Not What One Would Expect

November 04, 2024

Scrutinize

Very closely

Don't see what you want to see

See what is being hidden from view

I see a pair of heels

What do you see?

My sister's laughter started haunting me three days after I cleaned out her apartment. Not her ghost – I'm fairly certain Katie isn't dead. She's just gone, somewhere in Southeast Asia according to her last Instagram post, "finding herself" or whatever people call it when they abandon their lives without warning.

The laughter comes at odd moments: when I'm washing dishes, riding the elevator, trying to sleep. It's not malevolent or mocking – it's her real laugh, the one that used to bubble up from deep in her chest when she found something genuinely funny. The sound follows me like a persistent echo, starting just behind my left ear and fading into the distance.

I first heard it while sorting through her abandoned belongings, deciding what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Her lease was up in two weeks, and as her only family in the city, the task fell to me. I was folding one of her old college sweatshirts when the laughter rippled through the empty apartment, so clear and present that I spun around, expecting to find her standing there.

But the apartment was empty, just as it had been since she left six months ago with nothing but a backpack and a cryptic note: "Need to figure some things out. Don't worry. Love you."

Of course I worried. That's what older sisters do.

The laughter came again as I was boxing up her art supplies – dozens of half-used tubes of acrylic paint, brushes with bristles stiff from neglect, sketchbooks filled with unfinished ideas. Katie had always been the artistic one, while I followed our parents into accounting. "The practical sister," she used to call me, not quite managing to hide the slight note of pity in her voice.

This time, the laughter was followed by words: "Remember the time you tried to paint a sunset?"

I did remember. I was twelve, she was nine, and I was determined to prove I could be creative too. The resulting painting looked more like a tragic accident involving orange juice and grape jelly. Katie had laughed then too, but not unkindly. She'd spent the rest of the afternoon teaching me about color mixing and perspective. The painting never got better, but it didn't matter – I'd discovered I preferred being the audience to her art anyway.

That night, after filling my car with boxes of Katie's life, I dreamed of her paintings. In the dream, they moved and shifted, colors bleeding into each other like watercolors in rain. I woke to the sound of her laughter and the faint smell of turpentine.

The haunting grew stronger over the next few days. At work, my calculator started spitting out strings of numbers that, when I squinted, looked like tiny stick figures dancing across the display. My coffee developed swirling patterns that resembled Katie's abstract pieces. The spreadsheet on my computer briefly transformed into one of her charcoal sketches before snapping back to rows and columns of data.

"You're working too hard," my colleague Marcus said when I mentioned the strange occurrences. "When's the last time you took a vacation?"

I couldn't remember. I'd been too busy being responsible, reliable Rebecca, the one who stayed put, paid her bills on time, and answered every one of our parents' worried phone calls about Katie.

The laughter followed me home, accompanied now by the scratch of pencil on paper and the subtle swoosh of paintbrushes in water. These weren't threatening sounds – they were the background music of my childhood, the soundtrack of countless hours spent watching Katie create while I did homework at her desk.

A week after clearing out her apartment, I found one of her sketchbooks in my bag. I was certain I'd packed it in a box bound for our parents' house, but there it was, wedged between my laptop and my lunch container. The pages were filled with her characteristic style: bold lines, unexpected colors, images that seemed to move when you looked at them too long.

"You kept everything, didn't you?" her voice whispered as I flipped through the pages. Not an echo this time, but clear words carried on the air conditioning breeze. "Every half-finished painting, every broken pencil, every dried-up marker."

"Someone had to," I said aloud to my empty living room. "You never threw anything away."

"Because you never know when you might need something," she replied, her voice tinged with that familiar stubborn certainty. "Art comes from chaos, Becca. You can't schedule inspiration."

I snorted. "No, but you can schedule rent payments. Utility bills. Adult responsibilities."

