Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Toxic relationships

Norman woke up with the world’s worst hangover. His mouth felt like someone had shoved cotton filled with razor blades into it and his vision was swimming like he was still on an all-night bender. The spinning would have made him throw up but that had already happened a few times going by the pool of vomit in front of his mouth.

It took a mighty effort to peel himself off the cold concrete floor of the garage, his skin not wanting to come free due to the dried drool and vomit. Eventually, he got himself upright and laid his back against the table leg.

“What the fuck,” he groaned. The sound made his head pound.

It took another hour for Norman to recover enough and work up the courage to get to his feet. Even that was a struggle as his legs felt like he had run a marathon and didn’t want to hold him up when he did manage the feat.

Norman decided that crawling on all fours was a better idea as he shamefully made his way back to the house, the gravel digging into his palms and knees was preferable to him toppling over and cracking his head open. How that hadn’t happened in the garage he wasn’t sure but he had checked for blood or a bump on his head but there was none.

He had left the back door open in his earlier haste to test out his drug-fueled hypothesis. Which was good Norman didn’t think he would have been able to stand up again so soon after crawling across the yard.

He cracked the refrigerator open, using it to steady himself. He was forced to blink away as the intense light assaulted his bloodshot eyes before blindly reaching inside and pulling out a beer. Then he threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs and twisted off the cap, downing the ice-cold beverage without stopping. After the bottle was empty he used the remaining chill from the bottle to cool his pounding head.

Sure water would have been better in this situation but his house no longer got clean water from the city. He could shower and use the bathroom just fine but drinking it was out of the question unless he boiled it first. And he wasn’t in any condition to be operating a stove.

His experiment had been a bit of a failure but it answered an important question. There was something special about Jorik blood. Was it what gave them their magical aptitude, he wasn’t sure, but it certainly did something.

How that might help him, he wasn’t quite sure yet. Right now he was just focused on recovering from the side effects of accidentally ingesting just a tiny bit of the substance. It was like being on acid turned up to eleven, only without the fun side. Norman supposed you could dilute it and maybe turn it into a drug but he wasn’t willing to test that theory out, nor did he want to subject anyone else to this experience.

He was glad he had stopped Anna from taking any. The younger girl was a bit annoying with her overbearing crush on him but he didn’t want her to suffer something like this. Norman wasn’t inexperienced with drugs going bad. Ever since his parents had run off and abandoned him at sixteen, he had survived on his own. There were a lot of questionable choices in those following years, but he had survived. It made him self-sufficient and helped him survive the apocalypse as well.

The pain receded slowly and Norman took a cold shower to wash away the filth. After cleaning up and putting some cleanish clothes on, he headed back to the garage with a mop and bucket.

There wasn’t much that was worse than the smell of old stale vomit and he needed to be able to work out here without smelling it constantly. Norman had a very low tolerance for objectionable smells.

After cleaning up the mess on the floor, Norman tossed the rat corpse into the overgrown backyard after holding his nose closed and breathing through his mouth. The sigils he had carved had burst apart during his nap time, ruining the attempt and releasing the built-up gasses in the corpse. Despite his best efforts, Norman gagged the entire time as he carried the body outside to dispose of it.

After he finished cleaning up, Norman wasted an entire bottle of air deodorizer in the garage to remove the lingering smell. He would have opened the garage door all the way to let it air out but the thing had long ago fallen off its track and jammed itself stuck. At least it was partially open.

As for the powder, he transferred it from the cheap baggie to a small glass vial. He made sure to clean out any residue in the vial first though. When that was done he went back into the house and pried open the wall molding where he kept his stash. He tossed the vial into the pocket in the wall along with his wad of cash from Toby and the two bags of weed he had taken from Charise that he had originally shoved into the couch.

Then he went to bed.

Norman had recovered from the incident after a good night's sleep but now he had a choice to make. Would he continue experimenting with the dangerous substance or give it up?

When he thought about it, it was hardly a choice at all. Giving it up meant giving up his future or starving. Plus he was curious as to what it was capable of doing.

His thoughts were interrupted by Toby barging in.

“Geez, man, you look like you had a rough night. Need a pick me up?” Toby shook a tiny glass bottle that was an exact match for what Norman had stored the blue powder in. Only this one held a white powder.

“Nah, I'll be good.”

“Suit yourself,” Toby stuck the vial back into his pocket.

“Maybe you can do something for me though?”

“Depends,” Toby replied noncommittally.

Norman wasn’t surprised by this response. While Toby and he had been friends for about four years, Toby wasn’t lazy but he was a bit of a mooch. The man didn’t do anything unless it somehow benefitted him in some way.

“How bout a bag of that stuff we smoked last night? I only need some corpses to practice on. Small animal corpses would be fine,” Norman added, seeing Toby begin to balk at the request.

“Yeah, suppose I could do that. How many you need?”

Norman shrugged, “a large cooler full should suffice. The fresher the better though.”

“Yeah, alright…I’ll see what I can do.” The man didn’t hesitate at the request. Only two things seemed to interest Toby, money, and information. Although the man did care about his sister so he wasn’t completely heartless.

After their conversation, Toby skipped out. Probably because Norman didn’t have any more free drugs to smoke away.

