall dimensions. Subtracting meat from my total mass seemed antithetical to preserving me, yet I plucked, and with each pluck, I ripped out the heart of an alternate universe Greg, absorbing the health from that lesser version to stockpile "here and now" survival odds. My hand was a carcass. My hand was a starving hawk. I grunted, cried, and convulsed, whipping my head in all directions in what continued to be a bad time for my neck and brain. I retracted then kicked out my good leg. I screamed "fuck you" at my captors--normal behavior for someone protesting his role as "blood sacrifice blood supplier." The most pain I'd ever felt was being done to me by me. So fuck everyone, I thought, clawing apart brisket to fling on the concrete. Pastor gave instructions.
"Find something to tie his legs. Greg, stop fussing."
"Or what? You'll kill me?"
I pulled my hand, the piranha-snack, free. I knocked Mateo's knife-arm away, cuffs still flapping dramatically as I grabbed his coat to pull myself up. Rising from a single genuflection en route to standing, I discovered that pain had transformed my right leg into a different state of matter--the waterfall of screaming flesh pouring into my shoe could not support me.
"No knife! Save his blood."
The bucket banged on the floor as Jeremy and Pastor, on either of my shoulders, slammed me into the pole. When I rubbed my bone hand on Jeremy's face (The Reaper has been mixing bulgogi without a glove!), he let go of me, stacked his palms over his eye, because my fingers had raked his cornea. The same concept, a triple poke from my "devoured chicken wing" thumb, repelled Pastor. I wrenched a fistful of Mateo's hair in my flesh hand, pushing off his upright rigidity to propel myself toward Byron. The glowing orange ball was life. Words on a page, my handwriting on lined paper, I shoved that image to the front of my mind, projecting a unicorn's horn to lead me. I hopped on my good leg. I reached, I reached, I reached. The atoms in my distal phalanx could graze the photons of--
Someone had my legs. Someone had my arm. Someone choked me from behind. Before I could fight, before I could flail, they carried me away from Byron. The world escaped my senses...
Standing up again. Layer by layer, the scenery drifted back into focus. Phantoms clawed at me, trying to pull me back to the fog that permeates a mind.
I wiggled my fingers, ran a glissando tongue check over my teeth.
Mateo, crouching with the knife in his hand, looked up at me, my continued interference baffling him. Again, I grabbed his hair. Pulling him toward me, I drove my kneecap into his face, staring in disbelief at the scalp in my hand, at the blown apart charcuterie of a man’s head brightening the wall. At the incomplete body fallen across my feet.
"That...was an accident," I said, dropping the freshly harvested wig.
Pastor Lucas eyed the door. Jeremy dove for the hunting knife, rising to kill me with a reverse grip slash on my throat. I admired the refinement and accuracy. And certainty.
"The blood--" Pastor reminded.
Jeremy’s technique spurned the instruction; cupping the back of my neck, he rammed a knifetip into my chest, into my armpit, repeatedly and without fatigue. To make him stop, I lightly crushed the bones in his wrist until he surrendered the knife. Clang, it went. That ox, God’s attack dog, could not hurt me. He killed my shirt, however.
"Both of you, sit. Criss cross applesauce."
#
Devin settled on single-digit millimeters between us. I could have sworn his chin expanded during the stare down.
"I let my girlfriend take...five or six pouches. It’s not a big deal. Didn’t you learn how to share in kindergarten?"
"They’re gone. It’s a box of air. Replace them, now."
Devin groaned (or did his version of a growl) before walking away a few steps. Attaining a satisfactory distance, he turned to face me again, rushing forward--step step step step--then halting when our noses touched. I felt the breeze from his little sprint.
"Oh. I’m supposed to flinch when you do that."
A jumble of pent-up shouting and lively gesticulation flew out of Devin. "Why do you even talk? Why are you here? Get the fuck out of my room. Or I will beat. Your ass."
"Only my ass? I might ejaculate from that, baby girl."
Maria had gotten off the bed, stood by her man. "No one likes you, leave us alone."
The teasing, the goading, were done. I stated my only demand. "Everyone is going to pay me back for everything."
"Or what?" Devin asked.
#
"Hey. Hey, you. Floating light."
"Byron Cinquefoil Chickadee."
"What? That’s your name?"
"You cannot pronounce my real name. I chose a name that you can pronounce."
"Okay. May I call you Byron?"
"Yes, you may."
