#i will and cannot lie about my past as being a shitty person. its scary to say and post but i have to be honest thats who i was that IS a

[lordiavolo]

to be like frank here, redemption is an ever going cycle. when youve been the problem, the toxic ex, the abuser, you have to know you will have to apologize for that for the rest of your life. you will always have to live with the guilt and conscience of knowing how you hurt that person, or mutliple people. and you have to constantly CHOOSE to not repeat that behavior, and its not easy.

when you meet a new friend the topic of who you used to be will come up eventually, and if you have changed youll be honest with who you were. you cant run from it. you cant try to round the corners and make it seem like the other persons fault, or like it wasnt as bad as it was. its really really scary. because everytime you open up about it, its not just the wound of guilt but its also the fear that theyre going to look inside and not like what theyll see.

but you have to keep moving on and you have to keep being honest. and you have to remember that everyone is applicaple for redemption, you just have to work for it and admitting you were wrong with no buts is the first step.

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : Wicdiv #32 & #33

Work work work work work. I’ve never worked so much in my life. The college student easy life is a lie, kids. So I’m doing a 2-in-1 type of thing on the last two issues. I didn’t have much material on issue 32 alone anyway and I think these two issues make more sense as a two-parter finale, so I guess it works well. Thoughts and opinions under the cut, spoilers of course. And fuck Woden.

 THE LAST LAUGH

 “Well this looks ridiculous”

This was my - and I assume an unneglectable number of people’s – first reaction to the last page of issue #33 in which we see the severed heads of Lucifer, Inanna and Tara displayed on an altar. This scene was probably effective on some, but for me it immediately called back to Disney’s Haunted Mansion and Futurama, and I was effectively done for : there was no way I could take this visual seriously.

There’s no two ways around it : this scene is silly. First we have what should be one of the biggest reveal of the entire series casually thrown at us by a character who’s not even looking at the audience, Then the camera cuts to this grotesque display of living heads, and the scene is complete with a classic Luci one-liner that seems aware of how out-of-place this entire sequence is. Really, all that’s missing is the laugh track.

You could say anticlimactic ; but really should it be called that when it’s the creators themselves who intentionally destroy the dramatic potential of their own scene ? If you’re not convinced this was intentional, try a little thought experiment and imagine rewriting this scene to amplify its dramatic intensity. By doing so, my conclusion is that this ending had every chance of being a huge finisher like the ones we saw in Fandemonium and Rising Action, but every writing and artistic decision was deliberately made to be as wrong as possible, to ruin every emotional weight this scene could have had.

 This is not an anomaly : in these last two issues, the creators seem to have engaged in the systematic destruction of every dramatic beat by way of grotesque and ridicule. It’s an undercurrent that ran through the entire second part of Imperial Phase, but only reached its full potential toward the end.

It started on the very first page of issue #32, trivializing Amaterasu’s death when the issue before that still gave it all the gravity fitting to the first death of a Wicdiv arc. Then Dio’s last moments of bravery reveal themselves to be a total waste, on top of ruining One More Time forever. Even Woden’s bad guy monologue is sort of too shitty to really muster the kind of epic hatred you’d want to direct at this character. Then we have Sakhmet’s death, caused not by her lover or her sort-of-nemesis Baal, but by a thirteen year old on her first kill. And that’s not even touching on the awful reminder of her fate we get at the end of issue #33. Then there’s of course the beep machine, and issue #32’s hilarious finish, which I think call for no commentary. Issue #33 is divided in two big reveals, the first one forcing on the us the awful visual of David Blake’s head on Woden’s suit and one of the most fist-curling yet somehow pathetic bad guy monologues in history, and the second one being that ridiculous finish scene. The two are even separated by an intimate scene between Cass and Laura that literally gets cut because there’s a stranger tied up two feet from them.

 So if these issues somewhat feel like they’re played all wrong, we know where it comes from. They feel like a multipart climax that got flipped on its head, so not a punch would land or beat would work. That’s not to say there aren’t some really impressive character moments in there ; but for each of them, there’s an inversely proportionally bad joke or ironic twist sweeping right in to undercut the whole thing.

And that’s something worth examining, not as a mistake but as a creative direction. Humour used to be a respite in Wicdiv, a welcome break from all the bleakness and emotional scorching of the characters. Each of them had their own wit, from Luci’s cool girl referencing to Baphomet’s failed swagger, to even Cass’ dry deliveries. But now, humour is just another weapon to hurt us. It prevents us from caring about our characters, from connecting with their emotions, from taking the story seriously. As I was reading through what I knew were Dio’s last moments, all I could focus on was Woden’s villain’s speech and the fact that he was right, and that Dio’s death was probably going to be a complete waste, because that’s how Wicdiv works now. Just compare the weight of Amaterasu’s and Dio’s respective death scenes : they’re not even separated by a full issue, yet the light that’s shone on them is completely different. No matter how much dignity went into crafting Dio’s last scene, it doesn’t matter when it’s put back to back with the textual affirmation of its uselessness, the fact that we don’t even get to give him a proper goodbye, and even after that, Laura’s awful line about his life support. In 2017, I don’t think I need to explain anyone the power of humour in trivializing the most terrible situations and undercutting people’s empathy for each other. This is what Wicdiv has been doing to us these past two issues, against our will. Stopping us from caring. Keeping us at bay even when we’re trying to connect and get involved in the story and characters.

