Keeping My Head Down

I woke up the next afternoon and the sun was already getting ready to go down. It was Tuesday. 

Like most mornings, I felt a moment of peace and contentment... and then my memory woke up too, and the twenty hours of recent madness came crashing back onto me, completely ruining my day. 

Beck dumped me.

Crazy magic teleportation book.

Branded with weird chrome magic tattoo.

Miss Dean thinks I'm a satanic drug addict gang member criminal.

Threatened and insulted by Beck's secret magic book club.

Beck still dumped me.

Even for a Monday, that was bad. Still, I'd gone to bed only a few minutes past eleven, and physically I felt just great. The memory of yesterday's pain and disorientation was already faint, just another story. I knew I'd been exhausted, but I no longer felt it, so it wasn't such a bad memory. The laziness of the human brain softens even the worst of times, and often fairly rapidly.

I rolled out of bed, trying to ignore the way the back of my right hand tingled when anything touched it. The chromatic glyph absolutely shone in the sunlight streaming in through my windows, actually casting a glowing, flickering copy of itself on the wall like a particularly shiny watch. I was glad I'd fallen asleep dressed; I stuck my hand firmly in my pocket and left it there. I needed to come up with some way to cover it that didn't make me look like Michael Jackson.

And I was still ravenously hungry. I rummaged in my coat for a few minutes, found my wallet, and decided I had enough money to get some food before work. There was a pretty good stand-up pizza joint on the way to The B Word that I went to sometimes when Buck and I were stoned.

Ah, crap. I'd forgotten all about Buck. I felt bad about leaving him at the store last night, but he'd forgive me. Sometimes things just come up. 

I opened my closet to find a clean shirt and caught a sight of myself in the hanging mirror. I was pale, had a couple of days worth of scraggly facial hair, and the hair on my head was greasy and limp. I looked like a meth addict, and that sucked, but most of all I looked... thin. 

Remember how I mentioned I'd been hit by a car once? Well, I was laid up in the hospital for a few days, and I hadn't had any substantial food the whole time. Between the lack of sustenance and my body's effort to heal, I'd lost more than ten pounds. My eyes were bloodshot and sunken, with deep circles underneath, and my cheekbones stood out like a starving kid's in one of those stupid charity commercials.

I looked like that now. Recognizably different from yesterday. Weird.

Well, it had been a stressful day. 

I went into my bathroom and splashed water on my face, trying to ignore the shining double-reflection of my brand in the mirror, and combed my hair into something just orderly enough to be called a style, if you were a fan of The Cure. "Or Edward Scissorhands," I muttered, trying to make my nasty hair lay flat. Finally I growled and gave up, and grabbed my coat (checking, of course, for the Text in the pocket) and went to leave. 

Miss Dean was standing on my stoop. Again. She was wearing a threadbare pink bathrobe, fuzzy slippers, hair curlers, and an expression of deep distaste.

"Good morning, Trick." She didn't sound like she meant it.

"Good morning, miss Dean."

"Where are you going?" She was very obviously trying to see my brand, so I kept it hidden as well as I could.

"I'm going to have some lunch before work. Pizza."

Her frown deepened. I think the inside of her face was hollow. There's no other way she could screw up her mouth like that. "I didn't hear you come in last night."

"It was pretty late. You were probably asleep."

"You know I don't sleep nights, boy. In this city? Night's when the criminals come out. Got to focus."

I paused to wrap my head around that, decided not to bother, and closed my door behind me, making a show of locking it. "Good to know someone's on watch."

"Aye. I am. I'm on watch... all the time. Do you understand me, boy?"

I did my best to laugh, like I wasn't extremely creeped out. "Yep. Your English has gotten really good. Bye, now."

I scampered down the three flights of steps, hopefully faster than an old lady can, and started off at a brisk walk, trying hard not to look back. I needed a new apartment.  Maybe I'm just immature and afraid to get old, but the elderly made me uncomfortable. They seemed to me like walking relics, creatures of secrets and sadness and history, falling apart at the seams like scarecrows. Disturbing. 

And miss Dean seemed to cultivate that image on purpose, which raised even stranger concerns.

I didn't look behind me until I wheeled into Colonel Crust, which was, as usual, empty. Stand-up pizza joints usually are. I always wondered how the guy stayed in business. 

Italian soccer blared from the crappiest little TV set I'd ever seen, and the Colonel was lounging in an even crappier lawn chair in the middle of his kitchen, watching, drooping as though he was about to fall asleep. I smacked my left hand on the counter, waking the old guy up.

He actually looked happy to see me. "Ciao amico mio! It's been a dog's age, where you been?"

