THE ACCIDENTAL GOD
A Pygmalion Fail, Book One
By Casey Matthews
Text © 2016 Casey Matthews
Dedicated to Kyle, who rescued me from loneliness in high school. Also, to Aaron Allston—I wish I’d have pushed “Send” on that fan mail.
MAYBE WE CAN WORK THIS OUT…
“You stole my kill,” the ninja said. He stood a scant five-six, up to my shoulders, and wore armor plates over dark-gray clothing that hugged his lean frame. His face was wholly obscured by a porcelain faceplate shaped like a demon’s scowl.
“Stole?” Personally, I’d have been thrilled to come to a dragon fight and find fewer than the expected number of dragons. “You… want to split the XP or something?”
“That was a breeder. The breeders are worth eight hundred crowns,” he explained in a surprisingly reasonable tone. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” He rotated the sword clockwise, like he was figuring out a more painful way to stick it in.
“What? No! I don’t even like money. Keep it all, I don’t care. Do you want my money? Can’t stand the stuff.”
“The price is paid on the fangs. You destroyed them.”
“We could glue them together.” I glanced at the burning lumps of dragon head. “A sieve might help.”
Chapter One: Totally Not a Prologue
My face is very punchable. I gathered this because my head has gotten in the way of many fists. During one particular six-hour period, I was struck by two separate jackasses: once by an extra-dimensional orc and once by The Murph.
The Murph went first.
Dak and I were throwing dice in the study lounge of Murph’s dorm, nudging miniatures across a wonderfully complex battle map. Kevin ran the game in a way that favored strategy over story, and I had learned to appreciate the catharsis that came from slaughtering his boss monsters. The room temperature had nonetheless climbed ten degrees since we’d started.
All 250 pounds of The Murph slumped back in his chair. His sleeveless shirt revealed his bulk, which consisted of muscles and a thin fat layer hiding them. Eschewing the nerdy stereotype, he was built like an ox. Nine times out of ten, Murph was a friendly nerd who liked video games and played healers.
The tenth time out of ten he drank.
There were five of us: Kevin ran the dungeon; I dealt damage through my barbarian; Murph healed; Jessie painted Warhammer miniatures. Sometimes her bard sang or something, but mostly she painted. Then there was our secret weapon: Dak.
Dak sat with arms folded, a brown-skinned god atop his wheelchair, which amplified his presence in the tiny study room. He was positioned like a rival king stationed opposite Kevin, his spell cards arrayed, prepared to deploy game-breaking mechanics unearthed from obscure books. He’d once described to me his spell-selection technique as “maximizing the tears I can pull from Kevin’s eyes.” Or my eyes, when I ran games.
Kevin’s dungeon was going to be our tomb. All night, Dak and The Murph had brooded in their respective corners, neither addressing the elephant in the room: last week, Murph had tried giving Dak a ride while drunk and Dak threatened campus security if he so much as inserted a car key into his ignition. Since we’d met Murph last semester, Dak and I sensed his downward slide toward alcoholism, but Dak could be generously described as “forthright.” Sometimes that made him a jerk, but in his defense, he was the only one with the nerve to stand up to Murph and order him to call for a ride.
Murph had not appreciated this characteristic and paid Dak back tonight by slow-walking the dungeon. He shorted us healing spells, intentionally set off hazards, and reliably chose the worst strategies. In short, he found the best way to get under Dak’s skin.
Every time Dak called him on it, Murph played stupid. Sometimes he made eye contact and took a long pull from a water bottle full of vodka. This irritated me too, since it was prohibited in the dorms and we would all face fines if he was caught.
Somehow we made it to the evil necromancer without a serviceable healer, but soon found our backs to the wall. Jessie’s character went down; Murph waded blithely into combat and declared the session a bust. However, Dak pulled out a clutch wall spell that cut the encounter in half. I had the necromancer on the ropes when Murph pulled his dirtiest move yet: “My cleric dispels the wall they just summoned,” he told Kevin.
