Hey, everyone.

Thanks for being here to read this, those of f you with eyes on this. I'm sure you've noticed that it's been rather quiet around these here parts again. I'm not so fond of when someone says they'll do something at a certain time and place and then just doesn't do it, so my apologies for not keeping up with my own posting schedule that I set for myself.

My family got sick this past week. It's nothing serious, but we had to call off our Easter plans to roll around in our sickness. In addition, I took a new job this past week, so all my spare energy has been going into that.

Writing for CTL continues to be a priority for me, but I'm starting to realize we're getting far enough into the story that I'm forgetting eye colours, names of skills, whether people have revealed certain secrets, etc. I need to keep better notes on my story, which I'd like to take some time to do. We're nearing the end of this first book and I really want things to ramp up and for things to make sense, but for that to happen right I need to actually remember stuff, lmao.

Don't you worry. CTL isn't going on hiatus. I feel bad for the state I've left its upload schedule and Patreon in, but I'm going to keep on keeping on with it - just expect the update schedule to be rather 'it updates when it updates' until the end of April. My two jobs are consuming all my hours and I need to use my spare time rereading my story and remembering everything.

Thanks for being here, and thanks for wanting to see where the story goes.

Now, I've posted the introduction to a new story I've been writing below. I haven't written any new words in this in a while and it's not been edited, but if you happen to find it intriguing, I might look into it in the coming months. This is the fruit of one of the poll options I posted on RR several months ago.

Hope you like it, and stay safe.

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CHAPTER 1:

Erratic, uneven footsteps.
The swish of blinds being pulled down to cover the windows.

The close quarters of the rickety trailer they shared let Seth hear his mother was awake without having to press an ear to a wall, but the awkward shuffling of her gait told him something was amiss. Swiftly, while rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he pulled the nearest shirt over his head. She tended to forget his personal space when she was like this, so he wanted to make sure he was wearing some clothes when she burst in.

Proving him prophetic, the door swung open and thudded against the wall just as the hem of his shirt met the band of his boxers.

"Knocking," he groaned, reminding the woman who had birthed him of the concept of asking permission before entering a room.

But then he saw her eyes, wild and shaky. They looked past him, seeing him not as her son but as just another part of his unkempt bed. She spotted the window he'd left open a crack and pounced like a lion, clipping it shut and pulling the window cover down, sealing the outside world away.

He looked to the clock perched on the worn-down box he used as a bedside table for the time; 11:14 AM, long past when his mother's meds should have kicked in.

"I left that open for some air. You– you doing okay?"

Upon hearing his voice, she craned his neck in his direction as if she'd been startled by his presence. "If it's open, they'll have a way they can–" She blinked. The far-off, rabid look in her eyes was slowly replaced with one of recognition. "... get in," she finished, looking back to the window.

"Who will have a way of getting in?" He asked with his eyebrows raised. He knew his mother was realizing she'd been starting to fall into one of her episodes as she looked around and saw the external signs: the locked windows, every single way of looking into the house covered, and from past experience, her bed propped against the door that led outside.

"I don't want to tell you," she said with an uneasy smile, one of her hands touching the opposite elbow.

"The men in sunglasses?" Seth questioned pointedly, making steely eye contact with her. He knew the answer before she even started to deflate under his gaze.

"... yeah." She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and swayed in place.

"Where are your meds, mom?"

"I don't want to tell you that either," she admitted, this time with an ear-to-ear smile that told him everything he needed to know.

"You flushed them again," he stated. It wasn't a question. She let a giggle break past her lips and looked toward the bathroom fondly, like it was her partner in crime and they'd just succeeded in a heist together.

"Yeah."

Seth sighed a deeply restrained sigh – the sigh he wanted to give had the force of a thousand suns behind it and would burn up the entire room – and stood up from his bed, the comforter sliding limply down to the mattress with the motion. He side-stepped a soda can and opened up the top of his bedside table box, pulling crisp pair of jeans out that smelled only slightly of Mountain Dew.

