I'm going to post all of my writing in this entry from now on. I'll let you all know when I've updated via new entires. Just makes it less complicated. I'm too lazy to find all the italics and crap, so if you think something should be italicized or something, chances are... it is.
Family.
Forgot what that word meant. It’s different now. Different when your life flashes before your eyes and now you’re here, tied down on a fucking stretcher, needles and tubes and wires stuck in your flesh and sending all sorts of electrical and biomechanical impulses through your veins, commanding you and telling you what the fuck you’re supposed to be thinking.
Funny, how ‘different’ is the only word that comes to mind when I think of then and now.
Looking back, I can’t say I would have done anything any differently... unless I had been given a chance, a choice... a cause. But I wasn’t given shit.
No matter.
If there’s a point in sitting here, thinking of everything I could have done better, then I don’t see it. What’s done is done. Remember it and move on. Learn from it, but don’t dwell on it. If there’s a single fucking lesson that’s been battered into my brain, it’s the one that screwed me over and landed me in this shithole. I used to think life was hell.
Never again. Never, never again will I make that mistake.
“What is that.”
I pretended not to hear her and continued scratching my pen against the paper, digging the tip into it as hard as I could. Black ink was smudged on my hands and face, and I was pretty sure I got fingerprints all over the desk in the process.
Not that I cared.
Mother, however, was a different story.
“Xirtrian, what are you doing,” she said, her voice getting louder.
Again, I ignored her. If she was too stupid to figure it out herself, then that was her problem, not mine. And here adults thought they knew everything. Figures.
“I’m talking to you, Xirtrian, now answer me-“
“Answer her, you dumb fuck,” I heard my father growl from the living room. “You stupid or something?”
I refrained from rolling my eyes at him. No reaction. That was the key.
“Xirtrian, you’re making a mess. Clean that up and put it away.”
When I didn’t move, she got frustrated with me and snatched the pen out of my hand. “Listen to me.”
I stared at her blankly. There was something indistinguishable in her eyes, something that was always hiding there.
I saw her gaze flicker to my father, and the spines on her shoulders went limp. Fear. So much fear and pain and hurt in her expression, but it was so brief that it was hardly noticeable.
Except to me.
I saw it clearly, in every movement, in every word. That absolute fear.
Never understood it. Never understood what was wrong with the foundation of my life. My support system. My family.
I loved my mother. At least, I thought I did. It was hard to understand the tangle of emotions that spun around in my head. Right now, I felt absolutely nothing.
I stood up stiffly and walked away without a word.
The second my door shut, I heard her pick up the paper. I assumed she was looking at it. My curiosity got the better of me when I thought about seeing her reaction, so I opened the door a crack and looked down the hallway. She hadn’t even glanced at it. I watched with disappointment as she absentmindedly dropped it into the trash and started scrubbing the table.
Well, whatever. No big deal. What did I care, if she was interested or not.
That’s when good old dad must have finished his television show. I closed the door, not wanting to listen to their screaming.
As if it blocked any of it out.
I turned off my lights and crawled under my bed, pressing the side of my head against the cold hard floor. The dark seemed to bring some kind of solace, even if it was hardly there to begin with. I dug around under the bed until I found my headphones, then put them on and turned the volume up so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else.
Anything else at all.
Laid there for hours in the dark, listening to the same disk over and over. Couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard I tried. The doctor said I had insomnia, or something similar. Then again, I hadn’t seen the doctor since two years ago, back when I was five. We couldn’t afford health insurance anymore, so for all I knew, I had a trillion other diseases and medical issues that I had never heard of.
Ignorance is bliss.
I was supposed to go to school tomorrow, but I really didn’t feel like going. I’d just pretend to go, like I did every other day. Besides, mother and father both left for work before I got up for school anyway, and we didn’t have a telephone anymore so the school couldn’t really notify my parents of my absence. I’m sure they’d find some way to contact them eventually, but until then, I didn’t plan on attending.
A couple hours later I heard my door rattle in its hinges and knew the front door had been opened and closed. It wasn’t long before I heard it again, and knew both parents were gone.
Now I had the house to myself.
I got out from under the bed and set my music player on my desk. Then I proceeded to walk through the entire house and shut off all the electronic devices and all the lights, like I did every other day. Apparently, the parental units had no concept of conserving energy-and therefore, having a lower electric bill.
Not that they paid any bills, ever.
Humming to myself, I opened up the food storage, hoping to find something edible.
You know, there really is a reason why they tell you to never get your hopes up about anything.
I closed it and walked into the living room, picking up the empty beer bottles lying scattered all over the floor, along with several cigarette butts that my father had tossed on the coffee table. When I went into the kitchen and threw the bottles into the sink, I stepped back and noticed the faint stains of blood on the tile. There were a couple of busted chunks of glass underneath the kitchen counter. Obviously mom had missed some when she swept the mess up.
I stared at the stains, knowing that I had ignored the abuse that had gone on last night. Blocked it out. Stopped caring. I frowned, wondering if I should be feeling any kind of remorse or sadness.
All I could feel was hate.
I bent down and grabbed the pieces of glass in my fist, feeling them cut into my skin as I took them into my room and put them in the bottom drawer of my desk. Why I felt the impulse to do that, I have no idea, but it felt right at the time, so I went with my instinct.
I stood there, a blank stare on my face as I watched the desk. I’m not sure exactly how long I stayed there, completely motionless, but I know it was at least an hour or two. By the time I snapped out of my crazy little reverie, I heard the front door open and close.
Dad’s home.
It wasn’t fear that gripped me; no, it was common sense. To be caught alone in the house with my father was a stupid mistake that I shouldn’t have made. Immediately I started calculating the best escape route.
I bent down, ready to crawl under my bed where the air vent cover was. Too slow.
The door burst open behind me, and I stood there with my back to him, unmoved.
“What the fuck you doing home,” he snarled. I was dwarfed by his shadow, and I suppose I should have felt threatened, but no emotion went through me at all.
I said nothing.
“Look at me, I’m talking to you. Look at me!”
When I didn’t move, he snatched me by the back of the neck and jerked me off the ground, clenching his fingers around my throat. My breath was cut off and I immediately saw the room start to sway in my vision.
