The first thing Eric noticed in the morning was always the ache.

  Not the sharp kind from a fresh injury—that came later, if he moved wrong. This was the slow, grinding kind that lived somewhere between bone and regret. It settled into his joints and his spine and the back of his eyes, like an old coat he’d put on so many times he’d forgotten what it felt like not to wear it.

  He lay on his couch, half on, half off, one arm dangling toward the stained carpet. The TV across the room stared back at him with a dark, glassy glare. A blank input box glowed faintly in the corner, the last trace of whatever late-night nonsense he’d fallen asleep to.

  His neck protested when he tried to swallow. His tongue felt like someone had used it to mop out an ashtray. His skull pulsed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  The room smelled like stale beer, old takeout, and dust. There was the faint sour note of sweat in the air, and underneath that, the flat, tired scent of a place that didn’t see fresh air very often. The blinds were half-closed, letting in just enough late morning light to make everything look more pathetic.

  Eric stared at the ceiling, waiting to see if the day was going to show mercy.

  It didn’t.

  The throb behind his eyes sharpened as soon as he tried to focus. His head felt two sizes too small, like someone had taken a clamp to his temples overnight. His stomach rolled in a lazy slow-motion threat that said move wrong, and we’re revisiting last night’s decisions.

  He closed his eyes and breathed through it.

  In. Out.

  The couch cushion under his back had a permanent dip where he usually slept. He owned a bed. Technically. It was in the bedroom he barely used, covered in laundry he never quite got around to folding. The couch was closer to the TV. Closer to the fridge. Closer to the front door when he needed to walk down to the store and restock.

  Efficient living, he called it, when he was feeling charitable.

  Mostly, it was just gravity.

  His dangling hand brushed something on the floor. An empty can rolled against his knuckles and chimed softly against another. He cracked one eye. There was a little cluster of them next to the coffee table—silver soldiers laid out in a messy formation. Some proper empties. Some with a swallow or two left in the bottom. One rested on its side in a dried ring of foam.

  On the table above them, a tower of more cans had formed at some point. He didn’t remember engineering it, but it was definitely his work. Two tall stacks, then a third, half-hearted attempt that had collapsed sideways and scattered across an old pizza box.

  The pizza box was still open. Inside, something that had once been cheese had turned into a hardened sheet of orange-ish plaster. The slices had given up individual identities days ago.

  He looked at it for a long time.

  Then he let his head roll back against the arm of the couch.

  He could lie there all day. He’d done it before. Stare at the ceiling. Drift in and out of shallow sleep. Pretend the world outside the thin apartment walls didn’t exist. The worst part of it wasn’t the pain. It was that each time he woke up and realized how much his life had shrunk, it surprised him a little less.

  He shifted, the couch springs creaking, and finally forced himself upright.

  The room tilted. His vision went gray at the edges for a second. He grabbed the back of the couch until the wave passed, then sat there, elbows on his knees, head hanging.

  “Okay,” he muttered to himself. His voice came out rough. “We’re alive. Questionable choice, but here we are.”

  He scrubbed both hands over his face. His palms smelled faintly like cheap soap and cheaper beer.

  His phone buzzed somewhere under a pile of junk mail and receipts. The sound vibrated against the wood of the coffee table like an annoyed bee.

  Eric stared at the general direction for a while, debating pretending he didn’t hear it.

  It buzzed again. Longer, this time. Text, not call.

  With a sigh that felt like it came from his bones, he leaned forward, nudged a path through yesterday’s mail, and dug his phone out from under a crumpled grocery ad.

  The screen lit up.

  MIKE: ? alive?

  A minute later, another message, sent probably when he didn’t respond fast enough:

  MIKE: need matching set of liver problems, lets go

  Eric huffed something close to a laugh. It hurt his head to do it, but the sound came anyway.

  He typed back with clumsy thumbs.

  ERIC: breathing. mostly

  ERIC: give me 10

  MIKE: 20, you gotta shower

  MIKE: you smell like u lost a fight with a brewery

  ERIC: bold of you to assume i lost

  He smirked faintly, dropped the phone back on the table, and pushed himself up off the couch.

  The apartment was small. A single bedroom, barebones kitchen, living room that doubled as his sleeping area, and a bathroom that had seen better decades. The carpet was an indefinable brown-gray that had probably been beige once. The walls were off-white, marked with faint scuffs where furniture had been moved in and never moved again.

  He stepped over a pile of laundry, cracked open the blinds a little more, and winced as sunlight shot straight through his pupils.

  Coyote Hills glared back at him through the window. Rows of low buildings, distant hills, the faded sign of a shuttered laundromat across the street. A truck rumbled by, the bass from its speakers thrumming faintly. The sky was a bright, ordinary blue. No clouds. No reason for the knot of unease sleeping somewhere deep in his chest.

  He let the blinds fall halfway shut again.

  Bathroom.

  Shower.

  He caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror and stopped.

  He looked worse than he felt, and he felt like shit.

  His dark hair stuck out in half-hearted spikes, as if it had tried to be presentable and given up. There were hollows under his eyes. Stubble shadowed his jaw, edging into “too long to be stylish, too short to be intentional.” He wasn’t old, but the lines at the corners of his eyes made him look older than he had any right to.