"Mom, you have to take your medication," he informed her sternly.

It was her turn to sigh. "I've told you before that I hate the way it makes me feel, MC NAME. It's like I can't reach my own emotions when I'm on it."

Seth ran his fingers through his dark hair, an echo of his father's hair, a wrinkle in his brow as he listened. His mother had indeed expressed this concern before, among a thousand others all aimed at the same thing; not taking her dang pills. "On this one. We just need to keep trying new ones until we find the one that works for you – and that means staying on them long enough to figure out what's wrong with them."

"I know, honey," she said as she deflated, her shoulders lowering from her ears, "but what if we never find one that works?"

There was a tremble in her lip as she asked, her true concern showing. He pulled back some of his lecture-like tone in favour of something more even and stable. "We're going to keep trying until we find something that doesn't make you feel like a zombie, mom."

He kept speaking as he moved through the trailer, past her and into the living room. "You shouldn't feel worse on medication than you do off of it. Why would you even take it, then? But you need to stay on each one for as long as the doctor asks, or they're going to keep starting you over on the same thing again and again. Consistency is key if we're ever going to find something that works, okay?"

Continuing to talk to her in a comforting lilt was a trying task. He barely held back a wince as he exited his room and saw that the rest of the trailer's contents were mostly on the floor. There was one single path through them; the path from her mattress to the exit, because she had dragged it there to prop it against the door.

The door that opened out.

Not that she had been in her right mind, but damn. "I'm going to go to the pharmacy to get you a refill. How about you stay here and clean up?"

"Yeah, okay," she agreed, starting first on picking up the pots she'd flung to the floor while reaching for the tiny window behind the sink.

Seth had no idea how he hadn't woken up sooner, with all the commotion.

He grabbed the flimsy, dusty foam rectangle and peeled it away from the door, pushing the handle in to open it. The seal between their trailer and the outside world opened and a fresh breeze tinted with cigarette smoke flowed in.

Compared to the musty insides of his home, the scent was a welcome reprieve - and it paled in comparison to how the tiny space would smell when he got home. His mother got into all sorts of substances when she wasn't worried about how they would interact with what was already in her system; when he was feeling less charitable, he thought that was half the reason she stopped taking what was prescribed. All the more reason to be back as soon as possible.

"See you soon," Seth said as he ducked into the outside world with haste, grabbing his backpack off the floor on his way.

He unzipped its metallic closure and peered inside, checking to make none of his stuff had been damaged. His massive stack of notebooks seemed fine, but he would have to wait until he left the trailer park's property to do a wellness check on his laptop. There were too many sticky fingers around. He didn't think his 7 year-old brick of a machine would net someone much of a haul, but it was what was on it that mattered; his stories. He didn't know what he'd do if they got stolen now, when he had made so much progress.

Seth had been building up a backlog of stories for years now. One day, they were going to be what got him out of this place, but he needed to make sure they were good enough to stand on their own first. He had no fame or fortune to fall back on, no nest egg that would let him fail a few times; they had do succeed, and succeed hard. He had been planning his method of attack for months, so many months that he'd edited it a few times because the trends had shifted.

He sealed the bag back up and held on to the straps as he darted quickly - but not so quickly the people roaming the dirt paths would think he was avoiding them - to the edge of the property. Once he got to the city sidewalk and passed the gates, he let out a held breath.

He was looking forward to going to the pharmacy. Not only did it give him a chance to leave the burdens of his cramped neighbourhood, filled with dealers, cops and the mentally ill, but he also might get to talk to Clara.

Just the possibility made his steps quicken. Clara had been his, once upon a time, before everything in his life crumbled. Back when he'd been in school, back when he still lived in a house, back before his father left and his little brother left in a more permanent fashion. Seeing her reminded him of a time he wouldn't be sure ever existed without her existence to tie it to, her permanency.

