The boys didn’t stop him

Chapter 9 (continued): The Blue Room

I stare blankly into myself, or something that used to be myself, and everything is blue.

Not sky blue. Not soft blue.
Blue like a bruise.
Like looking through glass with water in your lungs.

I’m connected to something—cords, maybe.
IV lines. Or is it a dream?
I don’t smoke, there’s no fire.
I don’t breathe, there’s no air.

And then I notice—there’s someone in my bed.
My bedroom.
At least I think it’s my bedroom.
It feels like my bedroom.

The haze makes it hard to tell.

He doesn’t look too bad.
At least his shoes are off.
A small mercy.

I can’t read the clock on the wall. The numbers smear.
I can’t tell if it’s Thursday or Wednesday,
but I know I have shit to do tomorrow,
so this crackhead needs to get out of my bed.

I try to shake him.
But my arms won’t move.
My hands are just thoughts.
Phantom limbs in static.

And then a vision comes—
A tree.
Just for a second.
Then it’s gone.
Replaced by a snake slithering near my feet.

I look down.

No socks.

Bare feet, rough like a hobbit’s. Dry and too warm.

I try to speak.
Ask who the fuck is in my bed?
But nothing comes out.
No sound. No air.
Just the question, echoing inward like a swallowed scream.

⸻

This is my bed.

I was given this bed by my grandparents.
My grandfather.
Ten years ago, maybe more.

I pissed this bed.

My uncles pissed this bed.
Generations of beer and shame soaked into the mattress.

I pissed it with a girl named Nina.
I was seventeen.
We were drunk—so fucking drunk.

Probably 28 beers.
Four shots of Fireball.
Five doobies.
Three Perc 10s.
And a whole lot of pussy.

I woke up soaked.
And Nina said, “Nate, what’s all wet?”

I said, “What? Nothing.”

She asked again. “Nate, seriously.”

A few weeks later, she broke up with me.
Not because of that.
She said, “I think you’re gay.”

I just kind of looked at her.

She wasn’t wrong.

I wasn’t cheating on her—
yet.
But in my mind, I already was.

There’s not enough alcohol in the world
to stop a gay boy from doing what his instincts desire.
Chapter 12

I didn’t die, but I should’ve. Not because I wanted to, but because the way I lived demanded it. That’s what people don’t get about addiction. It isn’t about wanting to die. It’s about not knowing how to live with the static turned all the way up in your skull. It’s about a body that keeps breathing even when your heart checked out years ago. And I had just enough left in me to keep going, one dumb, brilliant catastrophe at a time.

The next morning, I was still wearing the same pants I’d puked in. I found a bottle of Faygo under my seat and drank it like communion. Cherry Red. Sacred and stale. My mouth tasted like vomit and metal. My hands shook when I tried to light my menthol. It took three tries. I watched the sun coming up through the cracks of a Taco Bell parking lot. That light made me feel like I was being judged. Like God had finally come back and was squinting at me, disappointed.

Taylor texted me, “U good?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at her message like it was a threat.

I kept thinking about the toothbrush. The lesbian with the toothbrush. The sound it made scraping against my molars while Taylor yelled, “You dumb fucking faggot, wake up!” and slapped my face like I owed her rent. I didn’t even thank her. Not the lesbian, not Taylor. I just walked out the next morning like nothing happened. Like I was late to brunch instead of crawling back from the edge.

I drove aimlessly for a while. Windows cracked. Air stale. Meth had burned a hole in my stomach and in my soul. I needed a shower. I needed a priest. I needed Roberto. That pretty fucker. That Scorpio demon with the grin that made you say yes to everything you shouldn’t.

I pulled into a truck stop and went inside just to wash my hands. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. My pupils were two pinholes cut into a theater curtain. I looked like someone who had been kissed by Death and spit back out. I looked like Leviathan Dean Star Finger. Whatever the fuck that means anymore.

I thought maybe I’d call him. Roberto. But I didn’t. I imagined his voice — smug, sultry, full of sand and silk. I imagined him laughing, that mean little laugh that curled around your ribs like smoke. I imagined telling him what happened. I imagined him saying, “So?” and lighting a blunt, unbothered.

Instead, I drove home.

Abigail was gone, thank God. She had a new man, some car detailer from Bryan. Probably already pregnant again. Her bedroom still smelled like wet cotton and Febreze and leftover men. I crashed on the couch. The puke was still in my hair. I didn’t care.

I dreamt about a river. A long, dark river where all the fish had needles for teeth. I was in a boat with my grandfather, who was young again. He didn’t speak, but he handed me a net full of stars and said, “Catch what you can. The rest isn’t yours.”

I woke up crying. No sound. Just tears. Quiet ones. The kind that feel like they’ve been waiting years to fall.

