To my further annoyance, the man in the doorway has managed to remetamorphose back to his painfully apologetic former self.
“You see, I just figured the best way to get you back in action would be getting you angry. And I guess it worked, right? I didn’t mean any of it, though. That is, I did mean the apology, of course. And everything I said about your therapist. But not the whining part. Sorry for that. And I promise that if you’re not comfortable with going back to Dr. Zamanhoff, we’ll help you find a new therapist the minute our work here is done.”
“Slap my ass and call me Sally! You’re that one little boy in the whole of human history who did stop crying over poor little Spot when mommy and daddy promised to get him another dog next Sunday.”
"What a preposterous assumption! I’d never name my dog Spot."
He patiently awaits a grudging half smirk on my part before letting his own lips curl with some measure of timid relief.
“I bet you called him Asmodeus and forced him to wear a spiked collar. A fate befitting the Pomeranian that he doubtlessly was.”
His tension subsides in unison with my anger. The instantaneousness of his emotional responses is a little unnerving once you become aware of it. At the same time, I can’t help but appreciate how pleasingly harmonious it feels. Not quite the soulmate experience, but rather what you’d expect when collaborating with a highly competent like-minded colleague.
“Madeleine,” he calls after me as I walk to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee. “Her name was Madeleine. And she was a mixed golden retriever. She…”
I let the coffee maker’s noise cut him short, lest he forget his proper place in this house. A few minutes of good-natured banter do not absolve him from the status of an iscariotic shrink-corrupting mind-violating uninvited cult representative.
“The creamer is two month past the expiration date,” I yell towards the kitchen doorway. “There’s no milk, either. Sugar?”
The sugar is over four months past expiration, but it’s fucking sugar. Who even bothers to give it an expiration date, anyway?
Well-mannered asswipe that he is, Devin doesn’t yell back. Instead, he walks over to the kitchen entrance and politely declines the sugar in his indoor voice. Must have read the best-by date out of my brain.
I make a point of having him see me add a heaped teaspoonful to my own mug. See? Not trying to poison you, prick.
As another matter of principle, I pour his coffee into the mug reading “Uninvited Guest,” with a big cartoon fly on the front. Mainly because It’s probably my only chance to ever make use of the dumb joke. I wonder if being the type of person who’d own a mug like this automatically means you probably won’t be entertaining often enough to need it. Life is not a box of chocolates. It’s a big fat fucking paradox.
Devin accepts the mug with a careful Mona Lisa micro-smile. He manages to produce the exact angle signifying a circumspect appreciation of the gag with no risk of showing insolence. Nothing commands diplomatic prowess in one party like sporadic bouts of volcanic temper in the other.
I set my mug on one of yesterday’s stained coasters and clear away the mess of used up plates, napkins and half eaten crusts.
Carrying the empty pizza box back to the kitchen feels a lot more awkward than it should. It’s not like he would have taken it with him last night, is it? There’s nothing wrong with not letting it go to waste in his absence. Except, of course, for the way I feel about having eaten it.
I do some rummaging around the kitchen and come up with a bag of gummy worms and some cheap-ass store-brand tortilla chips. Not quite the Ina Garten signature canape platter, but not altogether unreasonable as far as war room refreshments go, either.
I find Devin standing at the edge of the living room carpet, as if unsure of its intent to remain solid under his feet. I wonder if he’ll ever dare take off his shoes in a stranger’s house again.
“You’ve stepped on it yesterday, remember? Shoes on and all.”
Just like you’ve stepped all over my fucking life.
Great, now I can blurt out thoughts without even voicing them.
He sighs. The first step seems to cost him.
“Your mama used to beat the shit out of you, I bet.” My turn to do some unsolicited mind reading.
The delay in his smile makes me flinch. I remind myself he’s probably just being manipulative again. And if not, what can I say? Plenty of shrinks out there. He said so himself. Unlike him, I haven’t limited his access to any of them.