She was like a living memory, a beacon of light formed into flesh. Needless to say, he was fond of her.

But his fondness for her had to be metered, measured. His beacon shone for the world to see, and the world had seen it in his absence. Of course, she had attracted the attention of somebody else while he was figuring out his life-- and that was fine. Really. Clara deserved to be appreciated for who she was, and to not just wait for him forever. But he couldn't lie; when he saw her through the aisles of the pharmacy, he still pictured himself scooping her face into his hands and pressing a kiss against her lips. His mind edited Jared out.

This time, when he entered the pharmacy, Jared was nowhere to be seen. While he had nothing against the man (besides not knowing exactly how much of him had entered Clara), he had to admit that things were easier without him around. He didn't have to worry about how much his face was smiling, and how that might look to another set of eyes.

Seth fought to not look dopey at the sight of her; she was behind the counter, focused on filling a bottle with pills. Her pharmacy assistant scrubs weren't what he would describe as sexy, but her body filled them out well, particularly in the chest area where the fabric struggled to contain her.

Someone was there in line before him, so he stood behind them as they were served and pulled one of his many notebooks out of his backpack. He had most of his plots recorded on his laptop, but his more ephemeral ideas were stored physically on paper. He scribbled them out and, lately, had been bringing them to Clara. She had a knack for knowing which ones had real potential, and for getting him out of literary jams once he started writing. Her brain was focused in a way his couldn't be.

She was a voracious reader. In her free time, she ate up books like he wished she would eat up certain bits of his anatomy. She had read enough of other people's plots to always have an idea to suggest for his.

He awaited what she might say about this one, pulling away the elastic band that held the bound notebook shut. His latest plot bunny focused on a world where people were fused with card suits, and their suit determined their deck and what kind of magic they could cast. He was calling them Card Imps in his mind, and so the page he opened to had Card Imps emblazoned across the top.

But all he had was a species. He needed a plot, main characters, a world for the Card Imps to live in. He had so many splintering ideas that he couldn't reign in which ones deserved to become the reality of his story. That was where Clara came in.

The person who was in line before him was asking some questions about his prescription: when to take his pills, how often, if they interacted with common medications like ibuprofen.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

His cell buzzed around in his pocket. He slipped the old, tired rectangle out and checked the screen. It was his dad. Seth considered whether he wanted to answer the old man at all, but his boredom got the best of him.

"Hello?"

"Hey there, bud," chirped the high-pitched voice of his father. He was putting on a fake happiness that made Seth wonder if somebody had died.

"Hey," he replied uneasily, straightening his back. His father being around, even in voice form, had a way of making him reevaluate his posture. He was always telling him to stop slouching. When he looked down, he noticed his pants had a faint Mountain Dew stain in them; his father would never let him leave the house looking like this. Heh.

"What's up, dad?"

"Oh, nothing much. I was just wondering how you and your mother were doing."

Seth almost sighed. Subconsciously, his shoulders slumped. Dad wasn't calling for anything, he just wanted some new material on his mother. He called periodically for juicy deets to run to his new partner with, so they could 'connect' over them and how wounded he was over how she was acting now that he was out of the picture. He was worried about them, he said-- but not worried enough to ever visit, and certainly not worried enough to call her instead.

"Mom's fine. I'm fine. Is there anything else? Because I'm in line at the pharmacy."

Fuck. He knew the error in his words as soon as they came out of his mouth.

"Why are you at the pharmacy, if your mom's doing fine? Didn't you just say a week ago that you were out getting her meds for her?"

Seth's lips drew to a thin, unimpressed line. The man was so in tune with his ex-wife's life that he knew her medication schedule.

"Just getting the next batch early, just in case. Mom's been thinking about a trip."

"What kind of trip?"

The dark-haired boy groaned inwardly. "Why don't you call mom and ask? It's almost my turn in line."