Dak looked as though he’d been struck. “Really? Why don’t you just come right out and say it?”
“Say what?” Murph challenged. “I’m just playing my character. This is what he’d do.”
Never challenge Dak to give an opinion. If anything, challenge him not to.
Dak centered his stare on Murph. “Just say, ‘I’d rather get drunk and ruin games than have fun.’ ”
Murph was on him. At first I wasn’t exactly sure he would hit Dak, but he grabbed the wheelchair and pushed Dak toward the exit. “You know what? You can go outside.”
Dak slammed the brake on one wheel. It tore the wheelchair from behind the table and Dak seized Murph by his sleeveless shirt, nearly stretching it off between his bunched-up fists. “Get the hell off me.”
Something dangerous flashed in Murph’s eyes and he hit Dak in the jaw. Dak blocked the next punch. He was stronger than Murph, but didn’t have the leverage to do much more.
Then I was on Murph—on his back, to be precise. Unlike Murph, I am the stereotype of a tall and scrawny nerd, sans the glasses and acne. I ran enough cross country in high school to have cardio, but I wasn’t much of a brawler. Murph threw his shoulders back, tossing me onto the game table. I spun face-first into it, plowing through cardstock and miniatures. I tried to stand and boom—it all went fuzzy.
Getting hit in the back of the skull doesn’t really hurt. It knocked the sense from me and put ice water in my veins. Later, I would identify that as adrenaline. I turned around and my brain made some sluggish calculations: Murph had a hundred pounds on me; Dak was ready to fight him, use of his legs be damned; I could see this ending in a trip to the hospital; I was distressed to see Kevin and Jessie quietly skirt from the room. Sure, I thought. Split the party just when we’ve got to negotiate with the rampaging ogre. Way to go, guys.
So I let the cold fire pass through me until the shaking in my fists stopped. Hoping I was projecting more calm in my voice than I felt, I said, “Dak and I are leaving. Maybe you want to walk around outside while we clean up.”
“You assholes stop telling me what to do,” Murph shouted. “I’m not taking orders from Dak or his wife.”
“Okay,” I said. “I hereby order you to drink lots and keep punching people.”
Murph raised his fist. “Keep mouthing off. See what happens.”
“What happens is I’ll beat the crap out of your fists with my pretty face. Just see if I don’t.”
He swung and I got my fists up, sort of like Uncle Scott taught me in grade school but not quite. He punched me in the forearm, which put me back onto the table. I winced and waved my arm around. Somehow blocking hurt more.
“Be smart again,” Murph dared.
Wish one of us would be, I thought. I kept my mouth shut, silently despising myself for it. I tried to say what I thought with my eyes, though.
I think Murph got the message because he cocked back for another shot.
“Murph,” Dak said. “Look at what’s in my hand.”
He did. It was Dak’s smartphone. He was recording.
“You swing one more time,” Dak said, “and I’ll forward this to the administration. Then the cops. Go stand on the other side of the room.”
“I told you, you’re not my fucking mother!” Murph roared.
“T
hen stand on whichever side you like, sweetheart,” I said in my best old-Jewish-mother voice. “Long as it’s not this one.”
I ignored The Murph’s stream of obscenities and the chair thrown into the drywall, but he did in fact give Dak and me some breathing room. I stuffed our things into bags while Dak kept the phone leveled. Murph paced like a rhino in his corner, his words cutting through the adrenal haze clouding my senses: he dropped a racial slur at Dak and called me a pathetic virgin. Dak shared my smirk—if Murph knew either of us, he’d realize how tired those clichés were. The only thing that cut was his announcement that everyone in our clique thought we were the real assholes.
It cut me at least. Dak, on the other hand…
“You and I are both assholes,” he told Murph. “The difference is I don’t care what they think. You do.”
We escaped the study room before the resident advisors could intercept us. We found Kevin outside smoking and tried to strike up a conversation, but he just chewed out Dak for setting things off.
“Fine,” Dak said. “But I’m done gaming with that guy.”
