Authors: Jae Hood
“Forget the fortune cookies. Explain the ten. I thought you never go for tens.” He has this slightly disturbed expression, like maybe Simple Six is a little loonier than he originally thought. Not cute, quirky looney, but state-committed looney.
Madi warned me not to let my crazy show tonight, but it’s slipping. It’s an easy deterrent for blue-eyed boys with sexy-smug smiles. Besides, that promise was meant for my blind date. Not random stragglers.
Anticipation building in my head, I lean forward on the table. He copies me, scooting forward as well. Our faces are a handful of centimeters apart when I drop the bombshell, laying out my crazy on the table like a deck of cards.
“Of course I don’t go for tens. I fantasize about a ten, but not just any ten.
The
ten.”
“The ten?”
I nod. “I’m a fangirl, but not just any fangirl. I’m a superfan, the kind of girl who’ll be knocking on thirty’s door in a few years but still has photos of her favorite actor spread out all over her bedroom. And I’m not talking about tacking posters above my bed or taping them to the walls. That’s junior high ish. I’m talking major fangirl framing of photos I’ve printed offline, but not the paparazzi photos, because what an invasion of privacy! I swear, the guy can’t take the trash out to the curb without a photographer jumping out of the bushes.”
Eight blinks and falls back against his seat.
“I Tweet him every day,” I confess. “No man compares to him, because how can anyone compare to perfection personified?”
Eight stares at me like the delusional fangirl I am.
“Bobble heads,” I say. “T-shirts, mugs, pens. I’ve got it all. Merch lines my bookshelves, next to the books from whence his character was first born. I have the backpacks covered with pins with his glossy, handsome image staring back at me. When I climb into bed at night, I snuggle up to my pillow with his face splashed across the pillowcase. My bedroom is a shrine to all things
The Hunted
and its main character, Carter Hunt, aka Ayden Vaughn.”
Eight’s expression morphs from stunned to pure interest. Grinning, he rummages around inside the pocket of his jacket on the bench beside him. He pulls out a cell and taps the screen a few times. Screen alight, he shoves the phone across the table. The wallpaper is none other than Eight at Comic-Con posing with a handful of the actors from
The Hunted
, including the actor I’m more than a little obsessed with: Ayden Vaughn.
I stare at the lit screen until it becomes dim and then blinks out entirely. Fingers shaking, I shove the phone across the table, nearly pushing it off the edge.
“Do you like the television series or the books better?” he asks. “The books are better, in my opinion. The television series doesn’t capture the supernatural world of the demon hunter I’ve imagined inside my head, although I doubt anyone could convey the world I’ve fabricated inside my mind.” Eight chuckles, a hint of some unspoken knowledge glinting in his eyes.
“Get out of here,” I say. “Get out of here with your perfect face and your mutual appreciation for
The Hunted
. Guys like you don’t really exist.” I grab the fortune cookie and rip open the crinkly plastic.
“Does this cancel out reasons one, two, and three as to why you shouldn’t take me home?” Eight pockets his phone and opens his fortune cookie just as I’m breaking mine in half.
“No, this cancels out nothing. This gives me a reason number four.”
“And what’s reason number four?” Eight breaks his cookie apart and removes the partly folded paper from the crescent-shaped sweet. He stares dumbly at the paper, and then dumbly at me. A dull pinkness stains his cheeks. Must be from the coolness of the nearby frosty window.
“Reason number four: when a guy appears too perfect for you, it typically means he’s gay.”
Eight narrows his eyes and frowns. “I’m not gay.”
“Uh huh.”
I shove half the cookie in my mouth. Chewing, I read the red-printed words on the paper and nearly choke on the sage advice I hold between my fingers. I grab my purse, peacoat, the check, and make a run for it.
Eight’s jarred by my movement. He reaches for his jacket as I stand, but I’m already walking away. Heart pounding in my chest, I reach the register around the same time he does. Cursing myself for lack of physical capabilities in any form or fashion, I dig out a twenty and toss it on the counter along with my receipt, unconcerned with the good amount of change I’m owed.
“Keep it,” I holler over one shoulder at the flustered cashier. Pete stands nearby, looking perplexed by my abrupt departure.
“Hey, wait,” Eight yells. “Dammit, I don’t know your name. Six!”