A silence fell over his dad's end of the call. He knew he was trying to think of how to say he didn't want to talk to mom without mentioning Seth's departed brother, a subject they had all chosen to avoid. His mother's and father's relationship had fizzled out along with his sibling's life.

"It's my turn," Seth stated thankfully truthfully (though he would not have been above lying to get out of the call) as the guy at the counter walked away, leaving Clara's counter blissfully open. He hung up without waiting for his father to respond. He'd just be calling back later to ask for more info about his mom's nonexistent trip.

He approached the counter and watched in real time as Clara's face changed from its dull work mode and adopted a glittery fondness in its place. "Hi there, Seth. What can I get for you today?"

"My mother needs a refill." He didn't need to tell her on what.

She nodded, some of the light fading from her eyes. She knew why he would be asking again so soon and didn't press him on the issue, something he appreciated about her. Soft, understanding, genuine Clara.

She started scribbling away on her clipboard with a gel pen.

"How are your classes going?" Seth asked while fiddling with the elastic on his notebook. He kept it closed for now, not wanting to launch straight into asking her for something.

The blonde looked over the top of the rigid board, her blue eyes blinking in consideration. "Lacey had to make three batches of biscuits in my cooking class the other day, and still couldn't get them to rise. People kept switching her baking soda and powder, and her flour with corn starch. She cried a little."

Seth's eyebrows rose at the tale. "Savage."

"She deserved it," Clara assured him, "she sabotaged Melanie's lasagna with real cheese last week. Melanie's a vegan."

"Is this a cooking class or a junior saboteur class?"

"Coookiiiing," she replied, but even she sounded unsure. "Half-saboteur, half-cooking, maybe. But I'm sure I'll still know more when I'm done than I knew when I went in – I've got to start learning how to not burn the house down, since I'll be moving out soon."

The news that she would be moving out of her parents' place soon was exciting to some degree, but it also hit him like a truck. Would she be moving in with Jared? And had it really been long enough since he'd been kicked out of school that she was considering her own place? It felt like not so long ago that they had been seeing each other every single day in high school, finding little reasons to see each other in the halls or after class.

"You looking for a place in the neighbourhood? Because I saw some vacant trailers on my way in," he joked, "or if you waited a few weeks, you could probably get in there after the next time the cops raid the place."

Clara's lips turned upward in a smile. "I know I handle pills all day, Seth, but you might have the wrong idea about me. No, I'm looking for a two-bedroom apartment. I need somewhere with more than one room so Biscuit has some room to roam."

Seth couldn't tell from her answer if she intended to move in with her new boyfriend, which was probably the stupid point. He also couldn't tell if she would be transferring to another pharmacy location. He must have been staring pensively in her direction for way too long, because she flitted her gaze uncomfortably downward and away from his.

"You-- uh, man, sorry. Instead of stewing in my own misery, I might as well just ask. You moving to a new workplace too?"

"Yes," she sighed softly, her face melting into a delicate little frown. "I've been handing out some resumes and I've already gotten a few offers. I just..."

Clara bit her juicy lower lip and looked at him with her glittering ocean eyes. "I wanted to wait until all this had passed over with your mom and you were in a good place before leaving, but I don't know if I can keep waiting. Jared is getting really rightfully frustrated, but I just-- I feel so shitty. I'm going to miss you, and I know our friendship and your writing have been the only things keeping you afloat."

Something about the way she said 'friendship' like a swear word she was afraid to let the children hear let him know she had been getting something more than friendship out of their time too.

"Clara, don't stay in this dump out of pity. It's insulting, and the sooner you become the world's most famous nurse, the sooner I can tell the world I knew you way back when. Get out of here."

He finally popped the elastic off his notebook, pulling it open to present his latest idea to her. "But before you go, let me suck a last few ideas out of your brain. Card games have been gaining popularity in the writing scene and I always loved Yu-Gi-Oh and shit, so I've been playing around with a new idea. I want to make a race of imp people that cast spells using cards and have a reservoir for them in their tails, but that's all I have for them right now. Any ideas jump to your mind?"

