???: I don't know how you guys live with yourselves.

???: One day at a time.

???: One day at a time.

???: One day at a time.

Walking out of the corner store in some neighborhood I forgot the name of with my plastic bag full of snacks, soda bottles, and energy drinks, I glance in the direction I had originally planned on taking, noticing a nearby homeless man sitting down on the side of the building with his white puppy, a seemingly mixed lab of some kind.

It was a peaceful and quiet Thursday afternoon. The skies were eerily open and cloudless, our Sun was still being its unnecessarily bright and cheerful self, and the mingling tourists were just as annoying as yesterday.

As far as I'm concerned, the state of California (or the world for that matter) isn't burning up in forest fires or being punished by some divine entity, so since I don't have to personally deal with any craziness this world has to offer - I'm happy.

Or at least the sociopathic equivalent.

Holding a sign reading 'NEED MONEY FOR DOG,' the graying old man with salt-and-pepper hair wore a nondescript red and white grimy baseball cap, with a part of the brim apparently chewed off by a dog; a nondescript black sweatshirt with holes scattered throughout its front torso, blue jeans with rips and tears, and brown hiking boots with occasional duct tape in their soles.

His beard was bushy and unkempt, hair long and disheveled, and his eyes... his eyes were glazed; probably having smoked not too long ago.

Can't blame the guy too much; the marijuana culture is pretty much the same as it was when I was last here. In another time, in another universe...

He seemed harmless, I thought to myself, brushing away those dark thoughts and already pulling a fifty-dollar bill out of my wallet, casually making my way towards the duo.

"Here you go, old-timer," I say, crouching just a little bit to hand him the piece of paper that doesn't really have any value to me.

Mostly because I stole it, but who cares about that?

The surprise was evident on his face, even through his bushy black and white beard, as he opened his (probably) gaping mouth; his mind must have short-circuited at my surprise donation. Hell, even his body stopped for a moment, having frozen still once I placed the fifty dollar bill in front of his face.

"Wha?" He eloquently replies, his hand having stopped petting his dog once those first three words came out of my mouth.

The dog had a sad look in its eyes after the abrupt end of the head-patting session.

"Ciao," I said, bidding him farewell and giving him a right-handed, two-finger salute.

I don't bother looking back, I walk off into the sunset...

...

"Alright dude, what-the-flip?"

After hitchhiking from Eureka to the Arcata Plaza, and getting extremely drunk along with a few local stoners, I decided it was time to head back home, having had more than enough of a day leeching off of the Arcata kids' drugs and alcohol and ultimately calling a cab from one of my burner phones that were in my backpack after a few failed attempts at calling them.

I'm not the most social when I can't put a face to someone, alright? It's not my fault when I deal with faceless abominations I start to treat them like shit. How I knew that poor man just recently had his wife pass away from a drunk driver, remains unquestionable in my mind. Even knowing he shot himself in the head while I was on the call doesn't even make me have to mentally stomp that flame of guilt down.

I'm already over it.

With cash being the go-to method in this hellhole of a community, paying the taxi driver was fairly easy.

There was, however, a slight change in plans.

I forgot to buy a lighter.

I know, I know: Why waste your time and money on something so trivial?

If you ask this question, you may not have experienced the despair of forgetting to have a lighter when smoking—I wouldn't even wish that feeling on my worst enemy.

Anyway, this brings us to now… with me about to get mugged just a couple of blocks away from my apartment building.

"Give me your fuckin' wallet!" The seemingly younger teenager demands, a gun pointed directly up at my chest.

He's wearing the generic robber look—all black. Even the ski mask and everything. Besides that, you know what? He's actually not wearing all black. He does, in fact, have a dark blue bandanna wrapped around the side of his belt.

His arms are shaking as I just stare at him.

"What was that?" I cupped my left ear with my empty hand while simultaneously took a single step forward, moved my head side-to-side and glanced my eyes off into the distance, acting as if I were looking for something other than him and making a show of it.

He glances up at me in what I hope is bafflement, lowering the gun for just a moment before adjusting his grip and continuing to aim it at my chest.