 What does this change in the use of humour mean ? Personally, I link it to the change of our purported hopes as an audience. At the beginning of the comic and up until Imperial phase, we were still allowed to believe, like Luci, that a solution could be found, that the 2-year sentence wasn’t real, nor was the great Darkness. That it was going to be okay. But right at the moment when the characters allowed themselves to think that there could indeed be a solution, we, as an audience, started to know better : there was no loophole, no escape, no way to prevent the inevitable, whatever that was. We could no longer hope that things were going to be okay. So what do you hope for when things cannot be okay ? You hope that they’ll be worth it. If you have to die, let it be a worthy death. A beautiful one. If you have to go, go in a blaze of glory. If you have to fail, let it be at the hand of a worthy foe. Let it be worth it.

But it isn’t. And that’s what humour’s there to prove. When our hopes were that things would be okay, the comic responded with tragedy ; now that we simply want them to be worth it, its weapon of choice is ridicule. As such, it’s definitely not a coincidence that the 455AD special preceded Imperial Phase part II, as it sets the tone for the entire arc, up to its back quote : when it’s clear Lucifer won’t be able to outlive his death sentence, all he want is to be allowed to burn. But he won’t be. He will bleed out and his body will be dragged across and city and cut to pieces by an old lady then fed to the river. Such is the fate that awaits our character. Pathetic and grotesque in equal parts, useless unless it serves someone else’s purpose, following rules you do not understand.

If Imperial Phase is the arc in which the gods are allowed to think themselves kings and queens, then the creators are the King’s fools, the ones allowed to tell them their real value because they do it through jokes and flip-overs.

This arc is a constant battle between the story the characters wish they were in and the one they’re actually in. That’s why it would be wrong, for example, to think of the beep machine as a McGuffin : its thematic utility goes beyond a plot device. When just last arc, it was the subject of a joke to relieve the tension between two characters, now it knocks them back to their actual scope. Something so small and silly is the kind of device they deserve. The big, ugly, scary machine ? It does nothing. Did you think you’d be handed a huge plot revelation as the crowning achievement of this arc ? Of course not. Instead, what we get is a sad, banal story of parental abuse from a man who’s not over leaving his youth behind.

Yes, even the David/Jon Blake storyline, arguably the one preserving most of its dramatic intensity over these two issues, cannot help but feel like a sad joke when you consider that David Blake’s motivations are basically the evil queen from Snow White’s. This is what caused all this. This, an old wrinkled lady, and a thirteen year old on a mission from God. Those are our villains, everybody. As for dying a worthy death, our heroes’ options are a pool of blood or a mounted head on an altar.

 None of this is worth it. At this point, it’s even hard remember why “this” sounded so appealing in the first place. And all this goes to contextualize even more Laura’s breakdown speech halfway through issue #33 : she wanted everything they had, and she’d have given anything for it. For power, for glamour, for this. For this joke of a fate that’s not even that funny. That’s what cost her the death of her family, multiple friends, and the rest of her life.

It’s also fitting that Jon finally voices something that has been on my mind for a long time : just how little do you have to think of yourself to think two years of superpowers would be worthier than a fully-lived life ? Through this character who, just like the other gods, is too good for this deal, but unlike them, seems to realize it, it’s yet again the sheer impossibility to make this deal worth it that’s shown to us. Because what becomes clear after this reveal is that if Ananke allowed you to become a god, it’s so she could see that you’d waste away your potential. House always wins, and when you burn the House down, another opens up next door.

 So this is where we are : our hopes of seeing any of it be worth it have been ridiculed, and all that’s left to uncover is precisely which joke our heroes have been the butt of. Cruel ? Maybe. But if fiction so often serves as a way to quench our thirst for grand emotions and epic stories, it’s precisely because outside of it, it feels much more often like one big joke than a sweeping tragedy. After all, Henri Bergson said it best : comedy is much truer to real life than drama.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUES

 I KNEW IT IT WAS ME I FIGURED IT OUT I KNEW IT WAS DAVID BLAKE I AM THE GODDESS OF FATE BOW TO ME MERE MORTALS !

Alright, I’ll stop.

But while seeing yourself being right is immensely satisfying, it cannot help but damage your read a little ; like I said many times before, I want writers to be smarter than me, to be able to take me by surprise. So if I’ve managed to guess something, that’s great for my ego, but it also makes me a bit sad : that’s just another plotpoint that won’t reach full impact with me because I had so much time interiorizing its potential.