Ignoring him, I step out into the cool January air, buttoning the shiny black buttons of my coat. He’s in much better shape than me, catching up in seconds. His hand is on the bend of my elbow, but I pull myself away, spooked with the weirdness of my fortune cookie. The clunk of his boots against the sidewalk halts the minute I step into the parking lot.
I leave him standing on the curb, white puffs of heat billowing from his mouth as he slips on his jacket. He hollers my new nickname one last time, catching my attention long enough for me to avoid being slammed into by a silver SUV pulling into the lot. I toss him a thankful look and unlock my car.
Waiting for it to warm up is a nightmare. Eight’s perfect form still stands on the sidewalk, watching me have a full-blown panic attack beyond the lightly fogged glass of my windshield. I crank up the heat a little higher, warming my cold hands in front of the vents.
Once the trembling ceases, I remove the fortune from my pocket where I’d hurriedly shoved it while darting from the restaurant. I scan the words once again.
Look up and into the eyes of true love.
I flip the slip of paper over, reading my lucky numbers aloud. Laughing and crying and having a mini mental breakdown in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Atlanta.
Lucky numbers: 8, 28, 38, 48, 88, 108
For the next few days I hole up in my apartment and avoid Madi’s ceaseless phone calls. Either she wants to know how my date went, or she’s heard through her husband that his friend stood me up Friday night. No matter her reason for calling, I’m not into rehashing the events of the night I met Eight, but I do hang on to that blasted fortune, tucking the scrap of paper in the mirror above my dresser right beside the signed photo of Ayden Vaughn I scored off eBay. I stare at the fortune on a daily basis, wondering what could have been. This is what’s wrong with my life. I’m living in a dream world of coulda, woulda, shoulda in every aspect.
“There’s only enough room for one dream man in my life.” I tap at my phone, pondering my daily Ayden Tweet.
@therealAydenVaughn u know why I luv u? because ur a dream. and dreams never disappoint. #superfan
Curling up on the chair in front of my desk, I flip open my laptop and check my email. Three requests for e-book cover designs await me. I smile as I sink back in the chair, my head a little less cray than a few days ago. Confessing my fangirlish ways to Eight was a bit pathetic, lower than an eight trying to pick up a six. But if not for
The Hunted
fandom I wouldn’t be where I am today, waking up at noon, eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch as I open my emails. I’d probably be stuck in some hospital, punching a time clock and wiping the sleep from my eyes. My supervisor would reprimand me daily for wearing wrinkled scrubs because I don’t iron. Like, ever.
Years ago, before
The Hunted
was even a thought inside its author’s head, a career as a physical therapist had been selected for me.
Physical therapy isn’t a job I would have chosen for myself. The major was picked out by my mother, a woman who pushed me to pursue the dreams she’s yet to obtain. She got pregnant with my brother during her second semester in college and put school on the backburner to raise him and eventually my sister. When I was born, she gave up on her goals entirely and focused on encouraging her children to pursue jobs in the healthcare field. Something steady, reliable. Jobs that’d always be around.
“Factories outsource to China, businesses close,” she’d say, wagging her finger in our faces. “But sick people, sick people will always exist.”
My siblings didn’t disappoint. Wes, my brother, works as a cardiothoracic radiologist in nearby Atlanta. My older sister, Evelyn, lives in Augusta with her husband Russ and works long hours as a nurse anesthetist.
And me?
I make book covers bearing the bulging crotches of oily men for a living.
There’s nothing wrong with being a cover artist, of course, although I’m sure my mother would have rather seen me fulfill her dreams of graduating college with a degree—any degree—instead of dropping out and lazing my days away in my pajamas, munching on fattening snacks, and gazing at the glistening, hairless, rippled chests of the men in my stock photo files. If you ask me, the woman is crazy.
Who wouldn’t want to get paid to stare at man-candy all day long?
Still, I feel like the black sheep of the family. The girl who busted her tail one semester, only to crash on the couch one night and fall in love with a new television series playing on her favorite local channel. That one preview did me in. Waiting a week for a new episode became problematic. I craved more, so I picked up the books and fell into the world of huntsmen, demon hunters who made it their life's mission to rid the world of evil. And like a true addict, once I caught up on the books I craved even more.
That’s when I discovered the world of fan fiction.
