The first sensation was a distant, echoing voice that seemed to be filtered through several layers of cheap carpet and poor life choices. “Oh shit, Jake, are you okay?”
A few moments later, my higher brain functions—what few remained after a lifetime of poor decisions and a recent energy deficit—booted up like a rusty computer and delivered the diagnostic report. I was horizontal. The floor was cold. My face felt like it had tried to intimate itself with a freight train, and the back of my skull was providing a throbbing bassline to the whole miserable experience. Ah, the classic concerto of consciousness returning. I’d heard it before.
I groaned, a sound that was less a word and more a physical manifestation of my disappointment in the universe. I attempted to scoot up, a maneuver that required more core strength than I currently possessed, which was approximately none. I winced as someone pressed a cold, damp rag against my face. A welcome chill fought a losing battle against the heat of fresh humiliation. Nose not broken, I decided with the practiced expertise of a part-time villain and full-time klutz. Just a bloody nose. The back of my head, however, felt like it had personally offended the floor and was now being punished for its insolence.
Blinking away the bleary static, I looked up into the concerned, and let's be honest, unfairly sculpted face of Jerry, one of my neighbors in this den of academic ambition and questionable laundry habits. We both inhabited the same floor of the apartment complex, two ships passing in the night, though his was a luxury yacht funded by a trust fund, and mine was a leaky rowboat I had to bail out constantly with villainous scheming.
You can’t help how you’re born. My dad, the eternal font of homespun wisdom that was 90% useless in a world with kaiju, used to say, “A man isn’t built, he is made by his own actions.” Sure, Pop. Some people just get to build themselves with premium materials and a full crew, while others are out here trying to assemble a functioning adult from spare parts and desperation. Not that I could complain too loudly. My particular set of spare parts included a neat party trick that let me disassemble myself on a molecular level. Try finding that at your local Home Depot.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“What hit me?” I asked, my voice a gravelly mess. I sounded like a chain-smoking frog.
“Are you okay? We were ahh… doing the medicine ball thing,” Jerry said, his tone laced with a guilt that was probably more about potentially getting the gym privileges revoked than any actual concern for my well-being.
Right. The medicine ball thing. The school’s gym was a sardine can during daylight hours, but after hours, it became the unofficial clubhouse for the fitness-oriented and sexually adventurous. Jerry, who liked to proclaim he was “as queer as a paper hammer,” was a regular ringleader. Their games often involved a lot of grabass and bizarre, high-testosterone activities that blurred the line between working out and foreplay. Medicine ball tag was a popular one.
Normally, I’d have my microkinesis running a low-level background scan, a paranoid habit that had saved my bacon more than once. But tonight, I’d drained my power pool to absolute zero, a miserable state I fondly called “Energy Debt.” It was my chosen method of slowly, painfully increasing my limits—like lifting weights for my soul, if lifting weights felt like a flu-ridden zombie apocalypse. So, when a twelve-pound sphere of compressed regret came flying out of nowhere, my body’s automatic kinetic-dampening reflexes were offline for maintenance. I’d caught it like a six-year-old trying to catch a watermelon dropped from a roof.
I nodded slowly, accepting Jerry’s help to roll back to my feet. The world did a lazy spin before settling down. “Yep,” I said, rolling my neck and taking a quick internal inventory. Structural integrity: minimal damage. Nose: leaking but serviceable. Cranium: likely concussed. Pride: annihilated. “But seriously, a little heads-up would have helped. Maybe an air horn. Or a written notice twenty-four hours in advance.”
I’m straight, but the fitness crew was my default social circle. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an introvert by choice; I was an introvert by necessity. Empire State University was a breeding ground for future captains of industry and their trophy spouses. A lot of the women here were hunting for marriage prospects, not conversation. Hanging with the gym rats kept me off the radar of the more predatory social climbers. And hey, I won’t pretend I wasn’t susceptible to a perfect set of feminine abs or a killer smile. I’m only human. A tragically pragmatic, cynically humorous human, but still. Hook me like a fat trout.