And that’s sort of my problem with these two issues : they revolve around two kinds of plotpoints, some that didn’t surprise me (Dio and Sakhmet’s death, Woden’s identity, the reason for Laura’s attitude) and other that were impossible to guess (the beep machine, Minerva’s “identity”, the talking heads). Meaning that while reading those, I was pretty much letting the plot carry me without being able to pause and care. As I’ve said above, part of it is intentional, but it also means that there aren’t many punches in these issues that landed for me. I’ll definitely count Laura and Sakhmet’s last conversation as well as Cass and Laura’s fight as a success, but the “big” intimate moment of issue #33, the conversation between Cass and Laura, didn’t do much for me, probably because it seems to me that anyone with a functioning brain and ears knew exactly why Laura wasn’t her best self since she had become Persephone. I understand why Cass didn’t see it – as we’re discussed before, she is a factual thinker, meaning she can’t grasp with Laura’s guilt when it is so obviously unfounded – but I still don’t understand the decision to make this a big character moment when literally every sentence Laura had pronounced since the beginning of Imperial Phase revealed what she was going through. There’s nothing more infuriating that being fed information you already think of as canon. If you ask me, this moment is much more important and interesting for what it isn’t, that’s to say a romantic scene, than for what it is. Seeing Laura being rejected by Cass, and therefore breaking the pattern  of dragging people in her self-destroying orbit, is much more defining than her whole speech on guilt.

The problem is that most of the work these issues do is retrospective : if the Jon/David scene on its own has limited impact, the new depth it gives to all the Woden scenes we’ve already been through is vertiginous. Like I said, I did consider what the meaning of David Blake being Woden would be, but that’s another thing to be confronted with the actual fact. When you consider that David is talking to his decapitated, imprisoned son when he’s pouring out his thoughts make issue #14 go from merely quite repulsive to one of the most skin-crawlingly nauseating pieces of media ever written. I can’t imagine what the creators went through crafting this issue while knowing the entire story.

 As for the rest of the reveals, it’s a little hard to weigh on them without devolving into hardcore theorizing. We’re basically at the last stop before the comic has to lay out its hand ; it already managed to delay it through two entire arcs whose very point was to see how long they could get this blind game going. But for me as a reader, it also means I’m at the point in the story that’s the least interesting to me : the one where I have no choice than to follow the train as it’s well on its tracks, without any possibility to pause or jump ahead. I have to wait for the full story to know whether any of these twists paid out or not ; at this stage, I have both too much and too little to really be able to do something with it emotionally or intellectually.

 So as a final verdict because I have to go back to cramming for administrative litigation, I’d say these are two issues I’ll have to revisit once the comic is over, because I suspect they’ll be a lot better with the full story in hand. Most of its impact is on the issues before them and in the groundwork they lay out for the final year. So as a stop point, they may not hold much interest, but I can definitely see them be one of the comic’s most astute cogs once it’s done and over. As a two-parter finale, I like it more than the Imperial Phase (part I) finale : it’s more coherent in its construction and doesn’t try to bite off more than it can chew. It’s mostly plotpoints and twists, meaning it’s my least favourite kind of read, but once I’m able to put that aside to see it instead as a character work thread in a bigger design, it’ll probably hold my interest much more. But as of right now, I can at least commend it for how much it makes me want to reread everything from the beginning. Which I definitely do not have the time for right now. Damn you. Damn you all.

[punishandenslavesuckers]

Hiatus AU: Mark drags Damien back across the country in what amounts to the most karmic reverse kidnapping in history, but stopping to take hipster pics of scenic overlooks will not protect you from the scary stuff lurking in the liminal space behind highway truck-stops. (A03)

Damien stopped talking as soon as they got in the car and started driving.

That was almost twenty-four hours ago.

Mark Bryant – age twenty-eight, atypical mimic, fugitive, and uproariously done with this guy’s shit – does not give a single damn. (He doesn’t. Fuck you. He doesn’t care.) Mark has static under his skin, buzzing between the bones of his skull and the muscles in his face. Somewhere in the subcutaneous sinews, humming in the roots of his teeth. (That’s probably bad. Tastes like rage. Feels like he’s on the razor’s edge of bursting into… tears maybe. Or violence. Or a Ramone’s song. Something big and loud and…)

He turns up the volume on the radio.

Mark was (is) riding the high of victory. (He is!) He’s won. He’s in control. He’s going to see Joanie! He’s pulled over to pet at least three dogs and take pictures of whatever scenic overlook he wants. He has a souvenir bobble-head stuck to the dashboard, a disposable camera in his pocket, and nothing can stop him now. Not time, not distance, not shadowy government agencies, and definitely not the dude in the passenger’s seat.

Damien’s curled up like a wounded animal, one knee pulled up, his arms tucked in around his ribs, staring blankly out the window at the passing freeway signs. He looks kind of sick. A perpetual nausea in the slack lines of his face. There’s something… Mark doesn’t want to say satisfying about the weird gutted passivity on his former captor’s face, but he feels some kinda way about it. He’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a piece of him that... clenches a little, like a fist.

Like fuck you.

Fuck you, I win.

But then that goes away and he just feels shitty for feeling that way.

Mark leans over, picks a water bottle from the cup holder under the dash and holds it out. When Damien doesn’t notice, he bumps the guy’s elbow with the plastic.

“Drink something.”

“I don’t want to.”

Mark sighs. “Don’t you?”

Damien says nothing. Then he takes the water bottle, takes a single sip, screws the cap back on and goes back to staring out the window. Mark refuses to pity this motherfucker. He goes back to watching the road. The tiny hula dancer stuck to the dashboard jiggles happily, its little grass skirt bobbing. Somehow, that helps.

Mark used to cry a lot as a kid.

