Dale, Leah, and I sat at the table while I plowed through the rest of the pizza and regaled them with the tale of the bloodthirsty teen.

Dale was eager to hear about my adventure, or more accurately, misadventure. I told him about Shawn screwing up, pooping his pants, and crying like a little boy that got spanked for stealing cookies. I was a bit liberal about the secretions from Shawn’s body, but everything else was true.

“…then I yelled, ‘Justice Kick!’ and they exploded into a puff of smoke,” I said.

“You didn’t…” Dale said

“I did.”

“Ugh! I wish I was there so bad. You have to take me with you next time.”

“You actually believe this crap?” Leah said.

“Of course. Jesse would never lie to me.”

“Yeah. I’d never lie to Dale,” I said. Leah sighed and shook her head.

Apparently, I’d slept through the entire weekend. Besides the news crew, only the police had come. I was a bit disappointed by that; I’d hoped clients would be swarming the place. At least Dale had deterred the coppers—for now. He used the tried-and-true, “Do you have a warrant?” shtick and they left. It had been Detective Take-Me-To-Jail-If-It’s-The-Last-Thing-He-Does and some lackeys. His mother must have hated him to come up with a name like that.

“I marvel at your ability to stop people at the door, Dale. It is quite impressive,” I said. “You’re like Alfred to my Batman.” He eyed me.

“No, you’re more like Aquaman,” he said.

“What? How do you figure?”

“You talk to dead people like he talks to fish.”

“I don’t talk to dead people,” I said defensively. “I summon them from the great beyond.”

“Aquaman summons fish.”

“Yeah—well, I have super strength and speed and—"

“Aquaman has super strength and super speed in the water.” I stared at him for a long moment, then frowned.

“I am not Aquaman.”

“Whatever you say,” Dale said with a shrug.

The doorbell rang again, and my face brightened.

“I didn’t order any more pizza,” Leah said, raining blood on my black parade.

“Oh…” I said, then I dragged my feet to the door and opened it. “No,” I said when I saw the new arrival. “No Satan, please, no. No. No. No!”

“You forgot your phone in my car,” Shawn said. I glared at him, then snatched it from his hand. He pushed past me into the apartment. “Oh, and you got blood all over my car. I had to get it detailed, but don’t worry, you don’t have to reimburse me. I’ll cover it.” My face heated with rage.

“You’ll cover it? You—you know what? No.” I took a deep breath. “You know you could have dropped my phone off sooner. I probably lost business because of you.” He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of knowing I’d been unconscious this whole time.

“I was far too busy to swing by. I missed golf with my buddies, so I had to make it up to them.” He shrugged. Heh, I bet he made it up to them real good.

“What’s this?” Shawn asked, leering in Leah’s direction. A predatory grin slithered onto his face. He walked to the table. “What do I call you? How about ‘my love’?” he said, with a bow. He presented his palm like he expected her to place her hand upon it to be kissed.

Dale slapped his hand away like a viper striking prey. “That’s my wife.” A burning fury emanated from the beastly man. If the table hadn’t been in the way, I was sure he could have slapped Shawn halfway across the apartment. Shawn took a step back in surprise.

The temptation of watching Dale cold-cock Shawn was somehow overshadowed by my eagerness to check my messages, but my phone was dead.

“Alright children,” I said with a clap. “Daddy has to go check his messages. Be good while I’m gone.”

Ignoring whatever they said to me or each other, I walked into my bedroom to the cable draped over the side table. Plugging in my phone, I mashed the power button eagerly. The manufacturer logo appeared on the screen.

“C’mon, c’mon,” I pleaded to it tapping my foot.

I never listened to voicemails. Instead, I let them get transcribed so they could be skimmed. After reading, I’d just leave them there. I’d delete them eventually—probably. When my phone finally turned on and the voicemail icon pinged at the top of the screen, I pulled up the menu.

To my dismay, there were only three messages. The first, Mrs. Hasbrook refusing to pay and demanding recompense for her hardship; one from that reporter looking to get comments for the story and wanting an interview; and another from Mrs. Hasbrook, telling me that Cara was fine and didn’t need further care.

I remembered my revelation about Cara and decided to actually listen to the last one. Mrs. Hasbrook’s voice wasn’t monotone, per se, but with the drawl she spoke in, it may as well have been.