A few years ago I would have laughed at the mention of fan fiction. Laughed and teased and rolled my eyes, thinking the lovers of such a thing pathetic.
Until I fell into that world, I knew nothing of its power. The talent of its authors is otherworldly, some even surpassing the talent of the original book’s author.
I tried my hand at writing a time or two but lacked the creative genius that is a
The Hunted
fan fic author, so I decided to show my dedication in other ways by making story banners. I took the main characters from
The Hunted
story and rearranged them on the screen to suit the author’s tale. Added in the perfect backdrop and killer fonts, and wa-lah. A story banner was made.
A few of my author friends decided to self-publish their stories and asked if I was willing to make an e-book cover for them. Everything I learned I taught myself, and I didn’t imagine creating an e-book cover would be much more difficult than a banner.
Pretty soon I grew good at what I’d learned. I set up a website. I created a Facebook Page. People followed me on Twitter. First a dozen, then a hundred. Before I knew it, I had a couple thousand followers, and just as many likes on my Facebook Page.
And here I am today. Still in my PJs, sleeping in until noon, not making my mother very proud, but hey, we can’t all be as perfect as my siblings.
A crash from the apartment across the hall tears me from my thoughts. Grumbling, I pad to the door and peek out the peephole. Nothing. No one standing in the hallway. Nothing but silence ringing in my ears. I unlock the apartment door and stick my head out into the hallway, glancing to my right.
There are four apartments on this floor. One belongs to a guy in his fifties who drives an Uber car at odd hours. He’s a quiet neighbor, the kind of guy who’s rarely at home and when he is you’d never know it. An older couple lives in the apartment next to mine, both of them in their sixties and on the road a lot spending their retirement traveling the country.
And directly across the hall from my apartment lives Mrs. Spearman, the wicked witch from hell.
Mrs. Spearman is a ninety-something widow who—much like me—lives a solitary life. Her husband died during World War II, and she still mourns him to this day, lighting candles around an old black and white photograph sitting within view the rare times she’s opened her apartment door.
When I first moved into my apartment she stood in her doorway, her frail body hunched over, beady eyes watching as the moving men lugged in all my furniture and belongings. I tried to strike up a conversation with the old bag, but she huffed and grumbled something about Hispanics taking over the country before slamming her door in my face.
At first I thought her bigoted remark was lowly slung at the moving men, but the more I thought about her twisted grimace and the way her eyes flitted over my face, I knew she was talking about me. Not since childhood had I been made to feel set apart from society based on my skin color or my ethnicity.
As far as I know, there’s not a drop of Hispanic blood running through my veins, but I am biracial.
Two days after moving into my apartment, my parents stopped by for a visit. Mrs. Spearman peeked into the hall past her partly-opened door, her watery blue eyes widening at the sight of my extremely dark-skinned father and my lily white mother. I waved and called out her name. She shakily opened the door a bit, but remained silent as I introduced my parents.
I might as well have been presenting her with Adolf Hilter and Irma Grese from the way she stared at them. She mumbled the words “darkie” and “mulatto” under her breath before slamming the door with her knotty-knuckled hand. She’s dodged me like the Devil since, aside from accusing me of letting the air out of the tires on her old Buick one time and parking too close to the curb.
The hallway remains silent, but that crash was loud and definitely came from across the hall. Sighing, I leave my apartment door open wide in case I need to make a hasty getaway from the racist across the hall. I enter the hallway and knock on her door, calling her name.
“Mrs. Spearman, it’s Alex … from across the hall.” I hate that the old bird intimidates me. She weighs ninety pounds soaking wet and is old enough to be my great-great-grandmother, but still. The woman is evil, and I don’t mess with evil.
The knocking and name calling yields no response. I don’t know Mrs. Spearman well, but I do know that if she knew the “mulatto” across the hall was touching her apartment door, she’d yank that door open and curse me into the bowels of hell.
I knock until my knuckles grow sore. Something’s definitely wrong. The old kook never leaves her apartment until the first of the month, when she gets her check and blows it all at the local bent can store. Other than that, she’s trapped inside the walls of her cat-infested furnace of an apartment. Lord knows old people love cranking the heat on high. I can feel it pouring from the tiny space below the door, lapping at my bare toes. Maybe it’s my imagination, but they feel like they’re on fire.