“Here,” I shove the gummies at him as a compensation of sorts. Call it Spot 2.0.
He nods in some sort of general understanding. Good enough.
“So when is my playdate with little Claudia?” I rip the chips bag open. The air momentarily explodes in a yellowish mushroom cloud of MSG.
Devin pauses, head tilted to one side. He narrows his eyes in pained concentration. The rest of him tightens into a single coil of taut nerve and clenched muscle, every fibre straining to hear some subsonic vibe in the distance.
“They don’t seem to be decided on the night,” he says at last. His frown deepens. “I think they’re fighting again. It’s hard to tell. Too much psychic noise from the kid. Goddamned idiots! They’re practically dousing her with gasoline. The poor thing is about as stable as a tub of nitroglycerin, and she’s sucking in their negativity like a freaking black hole on steroids. An emotional Chernobyl waiting to happen. An implosion of such magnitude will suck the whole fucking city dry, and all these damned retards care about is whose unlaws are more of a nuisance and whose fault it is they no longer do family dinners.”
Until this very minute, I’ve barely thought him capable of polite annoyance. In his current state he’s fit to give me a run for my money. He doesn’t even flinch at his own shamefully non-PC use of the R word. I’m impressed to the point of near respect.
“Can’t you give them a little push, though?”
“As I’ve already said, I’m not all that good. Especially when it comes to um… ‘pushing.’ I’m a decent reader, a good enough empath, if you like. But I neither excel in- nor ever want to master- the art of mind control. To put it mildly, this practice makes me rather uncomfortable.”
“Yet you were OK with brain-violating my shrink into doing your bidding.”
“Not my bidding. And it wasn’t my handiwork, either. Plus, I was far from OK with the whole thing. It was necessary, yes. But no amount of necessity could ever make me like it. In fact, even adepts actually specializing in the area do not usually like it. And may the gods save us from the ones who do.”
“Well, this one sounds pretty damn necessary to me, don’t you think? What, with the mini-Armageddon you’ve only just predicted and all. Is there absolutely nothing you can do? A teeny-tiny polite suggestion- say about half a xanax worth of chill, just so they don’t make baby Wurdulac go nuclear kablooey?”
“Easy for you to say. Especially with baby Wurdulac gobbling up every bit of psychic force projected that way. And no, before you even ask, there’s no way I can affect her directly. So long as the Outsider is attached to her, the girl is absolutely off limits. Unless I want my soul devoured with no possibility of reboot. Which, thank you very much, I can do without.”
“OK, I get it- the fuck with the girl for now. What does it cost you to at least give the parents a try? If you’re as bad as you claim, the potential for any harm coming of it is insubstantial at best. While any amount of success can buy us some more time before the implosion, right?”
“Wrong. On both counts. First of all, the amount of energy required for even the subtlest of suggestions from an unskilled manipulator such as myself is immense. Potentially debilitatingly so. The consequence being, I won’t be able to perform the ritual needed to neutralize the menace in the long run. So to delay the implosion by an hour or two, I’ll need to spend myself to the point where I can no longer prevent it, thus accomplishing absolutely nothing. And then there is the problem of the AZ-5 button, if we stick to the Chernobyl analogy.”
“Are you implying that your control rod is poorly designed and graphite-tipped?”
“Yeah, and tends to cause an initial spike in reactivity upon insertion.”
“And there I thought you were just happy to see me. Well, at least we’ve established you have good taste in TV shows. Now what?”
“Actually, it’s all from a bunch of non-fiction works I’ve been reading about the accident and its aftermath. Never even watched the show. I undertook this little scholastic initiative, trying to investigate possible psychic involvement in the coverup and the overall suicidal compliance with which the authorities’ criminal incompetence and indifference were met. As expected, the amount of available information is negligible. But from the little I did manage to scrape up, reality is much scarier than I suspected. There was nothing supernatural about the Communist regime. Just the plain old unholy trinity of ignorance, cowardice and good intentions.”
