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Chapter 8 of Tales of Woe

Psijius, September 28th, 2:24 PM

I was sitting at a Starbucks with Adeline, sipping at my pitch black cup of coffee as she downed her smoothie and ate her bagel. We'd come to really... appreciate more about each other than our bodies. I'd found her story interesting, and she'd arranged for me to meet her son today. He was supposedly walking here from his home, and we were discussing my fake backstory.

"Right, because I totally belong in the military."

"It makes more sense than you growing up in a town that doesn't exist."

"Shadow's Cove does too exist! That place was my childhood! I died there for crying out loud!"

She chuckled a little, "Right, so if you're dead, how are you sitting here having coffee with me?"

"Simple, I nearly died, I came back, my family disowned me, and I ignored them ever since. It was easy until..." I caught myself as I began to choke up.

Adeline noticed and gave me a worried look, "Until what?"

"It's... It's not important."

"Come on, you can tell me anything."

"Okay, but maybe I don't want to."

"Maybe you don't have a choice." She moved her hand, and I glanced down to see her pointing her taser in my direction.

"... Fine. But mind you, I hate my family with a burning passion, and that's true for everyone-"

"Except for whoever makes you feel like crying."

"... Yeah. And you know why?"

"Because you're secretly a fag?"

"God no- no, I... He's the only one in my family who actually cared about me. Sure, I hated him, but... I don't know, at some point I started to actually care about him. I..."

*-*-*

I was walking down the side of the road, pack slung over my shoulder and bottle of coke in hand. It'd been eight years since Cipher had tried to kill me, and I'd done my best to protect him. I watched from the outside, looking in on his sad little life. How he slowly began to realize the injustice of the family their perverted logic and reason. I didn't touch him, I didn't let him see me, but I had become his guiding angel.

_ It started with things like cheating him into winning at games with the other children in the town, or maybe an apple ripening ahead of season. But it got worse, really quick. Around town, he had become lucky Cipher, always having a few coins to spare, always winning the coin toss, and always getting the best pick. Random chance ensured he won, and even the most rigged of games proved something was_ too lucky about him. I enjoyed helping him, not only because it allowed him to realize that good things happen to those who realize right from wrong, but it was enjoyable to fuck with that town.

_ By the fifth year of being on the outside, I'd come to the point where messing with Cipher's life wasn't enough. I was sixteen, and all my hormones were telling me to wreak havoc on those that I despised. It began with me draining a well here or there, but it ended with things like slashed tires, missing car engines, and entire houses mysteriously and silently turned upside down in the middle of the night. I knew when people were and weren't watching, and at one point I managed to make half the town believe it was haunted by will o' the wisps and wraiths. They thought the undead were terrorizing their town, and a few made connections to my grave and the mysteries surrounding it._

_ See, no one had dug up my coffin. For all they knew, I was dead, half rotten in the ground. But a month after poor little Psijius was buried, Cipher started being lucky. By the day he died the following year, Cipher was winning coin flips without a doubt. Two years later, a well dries up, and a week after, Cipher proves to be the only person who can pull water from it. By the end of the year, he's the only kid who can pull water from any well in the town. Some theorized I was protecting him, but most of us could see the dead and the undead. Most of them failed to see a dark figure running around, controlling the life of one child._

_ But I stopped. Cipher had stopped going outside as often, and the odd occurrences around town stopped with it, because their creator was always watching the door. I'd realized he wasn't coming out any time soon, and went on my way. I was following the one road leading in and out of the town, and passing by the endless fields of grass and grain, reaped by no one, and self-sustaining._

_ I was enjoying my time, until dad's red pickup truck came to a slow stop next to me. I was half terrified to look in, but an unexpected voice emitted from within, "Hey, buddy! Get in, I'll take you to the next town!"_

_ I stopped walking and turned around. Sure enough, Cipher had opened his door and was beckoning me to come over, ignorant to who I was. I did as told and once inside I realized something must've happened for him to be driving dad's car. Our father loved this thing more than he loved himself, and if Cipher had it, either the old coot had finally kicked the bucket without my knowing, or Cipher was ditching this dump._

_ Cipher held out his hand in greeting, "So, what's your name?"_

_ "Oh, uh- Saturn." I couldn't risk him finding out who I was, and quite frankly he was too stupid to know what Saturn was. The only reason I knew it was a planet was because I cared about the annual newspaper hoard from the nearest town._

_ "Huh. Neat name. I'm Cipher."_

_ "Oh. ... Nice to meet you."_

_ "Yeah, well I'm surprised you don't know me. Everyone in Shadow's Cove knows me."_