  A faint scar traced along his collarbone and disappeared under his shirt. There were others, hidden. Some were old and ugly. Some looked like they should’ve belonged to someone else.

  He looked softer than he remembered being. Not fat—he’d never had the patience for that—but there was a slackness to him. Muscles gone to sleep from disuse. Shoulders rounded forward. Like someone had taken the outline of a fighter and smudged it with a thumb.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He stuck his tongue out at his reflection, because if he didn’t, he might start thinking about things he’d spent years not thinking about.

  “Congratulations,” he told himself. “You look like you own three different ‘World’s Okayest Employee’ mugs and talk about your fantasy football league too much.”

  The shower water took a while to warm up. He leaned his forehead against the tile, letting the streams drum against his neck and shoulders. It helped. Not enough, but a little. His hangover receded from “murder” to “attempted manslaughter.”

  By the time he stepped out and towel-dried his hair, his headache had dulled to something he could ignore if he squinted hard enough. He pulled on a cleanish T-shirt, jeans that had seen better days, and socks that almost matched. Boots by the door completed the uniform.

  He grabbed his phone, wallet, and keys, then stepped out into the hallway, locking the apartment behind him.

  ***

  Mike was waiting at the foot of the stairs, leaning against the railing like gravity didn’t apply to him.

  He wore the same battered leather jacket he’d had since his twenties, faded jeans, and a T-shirt advertising a band that probably didn’t exist anymore. A baseball cap shaded his eyes. The attitude didn’t.

  “Good God,” Mike said, looking up as Eric came down the stairs. “You survived.”

  Eric stepped onto the sidewalk. “Disappointed?”

  “Little bit,” Mike said. “I got twenty bucks on ‘liver failure before forty’ in the office pool.”

  “We don’t have an office,” Eric pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, pushing off the railing. “So I’m winning.”

  He fell into step beside Eric as they headed down the street.

  They walked in companionable silence for the first half-block. The neighborhood was the kind where everyone’s business was visible but nobody had the energy to care. A kid zipped by on a scooter. An old man watered a patchy lawn, hose in one hand, cigarette in the other. Somewhere, a dog barked without commitment.

  Mike took a pull from the travel mug in his hand. It definitely wasn’t coffee.

  “You eat?” he asked.

  “I had a shower,” Eric said. “That’s as far as my ambition goes today.”

  “Bold plan.”

  “I thought so.”

  “You’re gonna pass out in Manny’s if you don’t put something solid in your stomach.”

  “Then you can drag me home,” Eric said. “See? Team-building.”

  Mike snorted. “My back disagrees with your optimism.”

  They passed a mural that had been halfway finished for years. Bright colors faded in the sun: some kind of bird with stylized wings, reaching for a shape that had never been filled in.

  “You sleep at all?” Eric asked.

  Mike shrugged one shoulder. “Couple hours. Woke up sweating. Dreamt I was back in the sandbox and my rifle was shooting balloons.”

  “That sounds… inconvenient.”

  “Yeah. The balloons were winning, man.”

  “Tragic.”

  Mike glanced at him. “You?”

  Eric’s jaw tightened, just a fraction. “Crashed on the couch. Woke up. Accepted poor life choices. You know. The usual.”

  He felt Mike’s eyes on him, measuring that non-answer, but the other man let it go.

  They turned the corner, and Manny’s Liquor came into view.

  The sign buzzed faintly, its neon tubes waging a losing war with the sun. Dust-specked windows framed displays of cigarettes, lottery tickets, and beer brands that promised more than they delivered. A handwritten note advertised ice, bait, and “coldest beer in town,” which was debatable but technically unchallenged.

  The bell over the door jingled when Eric pushed it open.

  ***

  Inside, the air was cooler. It smelled like old wood, cheap beer, and the faint spice of whatever incense Manny occasionally burned to “clear the energy.” The overhead lights hummed. Rows of fridges lined one wall, their glass doors fogged slightly with condensation.

  Manny looked up from behind the counter.

  He was in his fifties, round in the middle, hair going gray at the temples. Reading glasses perched on the lower bridge of his nose as he looked down at a lottery slip. He wore a polo shirt with the store’s logo stitched over the left breast, and the kind of expression that suggested he’d seen every kind of customer and none of it surprised him anymore.

  “Morning, boys,” he said, voice warm with automatic familiarity. “Eric. You look like death reheated.”

  “Feels about right,” Eric said. He raised a hand in a vague wave. “We’re here to bribe my hangover.”

  “And mine,” Mike added.

  Manny nodded knowingly. “A noble quest. Fridge is still where you left it.”

  “Good,” Eric said. “I’d be concerned if it moved.”

  He walked toward the coolers, the familiar hum and faint chill of them oddly comforting. The glass doors reflected a warped version of him as he reached for his usual: a cheap twelve-pack with a label he could recognize even half-blind.

  He hesitated for a heartbeat.

  His reflection blinked back at him, ghosted over stacks of beer and energy drinks. For just a second, he imagined someone else there—someone taller, harder, with shoulders squared like he still carried something important.