“Good morning, Mr. Gil. This is Mrs. Hasbrook. Cara is feeling much better. In fact, she’s feeling better than ever. There is no need for an additional visit, so we will no longer be requiring your services. Goodbye.”

I stared at my phone for a second, then set it on the side table and put my thinking cap on. I walked back out to the living room and started slowly pacing back and forth while stroking my non-existent beard.

Al taught me how to use energy, but after several ‘lessons’, we discovered I couldn’t use elemental magic. We did figure out that I healed unusually fast, even for a mage, and eventually we found out that my energy was incredibly efficient at healing injuries. That’s when the experiments to test my limits started. It was very unpleasant.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

On one occasion, I was told to heal someone that ‘deserved it’, but my healing had come moments too late. When they came back to life, Al completely lost it. I don’t remember much after that, but I eventually came to and was told that raising the dead was incredibly dangerous and the magic community condemned tampering with life. Obviously, I’ve since ignored those warnings.

I knew what I was doing, but something had gone wrong with Cara’s second chance. Shawn had poured energy into her, bringing her body back to life. I called back her soul with more energy and constructed a barrier to contain it. Had I given her too much?

I did use a lot of power, but she’d had an illness before dying, plus using tainted energy would have been significantly more inefficient than pure. Both were valid reasons to give her that much. Could it have been because I used energy filled with hate? That shouldn’t have made a difference… I don’t think.

I could ask myself a ton of different questions about why it happened, but it didn’t change what had to happen next.

During Al’s mentorship, we’d encountered other people with black eyes and there was only one way to deal with them. My face fell and I slouched.

“Bloody plague and all the death it leaves in its wake,” I muttered to myself with a frown.

“What? Did you just realize you left your action figure in my car?” Shawn asked. I only then noticed that everyone had been staring at me while I paced.

“What is it?” Leah asked in concern at my expression. There was a long pause before I replied.

“We have to kill Cara.” All three of my guests stared at me without comprehension.

“Are you being serious?” Dale asked tentatively.

“Yes.”

“What are you talking about?” Shawn asked.

“She has to die.”

“I don’t understand. We just brought her back. Why would we have to kill her? And since when do we kill people? I didn’t sign up for that. Are you actually joking and pretending to be serious?” Shawn word vomited.

“I’m being serious.”

“Then why?”

“Cara’s mom was right. We didn’t bring her daughter back.”

“What are you saying?”

“We brought back something else.”

“Stop being vague to build suspense. Explain like a normal person.”

I shook my head. “I’d never joke about something like this, and I’d never speak cryptically just to hold an audience’s rapt attention.”

Shawn and Leah rolled their eyes.

I sighed. “Mrs. Hasbrook said we brought a monster into her house, and she was right.” I looked over at Dale. At least he could appreciate my build-ups. He was gushing with excitement.

“Just tell us,” Leah said sighing at me.

“Fine. Fun murderers,” I said. Leaning against a wall, I adjusted invisible glasses and cleared my throat. “As I tried to instill in your tiny brain during our last lesson, foolish student, there is a science to resurrecting corpsified people. It’s like chemistry. The requirements for the result you’d like to achieve varies based on the concoction you prepare, and your measurements must be precise.”

“Ahh, so you screwed up because you’re a terrible baker.”

“Baker? What are you talking about? I’m a chemist. Pay attention,” I said. “Now, allow me to elaborate on what happened to Cara.

“I showed up for my shift, and you handed me a beaker with an unknown substance swirling inside. Furthermore, you injected the substance into a chimpanzee, then you took off your pants and peed on the floor like the idiot that you are,” I said. He scoffed. “Obviously, you had no idea what you were doing, and thanks to your incompetence, the chimp escaped and tore up the lab.”

“So, your solution is to kill it?” Shawn asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Far from it. You see, now, that monkey has gained super strength and intelligence and it wants to enslave the human race.”

Leah chimed in, “So, if I’ve followed your ridiculous analogy, we have a Planet of the Apes scenario.” I made a tut-tut sound, shaking my head.

“Oh, Leah. Bless your heart. You didn’t let me finish. It’s not actually the chimp that’s gotten superpowers. When Shawn wasn’t looking, something jumped into the beaker before he administered the concoction. The monkey is the host for an evil parasite. It’s the parasite that needs to die, the monkey is just a casualty.” Leah sighed in frustration.