The air in my apartment grew thick with the smell of paint and possibility. One of my walls – the boring beige one I'd been meaning to decorate for years – suddenly sprouted colors: blooming roses in impossible shades, birds with mathematical equations for feathers, stars that looked like balanced ledgers.

I blinked and the wall was beige again, but something had shifted. The laughter in my head took on a different tone – not just amusement now, but invitation.

That night, I dreamed I was sitting in Katie's old room, watching her paint. But in the dream, I was also painting, creating impossible structures with numbers and spreadsheet cells, building cities out of decimal points and percentage signs. Our artwork merged and danced together on the walls, neither more valid than the other.

I woke to find my hands stained with phantom paint and the ghost of equations.

The haunting intensified. At work, my presentations developed artistic flourishes – pie charts that transformed into actual pies, bar graphs that became cityscapes, statistical models that flowered into gardens of data. My colleagues were impressed by my "creative approach to visual representation." My boss gave me a raise.

At home, my furniture rearranged itself into more aesthetically pleasing configurations. My clothes developed subtle patterns that shifted throughout the day. My windows showed different views depending on my mood – sometimes the actual street outside, sometimes Katie's memories of distant mountains, sometimes landscapes that existed only in the space between imagination and reality.

"You're getting it now," Katie's voice said one evening as I watched the sunset paint impossible colors across my kitchen walls. "Life isn't just about keeping things neat and organized."

"Says the girl who fled the country without forwarding her mail," I retorted.

Her laughter swirled around me like autumn leaves. "Maybe I left because everything was too neat, too organized. Maybe I needed some chaos to find my balance."

"And maybe I needed some chaos to find mine," I admitted.

The next morning, I bought art supplies. Not Katie's abandoned ones – those were hers, her unfinished possibilities, her abandoned potential. I needed my own. The art store clerk looked surprised when I told her I was a beginner.

"You have paint under your fingernails," she said. "And there's a smudge of charcoal on your cheek."

I touched my face, but felt nothing. In the store's mirror, though, I saw what she meant – traces of creativity had begun to leak through my practical exterior.

That weekend, instead of catching up on work or cleaning my apartment, I painted. Not well – I still had all the artistic talent of a distracted penguin – but with enthusiasm. I created spreadsheets that bloomed into flower gardens, ledgers that became labyrinths, tax forms that transformed into origami cranes.

Katie's laughter accompanied every brush stroke, not mocking but encouraging. The sounds of her artistic process – brushes swishing, pencils scratching, papers shuffling – provided a rhythm for my own clumsy attempts at creation.

"You don't have to be good at it," her voice assured me as I frowned at my latest attempt. "You just have to let it happen."

"Easy for you to say," I muttered. "You're talented."

"And you're practical. But who says those things have to be separate?"

I looked at my painting again. It was objectively terrible – a mishmash of colors and shapes that looked like a kindergartener's attempt at abstract expressionism. But hidden within the chaos were numbers and patterns, tiny perfect systems emerging from the disorder. It wasn't good art, but it was authentically mine.

The haunting changed after that. Instead of following me, it began to feel more like collaboration. Katie's laughter became a counterpoint to my own. Her artistic chaos balanced my mathematical precision. Together, we created something neither of us could have managed alone.

Two weeks later, I received a postcard from Thailand. Katie's familiar scrawl filled every available space: "Found what I was looking for. Turns out it was there all along. Coming home soon. P.S. Your artwork is getting better – the numbers add a nice touch."

I turned the postcard over. The image showed a temple covered in intricate patterns – geometry and art intertwined in perfect harmony. In the corner, barely visible unless you knew to look for it, was a tiny self-portrait of Katie, painting numbers into the temple's designs.

That night, my apartment filled with our mingled laughter – hers ethereal and free, mine grounded and precise. The walls bloomed with equations that grew into flowers, spreadsheets that became butterflies, budgets that danced like autumn leaves in the wind.

