2022-07-18 16:25:55As he was thrown off his feet, the would-be-thief thought maybe he had made a rather poor choice. He didn’t mean for their prank to get out of hand. This was just what he and his friends did; find chances to have a laugh at other’s expense. These laughs were harmless, or so he thought; something to look forward to in an otherwise dull, and sometimes terrifying world. Rarely did their pranks have any real consequences.
Today, the consequences were quite real—and fast.
CLUNK
Thrown off his feet, the goon barreled over as the gym bag flew from his grip. He tumbled into a patch of sidewalk hidden beneath the shadow of a dreary-looking apartment, shaking. The sidewalk was cool on his cheeks; suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to have a nap. If he laid there quietly, perhaps all of his bad decisions that day would go away by themselves.
Victorious, Devon picked up his bag and headed back towards the bus stop. No sooner did he turn around that he saw his other assailant, Jaxton fumbling with his phone.
“OK, this man assaulted me and my friends,” Jaxton said, putting on a pathetic and sniveling expression. “Everyone look at this assaulter. Get him on camera.”
Devon couldn’t help but laugh. The whole thing was ridiculous and only getting worse. He shook his head and kept on walking to the bus.
At seeing his reaction, Jaxton’s eyes flashed. He bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood.
“What’s so fuckin’ funny, feather-hat?”
“Dude… assaulter?” Devon tried and failed to surprise a smile.
“Cause you fucking did it!” snarled Jaxton.
Devon maintained his smile, shaking his head. This whole incident was near fermenting with idiocy and was getting above Devon’s pay grade, as the saying goes. “You’re saying I assaulted you? Bro, you tried to grab my hat and your buddy over there stole my bag!”
“No, we didn’t!” Jaxton said breathlessly. “We didn’t—stop lying. More lies—” Jaxton was panting from the sheer force of adrenaline pumping through his veins. “—more lies from feather-hat, everyone!”
“The hell is wrong with you? Yes, you did! I heard you, you stupid-ass!” Devon said.
Jaxton shoved his phone in Devon’s face. Devon swatted it away. “See, everyone?” Jaxton snarled. “Did you see what he just did? More assault. More lies and assault from feather-hat. Get a look at his face! Get a good look… the assaulter and the liarist, everyone! Let’s get his name out there! #FeatherHat!”
Liarist? Where did these kids go to school? Not that Devon went to a particularly great school growing up, but he would have gotten his ass kicked for using a word like ‘liarist’. Kids these days…
…except Devon was only 22. That thought gave Devon a pause. There was something wrong about feeling so old at such a young age. Devon couldn’t be much older than the young man posturing and preening and shoving his phone in Devon’s face, all of which Devon wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. What happened to the world that brought such a gap between them?
Devon decided the best thing to do was to ignore them.
He marched back towards the bus stop with his bag while Jaxton followed, flitting around him like a summer fly, getting him on camera at all angles. A few people across the street also had their phones out, recording no doubt. Devon seethed. At that moment it seemed the entire world would not leave him alone and let him wear his own goddamn hat.
Meanwhile, Jaxton became ever more frantic in his attempts to get a reaction out of Devon, hurling insults in all kinds of nasty flavors.
“Leave. Me. Alone.” Devon snapped.
“No. Fucking make me, you stupid feather-hat wearing fuck. We were just messing around and you had to make it an escalation.”
Devon’s eyes widened.
“Oh, you were messing around?”
“—and you went and assaulted us!”
Devon laughed. “So you admit it, you were messing with me. You just admitted on camera, it was you who started this.”
Jaxton’s eyes widened. There was a beat of infuriated silence.
“No. That’s not what I—I didn’t say that! Don’t fucking gaslight me!”
This had gone on long enough. Devon turned around, spreading his arms in aggressive frustration. Jaxton recoiled as Devon shouted. “Gaslight? Bro, I’m waiting for a fucking bus! The hell do you want from me? Go back to school or something— stop acting like a fuckin’ goon.”
Off in the distance came the soft rumbling of bus wheels. Devon closed his eyes and prayed:
Please, please let it be the 712. Please get me out of here. I just wanna go to the Convention and be done with this crazy goon.