"Step back! Just give me all your money and I'll be on my way," he yelled in slight alarm after noticing I had taken a step towards him without him noticing (must be his first time mugging someone if he's this jittery and unfocused), cocking the slide of his 9mm Glock and pointing it at my head this time.

Had I not mentioned I don't like guns?

No, I don't think so. It never seemed to come up, but yeah, I don't like guns. Knives and swords are where it's at.

When I was a toddler, from what my mom told me, I snuck into the kitchen and grabbed a knife somehow and stuck it behind my shirt like I was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Is this specific story relevant? No. Do I like telling it? Yes. Why am I giving you useless information?

I mean, because I happen to have pretty sharp hidden blades on me starting only recently, thanks to overly repeated, more non-lethal attempts at neutralising my opponents momentarily when under certain circumstances failed.

This is my only chance to try and get away with a completely legitimate self-defense murder charge by killing this kid. And trust me, the thought process in my head right now might seem fucked up, but if you hear my reasoning, it'll make sense. Are you ready?

I have nothing better to do and I'm bored.

Reaching for my nylon carrying case attached to my belt filled with seventeen black stainless steel double-edged throwing knives with silver-lined edges and dark green cord-wrapped handles, I grab two, throw one, and sprint at full speed towards the teen with the other in my hand, hidden under the right sleeve of my jacket.

My plan, however, never came to fruition; with me being seven feet away and the throwing knife bouncing off the teen's chest, from the butt of the knife hitting instead of the blade, I'll be honest and say: I didn't stand a fuckin' chance.

Goddammit.

'BANG!'

I toppled on top of the teen, using my entire weight to tackle him to the ground, stabbing him in the neck repeatedly until I ran out of steam and eventually rolled over onto my back.

I smack my lips for a moment, pulling my newly purchased brown BIC lighter from my left pant pocket and a pack of Marlboro reds with only a few cigarettes left over in the coat's breast pocket.

As I was about to spark up the lighter, my vision started to dwindle and fade away; my sense of smell and my physical pain drastically dampened as I 'turned,' the new but familiar feeling of the invisible particles in the air around me slowly but surely stitching the bullet hole in my chest, creating a... surprisingly nice feeling.

My body instantly stood up at my command, moving at a ridiculously fast pace as if I were pulling the strings of a puppet. Floating in the air for only a moment (because I had honestly forgotten I could fly), I quickly lessened the effects of my super-powered high, but only slightly, and stood firmly on the ground.

'I'm most certainly going to enjoy my vacation,' I silently think to myself, ignoring the red liquid leaking from the nearby dead teen's neck; the blood much like paint in this regard, staining the cracked sidewalk crimson red.

"You should probably get that checked out," I quipped dryly, focusing on my power to 'eat' his body as my right hand reached out just a little bit to manipulate the invisible particles.

My powers are weird; leave me alone.

Dissolving his body with the invisible particles that are under my control should be as easy as making an omelet; which is to say: not as easy as I might have thought.

I found there are restrictions regarding my powers a couple of weeks ago. While healing and breaking my own body is as easy as drawing a penis in the seventh grade, others are a little harder, requiring more or less focus, depending on the biological aspects of their body.

It's like building a Lego set, dismantling it, then rebuilding it every time you finish, using the instruction manual. After mastering the art of building this one Lego set with the instructions for over a week, you now decide to take the next challenge by attempting to finish another, more complex Lego set with many more building pieces than the previous one and trying to finish without the instructions.

With this in mind, my physical body is the first Lego set with the instruction manual, while everyone else's body is a more complex Lego set with more than three major pieces and no instruction manual.

I guess I could have used a furniture building example, huh?

Whatever.

All that remained of the teenager I had killed in self-defense were crimson red blood stains on the pavement, along with his clothing and belongings.

'This is mine now.' I think to myself a thought of finality.

Before I had even thought this, my body was already subconsciously starting to loot the dead teen's stuff as soon as I was finished eating his body.

That's a pretty mad sentence; I'm going to ignore I ever even said it.

Patting down the pockets of the medium-sized sweatpants, I felt something leatherlike like a wallet and pulled it out to get a better look at it.

