Levi let out a choked gasp as he rolled off his bed, landing on the floor of his apartment with his trademarked thud. He gasped a few more times, fingers scrabbling at the hardwood under him, fingertips tracing the tiny gaps in the boards.

Once he had gained his bearings and sufficiently anchored himself to this plane of being, he heaved himself up onto his hands and knees.

Woozy, he crawled along the floor into his tiny bathroom.

He leveraged himself against the wall and slid his shoulder up until he was in what could be roughly considered a standing position. His hands grabbed the rim of the sink and Levi felt the coolness of the porcelain seep into his scarred flesh.

His bleary eyes looked back at him in the mirror, examining him. His chest bore slowly fading bruising where ribs had cracked under the skin. A nickel sized dot sat on his right arm just below the square muscle of his shoulder, pale flesh, scarring. It was tender to the touch, a bit itchy, but otherwise fine. That said, the skin was still irritated, and the familiar fizzle of supernatural fire tickled at him when he pressed his fingers to the scar.

He looked like shit.

"You look like shit," noted Arthur beside him.

"... Thanks for that," Levi croaked in a dry voice. Then he turned on the tap and started drinking from it in heavy, wet gulps.

When he deemed himself sufficiently hydrated, he showered, doing his best to clean himself of the smell of blood and vomit that wouldn't quite wash out. The water was as hot as it would go, hot enough that Levi didn't really feel it anymore, just the barest impression of water on scalded, reddening skin. He cleansed himself under the showerhead for as long as dared, then shut off the tap.

As Levi stepped out of the shower and began to towel himself off, his eyes caught his hands again. Not even a bruise on the knuckles. With how hard he'd hit that man, that stranger, he figured there would be some mark. Something should be broken, discolored, swollen, anything. But no, just hard hands and thin white scars.

“Another exciting day,” Arthur commented dryly, sitting on the counter of his kitchenette and kicking his feet. Levi gave him a dismissive chuff, reaching through his stomach to grab a coffee filter.

“Rude,” Arthur smirked.

Make coffee.

Eat something.

Feed the cat.

Get dressed for work.

The typical motions of his daily routine, a well-practiced waltz that he stepped through in an exhausted daze. Usually, by the time he got to work, he couldn’t even remember what he had done that morning. He scrubbed dust off of his boots with the old toothbrush he kept under the sink, its bristles finding their way into each crease of the leather to scour away dirt and gunk and reddish-brown blood which his nose assured him was his own. He was going to have to clean the sink again when he got home, he supposed.

Levi dressed himself and went to work. Went to the Bullseye, to a place where he could feel safe again. He sank himself into the beige, drowned himself in it, drowned the previous night in it too.

Julia pulled him to the surface, just a little. Enough that he had to breathe air instead of paint.

"Levi!" She chimed.

Julia ambushed him as he walked past the window into the manager's office, an office which the manager didn't actually use and which mainly served as a cluttered storage room for paystubs and any other paperwork the company needed to keep locally. Levi stopped in the plain, fluorescent-lit hallway to smile at her, weary though the smile was.

It was good to see her. It always was.

He had been headed down the hall to clock in. There was an ancient

"Hello and good morning, Julia,” he said as casually as he could. He scratched the scar tissue on his right arm under his work-shirt. He was sure it would be gone by nightfall. No one would be able to tell that he’d been shot the day before. “Did you get your rat taken care of?" he hummed.

"He is not a rat," the woman pouted. "Don't be mean to him, he's sweet! And yes, I got him taken care of. Got him a big thunder vest. It seems a little heavy for him, but I think it'll help keep him calm while I'm at work. He keeps chewing on the couch cushions because he's nervous."

Levi pondered this for a few moments, letting his mind wander over the details.

What kind of couch would Julia own? Probably something ugly, but that worked really well with her apartment in spite of that. Something in a light color that had faded from something even lighter. Maybe with little tulips on the rough, old-fashioned upholstery, spots of red and pink and orange all over it giving it a splash of floral color. Anywhere else it would have looked hideous, but with Julia's sense of interior design somehow, someway, it was the centerpiece that pulled the room together. Not the same without that couch, no sir.