“That’s humanity to you. I bet if any of them demons and dibbuks and body-snatchers and the likes had even an inkling of what a witless self-destruction mechanism we are as a species they’d never bother with us in the first place.”
“Unfortunately, many of them don’t have much of a choice. We are the only life form compatible with most of these entities, be they Outsiders or earth-bound. Animal possession is rare, and usually can neither be maintained for long nor enable the possessing agent act beyond the scope of said animal’s mental capacity.”
“So David Berkowitz was bluffing?”
“No, poor old Harvey was genuinely possessed- unquestionably, inexplicably and almost irredeemably so. It was one of the most perplexing and most trying cases in The Brotherhood’s history. The pooch nearly had to be put down. Would be, without a shadow of a doubt, if it weren’t for Reverend Albert Brady. A man of immense strength and equally unparalleled compassion, arguably one the most valuable assets to ever have stood in our ranks. He was a regular Dr. Dolittle of the psychic variety. Not only did he get the lab back on his feet in no time, he sent the parasite all the way to the far end of Oblivion. Bound it there for good, too.”
“And judging from said virtuoso’s absence here, at the site of an unavoidably looming cataclysm, I assume his expertise is no longer at our disposal?”
“Not unless you have a ouija board. Figuratively speaking, that is. These things are pure charlatanry.”
“Yeah, didn’t think they actually took collect calls out there. Though I for one would have cooperated, if I were a ghost. Just as a prank. Wait! Prank calls! Eureka, motherfucker!”
I’m astounded at my own genius to the point of near suffocating on a cherry flavored red and green striped worm.
“We can’t prank them into leaving…” Devin argues while I finish exhaling chunks of Christmas-colored gummy through my nose. I sneeze enough thought fractures along with the candy to silence him.
“It will only be a partial prank,” I explain once my breathing is somewhat restored. “We buy them movie tickets- actual tickets, to whatever rom-com is showing now. Something saccharinely trashy, the kind couples tend to watch when they want to pretend they’re not on the verge of a breakup. Tomorrow evening. There’s no chance they go out today if the fight is really that bad. But we do call them today, pretending we’re some cable provider or telecom operator or something. Tell them they won this lottery. Give them a reservation number they can check online, so they see the whole thing is legit.”
He takes a contemplative sip of coffee, slowly nodding his approval.
“I’ll need some help to assuage their suspicion, though. Not so much of a push, but rather a tiny stir in the right direction. Is this something you can do?”
He gives the no-longer-steaming sludge a little swirl around the mug, studying the resulting pattern for some hidden sign from the powers that be.
“I can certainly try,” he says at last.
After another pause, accompanied by exasperated hand gestures on my part, he finally puts down his mug and deigns to elaborate.
“Instances of mild suggestion over the phone are not unheard of,” he muses pensively. “In fact, it’s one of the only ways to bypass an emotophage’s vortex. A voice transmitted over telephone lines- by cable or by means of long-distance wireless communication- may have some limited effect on the receiver, but only when physically heard. It doesn’t affect other people in the same room if they can’t hear it.”
“I guess you should be the one to call, then.”
“Agreed. It will also be more convincing in the purely natural sense. Sad as it may sound in our day and age, most traditionally-minded individuals still tend to be more inclined to trust male figures. And yeah, other than giving birth to the Antichrist’s little sister, the Coopers are about as progressive as Ann Coulter and Peggy Noonan playing Bingo over Chick-fil-A at a church potluck.”
“Got you. There goes my plan to sign them up for the latest Fifty Shades of Abusive Scum sequel.”
“Have they made a fourth one?”
“Not as far as I know,” I make a mental note to mock his interest in the franchize at some point in the future.
“Well, that answers that, then, doesn’t it?”
He seems somewhat disappointed at the prospect of no new installation in the Fifty Shades series coming out this Valentine’s Day.
As for me, I’m mostly bummed out at the missed opportunity to send a couple of Fox-watching, casserole-gobbling psalm quoters for a date at a sleazy erotiflick.