“Then can’t you just remove the parasite?” Leah asked. I considered this for a moment. “And how do you even know she’s infected?”

“I don’t think they can be removed, and I know she’s infected because, during the television interview, Cara had black irises,” I said.

“She had black irises… that’s all you have to go on?” …yes?

“No. There’s a bunch more, but it’s too hard to explain to muggles.”

“Muggles… really?” Leah said.

“Normies. Non-magic people. Whatever,” I said. I didn’t know if there was a proper term for them. “Look, Al said that the things inside people with black irises come from a different plane or something and killing them is the only way to get rid of them. I don’t know any more than that; I’ve only encountered them twice.”

“Al?” Leah asked.

“Well, what did those two do that made you have to kill them?” Shawn interjected. “Maybe they’re not actually evil.”

“Al was my mentor,” I said to Leah, then I turned to Shawn. “And they’re definitely evil.”

“But how do you know?” Shawn asked. I let out an exasperated breath.

“Because they steal people’s bodies!”

“Did you even try to save the people?” Dale asked.

“No, Dale. I didn’t. They attacked as soon as they saw us. And you can’t really capture someone that can walk through walls. The other one was changing into a werewolf—I think.”

“You think?” Dale asked.

“Yeah. I couldn’t tell because Al threw a car at it before it could finish transforming,” I said.

“He threw a car at a werewolf,” Dale said to himself as a wide grin lit up his face. Before I could respond, Shawn spoke again.

“So…there’s all different kinds of magic that I could learn.” He wore a different kind of grin. I appraised him with concern. He was thinking villainous thoughts again.

I sighed. He’d eventually figure out how to use magic on his own, and then he’d be left to his own devices. I guess I would have to teach him, otherwise I’d be responsible for bringing a villain into the world. I resigned myself to my fate.

“No—not really.”

“But you just said…”

“I know what I said. When I fought Cara, you saw me use regular human magic. Whatever the ones with black eyes are, they use inhuman magic.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, what I taught you about energy is just the tip of the gravestone. It can be used to supplement the user’s body, but it can also be used to conjure elements. You know, like: Earth! Fire! Wind! Water!”

Dale continued, “Heart! With your powers combined—"

“Not heart. Just the other ones,” I said, cutting him off. He frowned. “Anyway, there are those basic elements, then there are the ones that fall in between, like lightning and ice; that’s normal magic. The things with black eyes, I’m just gonna call them demons, they don’t exactly fall within the realm of normal. They can do stuff like walking through walls and turn into werewolves.”

“Okay. So, I can’t do that stuff,” Shawn said. “But I could throw a car like Al?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“Because Al’s a psycho.”

“Psycho?” Leah asked. “Do you mean like—insane?”

“Pretty much,” I said. She winced.

“This Al wouldn’t happen to be the same Al listed as your emergency contact in your wallet, would it?”

My expression turned to horror. “Please. Tell me you didn’t...”

A nervous smile touched her lips, and she slowly shrugged. My stomach suddenly felt worse than it had when it was filling with blood. Then the doorbell rang again, and I groaned.

Shawn’s evil grin returned. I’d told him snippets of some of the torturous methods that I’d endured and that he should be thankful I didn’t teach him the same way.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Shawn said as he skipped to the door.

“No, don’t!” I reached out, but it was too late. The door swung open. Shawn’s demeanor changed completely.

“Well, hello there,” he purred.

“Is Jesse here?” a woman asked.

“Even better,” he said. “I am.”

“Ok…? Well, I’m here to see Jesse.”

“Don’t worry about him. Let’s talk about us.”

“Not interested. Is Jesse here or not?” Frustration was evident in her voice.

“Is it hot in here – or is it just me?” As if it was his wingman, my air conditioner kicked on automatically.

“You have ten seconds to get out of my way,” she said in a dark tone. “One…”

“Ten? Baby, you’re a solid nine, but don’t worry, I’m the one you need.” Dale, Leah, and I all groaned at that one. The woman growled.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash and drywall dust burst from a new hole in the wall of my bedroom. A wave of heat blew into the apartment. With each heel clack on the floor, the temperature rose. I sighed as she came into view. I raised an arm to gesture introduction.

“Everyone. I’d like you to meet my mentor, Al. The Rage Mage.”