  Then he blinked, and it was just him again.

  He grabbed the case and carried it back toward the counter.

  Mike had collected his own choices—a mishmash of cans and a bottle or two of something stronger “for emergencies.” He set them down with a clatter.

  Manny started ringing them up, hands moving with practiced ease. “You boys ever think of trying water?”

  “Occasionally,” Mike said. “Then we remember who we are as people.”

  “Besides,” Eric added, “water’s just beer that didn’t commit.”

  Manny shook his head, trying not to smile. “One of these days, your livers are going to send me a thank-you card for early retirement.”

  Eric pulled out his wallet and fished for his card. The plastic edges were worn. A crumpled receipt fell out with it and fluttered to the floor.

  He bent to pick it up.

  The world lurched.

  For a second, he thought it was the hangover. The room tilted, and a low ringing sound pressed in at the edges of his hearing.

  He straightened slowly.

  The bell over the door jingled as someone came in behind them. A blast of warmer air swept into the shop from outside, bringing with it the scents of asphalt and sunlight and distant exhaust.

  The ringing in his ears didn’t go away.

  It sharpened.

  Eric turned his head toward the front window.

  Outside, the sky was still a clean, bright blue.

  And then, just at the edge of town, somewhere above the low ridge of the hills—

  Something flickered.

  A line of white light snapped outward in absolute silence. It jagged across the clear sky, far too low to be normal lightning, with no cloud to birth it. It tore through the blue like someone had scratched the paint.

  Eric’s breath caught.

  The light forked and vanished, leaving no sound, no echo. Just a faint afterimage burning against his eyes.

  “Did you see that?” he asked automatically.

  “See what?” Manny asked, not looking up from the register.

  Mike turned, following Eric’s gaze. “See… what are you staring at, man?”

  Eric blinked hard, once. Twice. The sky looked normal again. Clear. Empty. Like nothing had happened.

  He tried to laugh it off.

  The sound came out thin.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Thought I saw… something.”

  Mike squinted. “You good?”

  “Yeah,” Eric lied. His heart was beating a little faster now. The ache in his joints had shifted, bristling into something more alert.

  He swallowed, turned back to the counter, and slid his card across.

  Manny finished ringing them up and passed the case over the scanner. “You boys see the game last night?”

  They made small talk. Safe talk. Eric nodded and made the right noises, but his attention kept drifting back to the front window.

  Nothing else happened.

  No more silent lightning. No thunder. No storm rolling in.

  ***

  When they stepped back outside, the sun hit them full-force. Eric flinched against the brightness. The sky stared back at him like a blank sheet of paper.

  “Seriously,” Mike said quietly, as they started walking again. “What’d you see?”

  Eric adjusted the weight of the case in his hands. “Probably nothing.”

  “You don’t get that look on ‘nothing.’”

  “Hangover and bad life choices.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  They walked in silence for a few steps.

  A breeze swept down the street, rattling a loose sign. The air smelled dry, dust kicked up from somewhere out of sight. The sound of traffic in the distance seemed a little muffled, like someone had put a pillow over the world.

  Eric’s skin prickled.

  He stopped walking.

  Mike took two more steps before noticing and turned back. “Eric?”

  Eric stared up at the empty sky.

  The ache inside him had changed. It wasn’t just the usual dull throb of overuse and cheap beer anymore. There was something underneath it now—something that felt like a muscle he hadn’t used in years trying to stretch in its sleep.

  His fingers tightened on the cardboard handle of the beer case.

  He thought of old nights under different skies, under light that wasn’t quite like this. Of thunder that came without warning. Of flashes that didn’t sound like storms at all.

  He thought of how long it had been since he’d let himself remember.

  “Eric,” Mike said again, quieter now. “Hey. You still with me?”

  Eric swallowed. The ringing in his ears faded, bit by bit, leaving only the echo of it tangled with his pulse.

  He forced his shoulders to unclench.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Still here.”

  “You sure?”

  “No,” Eric said honestly. Then, after a breath: “But I’m walking, so that’s something.”

  He started forward again.

  They walked the rest of the way back in a silence that felt different than usual. Not just comfortable emptiness, not just mutual agreement to avoid heavy topics. This silence had weight to it. Like the air was waiting for something.

  When they reached the apartment building, Eric paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked back over his shoulder.

  The sky was still clear.

  But the uneasy feeling hadn’t gone anywhere.

  Whatever quiet, numb life he’d managed to scrape together—the beer runs, the couch, the mornings spent staring at the ceiling and convincing himself nothing was going to change—felt suddenly thinner. Like a soap bubble someone had breathed on.

  Somewhere deep inside him, in a part he studiously avoided looking at, something old and dangerous rolled over in its sleep.

  He shivered, though the day was warm.

  Mike bumped his shoulder lightly. “You coming, or you gonna brood dramatically on the sidewalk all day?”

  “Brooding is a valid coping mechanism,” Eric muttered.

  “Not with my beer in your hand, it’s not.”

  Eric huffed a breath. Not quite a laugh, but close enough.

  He started up the stairs.