Gloved Hands: A Curse Workers Fan fiction
I always wanted to be a worker. As far back as I can remember I've wanted it. When I was a kid, there was this boy who lived across the street from me. Toby, he was called. My age. We used to play together once in a while, a game of football here, or a round of basketball in the park there. Sometimes we would go to the movies. It was nothing much, just a casual friendship. But he used to tell me he was a worker. A luck worker, to be precise.
Toby would boast about how he could do anything, and I was enthralled. Every day, I'd ask him for a bit of luck. "You even benefit from the blowback, if you give me good luck," I'd tell him. He never did, and when I was eight I figured out he wasn't really a worker, that he was only telling me that to impress me. He admitted that he was lying, and we left it at that.
"Why a luck worker, though?" I'd asked. "Luck workers are boring."
Toby had shrugged. "If I said I was a transformation worker, would you believe me?"
"No. Of course not. I bet there aren't even any transformation workers alive today."
The next day, Toby had an idea. We could pretend to be workers together, and we decided that we would both death workers. It was the very best kind of worker to be, when you were eight. It was cool. Of course, neither of us suffered from blowback, no rotting body parts. It was just how cool we were.
I never did maintain a close relationship with Toby. He moved away to California when we were ten. At first, we called each other when we could. But over time, phone calls became chat rooms online, and chat rooms became the occasional e-mail, until even those ceased to exist. Toby was one of those people who leave your life as quickly as they come in, carried away by the wind.
Lila, Daneca, and Cassel. They're all workers.
They're all workers except for me.
The gloves I wear, the gloves we all wear, are meant to prevent us from using the illegal magic touch, but there's little reason to use them. Not for me. Just an ordinary person, someone bland. I don't need these gloved hands.
Cassel's gone now. He's been gone weeks, and now I don't know what to do. Since I started rooming with him, since I found out … what he was, everything changed. Cassel made my life more interesting to say the least. To suddenly be tossed into a game of life and death, to con Zacharov.
And Daneca is different too. She is no longer the girl I fell in love with. She's one of them now. She's special. A worker. And even though we are coming back again, becoming close once more, it can't be the same as it was before.
Everything has changed now. The wind has carried everything away. Cassel's gone, Daneca is a worker, and I can get an A whenever I want to, thanks to Dean Wharton shooting me in the leg.
I sit on the roof now, the same roof Cassel climbed in his sleep so long ago. He was suspended for doing so, but I can sit on it whenever I want to now. It's peaceful up here. Quiet. Sometimes, sitting up here, with nothing but a can of beer to keep you company, you can forget anything and everything exists. Silence can do that.
A shuffle sounds behind me, and I turn. Daneca has come to join me. A glance at my watch reveals she's come at exactly the time I asked her to. She sits next to me and looks out at the turf without so much as a word.
Looking at her now, she's like the old Daneca. The Daneca who isn't special, the Daneca who isn't one of them, the Daneca I can at least try to stay at the same level with. The leather of my gloves in my fingers, so unnecessary. So little point.
There is no way I can meet her level now, successful filmmaker or not. It might have helped to have Cassel there. I can't be one of them.
Somewhere, out there, Cassel and Lila are together, free workers. Workers.
"How's your leg?" she asks me at last. "Does it hurt a lot?"
"No," I say. "Not today. Not a lot."
Daneca nods, playing with the fingers of her soft violet glove. She takes the fabric of the left index finger and twists it absently without pulling it off. At last, she leans her head against my shoulder. "Where do you think he is, anyways?" she asks me. "Cassel, I mean."
From one of the taller trees in our schoolyard, a single dried leaf falls onto the roof. It skitters down the slanted tiles before landing at my feet. I pick it up and begin to twirl it by its stem. "Who knows?"
Daneca snorts. "Knowing Cassel, he's off in Hawaii somewhere, having the time of his life."
"It makes you wonder what everyone else is doing. Like Lila. What's she doing right now?
Daneca raises her head from my shoulder with a cocked brow. "Cassel went with Lila, in case you forgot. He called us."
"If she hasn't given up on him yet," I say with a grin.
Daneca laughs. "Like they'd give up on each other. The lovebirds."
I smile and nod, because she's right. "Hawaii, then?"
She returns to my shoulder. "Hawaii."
Between gloved fingers, I let go of the leaf, tossing it over the edge. It starts to fall when the wind catches it and carries it away. We watch it go from our place, growing smaller and smaller until nothing is left of it at all.
The End