Opening it up, I saw his legal name was James F. Sundberg. He was nineteen years old, stood at 162 centimeters tall, and weighed approximately 140 pounds. He looked like an everyday Joe. The photo on his driver's license showed him with a smirking expression on his face. His skin was tanned, his hair was dirty blonde, and his eyes were bright blue.

'He could've been a model if he really wanted to.' I think absently, grimacing slightly at the thought that I may have ended his life a little too early.

I'm already over it.

Maybe I should have looked at his face to see the difference between him then and him now.

Damn, now I'm curious as to what he looked like.

Placing my right hand in the left pocket of the matte black zip-up sweatshirt, I felt something plastic.

All sorts of dollar bills were collected in the large plastic bag, after a careful look under the moonlit sky. Weathered, crumpled, and near-perfectly shaped bills—as if they had been just recently made—were joined in the cluster of green-papered currency.

This must be gang-related, I note to myself, deadpan as I continue to stuff the bag into my inner coat pocket and begin making my way back to my apartment.

...

The journey back to my apartment was a simple endeavor. Not having to deal with assassins, hitmen, tweakers, or random muggers for the rest of my evening seemed to help with that.

What wasn't a simple endeavor, however, was dealing with my emotionally fucked up roommate.

The soft sound of sobbing from beneath the blankets on the couch continued, the TV a couple of feet in front of the couch playing a national news program about the situation in Bayayla or whatever on a somewhat low volume, it being dwarfed by the much louder rhythm of the fan and heater blowing air in the direction of my blanket-covered roommate. I saw it as a miracle in my book that no one sought to investigate the strange noise of a crying teenager.

Talk about being sus af.

"I'm home," I repeated my call to my roommate, having already said it twice before and after taking off my shoes.

It's been an hour since I've been home and they still haven't gone down from their breakdown.

Firstly, I'd like to say: I'm probably the worst trip-sitter you could ever possibly want. If I had it my way, I'd relentlessly torture my roommate by giving them constant vocal suggestions, gaslighting them into thinking they did/should/could do something, and would even use props to enforce the psychological abuse.

Unfortunately, my roommate happens to be an inter-dimensional refugee with the power to literally destroy me if she wanted to with just a touch—I'm talking about changing my genetic makeup, warping my internal organs, turning me into a monster—Hell, making me into a mindless yes-man for her own amusement isn't out of character for her either.

At least that would be the case... if she wasn't broken out of her mind.

Using what I've dubbed "soul-vision," I... well, I look into her soul.

A fairly large portion of her soul seemed to be missing. I couldn't really put it into proper words, but something must have happened to her when she transferred to this universe. What or who could've done it will forever be an unanswered question.

I don't particularly care for this person much in any shape or form, but I suppose I can't outrightly state I detest the idea of helping her recover and using her for my future plans.

But since I don't have any particular new changes in mind concerning my current living arrangements, I suppose I could help a young lass get into tip-top shape for the impending debacle that is just over the horizon that will inevitably kill thousands if not millions of people.

But doesn't that dismiss my purpose for being here? To be free of all of my prior commitments? To start over fresh in a new setting and universe? To be truly set free of all of my past world's societal expectations and ignorant constraints? Is this really what I want to do with my new given life(lives)?

Who gives a shit?

I came here to have fun, to party, to laugh at this world's misfortune, but most importantly: to try new things, even when unexpected—

I tore open one of the bags of Skittles I had stashed away in one of my kitchen cabinets and chugged more than half of it to fill my mouth with candy.

—With great opportunity, comes great power.

Hmm... What do you think of that? You see what I did there, right? I used the classic 'With great power, comes great responsibility' quote and warped it to fit my twisted agenda. Isn't that brilliant?

I'm already over it.

"Alright, Pan-Pan," I begin in monotone, reverting to a more neutral tone as I continue to speak.

Taking my eyes off the TV and glancing at the nearby clock, I maneuvered the last few Skittles with my tongue to the left side of my mouth, asking, "It's time for a shower. Can you try to do it on your own this time?" I asked the now sitting-up teenager in a mildly exhausted voice, absentmindedly chewing while staring at her zoned-out expression.

I waited for an answer. Anything, really.

Her response was a single shed of a tear running down the side of her right cheek.

Goddammit.

Edited on October 10th, 2023z