He was shaking me, but I was too confused by the spinning motion of the room to really notice the pain that was snaking down my spine. I could smell the foul odor of alcohol emanating from him, and it was enough to make me sick-along with my apparent dizziness. My equilibrium was going haywire.
He suddenly let go and I caught a brief vision of the wall seconds before I slammed into it. Then he kicked me, coughed up a slurred string of curses, and shut my door.
I laid there upside down against the wall for a long moment, trying desperately to reorient myself. The room was spinning so fast that I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. There was a deep throbbing pain behind my eyes, and it was far too bright in the room. What the hell was going on?
Finally, after an agonizing eternity, the room came to a stop and I slid onto the ground, gasping for breath. I tasted blood in the back of my throat; started choking on it. Gagging and coughing, I rolled over onto my stomach and spat it onto the carpet.
Every time I moved it seemed like the dizziness came slithering back, and it took a long while for it to finally fade altogether. I laid there stupidly, and by the time I had enough sense to get up, I heard my mother come in the front door.
Didn’t want her to see me all bloodied and bruised like this. If she did, she’d make a big fuss about it, yell at father, father would yell back, there would be a big argument, mother would tell me to go to my room, and then father would beat the shit out of her for yelling at him in the first place.
Ah, the irony of idiocy.
There was absolutely one thought on my mind, and that was getting out of there as fast as I possibly could. The vent cover seemed like the only intelligent way out, although even though the more I thought about it, it seemed like there was no intelligent way out of this situation. No matter what I did, I’d have to come back, and it’d just happen all over again.
I stared at the vent cover. There was no choice right now. Think about it later.
No. Choice.
That, for whatever obscene reason, made me very, very angry.
It wasn’t my fault this was all going on. I didn’t do this. My stupid parents couldn’t figure out what they were doing, couldn’t pay the bills, couldn’t keep a steady job, couldn’t stop arguing over everything-
“Where’s Xirtrian?” my mother said quietly from in the living room.
Fuck it.
I ran forward, slid my fingers between the wall and the vent cover, and pried it off. Somehow I stayed calm, even though I heard her coming down the hallway and new she’d be in my room any second. I crawled into the vent, turned around and grabbed the vent cover, then pulled it back into place, scuttling as quickly backward as I could without making any sound.
Then I waited.
A few moments later the door opened and light shined in through the doorway, illuminating my room. I saw my mother’s feet as she walked in, worriedly calling my name a couple times.
“He went out with a friend,” I heard my father say, his voice slurred from whatever alcohol he had spent his time consuming over the past couple of hours.
“Which friend?”
“Hell if I know.” He paused, then muttered, “Hell if I care, either.”
Mother shut the door and proceeded to twitter at father.
I wasn’t going to stick around to listen to the oncoming argument.
Sliding backwards on my stomach, I kept going until I felt my feet hang down over an edge. I moved back as far as I could, hanging from my fingers and stretching my tail down to feel the bottom. I had no idea why the vent would go down, other than to lead to a basement, but to the best of my knowledge, we had no basement, so there wasn’t much purpose.
I finally felt my tail rest against some kind of floor, so I let go and dropped down a couple of feet. The further into the vents I got, the dirtier it became. Halfway through, I was already coughing and hacking from the amount of dust that I was inhaling.
After trudging through the dirt and grime for about a quarter of an hour, I managed to find my way outside-unsurprisingly in our “back yard.” The wall of the back of the house behind ours seemed to stretch on in both directions for quite a long distance. I replaced the vent cover absentmindedly, beating the dirt out of my pants without much success.
So here I was. Outside. I had never really gone around the back of the house before, and most of my escapades through the ghetto pretty much consisted of me hurrying to school and back without much looking around between.
Thunder suddenly cracked through the sky, shaking the ground and making me jump like a sewer rat. Rolling my eyes at my paranoia, I started walking down the alley slowly, staying alert and cautious but not feeling afraid. It was strange, what growing up in a house that stank of fear could do to you.
But I guess that’s life.
I roamed for a while, just walking wherever the alley took me. I lost my way fairly quickly, but it didn’t concern me in the least. If I really wanted to go home, I would have paid attention where I was going.
A flash of lightning followed by another roar of thunder made me more aware of the oncoming storm. I saw another bolt of electricity rip the sky in half seconds before a sheet of rain started spattering all over the ground, pelting me with icy cold water. Ducking for cover, I moved underneath a shabby overhang and leaned up against the wall, listening to the thunderstorm with calm interest. I slid down to the floor and sat on the wet concrete.
Gorgeous weather; so much better than sunny days. Sunny days were so typical, so boring, happened all the time... but the thickness in the air, the tension, the uncertainty of a storm...
It was so comforting.
A sudden rush of nostalgia gripped me, and I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I was feeling nostalgic about, really, but it hurt. It hurt bad. I felt the breath leave my lungs and I stared at the rain splattering on the ground in puddles, feeling an incredible sense of loss. It hurt so bad that I lost track of my actual self for a long moment, reeling from the onslaught of memories that flashed through my brain. They were all from before we moved, when I was still young, but somehow they were vivid and powerful.
Captivating.
For a while all I felt was confusion, because I couldn’t understand how I was remembering these things from so long ago. Then I stopped wondering, stopped caring, and just let the memories come to me. A lot of them were bad, and painful, and uncomfortable. A lot of screams from my parents. A lot of violence. Then again, there had always been violence.
But this was the beginning of it. Back when I didn’t really understand what was going on.
Not that I did now, either, but I could pretend I did.
I remembered how my mother used to be so proud and tall. She would always speak her mind to my father, and at first it wasn’t a big deal. But then he decided he didn’t want to hear it anymore. And he hit her.
Everything was different after that.
My father wasn’t ever a good man. I can say that easily and believe every word of it like it was spoken straight from the mouth of a god.
But who was I kidding. As if I was some angel sent from the heavens, such a good little child. What did I ever do that was worth anything. I was just about as useless as my fucking parents.
What am I trying to prove?
It started raining harder and it thankfully drove the thoughts out of my head. Hours went by and I couldn’t force myself to move from the ground, even though water was rushing over my legs and it was unbearably cold.
