I woke up late the next morning, my heart filled once again with longing for my father.
As the morning went on, I felt myself falling further into “nostalgia sadness,” which is what I call it when happy memories from my childhood ironically make me want to cry. I guess because I know those days are gone forever.
Desperate to feel some connection to my dad, I listened to Sticky Fingers again while I played Super Mario Kart, which had been our favorite two-player game. The plan was to win every cup with every character on 150cc mode in my dad’s honor. If I could accomplish such a feat, maybe I’d be allowed to feel his presence again. At the very least, I hoped it would keep my mind occupied and protect me from my increasingly disturbing dark thoughts.
Sometime that afternoon, my Mario Kart session was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Mag.
“Hey, I just came to apologize again,” she said sheepishly, gazing downward as she scuffed the toe of her foot across the welcome mat, her hands in her pockets. “I’m sorry for lashing out at you yesterday. And I’m really sorry I hit you. I can’t even imagine what you must think of me.”
“I think you’re planning to do a ritual with me,” I said.
Mag looked up and cocked her head to the side and furrowed her brow, trying to understand how I had gotten there from yesterday’s events. She soon dismissed it with a shrug. “You know what? Sure. You’re entitled to that opinion. I really did behave poorly. I hate that I snapped at you like that.”
I knew she meant it. I’d heard enough false apologies from my mom to know when one was genuine. It looked like Mag had even lost some sleep over it.
“You’re a nice lad, and even though my actions sometimes say otherwise, I really do want to be your friend,” she continued. “What do you say? Will you give an old sinner another chance?”
It was easy to forgive Mag. As unpredictable as she was, I still felt like we were kindred spirits, two sinking ships being brought together by the ocean current. Maybe we could combine ourselves into a functional boat that had just enough will to survive the sea storm of life. Maybe we could find comfort and understanding in one another.
However, there was still the matter of the ritual, so I told Mag, “I’ll give you another chance only if you tell me why you have a picture of me. If I’m going to be your friend, I need to know for sure that there won’t be any rituals.”
“It’s not you in the picture.”
“I know what I saw.”
“No, honestly. I can show you if you come over to my house.”
That sentence sounded a little too much like “I’ll give you some candy if you get in the van” for my liking, so I told Mag I was staying right where I was.
She ran home and then back to me, photo in hand. She gave it to me and let me examine it.
At first glance, I again saw myself, a couple years younger than I was now. However, on closer inspection, I noticed some small but discernible differences. My mouth was a little smaller than this boy’s, and my nose a little wider. Also, He had more freckles. But I was well aware that you can alter a photo to change those sorts of things, so I still wasn’t convinced.
What changed my mind was the boy’s eyes. They had a glimmer of hope in them, and you can’t modify a photo to add hope.
“Okay, I believe you,” I finally said. “But then who is this?”
“That’s Archie. He’s my little brother,” Mag said. “He was my little brother.”
Mag, seeing the confusion on my face, offered an explanation. “I didn’t mean to keep him a secret from you. I just didn’t mention him because it hurts too much to talk about him. Anything that reminds me of him makes me hurt, and I have a tendency to turn my pain into anger.
“So, when we moved, we didn’t unpack anything that would remind me of him. We thought it would make it easier for me to move on or be less angry and violent or whatever. But it still hurts like hell. Nothing makes it easier.
“Well, almost nothing. You make it a little easier. And not just because you look like him. I don’t know exactly what it is about you, but I don’t feel as angry when you’re around. The way I felt for those five seconds before I hit you is, like, the norm with other people. Maybe I’m projecting Archie onto you a little bit, but I get the sense that you’re innocent like he was. You’re just nice, and lately, I’ve noticed more and more how rare that quality is in people.”