I realized then that she hadn't really abandoned her life – she'd just needed to step away to see it clearly. And maybe her temporary haunting wasn't about her at all. Maybe it was about showing me that there are many ways to be creative, many ways to be practical, and that the best path often lies in the space between.

When Katie finally came home two months later, she found me in my apartment, surrounded by paintings of mathematical gardens and precisely calculated chaos. She looked at my work, then at me, and smiled that bright smile I'd been hearing in my dreams.

"The practical sister," she said, but this time there was no pity in her voice – only recognition and love.

"The artistic one," I replied, handing her a paintbrush. "Want to collaborate?"

Her laughter, real and present now, filled the room like sunshine. Together, we began to paint, mixing colors and numbers, chaos and order, past and present, until it was impossible to tell where her art ended and mine began.

Sometimes, late at night, I still hear echoes of her laughter from those haunted days. But now it's joined by other sounds: the scratch of my own pencils, the swish of my own brushes, the rustle of papers filled with beautiful impossibilities.

It turns out you can't really be haunted by someone who's helped you find a missing piece of yourself. You can only be grateful for the ghost who showed you how to color outside the lines of your own life.

And sometimes, if you're very lucky, that ghost turns out to be exactly the sister you needed all along.

"Better late than never," my grandmother used to say, usually when I'd show up hours after I'd promised to visit, bearing apologetic takeout and excuses about traffic. She'd welcome me with the same warm smile regardless of time, as if my presence alone made up for any tardiness. I never thought those words would end up saving my life.

The digital display at Carlyle Station read 11:57 PM as I sprinted down the stairs, messenger bag slapping against my hip. The last train home left at midnight – it always had, ever since the line opened in 1943. My footsteps echoed through the nearly empty station, bouncing off worn tile walls that had witnessed eight decades of commuters.

I shouldn't have stayed so late at work, shouldn't have let Marcus talk me into "just one more review" of the quarterly reports. But that's what senior associates at Preston & Gray did – we worked until our eyes burned and our dreams turned into spreadsheets. Besides, I'd caught the last train plenty of times before.

The platform was empty except for an elderly woman in a red peacoat, sitting primly on one of the wooden benches. She was reading a book bound in faded blue leather, its pages yellow with age. As I approached, catching my breath, she looked up and smiled. Something about her seemed familiar, though I couldn't place why.

"Cutting it close," she said, marking her place with a tasseled bookmark.

"Story of my life." I checked my phone: 11:59. "At least I made it."

She tilted her head, studying me with unusual intensity. "Did you?"

Before I could ask what she meant, the fluorescent lights flickered. Wind gusted through the station, carrying the distinctive rumble of an approaching train. But something was off about the sound – it was deeper, more mechanical than the usual electric whine of modern subway cars.

The train that emerged from the tunnel wasn't the sleek silver one I rode every day. This was something from another era entirely: a massive steel beast painted in deep green, its brass fittings gleaming despite the harsh station lighting. Steam – actual steam – hissed from somewhere beneath its wheels.

I blinked hard, certain I was hallucinating from too many hours staring at Excel sheets. But the train remained, as solid and real as the platform beneath my feet. The doors were different too – not the automatic sliding ones I was used to, but heavy manual ones that swung outward with a sound like distant thunder.

"Last train," the woman in red said, rising from her bench. "Are you coming?"

I hesitated. Every instinct honed by years of city living screamed that this was wrong. But I needed to get home, and this was clearly *a* train, even if it wasn't the one I expected. Besides, the woman seemed completely unfazed, as if Victorian-era steam engines regularly passed through Carlyle Station just before midnight.

"I don't think this is my usual train," I said weakly.

She laughed – a warm, familiar sound that tugged at my memory. "No, it isn't. This one's special. It only comes when someone needs to make a different kind of journey."

As if to emphasize her point, the station lights flickered again, and the temperature dropped several degrees. The steam from the train took on shapes that almost looked like faces.

"What kind of journey?"