He doesn’t anymore, but he does feel the impulse to cry beneath his adult sensibilities sometimes, there like a raw nerve for poking. He doesn’t poke it. He does not think about Joanie who is five states away at least. Days of driving between him and a fucking hug.

(God that sounds pathetic.)

Mark cannot articulate how much he wants to hug his big sister. He pictures it: They’re in, like, a parking lot. No. A park. It’s sunny. He’s going to sprint and tackle her. He’ll pick her up and swing her around in that way she hated when they were in high school. He imagines her punching him indignantly even though she hasn’t done that since she was sixteen. This is his familial hug fantasy and it won’t be spoiled by the fact Joan is over thirty and an adult now. By the fact they drifted. Nothing is going to spoil… to spoil…

He comes back to himself when his palms start to ache suddenly. The steering wheel creaking slightly in his white-knuckled grip and he relaxes. Breathes in. Here. Now. Breathes out.  

“I really missed having a body,” he says, because it’s not as though Damien can complain about his choices in conversation. “Like, I don’t think I can articulate how bad it was not being able to touch anything for two years. Standing around and breathing feels incredible. Do you know how weird that is? Dude. It’s so weird. I have lungs and that’s a highlight. That’s how low the bar is for me to be thrilled right now. My fingertips are blowing my mind.”

Damien says nothing. It’s vaguely petulant at this point.

Mark glances at him.

Damien’s age is a little hard to pin down, but Mark would say they’re about the same age. Damien’s a white dude… or a mostly white dude. At least half a white dude. He doesn’t look like he gets sun. Shorter than Mark. Kind of lanky. This dark moppy kind haircut that looks like it was expensive before it went to weed. Everything Damien owns looks expensive by the way. Mark noticed really fast. This is probably because he walks into high end stores and tells them to give him things for free and that just…

Mark looks at the road again.

“Look, I know you basically just kidnapped me because you wanted me to be your sidekick minion or whatever, but I don’t hate you or anything. You’re a dick, but you’re not dangerous. I mean… maybe you are a little, but proportional to how dangerous you could be, you’re not that bad.” Mark tries to let that stand. Fails. “I mean… I’m not giving you credit for not being as big of a bastard as you could be. I’m just saying you can talk to me if something is wrong.”

Damien drops his forehead against the passenger side window and exhales through his nose.

“Are you trying to say something? You can say something.”

Damien shakes his head once.

Mark can sense that the level and degree to which Damien’s sulking is… muted. Mark tries not to think about that. How Damien should be flipping out, should be screaming, but he’s not. Like Mark’s holding the guy’s head under water. No. That’s too violent. It’s like… it’s like… like he’s drunk, kind of. Thoughts murky and pliable. Yeah. Like he’s walking a drunk guy home from a bar and gently suggesting they go left. Except he’s not… he’s not always consciously suggesting… Jesus it feels slimy…

“Your power is really messy,” Mark says to the silence. “I can’t think of a metaphor. I’m usually great at metaphors. Or similes! I’m good at describing other people’s powers in layman’s terms. Yours kind of defies me.”

That gets Damien’s attention. He glances at Mark using just his eyes, but Mark can feel that… specific thread of heat. Interest. It always stands out. Want always stands out now. Mark turns the volume down on the radio.

“I can’t tell when I’m using this thing. It’s just… it’s always on. I mean… there a definitely moments where I can feel myself trying to push something specific… but I can choose not to.” He lets that hang, pointedly, for a moment. “But it is there, like, low-grade. All the time. You’ve had this since you were a kid and you never learned to turn it off completely?”

“No.”

“You ever tried? Like, really, really tried?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“I’m not lying to you right now.”

“Oh… right. Sorry.” Mark, privately, still does not believe that Damien’s ‘try’ is the same as the average person, but he lets it go. “Anyway, it’s funny. Empaths, telepaths, Class A powers – they all dig right past everything into people’s raw unfiltered stuff and it’s still possible to feel like people are incomprehensible. You physically cannot lie to me right now and I still… can’t trust anything you say. It’s like talking to someone under the influence. So… it’s like a lot of telepathy in that way, actually. It’s weird, but not totally off the beaten path for Class A abilities.”

Damien mutters something.

“What was that?”

“So… do you think it could be more common?”

“Well, I’ve told you before that I’ve never met anyone else with your ability. Class A powers are a pretty limited set and mind control is… well, it’s not possible according to the AM. Manipulation, mental suggestion, tricks… sure, but all that requires trickery and social manipulation too. Like mentally screaming in someone’s head to buy you a coffee will probably work, but not because you actually changed their mind. You… you definitely get in there move things around without notice sometimes.”

Damien stares out the window for a moment before rejoining. “Doctor Bright said I was a low level manipulator.”

“I mean, technically. I don’t think you could convince someone to kill themselves.” A beat. “Uh, right?”

“No. I can’t do that.”

“You tried it?”

“No. When I was fifteen fell off a pier. I couldn’t swim so I panicked and called out to a man on the dock to dive in and help me but… he couldn’t swim either. He knew he would die if he did so he just stood there.” Damien shrugged. “I can’t make someone choose me over their own safety. Not if they know the danger.”