Once Mag said that, I knew I could never tell her about my dark thoughts. Just as I apparently made her anger manageable, she did the same for my loneliness. If I told her about the dark thoughts, if she knew there was a part of me that wanted everyone to die, she’d stop seeing me as another version of her innocent, lost brother, and then she wouldn’t want to be my friend. I couldn’t risk that. I needed more days like yesterday. I needed Mag to like me.
“Anyway, I want you to know I wasn’t always what I am now,” Mag went on. “I never had anger issues before Archie died—at least not to the extent that I needed therapy. But the instant I learned that he was murdered, something snapped inside me. I’m so fucking furious at the person who did it. Except they never found out who it was. I don’t even know who to be mad at, so I just take my anger out on everyone.”
She looked me in the eye and then said, “Even people who don’t deserve it. I really hope you know how sorry I am.”
“I do,” I said. “And it’s okay. You don’t need to be sorry. Of all people, I know how hard it is to lose someone and not have all the answers. So, if you ever need to vent or punch someone in the face, I’m here for you, okay?”
Mag said thank you and hugged me. She held me a little too tight, like I was half adorable kitten and half life raft. She wasn’t hugging only me; she was hugging Archie, too. After releasing me, she said, “I promise I’ll never, ever hurt you again.”
We spent the rest of that day together, talking and getting to know each other while we ate tacos, watched some reruns of Charles in Charge that Mag had taped, and played crib (and, of course, several video games).
I learned that, even more than kickboxing, Mag was passionate about wrestling, which she insisted wasn’t as fake as everyone said. Everyone was fake to some degree, and at least wrestlers had the decency to be obvious about it.
When she was younger, she wanted to be a wrestler when she grew up, but she had recently decided she’d rather be a doctor or police officer, or maybe she’d research a cure for cancer. Something where she would save people’s lives.
I also learned that her favorite TV show was The Simpsons, her favorite movie was Happy Gilmore, her favorite band was Sleater-Kinney, she couldn’t stand the taste of ketchup, she thought gasoline was a conspiracy, she was fascinated by space and time travel and had tons of books on those topics, and she hated that escalators are still called escalators when they go down.
From that day on, Mag and I were inseparable. She invited me to her house every day after school and on the weekends. Colleen and Gloria were beyond welcoming, and they always prepared enough food for four people, even though they never knew for sure if I’d be there (some days, I just wanted to be alone). If I didn’t come over for supper, Mag would bring me leftovers for lunch the next day, accompanied by a note telling me to have a great day. They also let me know that their door was always open to me, whether Mag was home or not. Whether anyone was home, for that matter. They even gave me my own key to the front door.
By the time summer vacation rolled around, I was one of the family, though we never used the words “family” or “love” to make it official. We had an unspoken agreement that we were using each other to replace people we had lost. This didn’t bother me. Our connection still felt authentic even if we were only using each other to try to fill an unfillable void, or at least distract ourselves from it. After all, isn’t that what love is?
By now, Mag and I knew pretty much everything about each other. Except I still hadn’t told her about my dark thoughts, which, despite my blossoming friendship with Mag, still crept into my head and were becoming more catastrophic. I didn’t merely imagine myself torturing and killing one or two people at a time anymore. The dark part of me now wanted to kill the entire human race in one fell swoop. Even worse, these fantasies didn’t scare me anymore. If anything, they comforted me.
But, for all Mag knew, I hadn’t ever thought about hurting anyone. I wanted to tell her about my dark thoughts, but I still wasn’t sure she’d understand or accept me. Since any happiness I was able to extract from life had come to significantly depend on her friendship, I continued portraying myself as the vulnerable boy whose mom neglected him and whose dad was dead and who needed his big sister to protect him.
Meanwhile, Mag’s emotional outbursts had become less frequent. She stayed faithful to her word that she would never, ever hurt me again, though she still snapped on her moms from time to time. But she was going to counseling for that.