Go home. That’s what I should do, really. Just go home, go to school, and get over it. Sure, it hurt. But everything hurt. All the good things that happened in life always had a catch-kind of like getting shot in the stomach with an arrow. It hurts like a bitch at first, but then someone comes along and gives you the anesthetic to make the pain go away, and suddenly it’s okay, everything’s good, you forget all your worries as you’re drowning in your head from the drug, total euphoria, things couldn’t be better... and then they rip the fucking thing right back out and you remember everything all over again. Not to mention that you’ve got a huge hole in your torso and all your organs are spilling out onto the ground in a big bloody mess.
What is the point? Will someone please explain to me the purpose of dealing with it, day after day? They always tell me to look towards the future, but honestly I can’t see anything past these dingy grey walls.
Maybe I’m just stupid.
“Hey, fucker, get your ass out of the gutter before you drown.”
I glanced over to my left, not surprised to see another Zentharian glowering at me. He was obviously a grifter, judging by his clothing and the thick accent that made his words hardly understandable. I went back to staring at the ground.
“You deaf or just stupid?”
“Neither,” I murmured.
“Good answer.” He leaned against the wall next to me, staring down at me. “You lost or something?”
I ignored him. Maybe he’d go away. Or maybe he’d beat the shit out of me, see if I had anything of value, and then go away. Who cared.
“Ay? Don’t talk much, do you?”
“You talk enough for both of us, so I don’t see the point.”
He looked genuinely surprised. At least, I think it was surprise. “Got quite a tongue on you, you do, ay? Well then you’d better keep it in your fucking mouth or I’ll cut it out, yes sir I will.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll remember that.”
“What’s your name?” It took my brain a second to process what he asked me, because it sounded something similar to “wass-yh-nhyme” and made absolutely no sense.
“Does it really make any difference?”
“Nah, not really, nobody gonna care what your name is when you dead, ay?”
This was just getting ridiculous. “You’re going to kill me for sitting on the fucking ground in the alleyway?”
“Who’say I’m killing you, yeah?”
“Can’t you speak intelligibly?!” I cried out, standing up. “Or does that require too much effort?”
“Don’t be a smartass, kid, I’m twice your age, you little shit. You dumb as a rock. You fuck with me and I’ll kick your ass.”
“Age has nothing to do with intelligence.”
“And neither does the way I speak.”
Good point. “All right, then.”
“Xirtrian’s your name, ain’t it,” he said slowly, eying me up like I was some kind of threat all of a sudden. “Little boy who don’t speak none a word to his parentals, ay?”
“You’re fucking retarded.”
“Am I now, well at least I don’t have parentals that can’t decipher a two-bit from a nine meter-“
I punched him right square in the face. No idea where that reaction came from, since I really didn’t give a shit about my parents, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to say so.
He looked, again, genuinely surprised. “You’re fucking hardcore, little man.”
Wow. This was getting even more stupid.
He held out his hand. “I’m Jagger.”
I stared at him blankly.
Jagger laughed, flashing his teeth at me. “Damn, for a kid you sure got an attitude. You got a problem?”
“I didn’t ask for your name and I didn’t ask you to talk to me. I’m not the one with the problem.”
He seemed to think about that for a second. “You know how to griftboard?”
Way to change the subject, dumbass. “No.”
“Want to?”
“Oh, yeah, like you can griftboard. You can’t even balance an equation in your head, let alone your body on a board.”
Jagger howled with laughter. “Damn you’re mean. Your parents beat you or something, ay?”
I went cold and said nothing.
He stopped laughing, as if coming to a sudden realization that everything he had said had been invariably stupid. From the looks of him, he probably used to have some kind of brain in that decked out head of his, but he suffered from long-term usage of some stupid drug. There was definitely intelligence in his eyes; he just couldn’t seem to tap into it. That’s what drugs do to you, I guess. Sad, really, but I didn’t give a fuck one way or another. He was threatening me for absolutely no reason and was going to get his ass kicked if he tried anything stupid.
The silence stretched for a while, with him looking awkward and uncomfortable and me standing there like a wall.
What the hell was a grifter doing in this part of town, anyway? The thought burned into the back of my skull but I kept my mouth shut. Some questions were better left unasked.
Grifters were basically scavengers that lived off the main population. Nobody liked them, nobody knew them, and nobody really cared, except when they felt like bitching about somebody, and then grifters suddenly became the topic of choice. Jagger was a prime example. He had a couple cans of spray paint on his stud-encrusted shotgun-shell adorned belt, which was one of many that were crookedly settled below his waist. His black pants were covered with white and neon splotches of paint, came down to his knees, and had several purposeless buckles, straps, and zippers all over the place. He even had a couple chains here and there. His t-shirt was formfitting and neon yellow on the front, black on the back, and had weird symbols scrawled on it, along with more zippers and buckles. The amount of random things dangling from his clothing was strange enough, but it was even more bizarre to see the numerous piercings he had-his lower lip, his eyebrow, and several all the way up his jaw spines. Judging from the way he talked he probably had his tongue pierced, too.
Jagger was one of the few Zentharians that had no skin pigment, so his skin was almost translucent but glowed a light off-white color. His eyes and spines were obviously enhanced with something, because they changed color with his expression. I briefly wondered where a street grifter could get the money for something like that, then figured he probably got it done cheaply in some side shop. Like it mattered.
I was getting tired of this game. He came around to toy around with a little kid, and now had his tongue tied up in a knot in his mouth.
“I’ma thinkin’ I made a bad ‘pression on you, ay, Xirtrian? You giving me weird looks, now, and that ain’t cool.”
“I wouldn’t be giving you looks if you didn’t push my buttons.” I noticed that one of the spray paint cans on his belt had a dagger case on the back. I took careful note of it, along with the zicon pistol he toted on his left hip.
“You half my height yet you talk shit like you can back it up.”
“And what makes you think I can’t.” Fine, let’s play the who’s-tougher-than-who-ghetto-game. Stupid, stupid street kids.
Jagger whistled through his teeth, his tongue rattling against the roof of his mouth as he mockingly snarled at me, shooting me a sly grin. His hand was hovering over the pistol nonchalantly, but I caught everything, from the way his eyes kept sliding to my throat and the slight twitch in his tail. “You real stupid, you know that, ay, Xirtrian? Gonna fuck with a grifter?”
“I don’t need a label to back up what I say or who I am,” I said, somehow knowing every movement he was going to make. I was ready to counter anything he could throw at me.
“Ain’t that so, liars don’t make no friends.”
