School was different. Each person she passed was looking at her as if she had a third eye. The jocks that scoffed at her now looked at her with remorse, the nerds that hardly looked up from their tablets now stared at her with wide eyes and pursed lips. She was an eyesore, one that attracted attention like a moth to a flame.

Every few steps Desirae would try to pull her sleeve over her palm, but her brace limited her dexterity. As she passed a few of her classmates, she overheard them whispering about her injuries. To be fair, she should have been used to this. Her father was the talk of the town when he was elected into congress, and in all the wrong ways. This time was a little different, though—this time had to do with her, and her alone.

As she entered her classroom, Mrs. Ghalinksky lifted her gaze to look upon the students entering for that period and gaped at the sight of her favorite—and, arguably, least favorite—student.

“Desirae, what happened to you?” She asked, her jaw still left hanging open.

Shrugging her shoulders, Desirae took her usual spot in the corner of the room and slid as far down into her seat as she could without falling right onto the floor. Each time she crooked her neck, she felt a sharp pain shoot down her spine. It could only be compared to an electric ribbon that wrapped around each vertebrae of her spinal cord, shocking each nerve it came in contact with.

“You know, Mrs. Ghalinksky, just the norm. Took a stroll down Main Street and got smashed by a car.”

Blinking, her teacher let out the most awkward of laughs and tapped her fingers against the wooden tabletop of her desk. Clearly, she wasn’t sure if Desirae was kidding or not, and to be fair it wasn’t out of her nature to make such a fucked up joke. Before she could edge that hellish conversation onward, the bell chimed and people settled into their desks. Mrs. Ghalinksky stood to her feet, passing out a stack of tablets to each of her students. They were transparent at the base, a thin black border the only part of the device that wasn’t touch-enabled. The screen itself was see through, the only hint that it was usable were tiny little lines that ended in cubes. When the tablets came to life, this circuitry disappeared into the image. On it was a number, along with a list of questions. Exam scores.

“The exams from the prior weeks were disappointing, to say the least. We saw a drastic decrease in average score from the previous semesters, and only a few outliers managed to shock me.”

On Desirae’s tablet read a large, glowing ‘100’ that lifted off the screen into reality. She set the device down and drifted her focus back to her teacher who was already looking dead at her. Subconsciously, Desirae reached up to make sure the white gauze over her eye was still in place.

Of course it was, idiot. It’s held together by some stupid adhesive that tears your skin off every night.

A silent ping alerted onto Desirae’s screen just as the teacher tapped her pointer finger onto the surface of her wrist, a tiny blue LED illuminating from her metallic digit before it disappeared all together. Looking down at the screen, her score was now replaced with a pop up message that blinked irritatingly, similarly to that of a bad adware popup.

Pulling teeth is easier than reliving a tragedy. If you need a helping hand, find me at the intersection of Main and DeBuffy Street.

That’s when the air caught in her lungs. She refused to tear her gaze from the tablet, she refused to move a muscle, and she refused to close the popup. Her ears began to ring, and the clarity of her vision was worsening as a tear stung at the corner. She pinched her palms to try and distract from the nauseous feeling that was rising from the pit of her stomach, but nothing would ever outweigh the daunting nature of that message.

Just as her ears began to clear, and her breathing evened out, she heard one last statement before she blanked on everything that was happening around her. “Ladies and gentlemen, I expect only the greatest of impacts. You each serve a unique role in this world, but what we must not forget is the collision that can come from an idle mind.”

⟨ᴠᴀɢʀᴀɴᴛ⟩

DeVile sat beside Lystra and tapped his fingers on the table, watching as she scrolled through a few thousand lines of information. She was humming the sweetest of tunes while his head buzzed with all the anxieties and anger in the world.

“What is it you’re looking for again?”

“An old friend. Lives in Chinatown.”

“Old friend, eh?” Lystra snickered and eyed DeVile carefully before returning to the computer. “Awfully important friend if you don’t know where they’re at.”

“Let’s just say they’re secretive.” DeVile nodded his head before leaning back in his chair, rubbing the temples of his forehead before closing his eyes.

“More like,” she said with a sigh, “you pissed him off and now you need my help tracking him down.”

“Precisely, Ly.”

He stood to his feet and walked to the sofa, tracing along the polyester and pinched the particles of dust between his forefinger and thumb. She mumbled something under her breath in spanish, aggressively scrolling down the page to signify her frustration. DeVile didn’t really care, though, and it was far too easy to tune out her little tantrum. He’d make it up to her later, but in the meantime he knew she was aware how much her effort meant to him.

“I’m going to go run an errand really quickly. Give me a ring if you find something.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Her words oozed sarcasm, and her smile was as sardonic as they got, but he nodded his head and rested a thin folder with a few pages of information on the guy. Leaving without another word, he slipped his arms through his jacket and huffed out some air.

The metro line to Old Chinatown was rickety, the hand rail he gripped onto was slick with the oils of the prior travelers. While Lystra was busy trying to find any digital footprint left about this guy, he’d be working his magic in the streets. It would be an experience, those chinese mafias really hated his guts. Sniffling, he smirked at the idea of causing a little mayhem again.

It’s been too long, he told himself, I wonder if they would recognize this ugly mug.

Holding onto the leather loop attached to the pole, he swung back and forth as the metroline jolted to a start and made way to the most dangerous place he could possibly be in this damned city.

The ride was relatively short, but he found comfort in the awkward glances and angry glares. There was a woman who sat across from him with a child in her lap that gave him the one up every few minutes. He wasn’t sure if it was out of disgust, or out of yearning. Love and hate had a thin line, and unfortunately lust acted a helluva lot like love in his experience.

Chuckling to himself, he nodded towards the woman before hopping off the train at its stop and took a long, dramatic whif. Sulfur paled in comparison to the streets of Old Chinatown. It smelled of a wrestlers ballsack that had been rubbed against concrete, sprayed with cheap body spray, and then deprived of a shower for three days. It felt like home.

Home didn’t always feel like home, though, and the second he stepped down the final step and onto the street level, he finally remembered why he left this part of the city a long time ago.