Mag and I played a lot of video games that summer, and we got really good at them. On one lazy late August day, Mag wanted to see just how good we were and proposed that we play Battletoads, which many people consider a litmus test of how skilled one is at NES. It was also one of the few games Mag and Archie had never beaten. I had rented it a few times myself, but neither my dad nor I could even get past the Turbo Tunnel.
“I’ve read on the internet that it’s an impossible game,” Mag said as she rummaged around in the storage room, looking for the box with the Nintendo stuff. It was still buried somewhere in here, as up until this point, I had always brought my NES and games over to Mag’s house (this lowered my risk of being hit).
I hadn’t returned to this room with Mag since the incident on my birthday. I reflected on how strange it was that it hadn’t even been a year since Mag had punched her way into my heart. It felt like we had known each other forever.
“Is it, like, literally impossible?” she asked. “Or is it just really hard?”
“I think it’s just really hard,” I said. “The only literally impossible game I’ve ever played is life itself.” I folded my hands behind my head and leaned back against a stack of boxes, proud of myself for having blessed Mag with such a profound insight.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Think about it. Everyone starts with one life, and no matter what they do, they lose it before they’ve even figured out how to play the game. All this time, and still no one even knows what we’re supposed to do while we’re here. No one has even come close to understanding the meaning of life. I’ve heard people say that all they want out of life is to be happy, but there has to be more to this game than that, right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re in a simulation. Maybe we’re all Goombas to some other entity’s Mario,” Mag said as she continued her search. “I feel like it’s something like that. Something hopeless and depressing. Something where if we ever learned why we’re here, we’d all give up. We’d all throw ourselves to the ground and lie there and wait for whatever’s above us to crush us. Although I kind of want to do that sometimes anyway.”
I was taken aback. I knew Mag had issues, but this was the first time she had indicated that, like me, she suspected death was sweeter than life.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“I mean sometimes I wish I wasn’t here anymore.”
“So, are you... suicidal? Or do you just think about it?”
Mag paused her search and turned to look at me. “I don’t know. I was definitely suicidal for a while after Archie died, but I don’t think I am anymore. The urge to follow through on the thoughts isn’t very strong.” She paused briefly and then added, “I still cut myself, though.” She rolled up the sleeve of her hoodie to show me the scars.
I felt guilty for not noticing until then that Mag had worn a hoodie every day since we met, even during the summer. Should I have picked up on that and known something was wrong? Or was this one of those ‘hindsight’s 20/20’ deals? Yeah, that was probably it.
“I know I need to stop,” Mag said, “but sometimes I miss Archie so much that I don’t know how to deal with the pain. And I know that it sounds counter-intuitive to reduce pain by adding more pain, but the external pain, like, distracts me from the internal pain. It’s almost, like, soothing in a way. I don’t know, I feel like I’m not explaining it very well.”
“No, I think I kind of get it. Actually, I—” I said, almost slipping up and telling her about my dark thoughts. “…Yeah, I think I get it. And, obviously, I’m here for you if you ever need to talk or are worried you might do something you’ll regret.”
“Thanks, but I’m pretty sure I’m okay now. And you’ve already helped a lot.”
“Can you promise me anyway that you’ll call me first if you ever do feel like hurting yourself?”
“Sure, I promise.”
“No. You have to say it as a full sentence. I don’t know why, but I’ve heard somewhere that promises like that have to be in full sentences.”
“Fine,” Mag sighed. “I promise I’ll call you first if I feel like hurting myself.”
I was glad Mag had told me about her suicidal thoughts. Now I could help her if they became too strong for her to deal with alone.
This was the first time since my dad died that I suspected my dark thoughts were wrong, that perhaps human life had some value. Maybe people wanted to live not because they were stupid but because they knew their lives meant something to someone else.
Which I guess was still pretty stupid because that wouldn’t matter if we were all dead. So, my dark thoughts probably were right after all.
In any event, I knew this was the right time to tell Mag about my homicidal fantasies. If Mag was willing to share her darkest thoughts with me, then I owed it to her to share mine. If I couldn’t trust her enough to share the worst part of myself with her, then we weren’t best friends in the first place.