I texted Taylor back:
“I’m alive. Barely. Don’t front me anything else. I mean it.”
She just sent back a skull emoji. 🫥
Scene: Richie’s Back Porch — Night

The glow of a bug zapper buzzes above them. Taylor smokes a cheap cigarillo, her hair in a greasy bun. Richie’s sipping Monster out of a stolen Speedway cup. Levi is nowhere — out cold, in a K-hole, or dead, they don’t even know yet. But they’re talking like he’s already gone.

Taylor:
“He’s fuckin’ pathetic. Did you see him last night? Puking all down my bathroom wall like a toddler with the flu. Said he was gonna die and then didn’t. What a fucking drama queen.”

Richie:
(Laughs through his nose)
“He always does that. Levi dies every weekend. Then shows up Monday like nothing happened. Wearing sunglasses indoors, acting like he’s famous.”

Taylor:
“Famous for what? For being a messy little bitch with daddy issues? I’ve known Levi since he was fucking around with that Peter kid. He was a bottom before he was even an addict.”

Richie:
“He owes me forty bucks and three apologies.”

Taylor:
“Forget the money. He owes the world a favor and a permanent nap.”

They both laugh. Mean. Drunk on it.

Richie:
“You ever think he likes it? The overdose? The drama? It’s like… he wants to be found. Wants us to pull him out of the toilet, call him beautiful while he’s covered in his own piss.”

Taylor:
“Yeah, well. I ain’t his mother. And I ain’t Jesus. I’ll brush your teeth to keep you breathing, but I’m not gonna love you for it.”

She flicks her ash. Richie shifts, gets quieter.

Richie:
“He used to be something. When we were kids. I remember… he made a dress out of trash bags for the Halloween party at the rec center. Said he was a ‘goddess of rot.’ Everyone laughed but I swear to God… he looked majestic. I kinda… looked up to him back then.”

Taylor:
“Don’t be a sap. That kid died years ago. What’s left is just appetite and eyeliner.”

Pause. Bug zapper sizzles.

Taylor:
“You think he’s ever coming back? The real Levi?”

Richie:
“He never left. That’s the problem.”
Chapter 13

“The Tide is Coming”

I was on the north side of Myrtle Beach. The so-called good side. Not the slurred, grimy south where they call it Dirty Myrtle. Here, the sand was pale, the sea less angry, but no shells. Everyone took those—cracked and sold for a dime or a dream. The tide was creeping in, slow and patient, like a beast waking from sleep.

I threw a bottle in the water. A message inside. A secret for Poseidon, or whoever listens to the drowning. The bottle bobbed and vanished, swallowed by the Atlantic’s hungry mouth. I thought of Lake Erie — my real home — fierce and cold as a blade, but here? Here was a different beast. The ocean’s pulse pulling at my bones, pulling me out.

Bobby McGee sat next to me, bottle of plastic vodka half empty in her hand. We got so drunk we didn’t say a word, just sat, waiting for the tide to wrap us in its nonsensical, benign union. The moon was full and bright, a silent witness to the madness.

“This is it,” I said, voice cracked from salt and whiskey.
“The tide is coming, Bobby. We have to go.”

She laughed like a frog. Frolicked like a fool. Tossed her vodka bottle into the water, reckless. I reached out —
“No, Bobby. You’re coming with me.”

She shook her head, wild and free. “I can do what I want.”
I wanted to drag her back, hold her close, but she was already slipping away, a ghost in the wind.

⸻

Back in my bedroom, I dip my pen in the ink, the nib scratching paper like a fevered confession. My hand trembles with every word. The room is dim — one candle flickers, casting shadows like ghosts. My mind drifts back to the beach, the bottle, the vodka, the storm.

I write:

The ocean pulls and pushes like a cruel lover —
It asks for surrender but offers no mercy.

⸻

I left her there on the sand, wild and lost, and went back to the timeshare — her parents’ place, cold and empty. Upstairs, my friend was tangled up in something soft and complicated. I didn’t care. I was worried about Boobie.

“Boobie,” I muttered in the dark, “I’m not going to do it. Not tonight.” But my voice was a whisper drowned in thunder.

I made myself an espresso. The doorman gave me a look like I was a beautiful mistake.

“You okay?” he asked, voice low.

I smiled, “Don’t look at me funny, stranger.”
He laughed, “You’re beautiful.”
I said, “Thanks. Where’s the coffee?”
He pointed to the machine — a marvel of technology, the kind that listens to commands and breathes out Frappuccinos like some caffeinated oracle.

I slumped onto the lobby couch, the storm’s howl growing louder outside.

⸻

My pen slides again —

The storm screams secrets I don’t want to hear.
The tide rises.
I wait for the flood.

⸻

I woke to the tides creeping higher, moon swallowed by clouds.

I whispered to the darkness, “Leo, Leo, Leo… what do I do?”
But my voice was hollow. No answer came.

