Whenever I look in the mirror, the amount of images of unbelievably handsome men in my house doubles. That day wasn’t the exception, and the darkened spot at the base of my ribcage, a lovely bruise in my right side and in my reflection’s left, would have helped nobody believe in my handsomeness. As stated: unbelievably handsome, baby.

  The thing is… I was built like a crossfitter. One that spent five hundred days on a deserted island with nothing but coconuts and mosquito larvae (Because a tropical island without mosquitoes is, in my opinion, a direct attack against verisimilitude) and contracted a bad case of heroin addiction during that time (The island was deserted but had drugs, bear with me). The kind of body a medicine student has hanging around in their classroom, but with a bit more of skin in my case. Hyperthyroidism? Intestinal disease? Maybe, maybe: I had never cared about my diet enough. My languidness evidenced a racing metabolism and an absolute lack of an exercise routine worthy of a Retriever. My first year studying under them had been hell for me, but I managed: once settled into the office work, they rarely, if ever, subjected us to performance tests, and the punishment for failing one was some harsh talking and obligatory physical education. Which meant I was not going to keep up, ever: my aim was to avoid exercise, the punishment for engaging in such practice is exercise. This is a problem of game theory: the best outcome for my person is neglecting my physique because the punishment is not worse than the activity avoided. The punishment was, therefore, non-existent: engaging in irresponsible sleazing always resulted in a net loss of exercise—exactly what I was looking for.

  The bruises could provide good practice for my healing module, but I still hadn’t figured out how to do magic. At all. The next day I was to meet with one of several senior Retrievers who were at least a bit learned in the use of similar modules. Each person’s sacromotor was unique, a combination of their desires, the sacrifice made for the base, and the particular flair of their spirit. Mine was the result of a burning personality, wishing for an easy life and built out of a flock of crows. Murder, arson, and jaywalking.

  I sat on my bed and stretched my arms above my head. It had been a good day. I had gotten beaten, dismissed early to cope with the awakening of my magic, and passed beside a dead cat on the way home. Flies were having a banquet they would speak of for generations to come. A month or three, flies being flies. A productive day.

  I lay on my bed and absentmindedly called for Lillypod to come and entertain me. But Lillypod was now inside me, and hearing the calling made her stir, one of the modules somehow aching dully. The pain wasn’t localized anywhere on my body, it was affecting me deeper, in a way that wasn’t congruent with pains I knew. Calling that sensation pain, even, is but an ungainly approximation, a concession of a language developed to describe the mundane in lieu of the divine. Souls don’t hurt: they do things way, way worse than that, and yet far less stressing. Because pain isn’t the stab, the cut, the burn, the itch. Pain is a racing heart and shortness of breath. Blood pumping, flesh swelling. A sacromotor doesn’t properly hurt. It just protests, for lack of better word.

  Back in front of the mirror for a last look, I regarded my face with decrepit disdain. My mother wasn’t kidding all those times she had said I looked like a thin version of the governor. Being one of his many bastards, of course, had its perks. I never wanted for money thanks to the welfare plan he had put in place for undesirables like me. After my mother was done with all the annoying bureaucratic nonsense they liked to put his generous output through, living as humbly as we did became but a choice.

  And after my mother passed away —which meant doing laundry became easier and the trashcans filled half as fast, so I was left stoked and appalled in equal parts— I never had found things to spend most of the money on. My computer was reasonably up to date, the walls of my room had an enduring coat of paint, the framed photos of mom and me hung from relatively new nails. Sometimes I got nostalgic around home, reminiscing the days when she was living there with me, helping with the management and upkeep of the household.