“You know, I have intrusive thoughts kind of like that, too,” I said. “I call them dark thoughts.”
“Yeah, right,” Mag said with a little laugh. “I know there’s nothing dark about you. I know you’re just trying to make me feel better, but you really don’t have to do that. Honestly, I’m okay.”
“But I am being honest. I really do have dark thoughts. I have them all the time.”
“Come on, Emerson,” Mag said, still taking this way too lightly. “I know you don’t have a dark side. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Oh, I could kick a fly’s ass, if that’s what things came to.”
“No you couldn’t. You’re too much of a softie. And I don’t mean that as an insult. I actually mean it as a huge compliment. You just want everything to be good, and you don’t want to cause any harm to anyone or anything. You really are like Archie in that way. I find it endearing.”
“Oh, endearing, am I?” I said in a confrontational tone. “You got me pegged wrong. I’ll harm anything. Just watch me. Where’s a fly?”
I looked around and spotted a fly buzzing near the lightbulb on the ceiling. I watched it fly in a couple circles before it landed on a box. I crept toward it.
“You’re not gonna hurt it,” Mag said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, yeah? Just watch.” With that, I raised my hand. “I’m gonna open up a can of ass-whip on this fly. Just like Stone Cold Stevenson.”
“Okay, first of all, that’s not his name. It’s Stone Cold Steve Austin. Second, the expression is ‘can of whoop-ass.’ And third, if you’re gonna do it, don’t stand there and say you’re gonna do it. Just do it.”
Then a mischievous smile formed on Mag’s face. “Although that fly might have a family. Did you think about that?”
I knew what she was trying to do. Over the course of our friendship, I had told her how I liked to pretend animals had secret lives, and now she was trying to use my imagination against me.
“That’s nonsense,” I said.
“No, I’m dead serious. I’ve seen that fly around here before. His name’s Harry, and he’s got a job and everything. Sometimes I see him fly through the living room on his way to work, wearing a little hat and tie and carrying a tiny briefcase. He works hard to support his wife, Martha, and their three daughters, Olga, Bethany, and, uh… Bethany 2: The Annihilator. He doesn’t make a lot of money, but he always puts food on the table, and he makes sure there are plenty of presents under the tree come Christmas. And even though he’s exhausted at the end of the day, he still showers his daughters with attention. And, every single night, the last thing he does before falling asleep is he turns to Martha in their bed and says, ‘I love you more than anything, Sugarbear. No matter what, I’ll always come home to you at the end of the day. If nothing else, you can count on that.’”
I narrowed my eyes at Mag. “You made that up.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I know you, and I know a small part of you thinks there’s a chance it’s all true. You believe it just enough not to hurt that fly.”
“Oh, is that what you think?”
“Prove me wrong.”
I stood there with my hand above that fly for several seconds. It shouldn’t have mattered so much, but I wanted to show Mag I wasn’t as soft as she thought. The dark thoughts had become part of my identity, and I didn’t like having my identity challenged.
But I couldn’t go through with it. As much as I wanted Mag to see my dark side, the part of me that wanted the world to have magic in it was stronger than I realized.
I lowered my hand to my side. “You’re right. I can’t do it.”
“I know!” Mag said, pleased with herself for having manipulated me. “I actually envy that about you, though, if I’m being honest.”
“You envy what now?”
“I envy that you can still believe in shit like that. It’s like you haven’t completely lost your innocence. Don’t let go of it, okay?”
I said I wouldn’t, but somehow that wasn’t good enough for her. She came to me and grabbed my shoulders tightly. “I’m serious. Hang on to that part of you with everything you have. You can’t get it back once it’s gone. Promise me you’ll hang on to it.”
“Okay, I promise. Jeez!”
“No. Important promises need to be in full sentences.”
