Curiosity Killed Shaney(6)

Shaney headed to the bathroom to relieve himself. Time for the real world again. Dread knotted his gut. Mr. Anderson today at ten a.m. How much longer before they ‘shipped him upriver to the hoosegow’? That had come straight from Mr. Mason, the librarian at his first community service assignment. After the book incident—Shaney shuddered—the disturbing librarian had claimed he’d seen the trouble in Shaney’s eyes from the beginning. Man was just creepy.

As Shaney washed his hands, he leaned forward and looked in the mirror. Whatever Mr. Mason had seen wasn’t perceptible to Shaney. The same ordinary brown eyes stared back. He narrowed them and furrowed his brow, yet nothing remotely foreboding glowered back. He couldn’t do menacing. “Too twinky,” Scott, who worked with Todd, had informed Shaney while wrinkling his nose. Moron.

Shaney brushed his teeth and ran a comb through his unruly brown hair. The locks were too long on the top not to flop into his eyes despite the comb. No need to shave. He’d actually need to grow facial hair for that.

Leaving the bathroom and then dressing, he headed into the kitchen to grab something to eat. He found Todd sitting at the small wooden table they’d acquired at The Morgue. The entire apartment was decorated in that same mismatched, bits-from-here-and-there, style that drove Shaney’s mother to the edge of her Pottery Barn credit card. Shaney liked their place though.

Todd sipped at his chai tea (yuck), reading his book. Todd was into the occult. His interests were off the beaten path, like something out of Hollywood—witches, warlocks, and demons. He was constantly chanting spells, making creepy charms, and bringing foul smelling plants into the apartment. Last year, Todd had even tried to perform an exorcism on Shaney, claiming that Shaney’s masochistic drive to satisfy his curiosity resided outside the realm of the human explanation, hence a demon. Shaney believed his determination was more of an innate ability. Maybe a genetic anomaly.

“Hey,” Shaney mumbled, fighting to separate the coffee filters.

“Hey, sleeping beauty. How’s the head?” Todd’s chipper tone grated on Shaney’s last nerve.

“Totally rocking. Literally. But better than it was,” he answered, finally getting the coffee brewing.

Todd nodded. As he read, his eyes brightened and he grinned. “Listen to this. Did you know that demons don’t just possess people without a purpose? They each have their own agenda to propagate, like greed, revenge, wrath. Rarely general mayhem or bloodlust. Sounds a lot like seven deadly sins type of stuff.”

“So Mrs. Winters in 4-D must be infected with a sloth demon because she hasn’t moved from her couch in, like, five years,” Shaney mumbled. He wondered how long someone could technically not move from a couch. Not much past the point where hunger and bodily functions forced a move, but food could be delivered. The bathroom issue would be trickier, requiring some creative engineering or adult diapers. That would definitely be a two-person operation.

“Shaney, knock it off,” Todd warned, startling Shaney back to reality. “Since you were knocked in the head, you’re spacing out more than ever.”

Shaney released an exasperated sigh. Spacing out more than normal was definitely not good. “Maybe it’s a temporary side effect,” Shaney said, hoping his optimistic tone was catching.

“One can only hope,” Todd muttered, returning to his book. Nope, not catching.

Out of the limited number of people important to Shaney, Todd was the one person Shaney hated letting down the most. They’d been friends since Shaney was twelve and Todd was thirteen. Only one grade had separated them in school. They’d gone through puberty together, decided they were gay at the same time (as if being gay was their decision), came out to their families together, and, in between, biked and swam and played video games and went on adventures and became brothers.

From the start, Todd had been a testosterone raft keeping Shaney afloat in the sea of estrogen in his house. And Shaney’s house had been the normal that Todd had seemed to crave. Todd had spent the first ten years of his life on some strange-ass commune where Shaney guessed normalcy had been in short supply. After graduation, Todd started working at the local bookstore, waiting for Shaney’s graduation, so they could embark on a kick ass adventure somewhere—anywhere. ‘Somewhere’ had ended up being just four blocks away in an apartment, but it was a start.

Pouring his coffee, Shaney turned tentatively toward Todd and gave him the only words he had. “I’m sorry, Todd.” Quite meaningless, given the thousands of times Shaney had repeated them since the dawn of their friendship. He knew Todd didn’t expect the apology, but the thought had been heartfelt just the same. Todd’s irritation at the stupid shit Shaney did really just meant Todd didn’t want to see Shaney hurt or dead. “You didn’t miss any work because of me, did you?”