“You aren’t here to make friends, and neither am I. I don’t know who you’re kidding.”
He grinned at me, and his eyes flashed a light orange, then darkened. “You ain’t in no position to be talking shit, Xirtrian.”
“What is the point of this game you’re trying to play with me, Jagger, you’re not going to accomplish anything but prove to me how much of a dumbass you are-“
That did it. He snatched the pistol out of its holster and whipped it up, pre-aimed at my forehead. Not even two full seconds had passed and he snapped the trigger, the sound of the gunshot echoing through the alley.
I should have been dead.
But I was around behind him, grabbing the dagger out of its case and kicking him on the upper heel. He staggered, caught off guard, and he didn’t have any time to counter me before I knocked him up against the wall, ripping his shirt down the side with the dagger before thrusting it up to his throat, smacking the gun out of his hand.
“I backing anything up yet, Jagger, ay?”
Jagger laughed. “Nice, very nice, especially for such a-“ He stopped in the middle of his fast-talking bullshit and suddenly slammed the palm of his hand in my face, kicking me in the stomach and shoving me to the ground. Reeling from the blow to my forehead, I stumbled and fell, smacking my head on the concrete. I barely regained my bearings when he leaped on top of me, punching me in the mouth and cutting my air off with the other hand.
He went to swing at me again, but I caught his wrist, bent it around backwards, and arched my back, using my tail as a counter weight. I threw him off me, snapping his arm in the process. He snarled at me, grimacing from the pain in his arm. I scrambled to my feet, leaping for the gun. My fingers closed around it and I flipped over onto my back, cocking it just as he fell right onto it.
His eyes widened and he froze, the gun pressing hard against his breastbone.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “Bang bang, you’re dead.”
Jagger’s mouth was twisted in what looked like fury and fear all mixed up and confused into a single expression on his punk-assed face. “You bastard,” he murmured, in apparent disbelief at being outdone yet again. “Gonna shoot me, now, ay?”
I was amused how he still tried to play the tough-guy even as he was shaking in his pants. “Give me a reason not to and I’ll consider it.”
“Well I can give you several reasons to do it, starting with the fact that as soon as you take this fucking gun away from me I’m going to shove it so far down your throat you’re going to-“
“Save it, wiseass,” I growled. “You think you’re such hot shit but it’s obvious that you aren’t, since you just got your ass kicked twice in a row by a fuckin’ seven-year-old.”
He was snarling silently, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a menacing grimace. “What is it you’re trying to prove, kid.”
I almost laughed. “I’m not the one trying to prove anything.” Strangely, he started talking a little clearer and didn’t look half as stupid as he did earlier.
He stood up, seemingly not caring that I had a gun pointed at him. “Okay, game’s over, enough of this shit. You’re too young for this, kid.”
I climbed to my feet as well, flipping the pistol around on my finger absentmindedly. “Too young for what, street ranger?”
“Ah, hell,” he mumbled, looking around in a daze. “Where...? Where the fuck am I? Dude, what just happened?”
I stared at him. “Are you retarded?”
Jagger turned around. “Who the hell are you?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“No, dude, seriously, why do you have my gun. Do I know you?”
“Are you on drugs or something?”
He smacked his forehead. “Shit,” he growled. “Shit!”
“...what?”
“It’s that fuckin’ virolyte, I knew I shouldn’t have tried that-“
“Virolyte?! You took virolyte?!”
I gave him the pistol when he held his hand out for it, rubbing his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a dumbass.”
I was perplexed by this strange personality swing.
Jagger, on the other hand, looked pissed off. “Sorry for whatever I said or did. I really had no control over it. My fault for wandering off when I didn’t know how it would affect me. No big deal, though, looks like you can handle yourself.” He looked me up and down, then raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
I heard my front door slam, and my heart froze in my chest. “Damnit.”
Jagger glanced over his shoulder, flattening his ears to his skull. “Parentals?”
I nodded.
“That’s no good,” he said. “You goin’ home or you wanna come with me somewhere, ay?”
“Where.”
“Follow me.”
Jagger’s place was exactly what I expected it to be-a rundown piece of shit in the back-alley ghetto on the southside of town. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even technically his; it actually belonged to his ex-girlfriend, but somehow he still hung around the place like he owned it. The building had a poor foundation, which was obvious by the way the door wouldn’t close right and the way the walls were slanted to the left. The kitchen floor was made of rotted wood that creaked and bent underfoot, the living room had no carpet and was basically a bare open space with a floor made of cracked concrete, several stairs leading to the upper storey were missing or broken, and there were quite a few gaping holes in the ceiling. Pipes that had busted through the walls were leaking all over the place, adding to the filth on the floor, which consisted of all sorts of disgusting debris, from dust, dirt, cement blocks, trash, old newspapers, wires and cables, and anything else you could think of.
Felt just like home.
“Damanyiia ain’t home, she won’t be for another couple hours or nine-five, like I said, but she prolly won’t say a damn thing to me. Either that, or she look at me with this face,” he said, raising an eyebrow and looking generally bitchy while putting his hands on his hips and thrusting them out to the side.
I laughed. “So why you still come here if she doesn’t like you?”
“’Cause she does, she just dun’ want to admit it, you know?” he mumbled, kicking a wooden plank out of the way as we climbed-literally-upstairs.
“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“I mean I did left, walked straight out, I did, she the one who kicked me out in the first place, not wanting to do with me no more, or something like that, ‘sposedly got a new guy or some shit who treat her right-as if I didn’t in the first place, the girl think I hate her or something. Anyway, I get a call not two week down the damn road and here she wants me to stay with her ‘cause she’s a “scared” of bein’ lone, you know? Stupid. But whatever, I needed a good place to stay and I figured this was better than nothing.”
“So wait-she doesn’t like you, but she calls you to stay with her?”
He rolled his eyes. “Basically.”
“Doesn’t really make sense.”
“Womens,” he said, rapping his knuckles on my head. “Womens don’t make no sense, never. Best learn that now and avoid them altogether, kid. They ain’t nothin’ but troubles.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Good. Also remember never to follow dudes named Jagger ‘round, see, ‘cause they stupid and don’t know what the fuck they talking ‘bout, no?”