And then there was that little terrier, teeth sunk into those old second-hand cushions that Julia had worked so hard to clean, to make presentable. Levi could see it now, him tugging away at them, only unable to destroy them because those cushions had seen three families and eight different household pets, and what was he to their aged, durable material?

"You really think that vest will help?" he asked.

He wasn't really sure how those comfort vests were supposed to work, really. The way the commercials had described them they apparently felt like a hug, but Levi didn't think dogs, even that rat, was so stupid that it would think that vest was a hug. Dogs operated on scent, and there was no way that vest was going to smell like person. Levi supposed that the weight of the vest pinning him to the floor was the more likely reason he was calmer now.

"That's what the vet said," she nodded. "Doctor Blanc hasn't steered me wrong yet with my Bubs.”

“Are vets doctors?” Levi questioned. Then he paused for a moment to process, circling back. "Bubs?"

"Yeah, Bubs. Short for Bubbles."

Levi let out a snort. “Sounds about right for you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Julia asked, a brow arched.

“Well, I mean, as if naming him Bubbles wasn’t bad enough, now you’ve given him an absurd nickname. It’s very in-character for you.”

“This is starting to get hurtful,” Julia noted, though a smile was tickling at the corners of her mouth. “It’s a good name!” she barked. “He likes it.”

“How exactly can you tell if a dog likes their name?”

“His tail wags whenever I say it,” she said firmly.

Levi lapsed into a fit of giggling. Too good!

“You sure do tease me a lot for someone whose hair looks like a very unhappy mop,” Julia grumbled. “You need to brush it.”

“Believe me, he does,” Arthur chuckled to a woman that couldn’t hear him.

“Well, I’ve thoroughly forgotten what I was going to say to you Levi, so I hope it wasn’t important. I’ll see you at lunch,” She patted his back, then walked back down the hall she’d come from.

Levi clocked in, and then set about his first task of the day. He primarily did stocking, lining the stores endless rows of shelves with the colorful packaging meant to draw customers’ eyes.

The literature section was his favorite area of the store to stock. It was small which, unfortunately, meant it didn’t need to be stocked often, but the process of slotting all the books in together on the shelves was satisfying. Today almost half the literature section’s shelves were being stocked with the same book: a novel with a burgundy cover that appeared to be about a man drowning off the Pacific coast.

“Lucas Pastor,” Levi read off the back in a quiet voice, “provides a riveting exploration of wanderlust, personal tragedy, and the dark twists that lead an ordinary man to consider the unthinkable in this... Uh...”

Not his kind of book. Not that he was much of a reader these days.

Once he had finished his work in literature, he moved to the dairy section.

Stocking the milk in the dairy section involved pulling on a puffy blue communal jacket that smelled heavily of other people. It was tattered at the shoulders where the seams had started to pull apart. Jacket pulled on, he had to slip back behind the shelves into the great big walk-in fridge that housed the stuff just above freezing and slide the cartons onto orderly racks where customers could reach them by opening the external door.

When he was a child, he had walked the supermarket with Abuela every Saturday morning. He remembered the first time he had noticed that there was a world hidden behind the milk. It had filled him with such a potent feeling of awe that he had actually tried to crawl inside the fridge to explore the world “where chocolate milk comes from.” He’d been a curious child, and more prone to rush forward into the unknown than to make any kind of plan or ask permission.

The combination of Abuela’s wooden spoon and the twists and turns of life had broken him of that rather early into his childhood.

Still, he wondered if there were any more worlds like that to explore. Worlds tucked away at the corners, extraordinary and mundane at once.

Come to think of it, he supposed he lived in one of those worlds at the corners, at least halfway. He pondered absently if he could figure out what language that man from last night had been screaming in, but quickly dismissed the idea. He couldn’t parse anything the man had been shouting into actual syllables, if he had even been a man at all.

He had developed a fear of change, of the unknown. He doubted he would much enjoy stumbling upon the world behind the milk these days. But that was a hypothetical that he wouldn’t see.

After stocking the literature and dairy sections of the store, Levi made his way back to the break room for lunch. Mark, Julia, and Levi always took their lunches at 11:30, which put the store slightly under-compliment for half an hour. They had never gotten a complaint from management about it, so they did it anyways.

“What’d you bring?” Levi asked, leaning over Mark’s shoulder and peering into his lunch box.

