I watched Jenkins walk away from me, finally taking a breath when he disappeared around a corner. But the breath just wasn’t enough, and I tried to get more air into me, but it wasn’t helping, and I felt my chest tighten. Then, then, then… I felt something warm prod my soul, it was Bug Jacob.

  “What is it?” I somehow got out.

  “Do you want to… rest?”

  “?”

  “I mean, swap places, I’ll be moving the body while you can relax, does that sound ok?”

  “That, that, that..” I felt my breaths come slower, “Please.”

  Then I gave up control of my body, it was a little tricky, I had never let go of my body like that. But when I relaxed the mental muscles holding me in place, I drifted away so easily and watched through Bug Jacob's eyes as they piloted my body. Taking a few minutes to get used to it, but doing a suitable impression of me when they got the hang of it.

  But I stopped paying attention after a few minutes, allowing myself to drift, to disconnect, time flowing past me unabated. A feeling of… not peace… not contentment… there was just nothing there, and it felt so much easier to be than anything else.

  But it was rudely interrupted when Bug Jacob prodded me again, and I vicariously looked through their eyes and saw we were back in the apartment. The clock reading 1 am, the world motionless around us.

  “Hey, what is it?” I asked

  “What’re we going to do about Jenkins? Do we accept, do we run, do we try and make a scene?”

  I tried to put my thoughts together through the soup that had become my head, “I… sorry, I don’t know. Can we leave this for tomorrow, I’m tired.”

  Bug Jacob clicked their tongue, “This isn’t something we can put off.”

  “I just can’t-”

  “We are going to die or get hurt, or maybe even worse, someone close to us is. The government hasn’t exactly been showing the best restraint lately.”

  “But-”

  “No buts, this isn’t something we can ignore.”

  “Shut up!” I screamed at them.

  Then I grasped control of my body again and shoved them as far away from me as I could, ripping our cores apart, taking all the power, and creating a barrier of Domain so we wouldn’t merge back. Then I walked out of the apartment and started running, a million thoughts running through my head as my lungs burned.

  Feeling the cold concrete scrape against my bare feet and sting each time I slammed a foot down to propel forward. Only stopping when my side started cramping, I bent over, every frozen gasp of air burning my lungs.

  Then I looked up and saw the bus station in front of me, a street light above spotlighting it. I sat down at the bench, glancing around the area, finding nobody out this late. Though I heard them far away, a city never went to sleep, when some turned off the lights other brightened them and made it everyone else's problem.

  ‘Not even the night could grant me quiet.’

  Then I found the bus schedule on the side of the stop, doing the math for how much money and time it would take to get to the portal. I went to grab my wallet from my pocket, but couldn’t find it. I looked down to see if I had dropped it and discovered I hadn’t brought my shirt either.

  I sighed, my breath creating a puff of fog around me, and watched it rise above in the illumination of the street light. I groaned and walked back towards the apartment, a hundred or so feet away, keeping an eye on the frosted grass in case I had dropped my wallet.

  But retraced every step without hide or hair of the thing, finding myself back at the door. I put my hand up to the doorknob, pausing before turning it. A puff of warm air greeting me, the sensation alien to the cold howl I had gotten used to.

  Then I found my pile of stuff beside the couch, digging through it, a few moments later, a light came from behind. I turned and found my brother standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

  He waved and said, “Sup.”

  I didn’t answer

  Boe tilted their head, “So, what’cha up to. Didn’t see you when I got up.”

  I took a moment to answer, “I went to the convenience store to grab something, but I forgot my wallet.”

  “Oh,” then Boe looked at my appearance, “In just your pants?”

  “It’s the new fashion, you know.”

  They looked at me for a moment, then hesitantly said, “I know we haven’t really talked in… a while. But I'm here.”

  I nodded, “Ok.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Then they turned off the light and went to their couch, while I crouched in silence.

  Then I felt words spewing out of my mouth, “The two months I was gone, or well unconscious from your perspective, I was somewhere else. You know, like from those crappy isekai that have been taking all the budget from actually good anime. But it wasn’t… it… I was trapped."

  Boe turned over, “Want to tell me what happened?”

  I didn’t say anything. My body just felt hot so hot and I couldn’t cool down and I was shaking and sweating and the sweat took away all the heat and I was so cold.

  Then I felt Boe hugging me.

  I didn’t generally like people touching me, but he was my brother, so I accepted it.

  “Hey, can I show you something?” Boe whispered.

  I nodded.

  Boe pulled out their phone and pulled up a video. It showed Ron Weasley from Harry Potter in the second movie holding a handful of Floo powder, then when he threw it, he caught on fire and screamed in agony as he burned alive.

