Free Bullettime by Nick Mamatas

like the wings of a great crow, and he smelled of grease even from the bottom of the stairwell.
    “Who’re you?”
    “Uhm . . .” Dave says.
    “Your shirt is bloody. You all right? How you get in here?” With every question, he climbs three steps. “You on drugs?” he says, and he’s face to face with Dave. He’s a short man, Mr. Zevgolis, but as wide as he is tall. A nasty scar runs down one redwood forearm.
So Erin
wasn’t lying about that
. Unless it was something else that cut her father so badly. The scar looks only half-healed. Dave feels his own suture burning.
    “No,” Dave says. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
    “Maybe I call police, eh?”
    “Can I go home, please?”
    “Don’t you never come back, you understand?” Zevgolis says. Even his teeth seem supernaturally huge, each one like a jetty.
    Dave tries to squeak out an
okay
but he just exhales and bumps into Zevgolis. The man shoves past him and walks up to the near entrance of the railroad apartment. Dave runs down the steps as best he is able.
    In the Journal Square neighbourhood where Erin lives, there are a number of cheap and dusty stores. The Rite Aid workers are trained to hassle kids when they want a little medicine. And they have cameras everywhere. Why Dave thinks of cameras now, he doesn’t know, but it’s because I was staring at him so intently from the Ylem. No cameras in 99 Cent Dreams right across the street. And they carry the Mexican cough syrup. He drinks deep as he takes the long way back home.
    The police are waiting in the living room. Ann is there too, half-sober, her back straight. “David!” she cries as Dave walks in. “My baby!” She runs, as best she can, to hug him. Dave peers over her shoulder at the police—one guy in a uniform and one plainclothesman. They could be extras from
The Sopranos
, or Mr. Zevgolis’s cousins. And they knew mom was faking the funk.
    “The prodigal son returns,” the uniformed officer says to nobody in particular. Dave squirms out of his mother’s grip, and she gives it up too easily.
    “They’re here about a poking!” Ann stage-whispers. Dave realizes that he wishes he had a sane woman in his life. Here in the Ylem, I can see the futures branching forth from this point. There are plenty of sane women in Dave’s life. They throw themselves at us in college, at the workplace, they’re just an email or telephone call or kind word away, but I ignore them all to seek out this same dynamic over and over again—a woman whose modes and behaviours are beyond predicting, who are concerned with appearances, and who have some sort of wound that won’t ever heal, no matter what mad actions they took to salve it. If they really like me, even for a moment, or were kind and not cutting or oblivious, I win. If I lose, well, I try and try again, across every potential future. I liked that hug, though it was as contrived as the one Dave had gotten by the cute redhead whose name we had both forgotten as part of the school play in sixth grade. He had fit in the leprechaun costume, so got the role.
    The uniform murmurs something about the poking. Dave raises his shirt and shows off his homebrew suture. “It’s fine,” he says, unconvinced and dreamy. He coughs twice, so he’ll have an explanation for the cough syrup in his book bag, for his lateness, for what he’s sure are the subtle changes in his aura thanks to his first real make-out session.
    “Who did that?” the detective asks.
    “Uhm . . . I did it myself,” Dave says.
    “Not a bad job,” he says, convincingly enough for Ann.
    “What did the person who stabbed you look like?” the uniformed officer asks. He has a pad out.
    “Black guy,” Dave says. “He looked a little older, I guess.” He smiles. The cough syrup is making him feel pretty good, like he’s in a theme park, chatting with costumed characters. Cop Man and the Fat Detective. They’re his favourites. “He’s not a student.”
    “What makes