"The kind that changes everything that comes after." She held out her hand. "But you have to choose to take it. Nothing is inevitable until midnight."

I checked my phone again, but the screen was black. All the clocks in the station had stopped at 11:59.

The woman's outstretched hand remained steady. Something about her eyes reminded me of my grandmother – the same mix of wisdom and mischief, of patience and urgency.

I took her hand.

The inside of the train was nothing like the sterile, plastic interior I was used to. The walls were paneled in dark wood, inlaid with intricate patterns that seemed to move when viewed directly. Gas lamps cast a warm, golden light that softened every edge. The seats were upholstered in deep red velvet, showing no signs of wear despite their apparent age.

We were the only passengers.

"Sit," the woman said, gesturing to a seat by the window. "We have a long way to go."

"Where exactly are we going?"

"That depends entirely on where you need to be." She settled into the seat across from me, smoothing her coat with practiced elegance. "Tell me, Emily Harrison, when was the last time you were truly happy?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped. Not because she knew my name – though I hadn't told her – but because I couldn't remember. Work had consumed my life so gradually that I hadn't noticed happiness slipping away, like a tide retreating one wave at a time.

"I used to paint," I said finally. "Before law school, before the firm. I had a little studio apartment with great light, and I'd spend whole weekends just... creating."

"And now?"

"Now I have a corner office and a view of the city I never have time to look at." The words tasted bitter. "I haven't touched a paintbrush in five years."

The train lurched into motion, but instead of the familiar forward surge, it felt like we were moving in all directions at once. Through the window, I saw not the dark tunnel walls but a rapid succession of scenes: my childhood home, my college dorm, my first apartment. Places I'd left behind, moments I'd chosen to leave.

"Time isn't as linear as people think," the woman said, opening her book again. "Neither are choices. Every decision creates branches, possibilities that continue to exist even when we don't follow them."

"Like parallel universes?"

"More like paths in a garden. Some are well-trodden, others overgrown. But they're all still there, waiting to be walked again."

The scenes outside the window slowed, focusing on my old studio apartment. Through the large windows, I could see an easel silhouetted against the setting sun. My heart ached at the sight.

"What is this? Some kind of Christmas Carol situation? Are you going to show me how miserable my life will be if I keep working sixty-hour weeks?"

She smiled that familiar smile again. "No, dear. I'm showing you that it's never too late to find a different path. Better late than never, as someone wise once said."

The words hit me like a physical force. I knew then why she seemed so familiar – she had my grandmother's smile, my grandmother's way of tilting her head when she was about to say something important.

"You're not really here, are you?" I whispered. "You died two years ago."

"I'm as here as you need me to be." She reached across and patted my hand. Her touch was warm and solid. "Death doesn't mean what most people think it does. Neither does time. Or choice. Or art."

The train slowed to a stop, though I hadn't felt it braking. Outside the window was my studio apartment, exactly as I'd left it five years ago. But it wasn't a memory – there was fresh paint on the palette, wet brushes in the jar by the easel.

"This is impossible."

"Improbable," she corrected. "There's a difference. The impossible can't happen. The improbable simply hasn't happened yet."

"So what, I just... step off the train and go back to my old life? Abandon my career, my responsibilities?"

"No. You step off the train and into a life where you never abandoned your art. Where you found a way to balance passion with practicality. Where you remembered that success isn't measured in billable hours."

I looked out the window again. The apartment looked so inviting, so full of possibility. I could almost smell the oil paints, feel the texture of canvas under my fingers.

"What about my job? My apartment? My life?"

"All still there, in one version of now. But there are other versions, other nows. The choice is yours."

"And if I stay on the train?"

"Then we continue to the next station. And the next. Until you find the path you need."

I stood, my legs shaky. The train door swung open silently, revealing my old studio exactly as I remembered it – but alive, waiting, possible.

"Will I remember this? Remember you?"