Mark grimaces. “That must have been scary.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you swim now?”

“No.”

“What? Really?”

Damien just shrugs again. “Yeah. I’m scared of deep water actually. S’why I don’t travel much. Gotta go over oceans.”

“So you almost drowned once… so you just avoid water now?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“I feel weird,” Damien says suddenly. He’s staring at the water bottle in his lap, long fingers slack on the plastic. “It’s not going away.”

“I know. I’m sorry. When I find Joan we’ll get you back to normal. It’s just temporary.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No. You’re right. I don’t. But I’m not gonna ditch you like this so relax.”

“Why won’t you ditch me?”

“Because I’m not an asshole.”

“Doctor B would tell ya to ditch me.” Damien leans hard on the consonants when he says ‘Doctor B.’ “If she had to choose between you and me –”

“Stop it.” Mark speeds up a little. “That’s not fair and Joanie doesn’t like bullies, but she… she wouldn’t…” He looks out the driver’s side window. “And it doesn’t matter what she thinks because I would feel like an asshole for doing that, Damien. So I’m not going to. Stop trying to get me to feel sorry for you.” Mark straightens the rearview mirror. Not because it needs it, but because he’s restless. “There’s a rest stop in a mile. I’m gonna pull over there and nap for a while.”

“Kay.”

Mark tries to ignore the crawl of goosebumps when Damien responds like that.

“This is temporary.”

“Okay.”

“Damien. Seriously. I don’t like this. I don’t want you to be… like this.”

“That’s, uh, manifestly untrue.”

Mark sighs. “Okay. You got me: My desire to survive is overriding my ideal ethics. Sorry. I want to be in a reality where you’re not a zombie and also would let me go see my sister, but in this reality I think you would tie me up in a trunk if you got your powers back. So I’m not that choked up about it.”

“Okay.”

Mark turns the radio volume back up.

Mark manages to get comfortable reclining the driver’s side seat all the way back and closing his eyes. He is aware, faintly, of Damien’s restless dozing a few feet away, of sudden startled surges of… not want exactly, but something. Fear maybe. He keeps jerking awake. Eventually, he pops the passenger door and leaves to use the dimly-lit public restrooms across the parking lot. Mark, left alone in his head, sinks into the warm quiet and –

He wakes up.

Someone is tapping a knuckle against the driver-side door, rapidly, with knuckles, then palm. He sits up. There’s a black woman, pretty, in a baseball cap and a big bomber jacket. A trucker maybe. She taps more furiously.

He rolls down the window. “Uh, hello?”

“Is that your friend?” She points at the restroom building.

Mark sits up. Across the rest stop parking lot, Mark can make out figures. He scrubs his eyes and blinks. Beneath a pool of yellow streetlamp light, a tall, solid man in jeans and a large jacket is talking to Damien. He’s so tall he has to very conspicuously look down to speak with him. Which is weird. Damien’s not that short. Mark register’s it’s weird because the tall man is standing way too close. He’s standing way too close because he has his fist closed around Damien’s right forearm and he’s using it pull the other man toward a blue pick-up.

Mark jolts wide the fuck awake.  

“Oh Christ.”

Mark busts out of the car, scrambling a bit, his still noodley legs giving out beneath him as he bursts into an ungainly sprint. The trucker woman follows close behind. Mark notices, belatedly, that she has a long steel baseball bat in her hand and a spike of adrenaline jots his system wide awake.

“Hey!” Mark flail-sprints, gasping unattractively. “Hey! Back off!”

The tall man looks at Mark and the trucker girl with the baseball bat. “Oh, I see.” The man’s voice is… weird. Like there’s reverb in it somewhere. He turns to face Mark, pulling Damien around as an afterthought. “You’re the beneficiary here. My mistake.”

“Look, just… leave him alone, man. You don’t wanna do this. Right?”

“Hmm, that’s not going to work, friend.”

Mark swallows. “Uh, really?”

“Yes, really.” The tall man’s grip on Damien’s forearm tightens and he pulls up, yanking Damien closer so they’re standing side by side and Mark feels viscerally aware of how Damien is not a big dude. Suddenly he seems tiny. Or rather, the man beside him seems fucking enormous, an unmoving shelf of a human being smiling down at him. His teeth are crooked and a little yellow. “I was curious why his thoughts were… bent. Now I see, you’re bending them. You can’t bend me though.”

The woman with the bat says, “That’s enough, asshole. Let the guy go.”

The man smiles. Somehow, his smile seems too big for his skull. “I can tell you don’t like him very much. I could take him off your hands, kid.”

Which is about when Mark realizes he’s being way too flip for what this man is trying to say. Mark glances at the trucker girl with the bat and realizes she is taking things exactly the right amount of serious. He turns back to the stranger and raises one placating hand, lowering his voice.

“Look, you don’t want to do that.”

“I just told you, that won’t work on me.”

“Mark?” Damien lifts his head like he’s been dazed until just then. “What’s… going on?”

“Damien. This asshole’s a telepath or something. Get away from him.”

“Huh?” Damien’s brow knits and he turns, sluggishly, staring up at the tall man like he just noticed him there. Registers the grip on his arm. “What… the fuck?”