We end up picking something heartwarmingly moronic with Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. Let the poor fucks have some dimwitted ignodrama syrup with a large side of vapid schmalz to soften the blow of their crumbling marriage. They can even have one last go at that corny hand sweat exchange thing everyone pretends to like. I heard that stale movie popcorn goes well with suppressed mutual disgust.
I suddenly realize how much better off they may be if we fuck up. All the angry farewell shags they want and no custody battle.
“Not if it’s the really bad kind of fucking up,” Devin spills a bucketful of of dog piss all over my rare little bout of optimism as he reaches for his phone. “Then they still have a screwy little psychobitch for a kid, plus one unanchored and hella pissed off murdergeist. Not to mention two mangled corpses to explain to the authorities.”
“Much obliged, Little Miss fucking Sunshine. Do you also do bar mitzvahs?”
“They never let me in. My humor is too unorthodox for them.”
He dials. I half open my mouth to ask where he got the number, but quickly figure out I’d rather not know.
“Whitepages.com,” he mouths, covering the phone with his hand.
I’m quite happy to take him at his word.
I am not, however, happy to see him nervously fidget with an unused coaster. One can almost smell the awkwardness floating across the room like a big malodorous cloud of diseased flatulence. I pretend to need the bathroom, knowing that while Devin wouldn’t buy it, I can no longer withhold the urge to punch him if we stay in the same room.
The man who’s just been sassily bantering with me dissolves into a pathetic blob of self-deprecation. He responds to my discomfort with an apologetic spasm transforming his physiognomy into the most Glasgow-kissable mug to ever have graced God’s earth.
To my surprise, though, just as I reach for the bathroom door he manages to pinch his vocal cords into a deep, authoritative “hello.” Have I not looked into his petrified hare’s stare five seconds earlier, I’d be checking my living room for Jon Hamm.
No longer in need of a soundproof sanctuary, I can enjoy the audio from behind the corner, protected from his expression by the partial wall.
Though unintelligibly faint, the voice on the other end sounds exasperated to the point of near violence. I think it’s male, but it’s hard to tell from where I stand. Whoever it is, they seem eager to finish the conversation and go back to a rudely interrupted marital fight.
Nonetheless, Devin doesn’t seem to have much trouble keeping the other party engaged in the conversation. We are, after all, raised in the spirit of polite hypocrisy. Even towards bothersome strangers infringing on our personal time in the sanctity of our homes. Unlike the infringement itself, hanging up on the perpetrator is considered rude. It’s one of these peculiarities of human nature that will always remain a mystery to me. Along with baby showers and office happy hours.
“No sir, I assure you, this is entirely free of charge. Just a small thank you gift for our loyal customers. Exactly! Right you are, sir,” He lets out a hearty power-chuckle. Though bubbling to the brim with synthetic amiability, the sound is bone-chillingly reassuring.
“And this, my good man, is the very essence of our company policy. When it boils down to it, isn’t it all about family? Truer words have never… Yes, now let me read out the confirmation number for you. No, no. No catch,” another comradely chortle. “Cross my heart.”
He reads out the booking number from the tab still open on my screen.
“And it can, of course, be confirmed on the theatre’s website. Yeah, one would think so. And we did, back in the early 2000s. Huge mistake. See, back then the giveaway was held among new subscribers, and we ran it as a nationwide customer recruitment campaign. Well, guess what. Once word hit national TV, everyone saw themselves entitled to win.”
I’m not sure I like where this is going. Why can’t he just hang up? I hurry back into the room, motioning for him to stop sabotaging our goddamned endeavour. His eyes follow my finger’s slicing motion across my neck, but the mouth below them keeps on running.
“Sure, you do, and I do, but most people just don’t get the whole concept of a giveaway. Which is why, this time around we drew the winners from among our established client base and let them know in private. No, of course the giveaway itself was announced all over our website. All information was available to the public up to the very point when the names were entered into a random name picking tool. So technically, it was not kept secret. The announcement was only removed after the winners were drawn.”