"You'll remember what you need to. The important parts. The parts that help you paint."

I took a step toward the door, then turned back. "Was it really you? All those times you said 'better late than never' – were you preparing me for this?"

She smiled my grandmother's smile one last time. "Time isn't linear, dear. Maybe I said it because I knew you'd be here tonight. Or maybe you're here tonight because I said it. Does it matter?"

"I suppose not." I took another step toward the door. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when you finish your first painting. I have a feeling I'll know when that is."

The studio air was warm and thick with the smell of linseed oil and possibility. As I stepped off the train, I heard her voice one last time: "Remember, Emily – art isn't about making perfect things. It's about making things perfectly yours."

The train pulled away silently, taking with it any last doubts about whether this was real or dream or something in between. I walked to the easel, where a blank canvas waited. The palette beside it held fresh paint in all my favorite colors – cadmium yellow, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue.

I picked up a brush. It felt like coming home.

Somewhere, a clock began striking midnight. But I was already painting, and time – linear or not – had ceased to matter.

In the morning, I would find that my resignation letter had somehow already been sent to Preston & Gray. My expensive downtown apartment would have transformed into this sun-filled studio. My closet full of tailored suits would become shelves of art supplies and half-finished canvases.

But that was all in a morning that hadn't happened yet. For now, there was only this moment, this canvas, this brush. And on the palette, mixed with the paint, a single red tassel – one that had once marked a page in a blue leather book.

I smiled and began to paint, knowing that somewhere, my grandmother was smiling too. Better late than never, indeed.

Years later, when people asked about my mid-career switch from law to art, I would tell them different versions of the story. Sometimes it was a simple tale of burnout and brave choices. Sometimes it involved a mysterious train and an even more mysterious woman in red.

But in every version, I kept one detail constant: how it felt to pick up that brush again, to feel the weight of possibility in my hand. Because that's the thing about art, and life, and choices – they're never quite what you expect them to be, but they're exactly what you need them to be.

And sometimes, if you're very lucky, they come with a grandmother's wisdom, wrapped in an impossible moment just before midnight.

Stifled, burning embers extinguished, spark-less, lifeless and caged

We wither away, rotting, rotting like we too are being consumed

By more than what life has thrown, by a society igniting matches

Then shouting down that we burn too brightly, stomp him out, make her cease

Fire that cannot be controlled shall be removed, taken elsewhere

To burn through centuries of kindling in far away places

And the government, they hope the smoke never seeps home

That all that remains is dust, stomped down so deep we forget what it felt like

To briefly be burning, alight, consumed by more than cast away decay

But even specks sparkle in sunlight, if the wind wafts in just right

We may float, illuminated by the source of all heat

Remembering what we could be, before the boot crushed us beneath it.

Ashes to ashes, flame begets flame, suppressing fires only makes the burn

Uncontrolled, unceasing like how one may yearn

Simply to live untethered to social niceties, to clocks

That yield and rank us too much, always creating shocks

At how young a fire can be, how kindling doesn’t need a century’s suppression

As youth carries with it one’s first oppression, the boot’s first footprint.

To say that this thing, this beast, this dark force, a shadow lurking in every darkness was older than time would not be accurate. Before time, there was not a before. Yet, the Old Soul exists there. Time has a beginning. Perhaps it will have an end and yet another beginning, but the beast does not care. For it exists separated from time.

In the absence of anything, it thrives. It tries to breach our world, to drive mankind to a sort of madness. Just try to imagine an atheistic afterlife. Thinking of nothing brings you closest to shadow, to darkness. Those who think too hard on the topic graze the fringes of this Old Soul, this beast. They touch madness and are driven, in pain, toward it. The Old Soul consumes a part of them.

It can touch, only, the things that have no substance. It is infinite, because there is no infinity. It is silence and stillness. It is emptiness and abyss. It feeds on the lonely and lost for their lack of a thing. Every outline encircles it, and every blank stare pulls at it, bringing it closer to reality.