“Then don’t come back,” Kevin said. “We don’t want you unless you can make nice with The Murph.”
“Wait,” I said. “Apologize?”
“For a start,” Kevin said.
“Tell you what,” I said. “You go in there and toss tiny liquor bottles onto the floor. When his guard is down, I’ll wrangle him. We’ll hogtie him, dose him on tranquilizers, and sit on him together so Dak can approach and apologize for getting punched. How’s that?”
“Your sarcasm isn’t helping.” Kevin’s I’m-the-adult voice was pissing me off.
“Should I communicate my displeasure through interpretive dance?” I asked. “The Murph punched me.”
“You jumped on him,” Kevin said.
“He slugged Dak! He was all over him.”
Kevin shrugged. “Dak instigated him.”
My anger boiled over. Normally Kevin was the objective one, but I wondered if he’d been in the same room with me. “You’re making excuses for the guy who assaulted my friend. You don’t get to attack people who tick you off. Angry words get better words, not punches.”
“But who had the power to stop it? Murph wasn’t the one in control of himself,” Kevin said.
Dak snorted. “Whose fault was that?”
“I agree The Murph was out of line. But Dak needs to make amends for setting him off.” Kevin glanced at me. “You can come back when you like, Isaac. I’m sorry you got hit.” He said “got hit” like I’d been standing in the way of a baseball. He turned to go inside.
“No,” I said.
Kevin paused. He turned around.
“You blame Dak because he can be reasoned with and Murph can’t,” I said. “You’re one of those guys who just wants things to go smooth, but that’s not the same as doing what’s right. I don’t care if the easiest way to make things smooth is for Dak to apologize. It’s unhealthy. The Murph’s been messed up since we came back from summer break, and you’re not doing him any favors.”
“You want to talk enabling?” Kevin asked. “How about you and Dak?”
“Sure, but ours is the endearing kind,” I said.
“Adorable, really,” Dak said.
“Dak is out,” Kevin said. “I blame him because he can’t keep his mouth shut; I blame you because you won’t see how much Dak needed a punch to the face. I have it on good authority from Jessie, Alex Prime, and Alex Lambda that they’ve had enough of The Isaac and Dak Show too.”
“Then I’m out,” I said. “Anyone who wants to play in my games is welcome—even Murph—as long as they’re sober. But Dak will be there.”
“Fine,” Kevin snapped. “But I hope you can run a two-man game, because that’s what it’s going to be.”
“Wouldn’t be our first,” I said.
He pushed through the door to deal with the upset RAs inside.
Dak and I left.
***
It was a long walk to our room. Our school was built by Presbyterians as a women’s college. An artifact of that era meant that all the original men’s dorms were constructed across a ravine. The Presbyterians assumed a hundred-foot drop into a body of water would stop horny co-eds. Judging from the shotgun marriage of my great-grandmother to my great-grandfather, love had prevailed.
“Slow down,” I said. Dak was pumping his wheelchair and outdistancing me. “You fly when you’re mad.”
“Sorry,” he said, throttling back to my pace.
Dak was still grumping, so I slipped behind his chair and took the push bars. I jogged us down the walk. Dak hated when anyone else pushed him, but for me, he released the wheels. I chugged along and frowned into the silence. “You’re not doing it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to do it,” I yelled.
“Make me.”
“I’ll date your sister,” I sang.
“Fine.” He hunched forward into a racing position. “Vroom, vroom, vrrrooooom.”
Once I’d had my fill, I slowed and let Dak take back over. A sideways glance betrayed his grin.
After a while Dak said, “He shouldn’t have hit you.”
“Or you.”
“He shouldn’t have been able to hit you,” Dak said. He was looking at his legs. Dak had always been protective of me, but it was easier before the accident. Growing up, his parents were close to my Aunt Amy and Uncle Scott, so we played together a lot. Our friendship was sealed the day he stood up to the neighborhood terror, Mandy Craig; in middle school, Dak sprouted and turned into a strong son of a bitch. Once, when Tommy Marcuse stole my paperback and tore it in half, Dak had snatched his Twinkie.