Shit. Now he’s really pushing our luck. It would take a complete idiot to buy a pile of bullcrap this high.
Though increasingly pressing, my gesticulated cease and desist pleas remain unheeded. Another ounce of urgency, and the next neck-cutting gesture will end in self-decapitation.
“One hundred tickets in all. Out of…” he makes a few clicks on the keyboard. “One hundred and sixty mollion, sir. Yes, indeed, very lucky.”
I miss the urge to punch him. All I can do at this point is hold my head between my hands and crouch behind the wall, pretending none of this has ever happened. It’s like the worst possible instance of stupid protagonist syndrom, except in real life and with our own goddamned safety at stake. And a possibly lethal exorcism as a best case scenario- a scenario whose likelihood is dwindling by the second in favor of an unknown, but almost definitely lethal, worst case scenario.
And then, all of a sudden it’s “thank you, sir,” and “good night, sir,” and “enjoy your movie date.” It’s over.
I slowly extract my face from between my knees.
“What has just happened?”
I open one eye at a time. Just a slit at first, as if careful not to blind myself with second hand embarrassment.
“I think I might have pushed him a little too hard.” He starts blabbering the second the pressure of the call drops. “I’ve never done this by phone... wasn’t sure how much force is needed. It didn’t seem like he’d listen at first, so I had to press some extra buttons. May have somewhat overdone it with the curiosity, tuned his willingness to hear me out to the maximum. He just wouldn’t let go. The bastard wanted to know everything, so I had to improvise. Badly. Good thing I leaned just as hard on his gullibility. And then tickled his serotonin receptors just a tad, as a little finishing touch.”
If I could whistle, this would be a good time to test my prowess.
“Unskilled my ass, bitch!”
“Mediocre at best, really,” he shakes his head dismissively, as disinclined to accept the praise as I am to give it. “I’m very bad at concentrating the energy I emit. Turns out, the phone can serve as a focusing lens. An extremely potent one, as that. Mr. Cooper’s own agitated state also helped. Emotional strain is a well known susceptibility-increasing factor. It acts like a stretch of sorts, pulling and disrupting the proper alignment of one’s mental defenses, thus weakening their resistance to suggestion.”
“Yeah, we all love us a humblebragging motherfucker. Any chance this susceptibility is temporary, though? As in, Cooper just hung up with the thought ‘what the fuck has just happened to my brain and how do I undo this?’”
“The susceptibility better be temporary. Otherwise it would be a sign of severe mental trauma. The conviction, on the other hand, should hold. Though involuntary, the suspension of disbelief was not extreme enough to dissipate once the conversation is over. Plus, there is empirical evidence involved- the tickets are valid. As for the improvised pseudo-legal nonsense, I may have done a little something to make it less… memorable, so to speak. I would have done so even if it weren’t for the risks involved should Cooper start, rightfully, doubting this bunch of baloney. Out of sheer shame for my ignorance.”
“Understandable.”
“Oh, come on! As if you would do any better on such short notice with no pause button, a copy of Corporate Law for Dummies and leisure to browse Askalawyer.com.”
“Nope. But I was not the one on the phone, ergo cannot be credited with any of the intellectual gems that emerged during the exchange.”
“Brilliant. You’re freakin’ welcome.”
“For blitzing me with vicarious embarrassment and topping it off with a near heart attack? I am, indeed, all choked up with gratitude, forcing away tears of elation. Now dare I request that the kind sir extend his generosity even further, and shed some light on my role in tomorrow’s exorcism?”
He bites the head off a gummy worm to keep mine intact.
“Depends. One of us, I would assume, wants you to come back from the mission in one piece, inside your original body and with no uninvited passengers on board. My advice to said individual is to keep direct engagement to the barest necessary minimum.”
“And how, pray tell, does one do that while babysitting?”