The tears that had been gathering in the lower half of her eyes threatened to spill over. "Do you want the cards to have spells on them, or do you want the cards to be components of spells the imps can build into a deck, like 'element' and 'shape' and 'power level' or something? But Seth--"

Seth knew she was trying to go back to talking about her move, so he interrupted and pushed back with yet more words on his plot idea. "I want it to be a deck builder, yeah, but wouldn't having just element, shape and power cards make them only able to cast offensively? I want them to be able to build support spells with their cards too."

Clara's look of very moist sympathy shifted to one of mild annoyance. "Maybe there could be an element of randomness to their spells, or you could add a fourth category of card like 'spell type' that would include 'support'. BUT SETH--"

"That might work. Be quiet for once while I write all this down." He reached for his pen and clicked it a few times in the seething silence that followed his words.

"If you don't listen to me, I'm not going to fill this prescription," she decided, crossing her arms grumpily across her ample chest.

"You would refuse my ailing mother service?" He asked, putting on a playful pout with a hint of skepticism.

"Sure. I would tank my job for this – it's not like I haven't already tanked my relationship for you. Now why don't you do all you're good for and shut up and write while I say something?"

Seth held back a chuckle and used the counter for support as he started scribbling down the ideas her ideas had given him.

"Seth, I just wanted to say," she started, shaking off her aggressive tone in favour of the quivering one underneath, "I hate... that things getting better for me has to mean things getting worse for you. I hate that just as you were getting ready to release your first book and we were the best we had ever been, your brother started getting bullied and you got caught punching someone out by stupid Mr. Anderson who already hated you for no reason. I hate that nobody at school gave you a chance because you wear a hoodie and dark colours or something stupid and that Drew-- died."

Seth's scribbling faltered for a moment.

"That's just how things turn out for some people, Clara," he said with a forced shrug. He was a cool, chill dude, and his shrug made him look it too. He was definitely not also getting a little misty-eyed in but one single eyeball. "I'm working on getting out of it. You already are."

"Yeah, and I love that about you. Along with so many other things." With shaky hands, she started using a tiny guillotine to cut his mom's pills in half. "The world just wasn't fair with you, and I wanted you to know that. This isn't how the rest of it is going to be, and you can-- you can still call me, and I'll pick up. No matter what."

She abandoned doing her task in a two-handed way in favour of using the blade one-handed, because she used her newly free hand to brush her fingertips softly across the top of his writing hand.

"I'm not going to screw up your new life, Clara," he said, his jaw stiffening. He couldn't even believe that the words were coming out of his mouth. "You need to focus on Jared now that you're going to be living together."

Clara gulped, shocked that he had put two and two together as much as she'd been avoiding confirming it. She paused as she wondered what to do, how to proceed--

She grabbed his hand fully, and used it to pull him in and partially over the counter. She pushed her pillowy, soft lips against his and a bolt of electricity ran through him. He gripped the closest bit of her and deepened the exchange, and they full on made out in 'public' in the dusty pharmacy.

"You're right," she breathed up against his face, the salt of her tears joining the berry flavour of the lip gloss that she had smeared on his lips. He wished he had brushed his dang teeth before he had left the trailer. "I need to move on, you just make it so hard, and Jared isn't--

The sound of a bag slamming down against the counter made them both jump backward.

"Jared isn't what?"

Jared, with his slicked-back black hair and jean jacket, emerged from between two aisles where he could have remained unseen for as long as he wanted. Just how long had he been watching them for?

"Hey," Seth said, turning to face Clara's now-boyfriend while her lip gloss was smeared, glittery, across his mouth. He had definitely just started sucking face with 'Jared's girlfriend' in the middle of her workplace; inadvisable for so many reasons, including that her 'partner' could be hovering, fuming, behind one of the shelves. He didn't normally think of him as such a temporary fixture in her life, but considering she had just locked lips with someone else, how permanent were they really?