The boy on shift came in, quiet, watching me with eyes like question marks.

Without a word, he turned on the TV.

I smirked, trying to be something — anything — besides a ghost.

⸻

“Everything okay?” I wanted to ask. But my throat was dry.
He just shook his head and said, “Who the hell is that?”

I laughed. “Just a girl eating your clothes with her eyes.”
He smiled — small and curious.

⸻

Later, Bobby came in — dreadlocked and wild, no phone, no cigarettes, no vodka. She looked at me with a storm in her eyes.

“How could you leave me down there?” she said.
“Down where?” I asked.
“Down there, on the beach. Alone.”
“I thought you wanted to be wild.”
“I was wild. You left me.”
“No. You left me.”

⸻

The pen hesitates. I stare at the paper.

Maybe the truth is we both left each other.
Like driftwood in the tide.

⸻

I close the ink bottle, rub my eyes, and stare out my bedroom window. The night is still. The tide always comes, and it always goes. But the scars? They stay.

Chapter Fourteen

The Scrying Bowl

Levi sat cross-legged on the floor, the pen balanced between his fingers like a bone flute. He dipped the nib in the black ink, steadying the glass bottle with his other hand. The candles were low now, flickering in stuttered rhythms, casting shadows that swayed like they were dancing for him alone. One of them crackled, reminding him it was still alive.

He began to write:

⸻

Today, I pulled into a Goodwill parking lot with no particular plan. I needed a pot — something to root the plants I’d clipped from Rivergate Mall. Cheap green stems swaddled in water cups like hospital patients. I told myself it was practical, urgent. But it wasn’t.

Inside, I found something bewildering. A bowl. Italian. Marked once for eighty bucks, then twenty, and now — two ninety-nine. Golden, reflective, heavy in the hands like it had lived lives. I didn’t change the tag, though God knows I used to — when I was more of a little shithead, slipping stickers around like it was survival. But not this time. This time, I played it clean.

The woman at the register kept turning it in her hands, tag to bottom, bottom to tag, like she was waiting for something to click. I almost offered to put it back — told her if it wasn’t meant to be, I’d go without it. But she rang it up, and I left with a $2.99 oracle.

I was going to use it as a planter, but something stopped me. The shape, the gold, the weight — it felt like more. A scrying bowl. A tool. An answer-seeker.

Later, I looked up golden scrying bowls online, just to see. The old ones, the good ones, shimmer like liquid mirrors. They pull the other side in. Maybe that’s what this one’s for.

Today is my grandmother’s birthday. Or would’ve been, or is. I lied and told my mother I remembered. I didn’t. They only told me two days ago. I am an Aquarius — I don’t even know if my shoes are on the right feet most days. But I do know she stopped her chemo this week. I think she’s ready. I think she wants to go see her husband again. Maybe that’s the insight I’m supposed to find tonight.

After the candles burn down, after the cone incense finishes smoldering its little La Luna perfume into the air, I’ll sit with it — the bowl — and the chalice. The glass one, chiseled. It’s perfect. Sharp and rounded all at once. Holy in its geometry.

There’s another piece I keep circling, sitting on Deb’s altar. Half a glass ball with a flat base. Inside: tiny six-pointed stars, like fish in utero. Blue, white, red — moving when I tilt it, but never escaping. It reminds me of something: urgency, playfulness, distraction. Not happiness. Not sex. Something else. Like spirit with a toy.

I haven’t asked her about it yet, and I don’t know why.

I put the plants in a different pot. The one I originally found was Christmas-themed and seven dollars. Everything smaller than the golden bowl cost more. That’s how I knew. The price wasn’t an accident. It was a message. The universe winking.

Now I wait for my mother’s call. I sit here with my scrying bowl, incense ghosts, and aquarium stars. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I believe it matters.

I am enough.
I am that.
Faith.
Light.
Balance.
Be.
Believe.
Experience.
Sand.
Pause.
Harmony.

So mote it be.

⸻

Levi blew lightly on the last line, watching the ink dry in the curl of the letter H. He held the paper up to the candle flame — not to burn, but just to catch its warmth, to baptize the page. He hadn’t cried today. Not yet. But he could feel it somewhere behind his eyes, like rain thinking about falling.

He placed the journal on the altar, beside the bowl. Just close enough that if the ancestors wanted to read it, they could.

And then he sat back, and waited for the call.

Chapter 13: The Bullet and the Body

He took the tab at sunset, because Roberto told him not to.
Because the trees were calling. Because he didn’t want to feel anything that wasn’t dripping.

The woods behind the rehab center weren’t woods, not really. Just a patch of sickly trees and ruined fencing, a place where old syringes and dead birds went to die. But under acid?
They were holy.

The branches moved like veins. The sky peeled open like a wound.

He walked shirtless, barefoot, buzzing. No music. Just the heartbeat in his ears and the taste of something metallic growing behind his teeth.

