Chapter Eleven

"Around the time you took matters into your own hands, everything fell apart. How curious."

 

Gina called out sick from work the next day, while Callana slept at the foot of her bed. If this “nap” was anything like Callana’s last one, she might be out of commission for the next few days. At least that would give Gina enough time to figure out what had gone wrong with her life.

Von had come home late last night, probably taking the midnight bus home. But he didn’t work on Thursdays, so she caught him making coffee that morning.

“Hey,” Von said. “How’s it going?”

“Took Callana to work yesterday.”

“What in the name of Brovar made you think that was a good idea?”

Gina shrugged. “It actually went okay. Except for the part where she made me vomit up all my internal organs.”

Von chuckled. “That bad, huh?”

Gina took a deep breath.

"Worse. Because I’m… not joking, Von. That’s why I’m not at work. I puked up my guts—my actual, physical guts—in the middle of the restaurant.”

“Hold on,” Von said, taking a sip of his coffee. “You’re not… dead.”

“I’m well aware.” Gina walked over to the bottle-nest in the living room, picked up a clear, white bottle of Sminhoff, and cringed. She’d tried this last night, after Callana had gone to sleep. It had taken hours of willing herself to eat it, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her. As Von furrowed his brow, Gina shook her head. “Oh, fuck it.”

She bit off the tip of the bottle, bottlecap and all. It was easier to bite through than she’d expected—somehow, her teeth simply sliced the glass wherever they touched it, cleanly cutting the glass in two. Then, she crunched down, once again surprised at how oddly sweet it tasted. Like blueberries and cream, except pointy and crunchy. It didn’t even hurt.

“What the fuck,” Von said, spilling a few drops of his coffee onto the ugly, beige carpet. “What the absolute fuck, Gina.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that gonna happen to me?”

“Probably not. But no guarantees,” Gina said. “The longer you spend around Callana, the more likely she’s gonna get it into her head to ‘fix’ you.”

“Fix? What does that even mean?”

“Uh, basically make you a weird, immortal, glass-eating demon thing? Apparently, she gave me ‘tentacles’ somewhere, but I haven’t found them yet. Dreading it, honestly.”

Von started breathing heavily, shaking his head. “Okay, okay, no. No way, nuh-uh, no. We’ve gotta get rid of her, Gina. She’s not even human, she’s—she’s dangerous!”

Gina shrugged. “I told her not to do it anymore. I honestly think she’s just confused.”

“She’s a monster!”

“Oh yeah, no doubt, no doubt,” Gina said, idly taking another bite of the bottle—damn, it was surprisingly addicting. "There's no way to know how she'll react to just about anything. And you can't hurt her, can't really do anything to her, because she's basically God, and what are you supposed to do? When you think 'God,' you usually think Brovar, staring at the ashes of a dead world and fighting to build a new one. You think wisdom, you think absolute knowledge of all that is good and evil, all that retentionist bullshit our parents drilled into our heads. You don't think 'clueless twenty-something.'"

"Twenty-something? I got 'nine-year-old,' to be honest."

"Nah," Gina said, finishing her bottle and absently picking up another—turns out, she never got full anymore, so there really wasn't any cutoff for how much she felt like eating outside of boredom. "She's not a kid. She's dumb as rocks, and she has a childlike innocence, I guess, but no more than, say, any other foreign tourist on their first trip to Eston. It's all sightseeing, and she doesn't know the customs. That's all."

"And she's also got some horrifying alien intellect or whatnot."

"Oh yeah, a hundred percent alien. I don't think she'll ever be normal or anything. But as fucking terrifying as she can be... eh?"

"Eh?"

"Eh."

"You aren't even human anymore, and your response to that is... eh."

"I dunno, Von, what do you want me to say? 'Let's kick her out?' If we're dicks to her, she'll just bounce from person to person like a lost puppy, until either somebody decides they're fine putting up with her 'eldritch nightmare from beyond the stars' bullshit, or until she gives up. Then she'll probably, I dunno, destroy the whole planet or something."

"Pretty bleak," Von said, taking an idle sip of his coffee, then wincing. He'd decided a few weeks ago that he had to get into pure-black coffee, even though nobody actually liked it that way. It was the weird, hyper-masculine principle of the thing, Gina supposed. Despite all the growth he'd made in shucking off his parents' messaging after they kicked him out, he still struggled here and there, if only in bizarre, personally inconvenient ways.

"It's us, someone else, or oblivion. Assuming oblivion is even an option for me anymore, and... well..."

"You don't have to sacrifice yourself just to make her happy, you know. It's possible to put up boundaries without screaming at her and kicking her out. You could just say, 'hey, Callana, let's stay friends, but we need to get you a place of your own,' or something. You don't have to throw yourself under the bus to save the world or anything."

“Yeah, I know. I know. But I don’t mind her that much, honestly. She's nice, she wants to help, and yeah, she fucks up sometimes, but... you remember how I acted when you came out to me."

"Yeah," Von said, staring off. His realization had sparked Gina's, and she simply hadn't accepted the new, terrifying self-perception his realization had brought with it. It took months to repair their friendship afterward.

"I figure that if I can be that much of a bitch and still come back, I'm willing to give someone else the same chance I got. The same chance you gave me."

"Awww," Von said, shaking his head. "You wuv meee."

"Yesh, vewwy much, UWU,” she said.

"Okay, nope, it got too weird."

"Oh, so I'm the weird one?" Gina said.

“Gina, you’re eating glass.”