_ Now was the first mistake I made. I went with the weirdest explanation and backstory I could've thought of in less than half a second. "Shadow's Cove? Where's that?"_

_ "How the hell do you not know where it is? It's less than ten miles back that way!"_

_ "Well... I don't know! I was playing around with teleportation magic and-"_

_ "Ended up here?"_

_ "Yeah."_

_ "Huh. So, where you from?"_

_ "Oh fuck-um...-"_

_ "Fu- what? No need to swear, boy."_

_ "God you remind me so much of dad- I'm from New York."_

_ "As in the city? Damn! What's it like there? I hear they've got bright lights, buildings that touch the clouds and entire streets dedicated to acting and theatre!"_

_ "Well, yeah, sure, if you're into that."_

_ "And you ain't?"_

_ "Hell no! I got better things to do than waste my time with moving pictures and crowded rooms."_

_ "Sorr-y, didn't mean to offend you or nothin'."_

_ "No, it's okay, I just... God, I... I don't know if I can do this anymore. I just... I just need to... I just gotta find the right place to settle down. I can't... I mean, I'm just a simple guy from New Orleans, I can't-"_

_ "You said New York just a minute ago."_

_ "I did? Oh, well, I lived there for-"_

_ He held up his hand with a ball of fire beginning to roar near his palm, "You shut your mouth and tell me who you are or I'll give you a permanent place in hell."_

_ "... Funny, Ciph, you don't believe in hell."_

_ "Ciph- ... Wait, do I know you?"_

_ "Uh- no. Not at all."_

_ He glared at me, and then something clicked in his head. Without saying a word, he pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the car. "... How?"_

_ "... Um... What?"_

_ "How are you still alive?"_

_ "Heh-heh, umm... what are you talking about?"_

_ "Eight years ago, my brother died. It was my fault. I killed him, thinking I was just playing, but_ no_, Solarus meant to kill him! They wouldn't let me outside when they buried him and they fought to keep me from killing each and every last one of them, if only to breathe life into his grave. I turned against my family, I turned against my home town, and I turned against myself. I killed my own mother, all to see my brother sitting next to me, acting like he doesn't know who I am."_

_ I was speechless. A month of being alone in that house hadn't just made me grumpy, but it taught me loathe that place. It'd done the same to him, and he killed our mother over it. I felt a mixture of pride in what I'd created and a fear at the power he must have. Mother wasn't fast, strong, or that bright, but she could conjure life where there was none, and I don't mean necromancy, I mean birthing life into existence from thin air. And yet, Cipher had managed to kill her._

_ Suddenly Cipher broke the silence, "So, tell me, Psijius, how are you still alive?"_

_ "How hard did you fight to see my grave?"_

_ "What? I-... I... Answer my question first!"_

_ "Right, you must've hardly fought. I woke up in a coffin and blew its lid off as the shovel piled dirt onto it, and when I crawled out, no one was there. I remember that day as if it were yesterday, and yet all you care about is how much pain you've suffered." I opened the car door and got out, continuing my walk down the road. I heard his door open and close and the sound of his footsteps on the asphalt before I was pummeled to the ground and held there, looking up into his gleaming, golden eyes, now tearing up as he got off of me._

_ And then it hit me. Everything I'd done was wrong. Had I gone back to that house, I would've known sooner, we would've been able to work together to destroy that family, and now here we were, trying to understand each other's actions. I got up and starred at him a little longer, feeling my own eyes begin to water. I turned around and kept walking down the road. We understood each other, that's what was important._

*-*-*

Adeline handed me a napkin and I thanked her as I wiped the tears from my eyes. "I guess... I guess you aren't the only one with a bit of a sob story."

"Oh please, Psijius, if I have a sob story, yours is Vietnam. So... So how much of it do you want to tell Rich?"

"How much do you think he can handle?"

"Psijius, I doubt if he can even handle me being around you."

"Right... I'll tell him if he asks."

"Okay..."

A kangaroo sat down, but something seemed off about him, and I don't just mean the rippling glow on his fur, but the shape of his body itself seemed off, especially in his back.

I looked over at Adeline, "So he was a dragon?"

"Half dragon, half kangaroo. Guess who's one fourth avian."

"Interesting..."

The kid glared at us, "Yeah yeah, I'm one fourth dragon, one eighth avian, and a twelfth bat. Woop. Dee. Doo. What I wanna know, is why are you dating my mom?"