  I just looked at the screen for a moment, not knowing what to feel. Then I laughed. I tried to stifle it so I didn’t wake my roommates, but that only made me laugh harder. My stomach started cramping, and I was crying, then when I thought it was over, Boe and I looked at eachother with grins and the process started all over again.

  After what felt like an eternity of laughter, I felt drained, in a good way, like after spending an entire day at the beach.

  Then I said, “God, you’re fucking demented.”

  “You laughed as well.”

  I just grumbled in response, then said, “Thanks.”

  “No issue.”

  “Good night.”

  “You too.”

  And I layed on my couch, my eyes closing, and I felt myself drift off.

  O O O

  The Second day came with the annoying bustle of the employed getting ready to serve their capitalist overlords. I groaned and covered my head with a pillow, trying my best to fall back into sleep, but my Moth half was still present and getting rid of such pleasures.

  Speaking of my Moth half, I could feel Bug Jacob on the edge of my consciousness, having fused back sometime during my sleep. We didn’t acknowledge the other, just sorta edging around each other. But that tension was broken when everybody in the apartment was gone in was just me and my headmate, with Bug Jacob saying.

  “Hey.”

  “...hey.”

  “....”

  “....”

  I turned on the couch to a more comfortable position.

  Then Bug Jacob said, “Is that all?

  “What else am I supposed to say.”

  “Sorry would be a start. Being essentially put into a sensory deprivation tank for half the day, it isn’t exactly pleasant."

  “I’m… you… that was… sorry, I’ll never do it again.”

  “Never again, aye,” Bug Jacob smeared.

  I raised my hands in frustration, “What else am I supposed to do except say a couple words right now? It’s not like I can see the future.”

  “Maybe stop treating me like I’m some sort of quirk of yourself, I’m… I am me.”

  “Huh, yeah, no shit, Sherlock, you’re you.”

  “Then why am I only an adjective different from you. I’m Bug Jacob, the little voice in the back of your head, your ‘Exposition Moth’.”

  “Then what do you want me to do! What do you want from me, I can’t read your mind!”

  “Call me by a name, damn it, and promise on your souls you’ll never do that again, that you’ll never leave me like that, alone and floating in nothing like a speck.”

  There was a pause before I tried to replicate the words Terra had said the last time I saw her, “I promise on my Core, my Soul, and my Domain that’ll I never do that or anything like it again.”

  “Thank you,” they said softly

  “So, what do you want to be called?”

  “What?”

  “You said you didn’t like being called Bug Jacob, so…?”

  There was a moment before they said, “I think I like Orchid, they’re pretty, and they taste nice.”

  “If we’re going by taste, you should name yourself Twix or something."

  “Nah, don’t want to get a cease and desist.”

  After that, the rest of the day was averagely pleasant, mainly consisting of doom scrolling on Netflix, with the occasional talk with Orchid as I tried to ignore the deadline. The gruesome wait dragging for what seemed like forever, but also sped by, the next day coming before I even knew it.

  I sat on the couch before anyone else woke up, staring at my phone, fidgeting with the card Jenkins had given me. I had come across something in the middle of the night that I hadn’t thought of before, and was now consuming my mind.

  When Jenkins had said he’d give me three days, was he counting the day they met as day one, or day zero? Because if it was zero as I’d originally assumed, then I’d have an extra day to think over my options, but if it was the other one, then I’d already failed and was going to get kidnapped and brought to a CIA black site or something.

  No, it was still early enough in the morning that I could still make the call, but what if I was wrong and there was a better decision I could come up with? If I ran, then they’d go after Boe, and I had no idea if I could hold up to the entire USmotherfuckingA military. If I called… if I called, I had no idea.

  I grabbed my head with both my hands and let out a small groan. It was so much easier inside The Great Debate. Survive, the single commandment, if you found an obstacle, you punched it, and you did your best to deal with every punch aimed at you.

  Then the people around me woke up, Boe asked about me, worried again, but I just waved them off, not wanting to implicate them in anything if I decided to do something illegal. They seemed to want to keep talking about it, but their job demanded their attention, and left me all alone again.

  Waiting on the couch, waiting for whatever three letter agency would come after me. But none did, as I sat on the couch, feeling like I wasn’t in my own body again. I noticed Bu-Orchid prodding at me, trying to control the body, but I was stuck in place.

  And before I even knew it, it was the next day, the people around me going through their morning routines again. And nothing had happened.

  ‘Maybe all my begging to the universe had worked.’

  But as always, it hadn’t. I heard a familiar voice at the front door that Barbra had opened to go to work. When I turned around, I saw a gruff man with salt n pepper hair, holding a giant order from Starbucks. Robert Jenkins.