Hector blinked himself awake, clearing away lingering memories of Volithur mentally cultivating for half the night as he turned off his alarm. Before leaving his bed, he brought up his nascent understanding of cosmic energy and cultivated a few rounds. He exchanged energy through his mind five times before quitting, only slightly drained from the exercise.

“Well,” he muttered, “that certainly is a lot easier when you do it the right way.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for a cultivation session. The previous day he had used a cocktail of caffeine, lion’s mane mushrooms, creatine, ginkgo biloba, and B vitamin complex to boost his mental energy enough to power through a marathon of inefficient cultivation. It had been fairly effective. He estimated that he wasn’t far behind where Volithur had been prior to taking his first tea powder elixir. If he combined his homemade cocktail of supplements with the improved method taught by Ulysses, Hector imagined he would have quite a bit of success.

He rushed through his morning routine. Gym, stop by a gas station to get something for his father, arrive at the hospital. Hector closed the door as he entered his dad’s room.

“Hey there, young fellow,” he greeted.

His dad stared at the ceiling, only recognizing Hector’s arrival with a flip of one hand.

“Everything okay?”

“Deronto joined that religious order. He’s an arborist now.”

“I imagine that is a lot less fun than watching him score with the ladies.”

“Maybe,” his dad said. “The thing is… he had some serious insights into the nature of life. I got to go along for the ride and now I understand them too.”

“That sounds good,” Hector said as he withdrew fruit from the plastic bag.

“I don’t want any of that, Hector. Put it away.”

“Dad. Be reasonable.”

“Devouring like I’ve been doing is wrong in so many ways. I can’t even find the words to explain how wrong it is.” His dad took a shuddering breath. “My end is near, boy. I’m not upset about it any more. I understand the cycle. My death frees up resources for new life. Oh. Right. I don’t want buried beside your mother any more. Look into a natural burial. Plant a tree over me. I think that is legal here.”

“You can’t just give up.”

“Hector, I’m not surrendering a fight. I’m accepting a fundamental truth. Everything is connected in a beautiful web. If I were to continue down the path I was on, I would cut myself off from the tapestry of existence and become a parasite. I don’t want that.”

Hector pulled up a paper bag. “The only thing we can’t fix is death.”

“What the hell is this now,” his dad muttered, lifting his hand to push the bag away. Yet as he came into contact with it, his hand froze. Tension slowly built within the entire body of Terry Thoreaux, until he looked like a dog about to pounce on a scrap of food. His arm began to shake.

Then, quick as a shot, he ripped the paper bag open and submerged both fingers into the earthworms the local gas station sold as bait. The worms had been moving lethargically, but the entire mass quivered as one and went still before collapsing into rubbery corpses.

Terry Thoreaux didn’t stop. One by one, he seized every fruit set before him, whether whole or diced for eating, draining their ineffable essence so that they deflated into death. When the last offering had been accepted, his skeletal hand shot out to seize Hector’s forearm.

The mix of hope and regret that had swirled in Hector’s heart vanished beneath the tide of fear that arose. He felt something being ripped free of him. Something important. With an instinct as powerful as pulling back from a burn, Hector ripped free of his father’s grasp and launched himself back until he hit the wall.

His father made to pursue and visibly restrained himself. Anger contorted his features. “What did I tell you? This isn’t what I want to be! I would rather die a thousand times!” He placed his palms over his eyes. “Get out of here, Hector!”

“No, we can figure this out, dad.”

“You have no idea how any of this works, Hector. Stop trying to impose your will on the situation. I had a good life and it is at its end. Don’t bring me any more ‘gifts’ when you come back.”

Hector took a small step away from the wall. “I’ll stay until you are under control.”

“I’m not going to attack the nurse. I need fifteen minutes of peace to tame the hunger.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Are you sure?”

“Hector. Get out of here. I can’t take the next steps while you’re pissing me off.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Empty handed.”

“Dad…”

“Don’t you dare do this to me again, boy.”

“I won’t.”

“Bye.”

Hector’s legs felt wobbly as he left the room. He still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. Did his dad just become an Ogre? Did sucking some of Hector’s human life energy mean he was a Strigoi instead? Were they just toeing a dangerous line? Did they have to go back to the slow decline into death that had marked the past month?