“I had a feeling I shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’, smart kid. Get the fuck out.” He shoved me just as we were at the top of the stairs. Instead of falling like an idiot, I snatched his wrist, jerked him backward, and used him as a counter-swing and threw myself up onto the landing. He swung around and snapped his foot out, pinning himself between two walls.
His laughter echoed down the stairway. “Damn, boy, there ain’t no catchin’ you off-guard, ay?”
“I thought you would have figured that out by now.”
“I’ll get you someday, you just wait, kid.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“You say that a lot, boy. Your memory really that good or you just boast what you can’t back up?”
“I though I proved that I back up what I say earlier, no?”
He spit on the ground, sizing me up again. “How old you be, kid? Seven, you say?”
“What’s it matter?”
“I be fifteen, I over twice your age. I see more than you so far, yeah, yet you look at me like I can’t throw nothing new at you. You ever done this ‘fore, ay?” he said, pulling out a glass vial of some strange liquid that I had a bad feeling about.
“No...”
“This be violix. You know what violix do to you, boy?”
I swallowed, didn’t answer. Just stared at it.
He bent down, putting his face close to mine and narrowing his eyes. “It makes it all go away, shithead. All of it.” He snapped his teeth together real fast, snarling at me. “All this shit, yo. You listening? This,” he said, grabbing my arm and scrutinizing the numerous bruises that covered it. “This shit. This what I be speakin’ of. You know what I talk, you know what I mean, no?”
“I don’t need a drug to solve my problems,” I said slowly.
He stared at me, long and hard, swishing the liquid around in the vial. Then he slipped it into one of my cargo pockets. “Keep it.”
“But-“
Jagger slapped me on the mouth, walking past me. “Just in case.”
I bit my tongue hard, forcing myself to keep it there. No point in stirring up more odds and ends with Jagger.
I followed him as he went further back upstairs. We had to jump a couple of larger holes in the ground, but overall it was an easy romp to the attic. “Now, see,” he said, gesturing around, “if need be, you know where to find me, ay, so if your parentals get sassy you just walk out and come here, even if I ain’t home, I talk to Damanyiia, she sure to let you stay here too, she nice, I promise-“
“You just went on and on about how she isn’t nice-“
“Shattap and listen. You need somebody, I’m here. I know that ain’t no great thing, I ‘sposen, but if you find yourself in a stick, I be here, ay?”
I was taken aback by this sudden offering of friendship. The real me, the me I used to be before-well, if there was anything before-never mind-I wanted to trust him, but the walls were there, way too many walls. I simply nodded, accepting the offer, but I couldn’t see myself ever trusting him. I didn’t trust anybody, not now, not ever. That would never change.
He looked at me knowingly, and there was some kind of closeness there, some kind of understanding, and I couldn’t quite place it, but it was... comforting? I really just don’t know.
Then it was gone, and he was cold and callous as he usually was.
That, to me, was more reassuring than the friendliness. It was so alien to me, I didn’t know how to deal with it.
The house creaked, the walls shifted, and my ears picked up the sound of the door shutting downstairs.
He grinned. “There she be.” Jagger slipped something into his mouth, then cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, you best be going now. Yeah. Now.”
“I thought you said she wouldn’t mind if I was here-“
“Do you need to be here now?”
“No, not really-“
“Then get,” he said, shoving me out of the room.
I didn’t say a word and walked down the hallway, nearly running into her as she came up the stairs. At first I was somewhat appalled by the clothing she was wearing-or, rather, the lack thereof-but then I realized it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen my mother in before-take that as you will-and it didn’t bother me. She looked at me like I was some kind of insect to be stepped on and shrieked about. She made a face at Jagger, but Jagger was in some kind of goofy daze and was too busy staring at her to care what was going on.
It was kind of depressing, but then again, honestly, what wasn’t anymore? Who was I to barge into his life and tell him how things should be run. He made his own choices, I made mine.
I walked right out the front door, standing in an empty dusty alleyway. It took me a couple seconds to regain my bearings and figure out exactly where I was, but once I knew where I was going, it didn’t take me long at all to make it back home.
Home. What a weird word.
I opened the front door and shot a glance in both directions, sizing up the situation as quickly as possible. Dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway, so I already knew he wasn’t home. Mother’s door was shut, and I knew better than to probe further as to what was going on behind it. I went straight to my room, closed the door, and grabbed my disk player from under the bed. After listening to it for an hour, I put it away. Bored.
Hungry, too.
I got up and opened my door, only to whirl around and shut it again at the sight of my mother and some guy on the sofa. I growled silently, wanting to burn that ugly memory out of my brain. I did not need to witness something like that, but it wasn’t the first time I’d stumbled across it, and I doubted it would be the last. It was how she made money, so who was I to bitch about it.
This was getting out of control.
I was constantly second-guessing my decisions about my parents. Trying to make some sense out of what the fuck they were doing. Or weren’t doing. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. They obviously didn’t care one way or another. In their minds, this was how life was and it wasn’t going to change, so they might as well slump into a bitter depression, drink until they couldn’t tell what was going on, and fuck up everything to the point where they really couldn’t get out of it. And then they would whine and bitch and complain about how much life sucks. Father would beat the shit out of mother. She’d whine, get drunk, have a couple more guys over while dad was out getting wasted at some bar, then fall asleep in a drunken naked mess in the living room. That’s when it gets fun. Dad comes home, all hopped up on the latest drug of the week, sees mother, drags her into their bedroom, and beats her into the late hours of the night-until he falls asleep. Now, supposedly, the reason they take it into the bedroom is so I don’t have to listen to it.
Yeah, like I’m that deaf.
I have no idea where they think they’re going in life, and honestly, I didn’t give a shit anymore. Wasn’t my problem.
“I’m going to school tomorrow.” I said it out loud because I couldn’t hear myself think; my headphones were up insanely loud to drown out the noise my mother was making in the living room.
I started laughing at the stupidity of what was going on around me. I couldn’t stop, and it got to the point where I could actually hear myself over my disk player. I turned it off.
A few minutes later, my mom opened my door in a drunken daze, sipping on a large bottle of some kind of alcohol, completely naked and staring at me as if I was an illegal alien bunking in her room with a dead body hanging from the ceiling. Or something to that extent.
“Wthuh-fuckyu-dyun-hyo-“ she sputtered, hiccupping before she finished her slur of words.