As Devon was waiting, one of Jaxton’s friends came over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Yo, Jaxton, just let it go man, let’s go check on Kaier, he’s still laying on the sidewalk. I think he’s got a concussion or somethin’”
Jaxton snapped his friend’s hand away. Adrenaline laced sweat dripped off Jaxton’s face and soaked into his shirt until the young man was stinking with hormone-laced aggression. “Don’t fucking touch me, Steve, I swear to god.
Steve pulled his hand back. “Bro, relax, you’re tilting hard right now!”
“And don’t fucking tell me to relax! Nobody asked your opinion, grandpa… you and your old-man-name, fuck you!”
Steve put his hands up. “Hey man, you know how I feel about my name. You don’t gotta throw insults at me like that. "
Jaxton screwed his face and voice into a mockery of a toothless old man, holding up a shaking, arthritic finger for effect as he wheezed:“Oh me, oh my, you don’t need to throw insults young man, my name is Steven, I was born long ago in 2002… shut up!” Jaxton’s face snapped back to its original shape and voice with rather impressive speed.“I’m not tilting, and if I am, it’s all ‘cause of fucking feather-hat over th—Hey! Don’t you fucking walk away from me, feather-hat! You think you can just walk away after assaulting a student—HEY GET BACK HERE, I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU, YOU FEATHER-HAT-WEARING FUCK!”
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Success! Sure enough, the trusty 712 bus had just turned a corner and began its long-awaited journey to the station. Devon’s heart swelled with relief. While Jaxton was busy arguing with Steve, Devon made a break for the bus. He started off at a brisk walk, hoping that he could get on the bus without anyone noticing .Devon only got about half way before hearing from behind: “…ACK HERE, I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU, YOU FEATHER-HATTED FUCK!” Behind Devon came the sound of pounding feet and an incensed Jaxton tearing after him, phone in hand, still recording. Devon made a break for it, sprinting as fast as he could back towards the bus station. Some new riders had gathered at the stop to watch, a few of them secretly recording on their own. But Devon didn’t care—the sooner he could get on the bus, the sooner this stupid idiocy would be over. As the bus pulled closer, Devon noticed the front of the bus was adorned with a black “pill” affixed above the driver’s seat. Behind the steering
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Breathless and grateful, Devon took out his own code and scanned both his bus pass and pandemic code. A pleasant chime signaled that the passenger had both fare money and a clean history of infectious diseases that could cause harm to society. He lifted his bag above his head to squeeze his way down the aisle towards a pair of open seats. Exhausted, he plopped down hard on the seat and leaned his head back on the headrest. Cool air blew on his face and, though it was like breathing into an open refrigerator, Devon sighed with relief. The Convention hadn’t even started yet and he was utterly exhausted. It should not have been such a production just to get on the bus—all over a stupid hat! The hat was becoming more trouble than it was worth. He considered taking the hat off and throwing it in his bag. But another, more stubborn part of him insisted he keep the hat on. And why not? There was no law saying that a man couldn’t wear a hat with a feather in the brim. There was no re
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Jaxton leaned with his shoulder and burst through the doors, which gave way with a cracking squeak. There was a flurry of gasps from the riders. A few of them took out their phones and recorded as Jaxton tried to storm his way down the aisle towards where Devon sat. Another alarm went up from the bus: “ATTENTION—NON-STANDARD ENTRY DETECTED. PLEASE SCAN BUS PASS AND PANDEMIC PREVENTION CODE. ATTENTION—” Some of the riders closer to the driver’s side covered their ears to stifle out the terrible grating alarm. Why did it have to be so loud? “Will someone shut that damn thing off?” “It’s an automated system, yelling isn’t going to fix anything!” “YOU’RE A FUCKING AUTOMATED SYSTEM!” “Oy…so early, all this shouting is…that’s what I get for taking the bus.” Noise upon shouting upon noise. The bus driver pawed at a few buttons at the control panel and managed to shut off the alarms and the announcements, but the passengers were now in a thoroughly soured mood. Meanwhile, middle-a