“It’s not half-bad, actually. I don’t recommend it if you’re still, like, a normal person. Pica is a real problem, you know. But if you can actually digest it, eh—easy morning snack.”

Von shuffled over to sit on the couch. "So... are you okay?"

“Not even remotely, thanks for asking.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Gina shrugged. “Not much to talk about. I’m immortal, I don’t have blood anymore, and if I hurt myself, it heals right away.”

She’d tested that last bit at midnight, after getting super drunk and weeping for hours. Thank Brovar vodka still affected her.

“Gee,” Von said. "Although, you know, that last part might not be so bad."

"I don't know if I can count my... experimentation last night as a relapse, but I'm leaning toward 'yes.'"

"Oh," Von said, sighing. "Shit, Gina. I didn't even think about how this might affect that."

"Certainly makes it more appealing, now that I can hurt myself without any consequences. No one would even know, so... I guess I'll have to be a bit more diligent or whatever."

"Gina," Von said, laying a hand on her thigh, "I'm proud of you. I know what it's like to... lose your streak. But two years is nothing to scoff at. I was proud of you yesterday, and I'm proud of you today, and even if you relapse again, I'll still be proud of you tomorrow. You might not be one of us mere mortals anymore, but you're still human, and you're allowed to need help every now and then. I'm gonna be here for you no matter what, okay?"

“Yeah. Thanks—I'm... I'm going through a lot. Worst part is, Callana was only trying to help. As far as I’m aware, she was trying to give me a gift, so I don’t have to, like, die. Even if I don’t eat or drink anything, I’m apparently just gonna keep trucking along, so… Anyway, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Can she… reverse it?”

“Probably? I don’t—I don’t know if I... want her to, though.”

Von raised his eyebrows.

“I mean, it’s freaky, I… cried a lot last night. Didn’t sleep a wink. But thinking about it, it’s pretty cool,” Gina admitted. “I’m not gonna lie, I wish she’d asked me first, but if she’d said, ‘Hey, wanna be young and hot forever?’ I’d probably have said yes.”

Von shrugged. “I mean, when you put it like that…”

“But it comes with a bunch of questions, and I’d have liked to have a chance to think it over first, you know? Like, what am I gonna tell my parents? Bruh, I just found out that they’re open to me dating girls, and I was so excited thinking about how they’re gonna, you know, come to my wedding, see my kids, all the good, wholesome stuff you want with your parents in your life, you know? I’d been so scared for so long that they were gonna say ‘no.’ But they didn’t! They said they’d support me, and I was so happy. But now, there’s a whole new thing that they might say ‘no’ to.”

“Gee,” Von said, taking a sip of coffee. “That’s… that’s a lot.”

“Yeah. And whoever I date is gonna get old and die, and I’m gonna still look like a teenager. I’m gonna get carded for the rest of time.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Von said. “Okay, that one sucks.”

“Yeah! And the worst part is, I… can’t stay mad at Callana for any of this. I want to be angry. By Brovar, I wish I could be pissed right now. But she’s like a little puppy, an alien trying to be human. She's nice, she's curious, she cares. It’s sickeningly wholesome at times, and then it gets absolutely horrifying. At random! Zero warning!”

Von nodded.

“She’s absolutely infuriating, and she’s so fucking sweet, and it’s so fucking annoying.”

Von blinked a few times, shifting his eyes from side to side.

“I mean, where does she get off giving me something as amazing as this? Me? What did I do for her? Give her a few bottles? And now she just follows me around and I don’t have the heart to tell her off, and I don’t even want to half the time, even though I know I should! My entire life has completely changed, and this girl is just oblivious and smiling the whole way through, like she doesn’t even realize how important she is.”

“Uh…”

“I don’t even think she realizes how friggin’ amazing half the shit she does is, you know? It’s like she doesn’t know what is and is not impossible. I mean, she takes one look at the laws of physics and breezes on by. It’s fucking awesome, and she does it like it’s absolutely nothing! And then she looks like she’s gonna fall over and cry when she’s trying to be a waitress, because that’s too hard for her, but she’s still trying, because she wants to pay you back for all the things you’ve done for her.”

“Okay,” Von said, holding his hand up to stop her. “Hold on, I can only handle so much gay at a time.”

“Oh, fuck off, Von.”

He leaned back and clutched his chest. “Too… much… gay! Can’t… take it… anymore!”

“Shut it, Von, I don’t have a crush on her.”

“She’s sooo amazing, Von!” he said in a sing-song voice. “She’s changing my life, Von!”

“Fuck you,” Gina said, her cheeks flushing as red as a stoplight. “S-shut up.”

“By Brovar, you’re already living with her. You already share a bed! Talk about the urge to merge, holy shit. You’re head over heels, and you’ve only known her for, like, two days.”

“Six!” Gina said.

“Yeah, because she’s so engaging when she’s asleep. Oh, Brovar, are you watching her sleep? Oh, you’ve got it baaaad, sis.”

“You have no leg to stand on, bucko—”

“Wrong! You were so smug about the whole Clenard fiasco, missy! I have more than enough legs to stand on. But maybe, just maybe, you’d prefer tentacles.”

“Shut.”

“And apparently, you’ve even got a few of your own, now—somewhere.”

“Shut.”

“I mean, I bet you could make good use of a few tentacles in your relationship.”

Gina shook her head, finishing off her bottle as Von mocked her for the rest of the morning.

 

 

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

Call an Ambulance!: An eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, a being that has lived through eternity, with no beginning and no end... Might be a lesbian?
The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.
Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.