“Back up ya hyena,” Mark laughed, shrugging him off. “You should be bringing your own to work instead of trying to scavenge off of us.”

Levi switched to his other target.

“What’d you bring,” he hummed, scampering to that end of the break-room table.

She looked him in the eyes with a snarky grin.

“Tuna salad.”

Levi dry-heaved and turned away.

“Judas!” he hissed.

Mark and Julia both laughed. Levi could not stand tuna or anything that included it. It was a texture thing.

“You better go buy yourself something,” Mark sniggered.

“Don’t want a bite?” Julia taunted, holding up a bite of her vile concoction on the end of her fork. Levi held up his hand to keep the mixture away from him.

“Whatever,” Levi said haughtily. “I have another date with Rosa tonight, there’s nothing you can do to bring my mood down.

Mark shook his head sadly and Julia patted him on the arm.

“It’s okay,” she consoled. “We’ll always have our memories of him.”

“He was so young,” Mark whined mockingly into his hands.

“I know, I know. But the flames that burn the brightest burn the fastest.”

“Assholes,” Levi grumbled.

"I'll arrange the service," Mark said with a melancholy sigh. "Do you think white flowers, for purity of spirit?"

Julia shook her head. "No, his complexion is too dark. Roses would do better."

"Roses, got it. Any preference on the box?"

"I know it's big ask," Levi provided, "but can we do mahogany? I've always wanted something mahogany, and I guess if it has to be my coffin then it has to be my coffin."

"How are we going to afford a mahogany coffin?"

"I've got life insurance," Levi assured him. It wasn’t very good life insurance, but it was enough to pay for a snazzy funeral. He hoped there would be enough money left over for that custom pimp-cane he wanted to be buried with.

“Enough to pay for a mahogany coffin and a service?” Mark asked as he rinsed his mug in the sink.

“My father believed in being prepared for any situation,” Levi said haughtily.

Mark glanced at his phone and sighed. "Well, we’ll have to pick a date for it later,” he said as he set his coffee mug on the communal drying rack. “I've gotta get back on the clock."

Levi gave him a cross-eyed grin.

"Since when," he questioned, "have you been in a hurry to get to work?"

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Mark raised his chin, looking imperiously down at Levi from his position by the sink.

"Maybe I'm just bored of your company."

Levi and Julia both let out horrified mock-gasps.

"No!" cried out the blonde woman. "We have displeased the mighty Mark! Whatever shall we do?"

Mark laughed a deep, maniacal laugh, drawing himself up from his eternal slouch. He was actually pretty tall when he wasn't halfway bent over.

"Grovel before me peasants!" he demanded.

Levi and Julia, snickering the whole while, got to their knees and kowtowed to the mighty figure.

"Oh, forgive us our trespass," Levi pleaded.

Julia contributed with similar gusto. "We are but ignorant weaklings before you, oh mighty Mark!"

"Motes of dust before your pow-"

Patton, who ran the store's HR, stared at them from the doorway, coffee mug in his hand. The bare white enamel bore the simple words: "Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee." A small smudge sat on the rim where his ChapStick had blended with coffee and deposited itself as a brown kiss on the ceramic.

Patton slowly drew the mug up to his lips and took a loud slurping sip. He lowered the mug again.

"Do I need to... write a report on this or...?"

"E-everything is fine!" squeaked out Julia.

"I'm just gonna go now," Patton nodded. "I am going to leave and pretend I saw nothing and, by the time I come back, this will all have vanished. Like a terrible nightmare. Or my marriage. Same thing honestly."

The man walked away, and the trio took that as a sign to stop goofing off... For now, anyways.

The first thing that Levi noticed was the smell. He slotted one last box of cereal onto the shelf, the grinning tiger on the front seeming to taunt him.

The smell was familiar.

He pushed the cart down towards the end of the aisle.

The smell got stronger.

He pushed the cart towards the stock room. With his cart empty he would need to acquire a new set of merchandise to stock.

The world stank like copper and claws.

He pushed his cart down the shelves and pretended this was normal, pretended that the scent on the air that made his skin itch and his mouth water was always there.

When he found the source, his breathing was heavy. Wet. He felt like he was breathing through an ocean of syrup.

He looked down.