The tall man just laughs. “No. You’ll need to do better.”

Then he reaches down, grabs Damien’s other arm and starts pulling him toward the pick-up again. Damien, awake now, immediately panics and starts yelling. Trucker girl doesn’t hesitate. She charges, swinging. The bat hits the tall man right across the face, full power, a killing swing that freezes Mark where he stands, stunned immobile at the cracking ‘whunk’ and ring of the alloy hitting skull. The tall man though… the bat hits him and he doesn’t even move, the length of metal rebounding off his head like she swing into a flesh-padded brick wall.

“Ah! Fuck!” She staggers back, the bat humming with the impact.

“She gets it,” says the tall man. “She’s been on the road long enough to get it.”

Trucker girl looks at Mark. “Do something! I’m not joking. Fight. Right now.”

“Oh. Go away. This is between us boys, yeah? You know you want to get back on the road, right?”

“I…” The trucker girl blinks in confusion. “I do.”

“Well then… go.”

She nods, then looks at Mark, “Stay off the roadsides around here. Keep driving. I’m sorry.”

Mark, dumbfounded, watches her calmly drop the baseball bat and walk toward a giant semi-truck with the words Bay & Creek Shipping on the side. She can’t seem to hear Mark when he calls out, wild, pleading for her to come back, to help him, please, don’t just go. She climbs into her cab and the lights come on. Mark gives up as the wheeze of the hydraulics brakes fills the parking lot.  

“Let’s play a little game,” says the tall man.

“No thanks. I love games. Board games, but I don’t have any of those so let’s not,” says Mark, more than faintly panicked now.

“It’s your only fighting chance, I’m afraid. If I make this a physical contest, I’ll win over both of you. Now, here’s the game: The power at play here seems to be a… projection of want. You want your companion to come with you and I want him to come with me. So let’s you and I each try to get what we want. How about it?”

Mark’s entire nervous system rolls over on itself. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If you lose,” says the tall man patiently, “then your friend comes with me.”

Damien, hearing this, redoubles his efforts, rearing back from the tall man’s grip and thrashing. But even as he starts to wrench away, the tall man simply pulls forward slightly, twisting Damien’s forearms inward and down and it’s only now that Mark can see the size of the man’s hands are wrong. They are too big for his body. So large they encircle Damien’s forearms from wrist to elbow. His squeezes, slightly, deliberately and Damien screams. Damien’s knees hit the concrete. He just keeps screaming.

“Stop it! STOP!” Mark throws both hands up in surrender. “I’ll play! Just stop!”

The tall man releases his hold and Damien collapses forward, drawing his arms in against his stomach, shuddering and hunched through the aftershocks. He’s shaking like he’s been shot. Mark would bet a billion dollars Damien’s never been physically hurt by another human being in his life. Mark wills him with every particle of focus he possesses to get the fuck up and turn around.

Damien doesn’t react. He just starts hyperventilating.  

“Damien, not to rush you or anything, buddy, but how about you get up and get over here? Now?”

“I don’t wanna go with him,” Damien says dully, but rapidly. “I don’t. I don’t wanna go. Mark. Please. I’m sorry. I’m fuckin’ sorry, okay?”

“Let’s see who wants him more,” says the tall man. “Damien, is it? You want to come with me don’t you?”

“No!” Damien goes down, doubled over, head pressed between his palms. “No! God. Stop.”

“Damien!” Mark raises his voice, gesturing in big arms swings, trying to get Damien to just look at him, stop freaking out and focus. “Damien! Just come over here. Okay? You wanna go home? Let’s go. Right now. Just get up and come here.”

The Tall Man says, casually, “I want you to come with me.” He smiles. “I want to split your head open.”

Damien stands up, slowly, the way someone stands trying to carry something heavy. Then he starts walking toward the Tall Man.

Mark, for a horrified second, freezes. In that same horrible frozen eternity he projects the immediate future into the now and watches the monster man grab Damien by the back of the neck and smash his fucking skull open like a watermelon on the hood of that shitty pick up. He watches the gory explosion of it – the crack and spill, less blood than you might first expect, then more than he could have ever fathomed. A starburst of red and gray painted up the windshield and –

Mark snaps back. “DAMIEN! GODDAMMIT! DO NOT GO WITH HIM!”

Damien’s entire body convulses like an electric current jumped up his spine, the sole of his left sneaker scraping a stuttered step on the pavement. Then he twists and sprints away from the Tall Man straight at Mark, running faster than Mark might have thought him capable – a wild just raw fucking terror on his face. He gets ten meters. Then he convulses again and hits the ground, falling forward onto his hands and knees, jean’s ripping, palms skidding on the asphalt. He shouts in this strangled way that puts a shunt of terror in Mark’s gut. Sweat runs a visible line down his cheek.

“This is fun,” says the Tall Man.”

“Damien, listen to me. Okay? You want to not die? Just come with me.”

“I think you want me to snap every bone in your body,” says the Tall Man, his impossible hands impossibly in his pockets. Damien’s gasping now. He’s on his knees, fists pressed white knuckled and bleeding into the top of his thighs. He’s shaking so hard his teeth chatter. “I think you want that more than you’ve ever wanted anything else in your life, right?”