Uncertainty consumed him as he drove to work in a subconscious autopilot mode. He parked his car, removed his keys from the ignition, and stared at the warehouse door, surprised to find himself there. The whole ride had passed by in a moment and he couldn’t understand why he was there. Not just there at that moment, but why he had dedicated the majority of his life to the objective of moving boxes in and out of trucks.

What the hell was his life? Working at a company where he couldn’t be too friendly with his coworkers because he was senior management but was excluded from the social circle of the management team because he was a warehouse person? For what? The money? He had enough of that to live out the rest of his life in comfort.

The director of operations would be waiting for him in his office. Probably acting contrite because his childish power play backfired. The tug-of-war over budget or comparative sizes of bonuses or whatever corporate politics bullshit had motivated the ‘talking to’ of the previous day ultimately didn’t matter to Hector. He could hardly bring himself to care about the disrespect he had been shown. It might have only been twenty-four hours, but he had lived weeks in his sleep since then and been subjected to much worse indignities.

The real question was did he still want to work? If he quit, could he fill his time with something more fulfilling?

Of course he could. He knew how to cultivate now. Every hour he had previously dedicated to an ungrateful corporate entity he could redirect into self-improvement. The world around him bloomed into sudden clarity. He was done working. That chapter of his life could be left behind. Maybe he would work out the rest of the week, but staying wouldn’t be a net benefit to his life at this point.

Hector stopped by his office, where instead of the director of operations he found a post-it note requesting a call. Not feeling particularly like starting work yet, he picked up his phone and dialed.

“Hey, Hector! Sorry about that mess yesterday. Stress got the best of me. You know how it is, right? All this dream stuff has a couple of screws loose in my head, too. I’m the young master of a Xian family at night. That kid does anything he wants. I mean that literally. Anything. It’s like Girls Gone Wild and American Psycho had a kid and hired Grand Theft Auto to be the nanny.”

“Sounds like you have it pretty rough,” Hector said.

“Skews your perspective, that’s what it does. You start seeing real people as NPC’s in a video game. That ain’t right, though. I see that now. That’s why I offer you my sincere apologies, Hector. I didn’t mean any of that stuff I said and I am going to make it up to you. I promise. We good?”

“No hard feelings,” Hector said.

“Glad to hear it. You take care now.”

Hector set the phone down, sat in front of his computer, and drafted a resignation letter. He sent it as an email to the chief operating officer, company president, chief executive officer, director of human resources, and carbon copied his personal email account. Then, feeling lighter than he had in a long time, he walked onto the warehouse floor.

He didn’t get far before he saw something that made him question his decision to work out the rest of the week. Jeremy had the pallet wrapper disassembled.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Fixing stuff,” Jeremy responded without looking up.

“You’re not qualified to be doing that.”

“Relax, I know all about this kind of thing from my dreams.”

“And does OSHA know you received special dream training on machine repair?”

Jeremy finally looked up. “The motor is already repaired. The capacitor just needed replaced. I was ready to rewind the wires, but it wasn’t necessary. I have the frame mostly straightened out. It would be back together already except I can’t find a couple of the screws. The lighting isn’t very good over here.”

“You ‘replaced a capacitor’ on the motor…. How did you find the right replacement part?”

“You’ll be happier not knowing the answer to that, boss man.”

“At least tell me you didn’t rip it out of another piece of equipment in the warehouse.”

“I didn’t so much ‘find’ a capacitor as I made one.” Jeremy held up his hands. “Hear me out. I attend a prestigious Jinn academy in my dreams. My major is in aneutronic fusion, but the general studies classes cover motors, circuit design, stuff like that. Fixing a pallet wrapper is kid stuff.”

Hector grunted. The kid thought he knew what he was doing and it wasn’t like he had to worry about losing his job. “Fine. Don’t get hurt.” Pause. “That fusion thing. Can you do that here?”

“Not yet,” Jeremy said. “I need to saturate with legal energy. Legal as in the laws of nature, not lawyer stuff. Then I can start constructing a conceptual realm around the concept of deuterium-lithium fusion into helium-4. I can boost natural resonance with my probability domain and make it so that cheap and safe fusion happens at room temperature. Electricity is going to be very cheap in a couple of years, boss man.”

“I won’t complain about that,” Hector said.

Jeremy laughed. “You’ll probably be meditating on a mountain or some Xian shit.”