I ignored her. Blocked her out. This wasn’t happening, and that way it couldn’t bother me.
Nope. Not happening. Not bothering me. Not affecting me at all. Not happening.
She stood there for another five minutes, spitting words at me that I couldn’t possibly understand. Then she left.
I couldn’t deal with this. Something in me was tearing me to pieces from the inside, and it was struggling to come out in the form of either screaming or crying.
Neither of which were acceptable.
I chucked my disk player under the bed, rolled over, shut my eyes, and forced myself to fall asleep-the only way out of this nightmare.
“Get the fuck up!”
I snapped awake seconds before my dad grabbed me by my right ankle and pulled me out of bed. I smacked my head on the ground as he dragged me out into the living room, heart pounding in my ears.
“You piece of shit!” he roared. I tensed up, ready for him to hit me, but instead he threw me across the room. I should have hit the wall headfirst, but I swung myself around in midair and gripped the edge of the wall where it turned into the living room, clinging there.
“Xirtrian, goddamnit, you stupid-“
“Leave him alone!” my mother screamed, futilely shaking my dad by his arm. He whirled around and hit her, knocking her backward into the kitchen counter. I didn’t stick around to watch her fall to the ground. In two seconds flat I had raced across the room and bolted out the front door. I heard my dad yelling curses at me from inside the house, but I was already too far down the alleyway for him to even think about catching up to me. I ran as fast as I could in no particular direction, just ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. I had no idea what time it was, but it had to be some time in the middle of the night. It was raining, but only lightly, in a kind of foggy mist that blurred everything slightly. The world around me seemed hazy, like some kind of dream.
I kept running, and as I did, I saw little black spots dancing in my vision. I’d seen them before, usually right when my dad would hit me, and then I couldn’t see for a while after that. But that was different. This was just fatigue. I was panting and my tongue and throat were dry, I felt dizzy, and my legs and shoulders were numb. Every so often I stumbled from some obscure crack in the concrete. My feet felt heavy and leaden, like I had bricks strapped to my ankles.
I really had no idea where I thought I was going, and it didn’t make much of a difference one way or another to me. Nothing much did, actually.
My foot got caught on something and I fell completely this time, not feeling my body when it hit the ground. I was shaking uncontrollably from being so wet and cold, and the floor was stable and comforting, so I didn’t move. I dug my fingers into the concrete, scraping them raw as I closed my eyes and clung to it.
The only fucking dependable thing in my life right now was a piece of cement. How touching.
I woke up stiff and sore, with a very uncomfortable cramp in the middle of my spine. I was cold, hungry, and damp, and I had no fucking idea where I was. It was in the middle of the afternoon, judging by the position of the twin suns in the sky; they were almost overlapped. I stood up, grumbling and putting a hand to my aching forehead only to find that my fingertips were skinned and painful. Wincing, I spit over my shoulder, leaning my head back to stare at the sky.
I threw my hands in the air, and at the top of my lungs, screamed, “What the fuck did I do to deserve this?!” to no one. My voice echoed angrily down the alleyway, hitting my ears several times in a row.
Pulling myself together, I growled slightly, trying to keep my sudden onrush of emotion under control. I swallowed it down with difficulty, feeling it burn there somewhere in the pit of my stomach like something foul.
I couldn’t stop shaking and eventually just slumped back down to the ground, tilting my head back and staring at the sky. There was a big gaping emptiness in the center of my chest, like someone had physically ripped my heart out and left me there to suffocate. I sobbed once, my breath catching in my throat as I realized what I was doing. No. Xirtrian does not cry. Xirtrian does not cry.
Xirtrian. Does. Not. Cry.
I bit my tongue, sinking my teeth as hard as I could into it, choking back the tears that were struggling to surface. I tasted blood but didn’t stop biting it, and soon the physical pain washed away the emotional tension and the need to cry passed. I sat there, breathing shallowly and staring up at the clouds without much thought.
It didn’t make sense. Why did I even go back there. To get hurt? To watch the insanity of my family life play out in all its demented reality like some kind of sick joke? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I in fact did not care about my parents. I wouldn’t give a shit one way or another if they dropped off the side of the planet, or were both killed in a car accident. It wouldn’t phase me at all.
I didn’t love them.
I didn’t care anymore.
So why go back.
Good question.
I’m having a conversation with myself. That needs to stop.
Who else am I going to talk to?
The thought of going back to Jagger crossed my mind once, twice, and then I cancelled it out. Friendship was the last thing I wanted. Especially from someone like him. A drug addict, didn’t have a job, and the way his emotions flipped on and off like an electric circuit gave me the feeling that he would be quick to betray me for anything.
So what was I going to do now.
Seven-year-old stray. That’s basically all I was now. Not going back. Made my mind up on that issue. School? No. Later. If I went to school, my family could find me and that would ruin everything. Need to stay away from them for a long while.
No school. No home.
Job?
Going to have to wait a couple years for that, unless I wanted to apply for some child labor shit, and there’s no way I was going to do that. Dangerous stuff, that is. Too many kids die there, that’s why nobody talks about it, but everybody knows about it. Nobody does anything. Cheap labor. That’s city life for you.
So I’m basically fucked.
I stood up, looking both ways down the alley and trying to make some kind of decision. I hadn’t eaten in a couple days and my stomach was gnawing at my backbone. I started walking down the alley, heading towards the shopping center on the other side of the highway. It pays to be careful, so I backtracked and zigzagged the entire way.
When I finally got there, I was slightly surprised at the lack of business the shopping center seemed to be having. It was really early in the morning, though, so it wasn’t anything special. I walked right in the front door, sizing up the store from the inside. There were a couple people monotonously peering at items on the store shelves, as if staring at them would make the prices go down.
That was another reason we had no food, besides the fact we made no money to begin with-the most recent cargo fleet hadn’t arrived for several months, so food was scarce. Food and electric prices skyrocketed within the past few weeks, and most people were barely able to scrape up a living anymore. Nobody inquired as to why the cargo fleet hadn’t gotten here, and the news didn’t go into detail, but everyone knew anyway.
Space pirates.