"Cut that out, you're about as Italian as a pint of Guinness. Eh, life, you know? Got busy, stayed busy. I miss your pizza pretty bad, though." 

"Busy, huh? Yeah, you got that lady friend. Ladies keep you busy. No time for pizza."

I sighed. "Yeah, see how I'm not too busy anymore?"

The Colonel laughed, I think because he thought I was making some kind of joke, and then recognition lit his face and he groaned. "Ahh... I'm sorry, Trick. I don't mean to bring it up, I didn't know."

"Hey, don't worry about it. Just feed me, italiagno."

"On the house, of course."

I smiled. "There's no need for that. I've got money today."

"Yeah, but you got problems too. Lady problems. Lemme tell you something, back home, when me and my brothers had the lady problems, my mama always made us a whole bunch of food. Took the hurt right out. You got no mama, you got the Colonel. So sit down and eat."

I was oddly affected by my old friend's display of old-country generosity and concern (he was a Boston Irishman, like everybody else in this neighborhood, but he had this thing about Italian food and customs. Weird old b*****d. Made a great pizza, though.) and I even felt a little choked up. I sat down at the counter on one of the worn-out barstools and watched the Colonel at work. I always wished I knew how to make pizza. I could never get the dough right, it always just got dry and sticky and pulled apart. 

I knew I had about fifteen minutes, so I pulled out my Text and opened it on the spotless counter. My name gleamed mockingly up from the front page, matching my brand in color and style. Ugh. I turned the page, scanning for the phrase that'd branded me yesterday, careful to avoid reading it aloud. I didn't know what it would do, since I already had the mark, but I wasn't going to risk going through that nightmare twice.

Oddly, though, I could look directly at it without that desperate desire to speak it aloud. Even stranger, the glyphs and scribbles looked... meaningful. I didn't know what stood for what, but to my mind it was as clear as day what the writing said:

"I am prepared for this great burden."

Well. I wish someone had translated that particular sequence for me. I wasn't 'prepared' for any of this at all. 

I kept flipping pages, noticing snatches of writing that seemed meaningful at a glance, making the mental note to check them out later. About halfway in, I stopped. This page felt... dangerous.

I recognized it as the page Dolan had said was for "self defense". One little knot of glyphs had the feeling to it, drawing my attention as though it was moving, even though it clearly wasn't. Finally, carefully, I allowed myself to read.

A whisper in my mind, sibilant and silent, beautiful, mesmerizing, a tiny line of a song, dancing on my lips...

Before I knew what was happening, I said two short, harsh syllables under my breath. 

Instantly, faster than a blink, my brand lit up with a brilliant red light, and bright flame enveloped my right hand. I almost yelled, and it took me a second to realize it wasn't burning me. I tried to beat it out on the marble counter, to no avail. "Crap," I muttered, frantic.

"Hey, why you banging around out there?" the Colonel called, still hard at work on my pizza, and I felt a pang of panic. He'd be very surprised if he saw my hand on fire.

I looked around for an extinguisher or something, desperate. "Just... saw an ant!"

"Not in my parlor! Kill the m**********r!"
"Trying!"

I paused in my flapping to look at my hand. Sure enough, a healthy flame coursed over my skin, but it didn't seem to be doing any damage and it didn't hurt a bit. Bizarre. Suddenly the Colonel came around the corner, pizza first, and I flung my hand behind me to hide the fire. 

The flames ripped away from my skin, coalescing into a baseball-sized lump before plowing through a pile of newspapers. The whole stack exploded, flaming chunks of newsprint flying in every direction. I just managed to leap back out of the way, shouting.

The Colonel came out of nowhere with a fire extinguisher, dousing the smoldering pile of papers with foam, laughing like a maniac. He gave the shop one more cursory glance, then checked on me. "You okay, buddy?"

"Yeah," I gasped, looking around. Amazing. He'd set the pizza down on the counter, dashed into the kitchen, and brought out the fire extinguisher before I even knew what'd happened. I guess those are the skills that a restaurant owner develops. "Um... that was fast."

"Ah, you know how it is. People been telling me for years to get rid of that stack. Said it's a fire hazard. Dunno what the hell just happened, but I guess they were right, huh?"

"Guess so," I laughed, relieved. I quietly put away my Text while the Colonel considered the wreckage of his newspaper archive.

"Huh... huh. Okay, well, that was exciting. Now eat, boy, you making me hungry just looking at you. I could swear you got skinnier since you came in here!"

*

Reviews

[UponATyme]

How are you popping these chapters out so quickly?! I liked this chapter a lot, got a good feel of how people interact with Trick, some of his history, and even sparked some curiosity about the history of the people around him. Interesting characters!