"Byron. How do we turn off the spell?"
"Lucas can merely wish, decide for it to cease. Killing him can also break it."
Pastor gave no reaction, inaudibly prayed with his head down. Two of the men who tried to sacrifice me via bloodletting sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, obedient because of my newly obtained power.
"Although you beat me with metal pipes. And imprisoned me. And tried to murder me. Twice. I will give you...one chance. Pastor Lucas, if you can successfully rape Jeremy, while he is awake, I won’t kill you. And Jeremy. Vice versa. Raping."
The way Byron glowed, the way Byron hovered, showed no change.
A visage of weathered rock bent with a frown. The nimbus, the golden light surrounding who was originally Pamphlet Guy, clicked off. The two men disapproved.
"I’m joking. If you want to rub your penis on that stucco, hail-damage face, there should be consent."
Jeremy shook his head. My continued existence had wounded his belief that mankind was worth all that he had given it.
Pastor smiled. "I have decided to help you, Greg. To share with you my optimum solution. I guarantee--"
Pouncing like a pedant on a divergent-view typo, I grabbed Pastor’s throat, slamming him into the wall.
"You are not masterminding the situation. You have no reason to be calm. If you smile again, if you talk about a favor you did for me, I will simulate eating you alive."
Anticipating confusion, I expounded my threat. "By holding you down and biting pieces off your flesh. But instead of num num num eating, I spit the pieces out. And your skin. And your meat. And your slivered bone will clog the spaces between my teeth."
When Pastor gave no response, I relaxed my hand. He fell down, gasping.
"The faerie stays trapped on the effort of my concentration. He cannot prevent you from attempting the fey enslavement. Or remove any gifts you already possess. Find another man. Fill that bucket with blood. Immerse the fabulous, glowing varmint so he has to do your bidding. Greg, you can endow yourself with every ambition achieved. I will maintain the confinement spell for you."
"And in exchange?"
"Please do not kill me. Please do not kill Jeremy. And save our families. We sought the advantages of faerie magic only to save our families. They were taken hostage while completing missionary work. They are alive, we cannot afford the ransom."
"Which falls beyond my purview," Byron said.
Pastor stood up. "That worthless faerie, and his brethren before him, denied us--"
I pointed at the floor. "Sit."
Pastor sat, restraint re-joining him. "A rival church kidnapped our families. They want The Infinite Shard, our sacred book, as a trade to release them."
"Then, I guess you should give them The Infinite Shard?"
I could see the graveness, the meditation on consequences, building up to his reply. "Without it, we are vulnerable to The Calamitous Horde."
No information followed. This dire moment, or this ongoing TBI delusion, really demanded prompting to prove audience interest. I should have answered his dramatic pause by exploding his upper half with a front kick.
"And...that is?"
"The army of demons who seek to eradicate mankind while the Bear God, our god, hibernates. They are abducting humans, Greg. Their coup de grace, their mongrel abomination entwining sorcery and alchemical depravity, eats human flesh. Men, women, and children are being fed to the monster--"
"Eradicate mankind, huh. That’s genuinely interesting. And this rival church, the kidnappers, your feud with them has lasted--"
"Eight-hundred years."
Disbelief tried warping my face into a smirk. The details imperiling their loved ones mimicked the worldbuilding notes from a video game. A video game whose intro I totally would have skipped.
"I should have assumed that. What do you call your god?"
"Bjorn Prime. The Fang, The Claw, Almighty and True."
"That’s...yeah, of course."
Pushing my thumbnail into my finger or biting my inner cheek confirmed nothing unless I believed my various cortices immune to malfunction.
"Okay," I said, half-suppressing a laugh, "and after your god wakes up?"
"If we, as commanded, to the final heartbeat erase The Calamitous Horde, our mettle and devotion, thusly demonstrated, shall be rewarded with a paradise beyond fathoming. As Bjorn Prime awakens, the death of demonkind honors his opening eye. Although he may sleep, his rule does not."
I didn’t bother telling Pastor that, as viewed by the demons, his god was a slumbering evil whose disciples lived for murder.
Jeremy talked. "The Infinite Shard is primeval scripture, a codex of history, belief, and magic bestowed to the faithful remainder by--"
I stomped, spreading a spiderweb fracture into the floor, a tremor up the walls. "This conversation will not be joining my limited pantheon of moments."
#
"Here."
Maria grabbed a wallet off the dresser, selecting from it a mystery amount of paper money which got crumpled then tossed into the hallway.