The body of the man from last night laid on the floor. It was twisted into an unnatural position, face grinning up and fluorescent lights. The body’s eyes were glazed over, grey and dull, as its throat bubbled with iridescent blood. The thing breathed. The thing was dead.

It was an impossibility.

This was Bullseye. This was a sanctuary of the mundane. This was the safe haven Levi had found for himself.

The body’s eyes were a bright fluorescent blue.

Hadn’t they been dead?

Levi hadn’t killed this man. Derrick had stopped him.

He wanted to tear out Derrick’s throat with his teeth.

His sins sprawled out before him with blue burning eyes, and the words that leaked from his throat were intimately familiar.

“I am here... for you.”

Something within him shuddered. The beast gnashed its teeth in his head and clawed at the walls.

This was Bullseye.

This wasn’t real.

Endlessly mundane. Infinitely boring. Inexhaustibly ordinary.

The scent that was so familiar, so close to him, and it sparked in the front of his head and burned his senses.

His own blood drooling from the bubbling throat of the thing, filling the air with that blaze of crimson.

“I will make you whole,” it said in its cruel, hate-filled voice. The words, the voice that spoke them, twisted as it was… he’d heard them before, and his mind struggled to place them.

Levi took two steps back from the body. He should call out to someone, call the police, report this. Someone had placed this body here, but there was no way anyone could tie it to him, right? He was just the one to discover the thing, that was all. Security tapes would prove his innocence. Bullseye had cameras everywhere.

At Bullseye the eyes had walls.

At Bullseye he could see everything and everything could see him.

He needed to call Derrick.

He couldn’t call Derrick.

But he needed help, he needed-

He dug his fingernails into his flesh. He sunk his teeth into his forearm, mouth flooded with the taste of his own soul. It drooled, hot and wrong and right into his mouth. Down his throat.

“I am here now,” it said.

A dappling of red rose petals along the ground.

Drops of his blood on the floor.

White flowers wouldn't do.

“I will hold you.”

His complexion was too dark for white flowers.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them again.

No longer staring at the ceiling, those blue eyes stared at him.

Levi took slow steps backwards, suckling on the flesh of his arm. He felt sick. He felt drunk. He stumbled, shoulder slamming into a shelving unit. It rattled, some styrofoam cups falling from the top and landing with a light thump on the ground.

He closed his eyes again.

He saw lights in the sky.

Beautiful stars.

The back of a pickup truck.

Under the hood of an old Mustang.

The smell of oil, and blood, and the sea.

The moon overhead.

He opened his eyes.

Gone.

Gone like it had never been there.

When he went to the bathroom to throw up, to wash his hands and face, the bile was a muddy reddish-brown.

He was getting worse, every day.

The vending machine flickered its unsteady heartbeat outside.

It was cold for how early in the season it was, Levi decided. He wished he had brought a jacket with him. It didn't seem to be bothering Mark, but Mark was overweight and originally from Minnesota, where things were colder. And then there was Julia, who looked cozy wrapped up in that worn grey cardigan she always had on her person. It seemed to manifest whenever she needed, like a guardian angel except useful only for fending off the cold. Kind of a lame guardian angel, but at least it seemed dependable enough.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Canned coffee. Orange-cranberry soda. Sweet tea. The regular rhythms of life.

Crack, pop, pop. Opened one after the next.

A quiet, collective sip.

"God, I hate this job,” Mark groaned. “The same shit every day. Every customer is just as delusional and repulsive as the last.”

"That's the charm of it, isn't it?" Levi frowned.

"Work is not boring," Julia countered. "You two fail to appreciate the brilliance of the moment. People are the most interesting, complicated things on the planet."

Levi and Mark shared a doubtful glance, taking sips of their drinks. Then they turned back to Julia.

"Elaborate," urged Levi.

Julia rolled her eyes. "You two just like dealing with people on the surface-level," she admonished. "Everyone you meet has a life as complex, interesting, and tragic as yours. If you bothered to actually listen to the people you meet, you would understand that. People are endlessly interesting! Like billions of plays all taking place at once, each one different from all the others by a level of magnitude even when they have the same broad strokes."

Levi shook his head. What Julia was describing was irreconcilable with his way of thinking about people. Reality was subjective, so people were only as complete as you allowed them to be perceptually. He said as much aloud and was somewhat pleased by how Julia rolled her eyes.