Jared didn't seem to agree with his conclusion. Jared saw him as the only problem between them, rather than the deep-seated issues Clara had been about to reveal. He looked at him with daggers for eyes like he wanted to see him in the ground, which was a shame – they had operated under such a lovely, tenuous peace until now.

"Outside. Out back. Now." The betrayed blonde BF grunted, not giving his girl the time to do anything besides the hamster-like quivering she was already doing; something she did when she was nervous. She rubbed her nose with her knuckle, her nose wiggling from side to side.

"You heard the man," Seth stated, reaching over the counter for the mostly-full bottle of pills she'd been filling agonizingly slowly - in an attempt to draw out their conversation, no doubt.

"You don't have to go out there with him." The blonde's eyes were welling up, her pupils vibrating in fear. Fear for his safety. He looked like a wet noodle next to Jared.

Jared was what one might describe as 'ripped' or 'shredded'. His biceps made most shirts an ill fit. Seth was lean and lightly muscled, but his inability to pay to go to a gym or store any exercise equipment put a barrier between him and how swole he wanted to be.

"Yeah, I do. You get back to work." This fight between them had been months in the making, as much as he'd tried to avoid it.

Just as Clara tried to pipe up, a couple slipped in from one of the pharmacy's aisles and stood in line behind him. "You go ahead," he offered them, and stepped away from the counter. He didn't bother getting a bag, and stuffed the mostly-full pill bottle into his jeans. Or, 'mostly full' in that the prescription was near-filled. They never stuffed the bottles to the brim, ever. Such a waste of plastic.

As Seth left the dinky pharmacy, he looked over his shoulder. Clara was chatting up the couple, no doubt to alleviate some of her own anxiety, but her eyes met his as the door swung closed. They shared a meaningful look for a split second, full of longing, and then the door slapped shut.

There was indeed an 'out back' behind the store, through a narrow alley and back with the dumpsters. The smell of garbage filled his nostrils as he rounded the corner, but he wasn't unfamiliar with the scent of rot. Jared's sharp cologne cut through it, with notes of smoked wood and jackass. He was pacing with his shoulders up next to his ears, his arms flexed. He was really tossing his weight around, and it made his man-perfume especially palpable.

"You wearing so much cologne to compensate for something?" Seth asked pointedly, loudly because there were about three cars worth of distance between them. He felt kinda shitty about not immediately trying to make nice, but with the darkness in Jared's eyes, he doubted there was any room for words.

The blond man elastic banded in his direction as soon as his feral eyes noticed him. He charged forward ferociously, confirming Seth's suspicion that there was no room for talking here. This was to be a battle of brawn vs wits.

Taking in his surroundings with a 200-pound golden ape trying to eat him for breakfast was nigh impossible, but as he started to book it to the left, he saw something sticking up from the dumpster. Something sharp. Against this beast, whose mouth was foaming at the edges, he would need an edge. Literally.

Seth had the advantage of having barely muscled string beans for limbs, so he pushed off the bottoms of his cheap shoes and zipped narrowly past Jared before he could reach him. He even felt the air whip past as he whiffed a clumsy lunge for his throat.

Having a few precious seconds on his side while Jared would have to skid to a stop and turn around, Seth approached the dumpster with so much speed he found it impossible to stop and just allowed his chest to meet the hard side of the dumpster. Thud. He flailed upward, flapping at the metal shiny like a desperate bird.

His aggressor was seconds behind, grabbing the fabric of his hoodie and yanking it backward. He let his arms go limp and his backpack and hoodie slipped off at once, causing Jared – who had put a great deal of weight into his yank – to stumble backward and land loudly on his ass.

This gave Seth just enough time to get a good hold on the metallic something. He freed it from its home between a rusty can and a half-eaten food scrap. It was an x-acto knife; flimsy, but could it be enough?