“Excellent point. And you’ve got no idea just how tempted I am to let you face this near-impossible conundrum head on, all by yourself, and then mock whichever method you choose to solve it. Except I’d be mocking a dead person. Or worse.”
“I admire your munificence. So what do I do?”
“You get there at the nick of time, so the parents have to rush out the moment you walk in the door. To make up for your tardiness, you show up bearing a bunch of educational puzzles and activity books, mumbling something about how you got delayed because you had such a hard time picking just a few, so you ended up bringing them all so little Joy can choose for herself…”
“Charming. One little caveat, though: A bitch is broke.”
He’s standing up before I’m done talking, reaching in his side pocket to dig out a simple black wallet.
“Courtesy of The Brotherhood,” he clarifies, handing me a crisp one hundred dollar bill.
Wouldn’t ever dream of taking any of his personal money. A little T&E, compliments of the cultporate finance department, on the other hand- that’s fair game and then some. May even…
“Keep the change. For your troubles and such. Get some milk, maybe. Just make sure to get enough educational crap to make a parent believe themselves when they say they did their best.”
“OK, so I get there late. I piss off the Coopers even further by pretending I care about their kid more than they do. Then what?”
“You keep your emotions contained until I show up. I’ll wait in the hallway, one floor up from their apartment, so you should be able to hold your own for the time it takes me to come down.”
“What do you mean ‘keep my emotions contained’?! Should I maybe put my heartbeat on hold as well, while I’m at…”
My phone interrupts me with its infernally cheerful default ringtone, sparing me the trouble to attempt the latter by doing it for me.
At this rate I may start thinking I’m popular or something.
“Good evening. Am I talking to Ms. uum…”
“Amber. Just Amber will do.”
Of course. I almost forgot about this tiny detail. Babysitters, just like vampires, need to be invited.
“Amber, right,” Mr. Cooper sounds by far less agitated than his echo did less than ten minutes ago. Even his awkwardness isn’t all that bad. Kind of cheerful, even. Endearing, if awkwardness ever was. “My name is Edmund Cooper. I got your number from a mutual acquaintance. Dr. Robert Zamanhoff. I’m not sure whether he got the chance to talk to you since…”
“Oh sure, Bobbie just had lunch with my old man the other day. You must be that friend of his that Pa told me about. The one looking for a babysitter, right? Was so excited to hear that! Been badgering him with questions ever since, but he never bothers to get any details I care about. And Bobbie’s not answering the phone. Probably got patient appointments back to back all day. So I’m so glad you called, Mr. Cooper! But gosh, am I blabbering! So sorry about that!”
Never thought I was such a natural. Someone give me that naked golden dude all the A listers are after, dammit.
“Oh, wow. It’s so nice to meet someone this passionate about their job nowadays!” His chuckle sounds a tad more uneasy than he probably intended. For once, I don’t mind the awkwardness, though. I guess some small part of me wanted to creep him out just a little.
“You’ve got no idea, Mr. Cooper! I love what I do. You’re right, though. So few can say they do, in this day and age…”
“So true. So true. But please, call me Edmund.”
“You got it, Edmund. So tell me about the kid.”
Other than the vampiric possession part, that is.
“Right,” he clears his throat with the air of a surgeon facing the family of his latest professional failure. “Well, Joy... she is… She’s not like other kids. I mean, she needs some getting used to, you know what I mean? She’s very shy, sensitive. But her heart is in the right place. We wouldn’t have her any other way, God bless! Such a precious little girl. She’s just a little different, that’s all.”
“Oh, but aren’t all the little girls and boys different from each other? That’s what makes them the darling little angels that they are. Every child is unique, and beautiful in his or her way.”
I swear I wasn’t born a sadistic bitch. I blame it on a lifetime of disappointments and a low-vitamin diet. I didn’t even mean to torture him when I first picked up the phone. I’m not a bad person, really. I just have a low resistance to the temptations of tragic irony. Gods, do I wish I didn’t find it so comical.