That’s when he saw her.

The woman in the silver dress. Hair like ash. Eyes like animals in cages.

“Do you remember 1520?” she asked.
“I don’t remember this morning,” Levi replied.
“Good. Then I can show you.”

She pressed her hand to his chest and the world flipped inside out.

⸻

🌕 The Vision 🌕

Fire. Chains. Wolves howling inside human throats.

Ten people kneeling in a circle, vomiting blood onto silver coins. A baby screaming. A queen with no eyes. A bullet in each of their mouths.

“Say your name.”
“Leviathan Dean Star Finger.”
“Now say what you are.”
“Nothing.”

Wrong answer.

The claws rip through his back. His skin splits like old bark. His teeth elongate. His spine cracks. But he doesn’t scream—he laughs, until it turns into a howl.

He’s in the woods, but the woods are 1520, and his body is a myth in progress.

He sees himself eating a man he once loved.

He sees Roberto, naked in the field, holding a silver bullet between his teeth like a cigarette.

“Use it on me if I lose myself,” Levi whispers.
But Roberto’s already walking away.

⸻

☠️ The Comedown ☠️

He wakes up under a tree with a nosebleed and scratch marks down his thighs.

The silver bullet is in his hand.
There’s dirt in his mouth.
There’s a wolf print next to his own.

And in the distance, someone is howling.

⸻

Want to continue the trip?
We can go deeper into the hallucination, or cut to Roberto trying to find Levi. Or maybe Levi doesn’t come back the same.

Let’s follow the trail

Chapter 13: The Queen’s Favorite Is Missing

He took the tab at sunset because Roberto told him not to.

It hit fast—no warm-up, no soft colors—just a rip in the sky and the scream of the trees bending backward.

He walked into the woods shirtless and half-mad, already laughing. No shoes. No plan. Just a silver bullet in his pocket and last night’s bruises on his ribs.

The ground pulsed like a beating heart. The bark looked like skin. The sky melted into something pink and infected.

By the time he hit the clearing, they were already there.

⸻

Twelve of them.

The dead gay boys with wolf eyes.

Beautiful and terrifying. Half-naked. Bloody mouths. Ribs sticking out like fucking wings. Some had no noses. One was missing a jaw. Another dragged his entrails behind him like a fashion statement.

They smiled when they saw him.
Wide, too wide. Their teeth were wrong.

“You were hers,” said one, licking his lips.

“You are hers,” said another, grinning through cracked lips and a mouth full of maggots.

“You howled first,” whispered the smallest one, dragging his claws down Levi’s chest like it was foreplay.

Levi didn’t move.

He remembered all of them. From dreams. From the rituals. From the pit.

He remembered their bodies stacked like meat. Their eyes full of moonlight. Their mouths full of prayer and spit and rot.

“She made us beautiful,” one hissed. “And you fucked it all away.”

⸻

Flashback.
Motel.
Sweaty sheets. Tongues. Cigarette smoke.

Roberto straddling him, slow and cruel.
Hands on Levi’s throat. Not hard enough to kill—just enough to remind him he’s real.

“You’re soft,” Roberto had whispered, smiling like a knife.

“You’re real,” Levi replied, clutching at him like a drowning man grabbing teeth.

No altars. No oaths. No moons.
Just flesh. And heat. And the absolute blasphemy of joy.

⸻

Back in the woods, the air went cold.

The boys circled tighter. The dirt squelched under Levi’s feet—soaked with something that wasn’t just mud. It smelled like sex and grave water and regret.

Then—she came.

Not walking. Not breathing. Just arriving.

The Queen.
The one who made them. The one who kissed Levi’s spine when he was thirteen and told him pain was the only language worth speaking.

Her voice slid out of the trees like smoke.

“My favorite,” she said. “Gone. Rotten. Ruined by cock and cheap motel rooms.”

Levi laughed.
A fucked-up, broken sound, mouth full of spit and blood.

“I found something better than your twisted-ass sermons.”

“You were made from my ribs.”
“Then I’ll snap yours and dance in the dust.”

⸻

He pulled out the bullet.

Not silver-polished, no.
Tarnished. Dirty. Sticky with blood from his own thigh where he’d stabbed himself earlier just to feel anything real.

“You think I give a fuck about being holy?” he hissed. “You think because you turned me into some cursed little dog I’ll spend eternity licking your feet?”

The Queen said nothing.
But the boys twitched. Eyes glistening. Throats clicking like they were remembering what hunger tasted like.

Levi shoved the bullet between his teeth.

Not to die.
Not to end it.

To keep from howling.

⸻

“Fuck you,” he said around the metal. “Fuck your kingdom. Fuck your story. Fuck your moon.”

Then he turned around and walked out of the circle.

Bleeding.
Barefoot.
Laughing.

⸻