Jared was part way to righting himself again, one knee bent as he returned to his feet. He pulled back a hand, formed a fist and screamed out as he launched a punch straight for Seth's face. He had just enough time to side-step the jab, which thumped into the cold, hard dumpster. He screamed out louder, this time in white hot pain and rage. He cradled his hand pathetically and Seth used his shoulder to shoulder check him to the concrete while he was weak enough for him to pull it off.

With the electric shocks of pain, and perhaps some actual shock, still travelling up the betrayed boyfriend's arm, he folded easily and crumpled backward. His bulging neck muscles flexed just enough to keep his skull from splitting like a coconut, and instead it would just have a nasty welt in the morning.

A white light crept in at the edge of his vision, eating up his left eye's ability to see. For a second he thought he was whiting out from the thought of how Clara might feel about him breaking her partner's arm, but then there was a voice.

A whispering voice.

Quiet, but clear, like a distant bell.

"Do you wish to be taken away from this place, Seth LAST NAME?"

"What?" Seth questioned aloud, dreamily, as he rapidly leapt on top of Clara's current love interest and clicked out the x-acto blade to its third notch. He used his teeth to break off the rusty edge and spat it onto the concrete. Jared's blue eyes that matched Clara's so well shot open to ten times their size.

"Do you wish to be taken somewhere away from here, the place where you have given so much and gotten nothing in return?"

Red lights. Blue Lights. Seth began to hear the wailing of sirens in the distance. At the same time, his phone – which had clattered to the concrete face-up in his travels – began to vibrate. His father's cell number flashed across the screen.

Jared saw an opportunity to strike and suddenly a mean right hook caught Seth in the jaw, dazing him. Seth doubled down and refused to fall, pressing the blade's edge against the skin of his throat.

"Do it," Jared encouraged him, his eyes white-blue and taunting, "slit my throat in front of the cops. Everyone always knew you were gonna go to jail one day - why not make it today, trailer trash?"

Trailer trash.

Tremors shook his hand, the blade wobbling against Clara's boyfriend's neck, sitting ethereally atop his flesh without piercing. Oh, but he wanted to pierce. His brain was screaming at him not to.

There was more to him than his set of circumstances in life, more to him than the four walls of his tragic dwelling. He could be more than this useless lump, but not if he killed somebody in cold blood and got thrown away for life.

"You hold quite a lot of potential in you, Seth. That is why I am contacting you. Do you wish to go somewhere new, somewhere where you are needed for precisely the set of skills you have?"

The voice bounced around in his skull, reverberating in what he knew was only his own mind. Nobody else was looking around for its source, not even the policemen unloading from their car.

His phone continued to buzz loudly against the concrete, its volume matching the sirens. Everything was too loud.

His father wanted to know about the fictional trip his mother was embarking on; a lie he had formed only to shut him up. Clara's footsteps were slapping desperately against the ground as she burst from the pharmacy's backdoor, finally finished with her customers. The expression on her face screamed of why they would never be together again. Three policemen were bounding in his direction, guns out. His mother was back in the trailer, clicking her lighter on to imbibe in some unknown substance while he was out getting her the medication that numbed her to the fact his little brother was dead.

"Are you here to take me away to a magical land?" He asked in a gravelly voice with a wry grin, sarcastic but hopeful.

Frosty whiteness filled his left eye entirely, a snowstorm of colourlessness eating up his vision. A figure stepped into the nothingness, its outline just barely visible in the bright void. "I may only do so with your consent."

"Oh, I consent," he replied immediately.

"And it is not a land, nor is it magical at this moment, I must say."

"As long as it's not precisely here, at precisely this moment," he replied once more.

He could, again, barely see it, but the figure in his eyeball gave a single nod of approval.

His phone screen shattered under the foot of a policeman at the same time as everything exploded into a sunbeam of pure white.