To fight this Old Soul, the only thing one can do is fill their life with as much substance as they can. One day, despite it all, the Old Soul comes, and it will not consume you, but will thrive on the lack of you. So, weaken it. Fight it with love and music, and your favourite things. Keeping yourself occupied feeds it with neglect. It will be satiated until the day it is not. Such is life, to an Old Soul.

Is this the face of?

November 01, 2024

Is this the face of someone who is worried?

Perhaps she is naive. Perhaps she is grossly unaware

Maybe she exudes apathy toward that she cannot control

Toward things within her grasp

Toward a series of successful conclusions

Is this the face of someone dangerous?

Will she hurt you? Will you wish to be hurt?

Maybe, just maybe, you have her mistaken for another

Someone similar in appearance, but not temperament

Someone similar in temperament, but not appearance

Is this the face of someone who is hiding?

Hiding from reality or hiding a secret from full disclosure?

Maybe, you have no right to know the difference

Secrets remain such when known by only one

Secrets remain such when others respect this very definition

Is this the face of someone worth knowing?

Does she seek your counsel? Can you accept a hard pass?

Conceivably an excuse for possible events that have yet come to fruition?

Is she merely a distraction for others to gain access to you?

Is she worth the price you will pay when they do?

He bought a ring for me at a local fair. It was a beautiful setting, a blue lacy agate. When I looked into it I could see the rolling waves of the ocean. It was so lovely.

One afternoon we were out with the horses and getting in the truck I realized the setting of my ring was gone! Oh I was sick to my stomach because I really loved this stone.

How in the world would we ever find it? For all I knew it was lost in the pasture and that would be like finding a needle in a haystack!

Oh the humanity!

I just knew i'd nevet see it again and my heart just sank.

I have lost so many rings in my life that if I got back what they were worth, I would probably be well off sadly.

This wasn't just a ring or just a stone. This had meaning because of what it reminded me of. It reminded me of days long past, spent on beaches with my dad. Him carving cars out of driftwood, bringing up hermit crabs from the shallows for me to play with in the sand, and picking seashells along the shore.

So the stone gone, i moved on.

Then a couple months later my husband was cleaning out his truck

when he came in and asked me if i remembered loosing something.

I said "Yes my mind but you knew that already!"

Then he showed me the stone!

I was so happy i cried!

So now i have the stone but cant find the ring so now I have to get the stone put back into a ring!

Gosh! You win some

You loose some!

My parents say I’m an old soul. They’re probably right. I was accidentally invited on a birdwatching walk for senior citizens when I was university, and I went on it! I joined a knitting circle once, and everyone else there had at least twenty years on me. I’m twenty four years old right now and I feel like my soul is older, like I’ve lived more experiences than twenty four years ought to be able to hold, but perhaps that’s because I lose myself in fiction as often as I possibly can, trying to pretend I can live lives other than my own, that other souls could overlap onto mine like a Venn diagram or a kaleidoscope. Some semblance of more than humanity, of animal or vegetative souls like the sort Aristotle wrote about.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m an angry, bitter man. I’m angry at the universe because I’m getting old. I’m angry that my hair is gray and I’m going bald. I’m angry that I can’t see for shit and I need glasses. I’m angry that my wife destroyed our family and now I’m a single dad with four kids. I’m angry at Mary Jane for picking another guy over me. I’m angry at myself for still being in love with her. I’m angry at God for letting all of this happen. And I got my staples taken out of my stab wounds yesterday so last night, I was finally able to take all of that anger and hatred and bitterness out on someone.

But let’s take a step back. So this week was similar to most for me. Fun weekend with the kids. I took them to the pool and we all swam and enjoyed the water. We went on a picnic at a park with a fun playground. I played bass at church Sunday and talked to my friend Janet who runs the Sunday School. I call her the Superintendent. We talked about the kids and the divorce. She’s been helping me get beds and stuff for the kids through the church. It really sucks that even though I have a high paying job, I can’t afford anything because I’m paying for two households while my soon to be ex-wife does nothing. That’s a rant for another day, though.