  In a way, I missed her, and I still do. The way one misses that cup that fit perfectly in one’s grasp, or a very obedient pet. My mother, like Lillypod, was useful to me. And I know that it was expected of me to love her in the classical way, to hold such an objectively great woman as the axis of my life, but there are expectations not all bodies can live up to. I loved my mother the only way I knew how to. The photos were neat. The photos were performative. I had them on the walls because I was supposed to, because they provided a fa?ade of normality to my dwelling.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Back to the issue of magic, I focused inwards, regarding my illusion modules. I ordered the triplets to produce energy that would feed the aforementioned. They cried in silence, but I felt their souls sparking to life, sending out waves that got canalized through the spiritual thread that joined the mods with the core. I yipped like a stepped-on poodle when a misfiring occurred, every color in the room changing briefly, a shiver coursing through my body and smelling like burnt plastic and cinnamon, all at once.

  The good news was that the illusion modules worked. The bad news was that trying that with the healing mod and without supervision could result in a few localized mutations of the tumorigenic persuasion. Benign, but tumors all the same. And while healing magic could get rid of them, my approach to masochism was that it merely existed as a sort of countermeasure to my person, as if it had evolved to limit my power to annoy the masses.

  I ordered the three crow souls to stop, and to my fortune, they did immediately. There was a hint of a feeling of betrayal coming from them, but my crows remained loyal, as confused and pained as they were. My little darlings—my personalized murder. Always inside me, always serving.

  I dropped backwards on my bed and stared at one of the humidity stains on the ceiling. Odds were that now I had graduated, I’d eventually get reassigned, one way or the other. Retrievers were based in the Minced Meanders, but we had stations in lands both near and faraway. And problematic agents were sent to problematic posts. Defining problematic was tricky: if I happened to be an invaluable asset, they would keep me in central, and otherwise… I’d have to say goodbye to all those things I had so carefully adjusted to my routine. I’d need to adapt to a new bed, new bathroom, new stores, new coffee with new rat shit. I wanted an easy life, I wanted to coast by until the day I died: abrupt change was not welcome in such plans.

  Ah, but there was nothing I could do if they decided to send me to Distant Hell Number Thirty-Seven to get my guts eaten by a group of unwashed cannibal soulgyvers with unusual ideas about chopsticks and forks. Remaining awake ruminating about it would bite me in the ass the coming day.

  Flashes of colored lights still danced in my field of vision. Even when my eyes were closed I saw them, and they weren’t the usual afterimages, a remainder of activity in the retina. No. These were totally clear, but still shapeless, blotches of variegated tones. My illusion modules kept acting up, slightly, and they rebelled against me.

  “I am your owner, you silly fucks,” I muttered, almost a growl. I opened my eyes wide and held my hand in front of it, index and middle finger extended, leaving a slight gap between them. “Give me a cigar…”

  Once again I spurred the triplets, a gentler demand this time around. Crows were intelligent, whimsy animals, and their souls were ought to behave likewise. Then I regarded the three crows that made out the minor illusion modules, and carefully channeling the energy generated by the triplets, making sure to will only a third of it through each channel, I… caused another misfire.

  Good thing the walls of my house were thick, otherwise, the neighbors would have complained about the screech, and/or the ensuing maniacal laughter that followed soon after. A tickling sensation coursed through my whole body, my hands were four, quite rude, and none answered to me. I tasted coffee, chocolate, fried oil and salt in my eyes and armpits. My teeth felt made of rubber, my tongue gaseous. New body parts, twisted appendages that I wouldn’t know how to accurately describe, replaced my ribs, aching with an otherworldly burn. All in all, I was having a stupendous night.

  After what I judge to have been a minute or two now, but felt like approximately ten and a half months or seven business days, it all subsided, and I found myself licking the tiles of my room’s floor, that, of course, were as clean as you are imagining them to be.

  I swept my tongue like that would help take the aftertaste of dust and grime off of it, and, after seven or eight spits, went back to bed and decided to stop fucking around with magic. It had been a long day, I was tired, and I had to deal with at least two depressed motherfuckers in the coming hours. If I didn’t get a good sleep, several people would regret knowing me. More than they already did, anyway.

  I don’t remember how long it took me to fall asleep afterwards, but I know it couldn’t have been long.