“Damien.” Mark doesn’t remember holding his hands out, but he is now, palms up, arms open. “C’mon. Just… just walk to me, man. C’mon.”

“Or come with me,” says the Tall Man, shrugging. “I’ll kill you.”

“Mark!” Damien’s half kneeling, frozen halfway through the motion of getting back up. “Mark, I want to go with him. I wanna –”

The Tall Man laughs. “I want to kill you more than your friend wants you to live obviously.”

Damien squeezes his eyes shut. “No, no, no…”

“Don’t feel bad. It’s more common than you think –”

But Mark is already moving. Mark sees red. Mark sees white and red and Mark is darting forward. He’s grabbing the trucker’s bat from the pavement and he’s sprinting like it’s not the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’s not strong right now. He’s not. His lungs burn, his legs throb, the aching sinew of his formerly comatose body completely ill-equipped to the task of fending off some atypical serial killer, but in this moment: he can’t imagine doing anything else. He lunges forward, grabs Damien’s jacket and yanks him forward, kind of roughly tossing him around behind his knees.

“That won’t help you,” says the Tall Man.

“Fuck you” Mark points with the bat, one fist in Damien’s jacket. “JUST BACK OFF!”

The Tall Man tilts his head. “That’s it. Put your back into it.”

“I’m warning you!”

“How about this? What if I want to kill you if I can’t kill him?”

Mark’s intestinal tracts twists. Damien, sensing this, says, desperately, “Mark, please…”

“I’m not leaving you!” Mark backs away from the Tall Man. “Get up. Get up, Damien! That’s it. C’mon.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the Tall Man, keeps the bat up between them. He feels Damien’s hands on his arm, pulling himself upright, gripping his shoulder for support. Mark backs up, slowly. Damien’s breathing like a stabbed man behind him, ragged, painful sucking breathes. “We’re gonna get in the car and go. We’re going. I’m gonna see my sister again. We are going together because that’s what I fucking want you miserable evil fuckface.”

The Tall Man follows them, but slowly, at a stroll. “There you go, kid.”

Mark’s legs bump the front fender of their car. “FUCK YOU!”

“I still think that power is interesting.”

“Mark!” Damien’s in the car already. “Mark, let’s go!”

“I think I could do interesting things,” says the thing that looks like a man but might not be. “I think I’ll come looking for him later. Eat it out of him.”

Damien makes a choked panting noise of terror.

“You’ll never find us!” Mark snarls, getting into the car.

“I think you’re interesting too.” The Tall Man’s tilting his head. He’s tilting it too far, like it’s rotated and hung on broken vertebra. “Always good to see family. You know, like-kind. Mark, right?”

Mark puts the car in gear and guns it out of the parking lot, fishtailing around and hitting 80mph up the ramp, hitting 90, then 100, then 110 and they are screaming up the freeway so fast the whole vehicle yowls and rattles with the velocity. Mark floors it, two-fisted on the steering wheel, staring straight forward – too terrified to look over his shoulder and see, somehow, the Tall Man monkey-clinging to the back of the car or, nightmarishly, chasing them up the road. The fear possesses him physically. Holds him hostage at high speed.

They drive for a long time.

They end up at a Denny’s because of course they do.

Usually Mark would be opposed to using Damien’s borrowed power to freeload, but three plates deep into a pancake platter makes the crushing darkness of freeway truck stops seem far away. Disproportionate eldritch horrors can’t get you in the middle of a Grand Slam with maple syrup. You can’t be gutted by road-side creatures while you have hot chocolate in hand.

The super nice night manager is operating under this warm cloud of sympathy and good-hearted generosity that keeps refills of warm sweet things continuously coming their way. Mark knows it’s definitely his influence when one of the waitresses gently pats him on the head as though he were the most miserable looking stray dog on the planet.

Which just says pathetic things about his core desires right now.

Damien responds to all this doting by stooping over his coffee in their corner booth. He hasn’t said a word since they got away from the truck stop, only communicated in shakes of the head and vague body language. He’s wearing a hoodie and he’s got the hood up. He looks like a heroin addict that Mark picked up off the street at this point. His hand curled on the table top shakes slightly, even resting. They taped up the scrapes on his palms a while ago but the shake stays.

“You need to eat.”

Damien jerks his head slightly.

“You look really rough.”

Damian looks up from the coffee. His face alone says, No shit, Sherlock.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Let’s just sit here in silence except I’m gonna just keep talking because if I don’t I’m gonna think about how this is some Jeepers Creepers shit. I don’t even like scary movies. I like dog movies. Are there are good dog movies? Did good dog movies come out while I was in a coma? God, I’m gonna watch so many dog movies. You seem like a cat person probably, honestly, that’s my guess. No need to confirm or deny. I’m just speculating.”

There’s a single beat of silence.

Damien clears his throat. “He, uh, made me want to die.”

Suddenly the Grand Slam breakfast doesn’t seem like much protection against that crushing dark.

Mark says nothing. Then, softly, “What?”

“That’s what he was doing. I… I could feel how badly he wanted to… and then I wanted to…”

“You don’t have to explain –”

“He didn’t even make me feel sad. Like I didn’t feel suicidal, I was just really… I just really, really wanted smash my own face into the pavement. Like that was a great idea.” Mark says nothing because he doesn’t know what to say, so Damien adds, horribly, quietly, “That’s not really the worst part.”