Nobody believed in that stuff anymore; at least, not in public. But the stories got passed around anyway, and there wasn’t a damned soul in the city who didn’t know what a space pirate was. Humans, mostly, although occasionally they were part of a larger unit that paired them with Zentharians or Cytans-the two best pickpockets and cutthroats this side of the international galactic highway. As the story went, space pirates were fiercely loyal to their own kind, and not a one had ever been caught or imprisoned since they came into existence. They pirated technology from all over the universe, and legend has it that their ships could outmaneuver even the highest ranking military starships-even the ones the government never told anyone about.
Space pirates had always intrigued me, but now that I’d gotten older, the story seemed a little too far-fetched for my taste. I didn’t deny that they were real, but I didn’t care one way or the other. People spent far too much time gibbering over whether they existed or not, instead of doing something to stop them.
That’s society for you. All bitching and no accomplishment.
There were only two people who appeared to be working at the store-a decrepit old male Vianis who was shaking and blind in one eye, and a teenage Cytan with most of her long fuzzy forest green and brown hair tied up in braids and a giant ponytail on the top of her head, chewing gum and looking like she was ready to fall asleep.
I started down the first aisle, pretending to be looking for someone. Nobody seemed to pay me any attention, but caution was my middle name. Better safe than sorry. I got halfway down the aisle when the front doors slammed open, glass shattered, and three gunshots when off in quick succession.
I dropped to the ground instinctively, glancing back at the front of the store.
A tall gangly Zentharian came sprinting into the store, reloading his pistol and ducking behind the shelf two meters in front of me. The gun clicked twice and then lit up as he stuck the energy cartridge back into it. Several more gunshots were fired, and the Zentharian cursed under his breath before standing up and snapping off two quick shots over the shelf. I could barely see what he was shooting at, but it looked like a couple Cytans and some grungy looking Vianis female.
The first Cytan took a bullet to the forehead and a second to the throat; he didn’t even have time to scream before he died and collapsed noisily on the ground, his pistol clattering across the floor.
Nice shot. Damn.
The Zentharian glanced over his shoulder, eying the back door a couple seconds as he reloaded again. Smart; didn’t wait until his charger was empty before reloading, so he always had a full clip. The second he finished reloading, he jumped to his feet and ran right past me, kicked open the back door, and dashed to the right, disappearing outside.
The strangest impulse overcame me. I jumped to my feet, ran to the back door, slapped the emergency lock system panel, swung around outside, and slammed it behind me, hearing the automatic locks engage. Apparently one of the people working at the store finally figured they should set off the alarm, because it started screaming in a monotone growl.
I ran down the alleyway, knowing there was probably no way I would be able to catch up with him, let alone know which direction he went.
Why the hell was I trying to follow this guy anyway?
By the time I had come to this realization, I got myself all turned around in the alleyways.
Great.
Growling at my idiocy, I turned around to backtrack-
And got a palm in my face.
The blow knocked me senseless, and when I hit the ground, I couldn’t figure out which way was up. For a second I thought the sky was underneath me and my heart stopped as I waited to fall into it. Then everything catapulted back to normality and I was busy chasing the black dots that were pecking at my eyeballs.
That’s when I got a kick to the gut and was flipped onto my face.
I heard the gun click as he cocked it, and I winced, waiting for everything to go black.
Any minute now.
Any minute... now?
I looked over my shoulder, expecting to stare down the barrel of the pistol. Instead I saw the Zentharian leaning casually on the wall, pulling a lighter from his pocket.
I stood up, profusely perplexed, but he ignored me and lit his cigarette. Hesitant, I started to speak, but he hissed at me through the corner of his mouth, shooting me a glare. Then he gestured at me to come closer.
I saw him snap another energy cartridge into his pistol absentmindedly. Before I even got close to him, he leaned around the wall. Six gunshots rang in the alleyway, and when he put his back up against the wall, he slipped his pistol into its holster and took a drag from his cigarette.
“You got some eyes on you, kid. Make out with anything in there?”
I shook my head.
He dug around in one of his many cargo pockets, holding his cigarette between two fingers in his other hand and exhaling smoke when he sighed. Two seconds later he pulled a candy bar out from his pocket and tossed it to me.
“Can you walk and eat at the same time, kid,” he said, giving me a snide look.
It took me a while to realize he was joking. Some alien urge in me wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t remember how. I just ate the candy bar and followed him.
“You’re not from here, are you.”
The way he talked, he never phrased anything like a question; just assumed, and I was supposed to either disagree, elaborate, or keep my mouth shut. Didn’t leave much open for discussion.
“You got that downtrodden look about you, kid, you look like you’re from an orphanage or some shit. You got parentals, yeah?”
I suddenly remembered how to laugh and couldn’t stop myself.
He looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. “Something funny about that?”
“I don’t have parents.”
“You mean you do, and you just don’t like them, or you’re really parental-less?”
“Does it really matter.”
“No, not at all, I don’t give a shit about you, I’m just trying to make conversation so I don’t have to listen to you dragging your feet the entire way.”
I bit my tongue to keep myself from snapping at him. I had quite a mouth on me, for a kid that was known for never saying a word.
“Got something to say, kid?”
“Yeah, shut the fuck up and quit calling me kid.” Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
He choked on his own laughter, but didn’t say anything and took another drag from his cigarette.
“Smoking’s bad for you, you know,” I said, playing the role of the obnoxious school brat he seemed to think I was.
“So is candy.”
“Point taken.”
“Quit pretending to be stupid, kid, I ain’t no parental and I can see right through you.”
“What makes you think-“
He spun around and grabbed me by the shirt collar, yanking me off the ground and putting his face right in mine. His eyes were black, blacker than anything I had ever seen, and they were cold.
Cold, dead eyes.
But they saw everything.
“You lie to me now, you’re setting yourself up for lying to me later, and you know what I do to liars, kid?” He took his cigarette out of his mouth and made an obscene gargling sound in the back of his throat as he swiped his fingers across his neck-burning himself in the process. “You got yourself into deep shit when you followed me out of that door. Confused? Here’s two reasons-and I got plenty more but I ain’t wasting my breath explaining when I could be smoking another cigarette, so don’t test my patience. First, you, in your own way, whether knowing it or not, put me in your debt by covering my ass. Not my choice; damn code, have to follow it. Second, you followed me. Do you even know who I am, kid?”
I shook my head, and he dropped me, rolling his eyes and blowing more smoke. I was getting sick from it, and he seemed to be enjoying it too much to be sane.