Tommy shouted, “Give it back, you donkey-lipped half-breed.” Because Tommy was one of the more eloquent racist jagoffs who gave Dak hell for his DNA; the ineloquent ones just dropped the N-bomb.
“Hey, Tommy,” Dak said. “Know what a money shot is?”
Tommy’s eyes narrowed.
Dak slammed his fist down on the Twinkie. He struck it with enough force to blow the wrapper open and all the icing splooged out the opposite end, decorating Tommy’s face and shirt. “How’s that taste?”
The memory elicited a snicker.
“What?” Dak asked.
“Tommy Marcuse,” I said.
Dak laughed a long while. “Wish I’d had a Twinkie tonight.”
“We shouldn’t laugh,” I said, even though the blackness of my own laughter lifted my spirits. “Tommy’s a racist dick, but imagine what his family’s got to be like. I read in the news that after graduation he got sentenced to community service for fighting his dad.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“Then he got real jail time,” I said. “I guess his community service was janitorial duty in the courthouse and he stole a bunch of memory cards from the court’s computers.”
“That sounds like Tommy,” said Dak.
“Back then, he outweighed me and goaded other kids into saying crap about you. Now, though? Look at our lives and look at his. Feels sordid. Laughing at him.”
We approached the wooden bridge arching the ravine. “You’re thinking we’ll feel that way about Murph someday when he’s doing time for his third DUI?” Dak asked.
“Maybe.”
“You’re thinking there’s reasons Murph and Tommy do what they do,” he pressed.
“There are.”
“Every rotten thing’s got a root cause,” Dak said. “But a root cause isn’t the same thing as an excuse.”
“What’s the root cause for Murph?”
He shrugged. “Could be lonely. Or depressed. Maybe someone he loves killed themselves and he’s never gotten past it. Or he might just be a horrifying person deep down—that happens too.”
“Have you heard—”
“I know what you know,” Dak said. “We fished him out of a bottle after his fraternity kicked him to the curb. He seemed kind of cool, so we did what we always
do. We invited him to play games so that he could be weird instead of weird and alone. We take in strays. Some people are strays because the world damaged them. Others, because they’re dysfunctional, and that’s not necessarily their fault. But some strays are unsafe people.”
This was something I was coming to grips with about nerd society. Or any society of outcasts, really. “So maybe there’s a good reason for tonight.”
“Even if he’s got a reason, he’s got no excuse,” Dak said. “So he’s in pain. All right. He’s decided to inflict his pain on others. Our pain should bring us together. It takes a selfish man to use his pain as an excuse to hurt people.”
“That’s easier to say when you’re not in pain,” I said, thinking about Tommy and wondering what exactly it took to make someone stab their own father with a broken bottle.
“Someone, somewhere, probably still believes in unbroken people,” Dak said. “But if you pulled nine guys off the street, I’m pretty sure I could tell you ten tragedies.”
We both crossed the bridge in silence, passing over a chasm full of old shadows that leered up at us. The only sound was the rumble of Dak’s wheelchair against evenly spaced boards.
***
I settled into my rolling chair, my head radiating pain. Dak passed me a bag of frozen peas. “For your obnoxiously large, easily targeted head.”
“You’re a peach.” I rummaged for an old ball cap and widened it, using it to secure the peas to my head. The pain eased and I sighed.
I pulled out controllers and Dak and I played video games until the carnage lulled us into a mindless kind of mindfulness, fingers twitching as we blasted our way through Imperial Stormtroopers together. It took my mind off the residual anger and dragged my heartbeat down to a resting rate. It also helped me ignore the fear: I’d been hit before, but never from behind or by a friend. It bothered me that Murph knew where I slept.
Dak and I went through the motions in our video game. “When are you going to learn to shoot straight?” he asked.
I turned my character and shot his in the back of the head. “That looked pretty straight.”
The Accidental God (A Pygmalion Fail Book 1) Page 1
