The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  “Wake up, you lazy son of a bitch!” Elijah shouted deafeningly before literally jumping onto me with his elbow bent and extended towards my jugular. My instincts sensed the attack coming, so before I had even opened my eyes, I had drawn in a deep breath, crossed my arms so that they were formed into an X right in front of my face, and when he crashed into my arms, I thrust upwards, sending him hurtling backwards off of the couch and onto the floor.

  “Nice, man.” He told me, “Nice!”

  “Don’t do that!” I snapped at him, as I stood up and started to move towards the bathroom, “I almost pissed all over myself.”

  “Yup. Salt Rum, walnut bladder, and terror.” He told me, just before I closed the door, “But at least your Training is still good! You hit back before you had even woken up!”

  “Yeah, you remember when James and the other guys used to sneak into our houses while we were sleeping to test if we could do that?” I called back to him.

  “Fuck, man, they got me so many times. Every time, they got me. I’d fight back, but not good enough. Trust me, at that time, I took any opportunity I could find to fight back with James.”

  “Oh, man, when you two used to fight in the ring…” I said as I came out of the bathroom, “He used to own you, dude.”

  “It’s not my fault he’s a fucking Herculian, and I’m just a lowly Ares, okay?! Of course he’s better at fighting than me. I’m tall and skinny, and he was tall and built like a tank.”

  “Well, he wasn’t a bodybuilder, man.”

  “No, but he was built. Way more built than me, and trust me, I tried to be built. I still try, and I got nothing.”

  “Yup. You do still look like a gangly spaghetti monster, as Penny would say.”

  He laughed at that half hysterically, and I chuckled at the memory. I remembered how we had all been in James and Brynna’s kitchen (where we spent pretty much every morning), and Eli and James had been ignoring each other as usual, so James and Brynna were standing by the sink, talking quietly and kissing whenever they felt Penny was adequately distracted, and Penny and Eli had been arguing animatedly about something, until finally Penny shouted out, “And why should I listen to a gangly spaghetti monster like you?!” And we had all died. Penny, in the slightly bashful yet proud way that kids do after they’ve done something particularly hilarious, explained, “He’s tall and his arms and legs are skinny, so he looks like gangly spaghetti!” “

  “Oh, there is no denying she is your child, my love.” James had told Brynna through his laughter, “You can never deny her.”

  “That kid, I swear.” Eli told me, “Hands down, one of the best things to ever happen to the universe, and…”

  He stopped. That quickly, we were sad. That’s what they don’t tell you, when someone dies, and they say, “Think of all the good times.” You think of the good times, and you laugh, and then you’re left feeling empty and sad all over again, because you realize all over again that that person is irreversibly gone, and you’ll never hear them joke or laugh or even just talk to you anymore. In Penny’s case, it was all the more tragic thinking of how funny and awesome she had been while she was alive, because we knew she’d only have gotten funnier and more awesome as she got older, and she had been robbed of that chance. She had been robbed of her life, and we had been robbed of her life.

  “Never mind.” Eli said after clearing his throat, “We don’t have time for it right now. So, go home, put on something that doesn’t make you look like Will Smith, circa 1999, and let’s go prove Don’s a treasonous asshole!”

  I laughed at that, and the tension was broken.

  “In my defense, Will Smith circa 1999 was fucking awesome. Fresh Prince…”

  “Fresh Prince!” He said at the same time as me, and we both replied, “Yeah…” and then laughed again.

  “I take it back. You want to look like the Fresh Prince, look like the Fresh Prince. You’ll look way cooler than me, but it’s whatever. You don’t need to look cool to prove Don is a treasonous asshole.”

  “Maybe I’ll wear all black like you are, and we can look like Men in Black.”

  “I can be Tommy Lee Jones?! Or do you want to be Tommy Lee Jones?”

  “I thought I was Will Smith!”

  “Fine, then I’m Tommy Lee Jones. Fuck yes, let’s do this!”

  “I’ll be right back.”