My wish gets granted when poor Ed gets all choked up on me. Should have known better by now. I’m not good with wishes.
“Thank you. Thank you so much, Amber,” he does his best to keep his voice steady. Despite all his efforts, It’s nowhere near steady enough to prevent me from feeling like a total piece of shit. “Thank you and bless you for your kind words. It… You have no idea how much they mean to me.”
I hate him for the guilt his maudlin exclamations force on me. Hate him enough to want to hurt him some more. I solemnly vow I will do no such thing.
“Oh, but I mean it. Every child is a blessing. As you surely knew when you named her Joy. I can hardly wait to see for myself what a perfect bundle of joy she is.”
I’m not very good with solemn vows, either.
Devin makes a little sound, not unlike Snickerdoodle’s pre-hairball emission cough. I’m not sure whether he’s laughing or cringe-gasping. I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say both. If I had balls I’d kick myself in them. Or Devin would, if he had any himself.
Ed grows silent for a whole minute. That’s better. Now I can pity him without wanting to give myself more reasons to do so. I wonder if that’s what compassion always feels like.
“All right then, when can I start?” I hope he doesn’t take my pretence at cheerful practicality for the indifference that it truly is.
“I… yes, of course…” he doesn’t quite snap out of it. It’s more like he locates the exit sign and starts crawling in the right direction. He coughs some of the dismay out of his voice and starts afresh. “Actually, for now, I… we thought of a one-time thing. For the time being, that is. To see how you guys get along, you know? Not that I doubt your competence or anything…”
Not very wise of you, Eddie boy. Not wise at all
“Of course, I understand. It only makes sense. No worries whatsoever. So when should I clear my schedule?”
“Right. Umm… How about tomorrow evening? Can you make it on such short notice?”
“Sure, otherwise parents would have no date nights, would they? No problem. Just say when.”
“Will half past eight be OK?”
“Definitely. I will be there.” Then, realizing how royally I have almost fucked up: “I’ll just need the address.”
Another act of the farce is complete.
“You’re mean.” Devins' voice carries enough disdain to rekindle my shame, but not to cancel out the savage spark of admiration in his eyes. For a moment there I almost like him.
“I don’t know what came over me. It’s like I was the one being possessed. Wait! What if…”
“Nope. This one is all natural. It’s called assholery.”
“Are you sure? It really felt like…”
“All you. I would have felt a foreign influence.”
I’m somewhat disturbed to sense a mild glow blossom somewhere deep inside me, behind a thin layer of shame. It feels suspiciously reminiscent of pride.
“We do, however, need to make sure she doesn’t get to you tomorrow. You must tune down some of this crazy emotional mega-shitstorm you’re radiating 24/7.”
“OK then, let me just find the Off switch.”
“Ever thought of getting yourself a freaking stand-up show? No? Good. You’d be the flop of the century. What I mean is I will teach you some simple tricks so you can temporarily tune it down. Got any further smartassery regarding my suggestion, or would you rather shut up and get a chance to live past tomorrow evening? Just what I thought.”
Thus, for once, I do the smart thing: I shut my mouth and learn.
Or at least I try to. The “simple” part turns out to be a lie so blatant it would make a politician blush. The next four hours are a bitter montage of abject failures.
“Nope. I still hear your every thought. Not even muffled. And you wish my mom let you do that to her. She’s way out of your league.”
At this point I’m practically panting with effort, my tee-shirt drenched through with hot, angry sweat.
I exhale another gust of anatomically-themed epithets at my hapless tutor’s ancestral lineage and try to refocus my attention on the cursed image of a nondescript chunk of granite.
“That’s right, focus on it. Keep your mind on the rock.”
By the hundredth time or so this part becomes almost manageable. I can see every crevice on the lifeless form’s grey surface. Every crater agape with sterile indifference, every protrusion stands monument to nonexistence in a landscape of drab bleakness.
