I believe it would be great to try a drink.
I haven’t had what this is called.
I find him where anyone finds him, Jon-Jon, whose real name is Jonathan Johnson, one of the most mediocre of names possible. I saunter up — another word worth acquiring, for I enjoy that word. Saunter.
Jon-Jon is adept at hiding behind a smoke screen, a practiced role of his as a businessman. Yet upon seeing your presence, seemingly out of nowhere — I had walked in such a manner that he couldn’t have noticed until I was directly in front of him — he says, “Hunter, well, you’re… you’re looking a little rough.”
Immediately he runs through a number of ideas, turning you into a gambler’s paradise.
I tell him, “Hunter will not die. He will live longer than you.”
The dramatic shift from reserved to noticeably concerned is far more enjoyable when the person’s worked tirelessly to be someone he is not.
Jon-Jon makes an offer, for there is little else for him to say: “You want a drink? Maybe a smoke?”
Must it all be vice?
Yet I am here to try one, and I accept a drink. The taste is familiar. I will not be able to taste this with fresh senses. You have tasted and abused this drink to help navigate the social circles. And it tastes of something else. It has no clear taste whatsoever. I taste mostly the aftermath, long after the effects of alcohol hit this body. I drink as much as you would.
I drink and discover that the body changes, becomes more difficult to navigate, after drinking enough.
I walk with narrower focus to what’s next.
Fifth period and sixth, yet this body needs time to repair. It needs to rest. I sit in what is deemed study hall. The students move away from where you are sitting. You are “freaking them out.”
I notice a young woman, Blaire, the only one staring back when I am caught making eye contact. She knows you, and not as what you were but what you are becoming. She wants to approach, but I sense that she feels as though she hasn’t been welcome. I sit there, staring, and she sits, staring back, for the entire period. Upon leaving the school campus, I watch so many treat you as a contingency, something that shouldn’t be. A lost cause.
For the one named Blaire, she is the sole exception.
Everyone else, they assume that the exorcism may arrive too late. I let the body rest before walking home. Your home is like you left it.
Now leave the kingdom.
They will be waiting for you.
Your parents.
I watched the entire thing, and man, it does seem different after it is all said and done. Seeing it from a distance, I really get this strange feeling, like they want me to be messed up, the one who got it all wrong, so that they feel better about themselves. I mean, right?
That would be correct.
It’s all fixated around you, and I don’t know why that is.
I am deemed an affliction.
Like something I shouldn’t be around. The priests told me to fight any and all contact with you.
I remember. I was there.
They don’t see you for what you really are, I don’t think.
They do not. They see things for the horror that has been defined over time.
You know, I’ve been thinking… is it why Father Albert calls you an unclean spirit?
Perhaps.
Yeah, I think that’s probably why. Demon seems too much like all the other demons in the movies and stuff.
They assume that the activity is made to terrorize. I have only done what I have done because it worked.
Definitely. It definitely worked. Okay, so I don’t want this to happen.
It will happen. It is what’s in front of you.
Like, she just won’t go away! Now she got my parents involved?! They’re both home. I’ve never seen it where they are both home in the middle of the day. Not like this. Now this, this is insane. She just won’t leave me be.
I am here. You will be fine.
You’ll do all the talking?
If I must. Yet did you not state that you would no longer take the easy and convenient way out of decisions?
Yeah. Yeah, I did say that. It’s just… okay. Fine. Time to get this over with.
Of course, they’re not going to let me step inside before my dad’s right there, making sure I won’t get away.
“Son, we have to talk.”
It sounds like I’m about to be in, like, one of those TV dramas. I’m the poor son who’s in a losing battle against a demon.
Mom’s got her head in her hands, and it looks like she’s been crying.
That bitch Becca is there, and she told them all. Of course she told them. Look at that grin on her face. You see it?
Indeed, I do.
Dad’s right behind me so that I can’t just run away. Run upstairs. Run back outside. Run inside so that you can speak for me. But yeah, I know, I know, you’re right there. I just don’t want to have to hear this. It’s so ridiculous to me.
“Son…” Dad’s got a chair, got a plan, got a whole big charade.
Yeah, I’ll sit, even though I already know how bad this is going to be. I’m sitting. Now it really starts.
Becca first: “Hunter, are you there?”
Of course I’m here. But I’m not going to say anything. She shouldn’t be here. She should be, I don’t know, somewhere else. Out of my life.
Then it’s my dad saying the same thing: “Hunter?”
My mom cries. She won’t stop crying.
Would you like to know how your mom’s going to die?
Huh? How?
Your mom will begin coughing one day. It is a cough that fails to improve. It disappears and then returns. Your mom will begin coughing up blood. She will ignore the symptoms given that they’re quite easy to ignore when working fourteen-hour days. When she gets it checked, her voice will have left her. A knot that will not leave when swallowing will send her to the doctor. The diagnosis will be cancer of the larynx. Your mom will die ten years after the first cough. You will be in your midtwenties.
I look at the tears and see how my mom really does look overworked and ragged. I take this information as something sinister but also something that’ll just have to happen. It’s already there, right? The cough?
The first symptoms have already begun to show.
Dad looks me in the eye. “Son, are you there, son?”
Becca too. “Hunter?”
They want you to speak.
Fine. “I’m here.”
Becca, acting all concerned: “Hunter, stay with us.”
And then Dad going on about being out of the loop: “Why haven’t you told us, son? What makes you assume that this isn’t serious?”
What is there to say? “You’re never around, what do you care?”
Mom gasps, cries a little harder. Wow, what are they trying to prove?
“Like hell I don’t care. This isn’t you speaking. It’s the demon!”
Becca nods. “You need help. And now.”
I say, “Why are you, like, even here? This is me talking.”
Becca rolls her eyes. “That was just an argument. We have been through too much to just up and end it. Come on, Hunter…”
Um, I seem to remember the scene being really, really final. I make it sound really insincere: “Come on, Becca…”
Dad’s all like, “Becca was the one that had to tell us! I simply cannot believe this could happen to my son!”
It can happen to absolutely anyone. You’re right. It can happen at any time.
One must simply put oneself out there.
Yeah, and they’re acting like I’m dying.
You are dying.
Huh?
We are all steadily moving toward the end of the tunnel.