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Last stop—New Hudson Convention Center.The bus crawled over to the bus station and, hissing, the bus’s tired deflated. It sounded to Devon like a dragon’s mighty fart after returning to its cave after a long day of pillaging and burning villages. Hoisting up his bag and, after giving it a brief once-over to make sure everything was zipped and secured tight, Devon debarked from the bus. As he left, the driver looked up from his magazine.“Nice hat,” the driver said with a thumbs up.“Thanks,” Devon smiled. But the driver had already returned to his magazine before he could respond.Devon left the bus. What greeted him was a scene of colorful chaos.The Convention Center looked like an enormous blue doughnut, rising
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Devon sat crosslegged on the floor, squishing his hunter’s hat for comfort. He stared at a spot of carpet, trying to drown out the sounds of the frightening-looking man screaming at Ali. Devon could piece together that the goons all worked for him—some of them were half in costume, others dressed like regular folk. A few wore golden watches. Were they thugs? If so, they weren’t like any gang members that Devon had ever seen, and New Hudson was unfortunately filled with those. These men looked too clean-cut. They didn’t have the casual swagger of the gangs he knew, and other than a little bit of rough-handling on the way to the top-floor lounge, they hadn’t been beaten. Furthermore, gang attacks usually don’t take this long, and by this point they had been sitting in the lounge for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Ali had begun to shout at the man who kidnapped him. That was the strangest part of all of this--when Ali shouted, the man who kidnapped them listened. And so did his goons. At
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Far away from the chaos of New Hudson, in the Golden City of Al-Zhabai, King Ibrahim al-Zhabai stood on his private balcony, thinking of a joke. Once, the land that his Kingdom sat upon was a flat cropping of rock surrounded by a lake of sand. No trees, no oil or minerals, or any of the other resources that make a city worth building existed there. A hundred years before King Ibrahim’s time, this useless plot of land was gifted to his great-grandfather, Usman al-Zhabai, Founder of the Kingdom, as the world’s most expensive prank. It was a little known truth. Very few people beyond the deepest circle of the royal family knew this story. Not even foreign websites could publish it, for the instant they did al-Zhabai’s Ministry of Communications used every means at their disposal to take it down. Family lore said that when Founder Usman, talented and overlooked, was finally gifted the land he had worked for all his life. When the empty plot of land was finally revealed, his “benefac
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It began with a push. Once again, Ali was surrounded by an angry crowd, with someone screaming at him in a language that was not his mother tongue. In Al-Zhabai, nobody would dare speak to him in such a way—even the cousins who looked upon him with contempt would never stoop to such behavior. In the moment, Ali felt the most curious sensation—that his soul was leaving his body, watching it from above. Perhaps the shock of the push had killed him, he thought. Curiously, in this dissociated state, he didn’t seem to have any feelings at all, though his body was nearly convulsing in terror. Time seemed to lose its smooth passing. Suddenly everything became terribly slow, as if the convention and everything in it was moving through thick honey. Down from above his own body, Ali gazed as Tamyra, whose face had become a terrible mask of vindictive rage. She lunged at Ali— to snatch Devon’s gift, he thought. But Tamyra’s dexterity had vanished before the heat of her own anger, and whom m
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“Of course it would be you,” Tamyra snarled. “Who else would be so entitled? All I needed to finish my was going to finish my Warriors of the Endless Road collection was that Dashu. And you took it.”Tamyra’s face had flushed past crimson and was on its way to purpose. Her princess wand was quavering in her hand. At the slightest provocation, Devon feared she might actually use it. He held up his hands as though the wand were about to shoot lightning from its glittery points. “Look,” Devon began, “I’m sorry about your collection, but like—how are any of us supposed to know that? We can’t read minds or anything.”“You took it,” Tamyra intoned. Devon’s logic had no place amidst her anger. And there was much to be angry about—between the incident at the entrance, the horrible mess in the Fantasy writer’s panel, and now this. Just over the past two days, Ali and Devon had been a thorn in her slippers. and she had just about enough. “And it’s not enough that you have the nerve to troll in