“Good. Make it even plainer. Let it bore you.”
I make it smoother, its greyness more uniform. I leave nothing to catch the eye. Motionless, shapeless, featureless - yet the sole focus of my attention all the same. There is nothing else to look at.
“Excellent! Your best grey rock so far. Now comes the tricky part.”
I lock my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut twice as hard, adamant not to let the rock slip through.
“Don’t you ever wonder,” he begins slowly, almost gently, “what it would feel like not to be a clusterfuck on steroids? For just a minute?”
Grey rock. Just a grey fucking rock. Nothing to see here, no fun to be had. The epitome of barrenness. Voidness voider than void. The ultimate...
“... nothing to hope for. It’s not even about how you’ve always been an underachiever, you know. It’s not a crime to fail. You’re worse than a mere loser. You don’t even bother to try. You’re a parasite. A leech so odious no foot will touch you long enough to crush you under.”
Still grey. Still lifeless. No leech could ever survive here. Not on my rock.
“Ask Deidre what it’s like to have you as her personal tapeworm.”
I grit my teeth. The rock gives a tiny quiver but remains intact.
“Of course, she does take some pleasure in pushing your buttons. It is in her blood, after all. But can you blame her? She’s just charging a little fee for her services as an emotional invalide’s financial crutch.”
What do you mean in her bl… no! Grey rock. Think of the fucking rock. There is no blood in rock.
Except there is. A barely perceptible dribble, oozing through a microscopic hairline crack. There didn’t used to be any cracks there. I strain my mind to mend it shut. The bleeding stops. The fracture remains.
“That’s right, that’s how you bleed her of her money. With nothing to show for it but ingratitude and petulance. Every effort on her part is met with another load of glorious fuck-uppery.”
Another crack, forking out into a double trickle of brownish-red syrup.
No! Hold it, dammit! You’re a fucking rock, for fuck’s sake…
One branch of the fissure narrows momentarily, only to grow back to twice its original width and burst into an entire network of fine red lines.
Grey! Go back to grey!
We meet halfway, somewhere between washed out salmon-clay and milky puce.
“Makes one wonder: who’s the vampire now? Didn’t know parasitism could be mutual. I guess that’s what happens when one stupid slut gets knocked up by two pieces of shit. One half-vampire, one half-scumbag, and one whole happy dysfunctional family.”
I hold the violently quaking rock in a pair of mental hands just as shaky, trying to cover the widening cracks with slippery blood-sweaty fingers.
“So it would be a total of four exploitative assholes using and dumping your mom in her lifetime. Guess she’s better off, now that she’s all alone.”
The rock shatters in a violent explosion of dust and gore.
I can feel the sharp shreds hit my face with a sting that is all too real. Devin recoils with a small involuntary blink. He does his best to conceal his reaction, but by now I know for a fact that the rock, and the resulting debris, is as tangible to him as it is to me. If not more so.
He wipes an invisible splatter just above his left eyebrow and looks at his watch.
“Six minutes. That’s an improvement, I guess,” his expression conveys none of the optimism implied by the statement.
“You guess?! It took you twice as long to get to me this time! I’ve managed to hold off the attack for six whole minutes, dammit!”
“Which is better than you did an hour ago. But nowhere near good enough. Again.”
It takes me another hour and forty minutes to raise my time all the way to thirteen minutes. And it doesn’t end with the rock either. After the Grey Rock comes the Fuzzy Blanket defence. And don’t even get me started on the Warm Fog and the Steaming Engine.
By the time we yawn our goodbyes - sometime between Witching-Hour-thirty and stupor-o’clock - I’m ready for my Hogwarts acceptance letter.
Would have gotten it too, hadn’t the stupid owl kamikazed into a nearby power pole at some point during my exhaustion-induced ten-hour coma. Just as well, I guess. Would be hella awkward to sit in a classroom full of magically enhanced prepubescent pimple-cushions.
I dream of graphite and rubies.