“How is that not the worst part?”

“I can still kind of feel it.” His eyes tighten a little. “It’s not… compelling anymore, but it’s there. Like when you think about stepping off a tall building or something. You’re not gonna do it, but you… think about it.”

“Intrusive thoughts.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what’s that’s called when you imagine doing something awful, but you’d never do it. Like pink elephants. Don’t think about pink elephants. Don’t think about stepping into oncoming traffic. Intrusive thoughts. They’re really normal. If this… guy put a violent thought in your head then it’s not super weird to get hung up on it. Doesn’t mean he’s still influencing you.”  

“No. Just you.”

Mark reaches for the butter. “I can’t help that, Damien.”

“That’s not bad. Not… right now. It’s fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Better you than… It’s better. Feels normal now.”

“You can tell when I’m projecting now?”

“Sort of. I can feel… you wanting me to be okay. I think.”

“Is that surprising?”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

“Damien, I told you, I don’t hate you. I just… think you’re messed up.” He fidgets. “And really selfish. And an asshole. And you need a haircut.” He thinks Damien almost smiles, or at least looks not awful for a second so he pushes on. “Also, like, do you know you can wear colors not in the grey-scale?”

Damien sighs. “Doctor B was right.”

Mark blinks. “What?”

“I asked her once,” says Damien, “why she wasn’t afraid of me. You know, because I was threatening her at the time. She told me there were things way scarier than me out there.” He makes a thoughtful little ‘huh’ sound that is 100% disproportionate to their reality. “I just thought she was talking about the AM.”

“Stop talking about threatening my sister, Damien.”

“Sorry.”

Mark eats a few bites of pancake.

“That… guy seemed really interested in your power. I think he was using Class A and C abilities at the same time. That’s not… nobody is a mix. Not even me. I can only use powers one at a time. That thing was strong. And it was telepathic and I think he was a shapeshifting? Like, for a second there it almost seemed like he was mimicking your power. I don’t… I don’t know what just happened. It’s impossible.”

Damien’s staring vaguely into the middle distance at this point.

“Do you think he was like me?”

“What?”

“He was using my power, right? He made me want what he wanted.”

“I… I don’t think so, Damien.  I thought he was more like me. A mimic. Like, an advanced one. Maybe if I live long enough I’ll be able to keep other people’s powers. I don’t know.” A beat. “I don’t think he was like that because he had your power. If that’s what you’re worried about. He actually seemed like he’d never seen something like it before.”

“Yeah… but he really seemed to, you know, dig it.”

“Powers don’t make people monsters. Choices do.”

“You think I do that though. Choose bad stuff.”

Mark sighs. “Yeah, man, I do. Maybe think a little harder about that. You know, in case you don’t aspire to be a deranged truck stop murderer.” Mark scrubs his face with two palms. “Christ.”

Damien tilts his head. “Are you okay?”

“No, Damien, I’m not okay. I haven’t sleep in days and I fought off some serial killer on a highway.” A beat. “Why aren’t you freaking out more? Why are you so fucking calm about – oh.” Damien, through the forced sieve of telepathic zen, just blinks at him. “Right. Of course. Uh, how about you? Are you okay?”

“My arms are a bit sore.”

“Wait. Did he hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“What? Damien, where?”

Damien calmly rolls his sleeves up over his elbows. In the cheerful Denny’s lamp light, the length of his bare forearms are an ugly rug-burn of purple-red bruising, massive subcutaneous bleeding, vivid and hot to the eyes. Like someone put Damien’s arms in a vice and crushed. He twists his wrists a little just to give all angles, then starts to pull his sleeves down again.

Mark, horrified, blurts, “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I thought you might freak out and try to pull over. I didn’t want that.”

“Do we need to go to a hospital? Is anything broken? Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think –”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Some whackjob tried to Sophie’s Choice us on the road. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I got out. I’m free. This was supposed to be –” Mark stops because the waitress is looking at him from across the room, her arm bent in the attitude of pouring coffee. She’s spilling it on the table, not paying attention. Listening to him. “Sorry. What do you want to do, Damien?

“Let’s just keep driving.”

“Heh. God, I can’t even tell if that’s what you really want or just my fear.”

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t would you?” A beat. “Fuck. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. Okay.” Mark runs a hand over his face. “I’ve got some Aspirin in the glovebox or something. You can take that. I can ask for a first aid kit or something…”

There’s a silence.

Then: “Mark, thanks for not leaving me with that guy.”

Mark’s head comes up. “What? I wouldn’t… do that to you.”

“No, I’m not saying you would. I just… that guy said he was going to kill you. You didn’t have to help. Anyone would have run.”

“Well, I didn’t. Not my style.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“We… should box this stuff up and get moving. We have a long drive still.”

“Sure.”

The car smells like breakfast for the next 300 miles. The sun rises in warm beams from beyond the mountains, illuminating the curves of the country side in impossibly beautiful swathes. Mark snaps a picture one-handed with the Polaroid. He doesn’t stop the car though.

 Fin.