“You’re the second damn street-rat punk-ass kid I’ve picked up since I’ve been in this business, and let me tell you, you’re going to be a fucking nuisance, just like the other one was. Trash-talking pieces of shit, you kids are. Then again,” he said, inhaling more smoke and closing his eyes for a moment, “I act like I ain’t got no options here, when in fact I have several.”
“Look, I’m glad you’re having a fun conversation with yourself over there, but are you going to let me leave now or is there something you want me to do?”
He started laughing again until he coughed a couple times and tossed his cigarette to the ground. I thought he was actually going to take a break.
Right.
He pulled out another one and lit it, then chuckled at me. “I’d swear you two were related if you weren’t different species.”
“What the fuck are you talking about-“
“Come with me, kid, I gotta get you to un-debt me and then I’ll let you go. How’s that sound?”
I didn’t like the sound of it. He seemed to be quite a nasty character, and “un-debt” was not a phrase that seemed to end in anything fun for me. “And that works... how?”
“You ain’t in no position to be asking questions, kid.”
“You asked me one-“
“Yeah, and you ain’t supposed to answer a question with a question, so swallow that sharp tongue of yours and quit bitching at me.”
“You’re the one who’s bitching, not me-“
He kicked me in the gut. “Shut up, man, just shut up. Quit your yapping and follow me. I’ll be glad to be rid of your filthy ass, street trash.”
“Oh like you’re so clean yourself-“
He hit me right in between the eyes. “Boy you don’t know when to quit, do you?”
I was too busy trying to reorient myself to retort.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Little bastard.”
Why did everyone feel the need to smack me around? Did I have a sign on my back that said “KICK ME!” or did I have “IDIOT” tattooed on my forehead? Am I missing something here?
Oh, wait, I’m a kid, I don’t have an opinion. My bad.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” I snapped, growling at him. He shifted, and I was ready to counter whatever he was going to throw at me, but instead he just gave me a long stare.
“Benjamin,” he said slowly. “Benjamin.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of name is that-“
“Ain’t matter what kind of name it is, kid, you gotta learn not to be so quick to judge and stop being so narrow-minded. You ain’t never thought twice ‘bout the words you spit all over, but if you take into consideration just who the hell I am, it might make more sense.”
“You keep assuming I know you,” I said, “when in fact I couldn’t put your name to a picture, even if I did.”
“That’s a damn dirty lie.” He lit up another cigarette. “They just ain’t call me Benjamin on the screens, yeah?”
“What are you talking about,” I said. Something about the way he cocked his head to the side like that, that crooked smile, black eyes-
Oh. Shit.
“Yeah, see, yeah you know me. I can see it in your face, kid, you just now figured it out. Need to get rid of that habit, by the way-you’re way too easy to read. Yeah, though, they call me some other name ‘round here. Can’t recall at the moment. It’ll come to me later.”
“Axis,” I sputtered.
“That be it.” He laughed under his breath. “Dumb fucks. How the hell does Benjamin sound remotely like Axis?”
“They call you that because-“
“Yeah I know, shut up, I be joking, kid, can’t you laugh sometime other than when I mention your parentals?”
I bit my tongue. Hard.
“I’m gonna keep digging deep like that if you don’t watch your mouth. You’re easy to read, I told you. I can tell you right now who you are-your parents beat you, which is why you clam up like that, and you’re so defensive, yet you’re angry as fuck-but you don’t say a damn thing. You’re smart, kid, real smart, you just don’t know how to use that intelligence. You ran away, I’ll bet. Am I right?”
I swallowed what I was going to say and kept quiet.
“Yeah. Yeah.” He tossed his latest cigarette to the ground and crushed it with his foot, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning back a little bit. Relaxed. “Trust me, kid, I know that story. I been there, done that, lived through it, got past it, moved on, whatever. I don’t have any inspirational speeches for you, ‘cause honestly, where I’m at now ain’t much better. Life sucks. Anybody that tells you otherwise is on drugs, probably, because they obviously don’t know shit.”
“Nice to know.”
He suddenly got real serious, and loud. “You think life is all sugar-coated and candy, don’t you. You think, oh hey my life sucks now but I’ve got something good coming to me eventually, it can’t all be bad. Get that fucking idea out of your head right now, kid. Right now. Life is shit. You’re born, you crawl, and you die, and then it’s fucking over. There ain’t no such thing as the Next Life, or whatever those crazy Vianis preachers try and tell you. When you’re dead, you’re dead, and then you’re just home for a bunch of flesh-eating maggots. I ain’t trying to be cool, or mean, or whatever the fuck you think I’m doing. I’m telling you the truth. I’ve killed people, kid. I kill them all the time. I’ve seen friends get killed. I’ve almost been killed myself. It doesn’t bother me no more. And for what? Money. Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. You name it, I’ve done it, I’ve seen it, I’ve had it. I’ve been through hell and back five times over, and it doesn’t get any better. Ever. I’ve been cheated on, lied to, abused, cursed at, backstabbed, set up, beat up-the whole fucking book. I’m still here, yeah, and I still do the same shit. But I tell you one thing, kid. You think life sucks where you’re at? Just try it when you’ve got nothing to lose.”
I didn’t say anything. I’m not sure what message he was trying to throw at me, or which way I was supposed to read into what he said. It could have been taken several ways, so I took all of them.
He seemed spent after that. Probably didn’t help that his lungs were coated with smoke from all those damn cigarettes.
“You never told me your name,” he murmured, lighting up another cigarette. “But you don’t need to.”
“Why’s that?”
“A name means nothing. It’s just the fucking thing they write on your gravestone to make people believe you actually lived at one point. We don’t live, kid, we exist. As far as I’m concerned, your name is kid, and that’s what I’m going to call you. When I say you, you listen. You know I’m talking to you. You can call me you too, for all I care. I don’t give a shit. Names are for drama-whores.”
“Mmkay. Gotchya.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“I didn’t say anything-“
“Yeah you did. Shut up.”
“Okay-“
“What did I say?”
I didn’t say a word.
“That’s better.” He coughed a couple of times, then threw the cigarette away. “I’ve been waiting ten fucking years for that damn thing to kill me,” he said, giving me a cynical crooked smirk. “Guess good ol’ Death don’t want me yet.”
I wouldn’t want him either.