I worked every day and yesterday went to karate class after work. Paul has been grooming me to be a blue belt. I just haven’t been able to make any of the promotions yet because of kids and stuff. Then I went to the open mic at the Train Stop. Played violin and read some poems and people loved it as always. A few of us headed over to the Queen Korean Restaurant afterwards. It’s also a club and as the name, possibly unintentionally, implies, it’s a haven for the LGBT crowd, many of whom are friends of mine.

So that night, I was there with Frank, Billy, and Chris. And a transgender woman Rachel who ironically I met when Mary Jane and I were out celebrating her birthday. Rachel and I play music together sometimes. She plays country and rockabilly stuff.

I talked to Frank about music and art. He’d been an art history major in Kansas City, where he was from. A real blues guy. I talked to Chris about some fliers for an upcoming show. And Billy and I talked about some broadsides we were gonna publish together. Lots of art and music stuff.

Rachel mentioned she’d been assaulted by some guys nearby but she fended them off because she had taken karate for several years. Good for her. If I didn’t want my identity to remain anonymous maybe I could have recruited her for some help. Anyway, it definitely sounded like the neighborhood needed some cleaning up. And the guys who attacked her sounded different from the four guys in the car who’d been giving me trouble. The guys who attacked her all had white bandanas and white skull necklaces. Seemed like some sort of gang insignia.

Around one in the morning, I said bye to everyone and walked back to my mini van. What? I’m a middle aged single dad. What did you expect? Anyway, I got in the back and changed into my body armor. I checked to make sure no one was around, and got out, locking the van before I snuck into a nearby alley.

I snuck around in the dark until I found the street those four guys liked to frequent. And I waited. My anger continued to boil over as I waited. Not only was I gonna take out my life frustrations on them. I was gonna get them back for trying to kill me.

I waited a half hour. An hour. The street was empty. And I had to work the next morning. And I was already struggling a bit at my job. Finally a guy walked down the street and I saw their car show up, driving slowly behind him. They jumped out and he started running so I made my move.

I leapt out from the alley. “Hey, fuckers.”

The four guys in black turned to look at me as their quarry ran away. they started laughing and drew their knives. “Who the fuck are you?” one of them asked.

“Your worst nightmare,” was my response. I immediately regretted it. I mean what if that corny shit ended up sticking? What if “the Nightmare” ended up being my name. Actually I guess that’s not bad. Sounds more like a super villain than a superhero though. What do I care? I’m more of an antihero anyway.

So back to the story. They came at me and I high kicked a guy in the face. And those boots are pretty hard, as is the armor on the fists, so when I punched the other guys it also did quite a bit of damage. The fourth guy tried to hit me, and my block fucked up his hand pretty good. I stomped one guy for a bit and the others got back up and tried to stab me a few times but their knives deflected off. It almost seemed unfair at this point. That 2500 bucks was well spent.

So I kneed one guy in the head and uppercut his jaw, right hooked another, and roundhouse kicked the last one. They were all on the ground in pain so I took turns stomping the shit out of them. And I picked one poor random fuck and jumped on him and beat his face bloody. He spit blood out on me. “We’ve got friends. You ain’t seen the last of us whoever you are.” I punched him a few more times for good measure.

And as they all wallowed in pain, I took one of their knives and slit all four tires of their car. I threw the knife on the ground. “This is my neighborhood now. Stay the fuck out.”

“This ain’t your neighborhood,” one of them said. “You’re gonna be sorry.”

I stomped on that guy’s head a few more times for talking back. “Anyone else got anything to say?”

I left them all bleeding in the street and snuck back into the alley, heading back to my car with a shit eating grin on my face. Yeah. I’m a badass.