I rattle the doorknob, knowing, just
knowing
she’s got the place locked up tight, harder to get into than Tim Tebow’s tighty whities. So when the door cracks ajar, I drop my hand from the knob like I’ve been burned. Long enough to question whether I really want to enter the Cryptkeeper’s crib.
A fat calico noses the door open even farther, darts from the apartment, and winds her way around my ankles. The cat’s obese, and when I say obese I mean obese. Her fat belly is literally touching the carpet below. She wears herself out from toiling around my ankles and saunters across the hall into my apartment.
“Uh, make yourself at home, Cally,” I call, to which she replies, “Mew.” Not a “meow,” like a proper cat would respond, but the half-hearted greeting of an unhealthy cat too breathless to properly purr.
Shaking my head at the feline’s antics, I push open Mrs. Spearman’s door the rest of the way. The air inside smells like putrid cat piss and cheap kitty litter. The foul aroma is heightened by the air unit blasting hot air from the wall to my left. Covering my mouth and nose, I scamper across the apartment and turn off the heat.
Cats lounge around on various pieces of furniture, some long-haired, some short. All with varying hues of fur. They’re not as friendly as Cally. They stare at me much the way their owner sometimes does: with accusatory eyes and rigid postures. I’ve never owned a cat, but I’ve always kind of thought of them as my spirit animal. Aloof. Neurotic. Independent. Selective with their affection.
A few months ago I happened across a news article online that claimed to prove cats would eat their human owner’s remains within a couple days after their demise, whereas dogs would go almost a week before sinking their teeth into their dead master’s flesh. I’m not sure what brings this article to mind. Maybe the hell cats staring at me from their various perches around the room, or the dirty bottoms of Mrs. Spearman’s feet protruding from the bathroom doorway.
Either way, this is what I’m thinking when I find my elderly neighbor dead.
***
Madi arrives at my doorstep demanding my attention less than an hour later. Sheer determination is set in her deep blue eyes, but it fades easily enough once she notices my spooked expression. The coroner has come and gone. A couple dark-suited men from the local funeral home wheeled Mrs. Spearman away on a rickety stretcher-type thing, her body covered in a black velvet cloth. A horde of emotionless cats watched her as she went. Emotionless until the blue-uniformed men wielding catch poles arrived.
My apartment door is propped open, and I sit on the couch, twisted around, watching animal control dart in and out of the apartment across the hall. Cats run amuck, and more than one individual leaves with claw marks running the length of their arms.
“I still can’t believe she’s dead,” Madi says between bites of tortilla chips and queso dip. Cheese drips from one corner of her mouth, landing on a wave of the soft brown hair tumbling over her shoulders.
Learning of Mrs. Spearman’s death caused her to have a craving for Mexican food.
“Life will be less entertaining without her presence.” I snag a couple chips and head to the door, closing it. “No more lurking in the hallway for the pure joy of tormenting her.”
“No more hate mail slid under your door,” Madi points out.
“No more asking her if she knows where I can buy some meth.” Joking about my neighbor’s death helps me cope, because as much as I hated the old woman, I didn’t want her dead. And finding her dead? Absolutely not.
“All kidding aside, when are you going to tell me how your date went Friday night?” Madi licks dip from her fingertips and tucks her legs under her on the couch. Poor Mrs. Spearman is all but forgotten. There's a reason Madi is here after all. “Logan says BJ isn’t spilling.”
“That’s because BJ never showed up.” I steal the oil-stained bag of takeout chips from her hands. “Ugh, BJ. I can’t believe I let you talk me into going out with a guy named after a sex act.”
“He stood you up?” Madi’s porcelain-smooth face turns red. She reaches for her cell sitting on the coffee table.
I grab her hand, rendering her still. “Don’t call Logan. The situation is embarrassing enough without him teasing me about it.”
Madi’s husband teases me about everything, especially my awkward tendency to avoid human interaction, not to mention my unhealthy obsession with Ayden Vaughn. If he knew his friend stood me up, he’d never let me live it down. That or kick this BJ guy’s ass.
Kicking his ass … Hmmm … Maybe I should reconsider my stance on not letting him find out …
“Fine.” Madi sinks back into the couch, reaching for a chip. “But if I ever meet the guy.” She makes a fist with her small hand and I cringe. No doubt she’d beat the snot out of that guy. Wouldn’t be the first time she’s gone to bat in my defense.