"Levi, that's stupid," Julia said with her tongue stuck out. "And I think you know that and are just too stubborn to change your point of view."

Mark, in turn, had wrinkled up his nose a bit. He did that if he was thinking through something particularly complicated.

"I see what you're saying Levi, really, I do," he explained. "But I'm with Julia on this. All you're saying is that you don't care to learn enough about these people to complete your understanding of them. I don't either, but that doesn't make her wrong, it just makes you and I ignorant of reality as it is."

Levi sighed softly.

"No, there is no 'reality as it is' there's only perceptual reality. Anything that you don't perceive isn't something you're ignorant of, for practical purposes it simply doesn't exist. And it works the other way too, if you see something, whether anyone else can see it or not, it's REAL. Otherwise, you wouldn't be perceiving it." Levi paused for a moment to sip his coffee. "Our brains only know what is and isn't by our senses, by our perceptions. In that way, interpretation doesn't just discover reality, it literally creates it out of nothing. We have no way of knowing what objective reality is. As far as we can tell, there’s no such thing as an objective reality."

"... That's still stupid," Julia grumbled.

"If a truck comes around a blind corner," Mark provided, "and you don't see the truck before it hits you, it's still real when it's coming around the corner."

"No, it's not. Only the impact is real, because that's what you perceive."

Julia paused a moment. "Isn't this just the whole 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound' thing?"

"For the most part," Levi admitted.

Three dull thumps, emptied drinks into the trash can.

"Here's to another night of deep philosophical insight," Mark chuckled dryly. "Goodnight you two."

"Later boys," Julia chirped, nodding.

Levi jittered as he went back to his car, ignoring the itch of the skin on his arm healing.

The gym was packed today. Made sense, Fridays usually were a busy day for them. He grabbed his gym bag out of the trunk and went inside. He waved hello to the handful of other students that greeted him, then went to the bathroom to change.

“Levi, your heart is going crazy,” Arthur said quietly, leaning against the other side of the stall door.

“Shut up,” Levi muttered. “I’m just excited to have fun.”

“What happened at work today-”

“Was just another thing. Nothing to worry about. I’m under control.”

“Levi, we all have bad days. Maybe you should sit this class out?”

“I need to get the jitters out,” Levi growled, unlocking the stall door. He nudged Arthur aside as he made his way to the sink to wash his hands and fix his hair. “I refuse to be a mess when I see Rosa. This is good for me. This is what I need.”

“You could hurt someone,” Arthur snarled at him with a sudden and violent intensity.

His words echoed through the empty tiled room.

Another student, Keith, he thought, walked in.

“Oh, hey Levi,” he said, making his way to a stall. Levi gave him a nod of acknowledgement.

He looked himself over in the mirror. The circles under his eyes.

He looked at his arm. There wasn’t even a scar there anymore.

Levi pushed off the skin and shrugged his bag over his shoulder, heading back into the main area of the gym,

Arthur didn’t say a word.

He navigated between the equipment. Giant punching bags, free-standing pull-up bars, the like. He slipped off his shoes and bowed before he stepped onto the padded mats. It was old-school, but he did it out of habit. The soft mats were familiar under his calloused feet.

“Levi,” Coach Daryl said warmly. “Ready for class?”

“Absolutely,” Levi said. His mouth felt full of too many teeth, sharp as sharp could be. He grinned, flashing them.

“Glad to hear it. Join the group running laps, we’ll get into things shortly.”

Physical conditioning was a breeze. He’d been doing the same exercise routine for years, it no longer provided a challenge for him.

When it was time to spar, however, Levi’s blood really began to pump. Normally they started with rolling, but Coach had been focusing on boxing and kickboxing for the past two months. In his words there was “an overabundance of students who did not know what it felt like to get punched in the face.”

The class was broken into pairs. Coach Danyl sorted them into matches he considered “fair” without providing any rhyme or reason.

Levi got paired with Ken. Ken was the second largest man in the school that night. 6’5” and all muscle. He’d been attending classes for three years, and was quite the opponent.

“Uh, hey Levi,” Ken said meekly. He averted his gaze. The big guy never could look anyone in the eye.