"Can you leave us alone now?" she asked.
"Probably," I said, turning to forfeit the staring contest.
I heard the door slam. Heard Devin call me a "fucking weirdo." Heard the beautiful echo of my patella crunching Mateo’s head. I took Maria’s five dollars then drove to work.
#
Pastor Lucas and Jeremy, my prisoners in the basement, exuded the energy of two kids pleading their way out of detention. They insisted that devising my death came right after the headlock squabble, and that killing me seemed attractive only because it presented fewer complications than--"...abducting a homeless man after midnight," Jeremy was saying. "Which, I'll admit, we were not keen about doing. So, when you came here then disrespected us, picked a fight, it seemed like--"
"Fate," Pastor finished.
"I understand," I said. "And your situation is desperate because of family."
"Family," Pastor agreed.
"Tell me about them. The captured ones. Jeremy, who did they get?"
"My parents. And my little brother."
"And if you contact the police, or refuse to give up The Infinite Shard, that other church will...what will they do?"
"Kill them."
"How old is your little brother?"
"Six."
"They’re going to kill a six-year-old?"
"You can save him, Greg."
"Visualize them. Imagine their plight. Bring me in, connect me to what happened. The only way I can help is if I'm allowed to feel--"
"He was wearing his favorite shirt," Jeremy said, eyes shut. Fake or actual somberness--or a handful of chopped peanuts he had eaten without me noticing--clogged his larynx, straining his voice. "And I guess he wears it a lot. It’s the one clothing item he owns that isn’t a hand-me-down, my parents don’t have--they practice saving money. Other kids, apparently, because they care about this stuff, mock him--form a group and ridicule him--for wearing the same thing so often, but my brother doesn’t...he’s proud of the new shirt his mom and dad bought him. He’s not aware of any norms, and then other people want to make him feel ashamed? Over a shirt? Over his parents not--"
"What’s on the shirt? What does it look like?"
"It has a cartoon cow, and the letters above the cow say, ‘Good Mood Dude.’ But the word ‘mood’ has five or six ‘Os’ like the cow is pronouncing it, mooing."
Jeremy slouched, opened his eyes.
"Hey," I said, stepping closer. "What’s your brother’s name?"
"Kyle," he said.
"Jeremy. Jeremy. Listen to me. Your brother Kyle...is going to die wearing that shirt."
I grabbed Pastor by the mid spine, plunging my fingers around the vertebrae, lifting him off the floor as he screamed his final scream. Jeremy sprang up. He gouged my eyes. He bit my neck. He punched--and also tried to crush--my testicles. So I flung him by the collar toward the Mateo cadaver.
Bringing my human catch to shoulder level, I ran at the wall, hurling Pastor at the bricks from a distance of three feet. His bones, his overall weight smashing into a hard surface, kissed my ear drums. After dropping to the floor, Pastor Lucas convulsed in a garish display of remaining life force. His indestructible face bled from a torn-open flap on the forehead.
"No!"
Jeremy charged at me, but he was not mine. I restrained him--squashed his dramatic surge--by palming his face and squeezing.
"Byron," I said to the floating orb, no hint of struggle in my voice, "can I get my prize?"
As though on cue, Pastor’s writhing and pointless, respiratory fanfare ended with a sputter. His corpse’s blue eyes dazzled in their stillness.
"It’s in your pocket, Greg. Thank you for this."
Before sacrificing Jeremy to faerie vengeance, I grabbed him by the shoulders then whispered my farewell. "I bet you wish you had walked up to someone else that day."
He blew his nose into his hand. After inspecting the result, he wiped the nasal muck onto his pants. "Why would I regret the will of God?"
Byron floated toward the man who had wronged him. I backed away, briefly nervous about my own vulnerability.
"I could torture you for a thousand years," Byron stated. "Magically prolong your suffering. I could--"
Jeremy, using two hands, snatched the talking scoop of sherbet from the air, jamming it against his face for a bite.
Then two bites.
Then three.
No pieces hit the floor.
An invisible force knocked me down, slid me backward as I fought to crawl, fought to save Byron. The howl from an aggrieved elemental sentience rattled the world. Orange light pinwheeling from Jeremy’s stomach filled the room with an eyeball-frying flash. When my vision returned, mine was the only body that remained; fading orange sparkles had replaced the dead as well as their impact splatter, and Jeremy and Byron were gone.