“Okay, I promise I’ll hang on to that part of me with everything I have.”
I was still dissatisfied. Mag needed to acknowledge my darkness. “But you should know: I’m not that innocent.”
But Mag didn’t believe me. She only repeated my sentence in song, à la Britney Spears.
That annoyed me. “I’m being serious here, Mag. I honestly think about doing evil things.”
“Like what? Putting a whoopie cushion on teacher’s chair?” Then she laughed at me. “You might as well drop the charade. You’re never going to convince me that you have a dark side. You think ‘idiot’ is a swear word, for Christ’s sake.” Then she laughed at me some more.
I could feel my face turn red. Two of the things I hate the most are getting laughed at and not being believed. So I decided Mag was going to believe me, dammit. “I want to kill people, Mag!” I yelled, as angry and serious as anything.
She stopped laughing.
“I daydream about pressing a button that makes the world burst into flames and putting everyone out of the misery they’re too stupid to realize they’re in. And it makes me happy. Imagining myself murdering people helps me fall asleep at night. So you can make fun of me all you want for being soft, but it’s a good thing I have a soft side. Because if I didn’t—if I had more guts—I’d kill everybody!”
As I said this, a flash of rage shot through me, and I smashed my hand into the box next to me, splattering Harry’s body.
Mag was stunned. She had never seen me get angry before.
“What? Surprised to hear that come from the softie who wouldn’t hurt a fly? Well now Harry’s dead!” I shouted. “Do you believe me now?”
Mag placed her hands gently on my shoulders. “Yes, I believe you, okay?”
“And let me guess: You hate me now because I’m not enough like Archie. You don’t want to be friends with me anymore.”
“Oh my God, no. Emerson, I’ll always want to be your friend,” she said in her hero voice. “I don’t think anything less of you for having dark thoughts.”
“Well, you should. Below the surface, I’m miserable and angry all the time. I hate that I can’t just be normal and enjoy life for what it is like everyone else. I can’t just go for a bike ride or whatever and be happy with that because I can’t stop thinking about how awful and meaningless the world is. Why do I have to be like that? Why can’t I be like everyone else and let myself be happy? What’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re fourteen, that’s all. That’s how old I was when I realized being happy isn’t as easy as people make it look. And that was before I lost Archie. It’s just what happens as you grow up and learn that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. When you learn that rainbows don’t even really exist.”
That was exactly what I needed to hear. I didn’t need a pep talk. I didn’t need to be reminded that I had it a lot better than starving children in Africa and that I should appreciate what I had. I needed to know someone felt something close to what I felt. That I was understood. That I wasn’t alone.
I calmed down after that, and Mag resumed her search. She eventually found the Nintendo box, and we spent the rest of the day playing Battletoads. Throughout the day, we declared several dozen times that the game was impossible after all, but we kept playing anyway, and we beat it just before midnight.
Mag was exhausted by then and went upstairs to bed. I pulled out the hide-a-bed from the couch downstairs, which I slept on more often than my own bed that summer. I tried to go to sleep, but it was no use. The adrenaline rush of beating Battletoads wouldn’t allow it.
I got up and dug through the Nintendo box to see what other games Mag had. Sitting atop the box’s contents was an unfamiliar cartridge. It was definitely not for the NES.
The label depicted a white wizard, a black knight, and a red druid or something like that. The title was Emerson RPG: The Legend of the Three Talismans. In the bottom corner of the label were the words “Only for the Butterfly Box.”
This was very odd, as I had told Mag about my mysterious birthday present, and she said she’d never heard of any such thing as the Butterfly Box.
In any event, I sprinted home, retrieved the Butterfly Box, and ran back to Mag’s house. I set the system up, inserted the cartridge, and switched on the console.
I was greeted by a black screen with “PRESS START” in white block letters. I did as instructed. I can pinpoint this as the precise moment when I learned the universe wasn’t what I thought it was.