“Hey Ken. How you doin’?” He slotted his mouth piece in, chewing on it to make sure it was seated well in his mouth.

“Mph, fine,” Ken replied, his own mouthpiece in, now.

They touched gloves.

It began.

Ken was horribly fast for his size. Levi slipped a jab to the head, only to catch an uppercut to the belly so hard that it physically lifted him an inch or two off the mat. He stumbled back with a wheeze, one hand dropping just in time to catch the lead-hand hook that had been coming for his exposed ribs. The impact made a loud smack as Ken’s glove collided with the soft meat of his arm.

Levi, fighting southpaw, brought his lead hand back up to stop the follow-up hook aimed at his jaw. Clever fuck, making him drop his guard low to block the body-blow, then bouncing off an using that momentum to come back in for his unguarded head.

Levi threw a rear-hand uppercut, buying himself some space even though the punch didn’t connect. He followed through, letting his momentum carry him forward. His rear leg followed, tapped the mat in front of him, then shot back out in a brutal side-kick aimed for the underside of Ken’s jaw.

Ken leaned back just in time.

Levi’s head was pounding with his pulse.

His teeth felt so sharp, like they were digging into his mouth.

Everything tasted like blood.

He pushed his newfound advantage and went on the offensive.

“You need to go easy,” Coach Danyl said gruffly.

Class had been over for fifteen minutes, and the school was basically empty. Levi and Danyl were circling one another on the empty mat. The coach wasn’t wearing any shin-guards, though he did have the sense to wear a mouthpiece.

Levi looked up at the man, frowning. “What do you mean?”

He had just done a full class. Sweat had soaked into his clothes. He could smell the endorphins in the air. He had sparred with at least eight different people. No one was tracking points, but when Dom, his eighth partner, dropped limply to the floor, knocked unconscious by a nasty left hook, Levi decided that he was winning.

Arthur sat on the bench by the door, a towel draped over his head. Still, Levi felt the man’s gaze on him as they circled.

“You are going to hurt someone if you don’t go easy.”

Levi snorted.

Coach Danyl closed the distance suddenly, and they exchanged a flurry of blows for a few moments before Levi managed to get some distance again.

“It is not a joke!” Danyl barked, throwing a few testing jabs his way. “You are going too rough. You have been doing this for a long time, and you’re strong for your size.”

“I’m the second smallest guy in the class,” Levi protested. It didn’t seem fair to be told to hold back, when he was the one routinely fighting out of his weight class. Something inside him thrashed in challenge, running its claws down the walls in its cage. Not fair, not fair!

“You have been doing Sambo since you were a boy!” Danyl had dark hair and dark eyes. The man’s skin was flushing with frustration, starting at his neck and working up from there. “Half of these students have only been in combat sports for six months, and you throw them around as if they were made of steel!”

Levi lowered his gaze. “Yes coach,” he said softly. That thing inside of his chest thrashed about at the idea of holding back, but it did not rule him. Not right now.

He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He was having fun. He was playing. He didn’t want to do any real damage, just... let off some steam.

“Levi, what is going on in your head?”

Levi sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You have been acting strange for months. It is not like you.”

“I’m just having a rough time right now, sir.”

Levi winced. Danyl slammed a round-kick into his right thigh, and Levi wasn’t quite fast enough to check the kick. Instead, he leaned into it and threw a leaping-knee with his left leg, forcing Danyl back again. Levi growled. He was distracted…

“Do not take it out on my students,” Danyl said firmly. “You should talk to me about it. Tell me what is happening.”

Arthur looked up where he sat on the bench, face almost hopeful.

Levi’s lips tightened into a line. “It’s private, Coach, but thanks.”

Arthur’s head drooped again and he sighed.

When Levi hit the showers, he felt… odd. Guilty, but also… good. The jitters were gone, worked out of his system.

Mostly.

And he had something to look forward to.

He had a date. With Rosa. Another one.

For just thirty dollars a head, two people could get outfitted with the finest laser weaponry money could buy. Well, that thirty dollars could buy, anyways. Limitless fun!

The company was more important than the activity anyway.

Levi changed in the tiny locker room. Black skinny-jeans. A white shirt with a neon pink print across the chest that advertised a band he hadn’t listened to in years. Would probably look good under a blacklight.

Arthur was silent as they walked out to his car.