Norman lay back on the broken couch in thought. He needed to find a way to make more money. Well, ultimately raising the dead and having a huge army at his command was his goal. Not that he was evil or anything, he just wanted a life of luxury and leisure. What better way to accomplish that than with an army of faithful, mindless minions?

But that was a goal far off in the distance. He hadn’t even figured out how to interact with the dead yet, let alone raise them.

That was part of what he was doing last night. It was a spell designed to view the memories of the dead, or so the anime had shown. Honestly, he had no clue if he was on the right track with any of this stuff but he had to start somewhere.

No, he needed an immediate way to make some cash. Norman had been shunned by most businesses due to his choice of magic. He couldn’t figure out why until he had seen the video that his old boss had shown him. That left most legitimate businesses out of the question. Norman didn’t want to work for the criminal elements within the city, that was a good way to get on the bad side of their competition and Norman wasn’t a fighter.

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That left the businesses that operated in the grey area. The only entrepreneur he knew was Charise though. Being lovers with her was one thing, but working for her was another. He couldn’t think of any other choice though.

Working with Toby was not an option. He had already asked him back before he had gotten the job at the coroner’s office. The man had flat out refused, saying it would cramp his style. Norman thought that was bullshit. Toby probably just wanted to hide the method for how he seemed to be on top of most things that happened around town. Norman doubted it was because Toby was a courier but he didn’t care enough to dig into what his friend was up to.

Norman got up from the couch and went to get ready, if he wanted to convince Charise to hire him, he needed to show up at his best.

After a shower and a change of clothes, Norman now sported a black t-shirt with a band logo on the front and a list of tour dates on the back. He had even ditched his favorite shorts for some slim jeans and tall black leather boots in place of his flip-flops. Gone was his chipped black nail polish, replaced with a fresh coat. Charise always said she loved this outfit but Norman hadn’t much liked the skinny look. This is why he always wore baggy shorts and loose t-shirts when he could get away with it. As for the boots, he hated how they made his feet sweat.

By the time Norman made it to Charise’s apartment, it was early evening. He knocked on the door and waited.

It took longer than expected for Charise to open the door, almost like she was hesitant to do so.

“What do you want, Norm?” Gone was the sultry voice that she had used to lure him into taking the brain for her. In its place was her no-nonsense business tone. The one she liked to pull out when she was mad at him.

Before he could speak, he heard another voice.

“Come back to bed, babe.”

Hot anger rushed through Norman when he heard that. Not because he expected her to be his alone, but because it was less than a day since she had lured him here with the promise of sex, then denied him. Could this be why?

“Who the hell is that?” he asked coldly.

Charise made a disgusted tsking sound. “It’s none of your business, Norm.”

Norman began to argue when a meaty hand pulled the door all the way open, snapping the chain holding the door. Norman gulped. The large, topless man standing behind Charise was familiar to Norman. It was one of the idiots who had been harassing him so long ago and the catalyst for him adding the special ingredient to his potions.

“Oh, dude, I know you.” The mountain of muscle snapped his fingers and it sounded like a gun had gone off. “You’re that weirdo in those videos that does stuff to bodies,” the man guffawed. “You also make those healing potions too, don’tcha. Thanks for those, by the way, shit works good,” he flexed, his bicep – larger around than Norman’s head – and pointed to a long jagged scar. “Shit fixed it right up but man it tastes like salty ass, ya gotta do something about the flavor.”

“Uh… yeah, I’ll uh, work on that.” Norman nodded dumbly, he had expected the man to be angry, or irate. What he didn’t expect was for the man to laugh.

“Why are you here bugging my girl anyway? We were kind of in the middle of something if you know what I mean,” the man squeezed Charise’s ass and made her jump and squeal. She slapped him which only made the man grin and wink at Norman.

“He’s just here to pay me back. Go wait in the bedroom, I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Oh, this is your lame business stuff, boring. Hurry up and finish, babe, I gotta get back to the Guild tonight.”

“This won’t take long, Chad.”

The muscle-bound man rolled his shoulders and walked back toward the bedroom.

Norman prickled as he watched Charise eye the man’s physique the entire time he sauntered off before she finally turned toward him with a scowl.

“You best be here to pay me back for what you stole.”

“Stole! You owed me. That cost me my damn job.”

“Pff, hardly. I didn’t force you to take it and I certainly didn’t tell you to get caught like some idiot. Now, are you gonna pay up?”

“Fuck that, I don’t owe you shit!”

“Keep your voice down, unless you want Chad to come back out here and deal with you personally.”

Norman threw his arms up in exasperation. “I can’t believe you left me for that muscle-brained halfwit”

“Oh don’t get all high and mighty on me, Norm. We split up months ago. And at least Chad knows what the fuck he wants.” Charise stepped out into the hall and poked him in the chest. “I gave you over two years of my life, and for what, hmm? Zilch. You have zero ambition other than hanging around with that reprobate Toby and getting high all day.”

“That’s not true, I came up with that healing potion.”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “That was almost two years ago and you got fucking lucky and we both know it.”

“What have you done since? Nothing. Then I find out you had been lying to me about what you were trying to accomplish. You told me you were trying to be a mage and I supported you. Only to be personally embarrassed when one of my clients shows me a video of you doing weird shit to corpses. A fucking video! Do you know what that did to my reputation? No of course you don’t because you don’t think of anyone besides yourself. Face it, Norman, you’re never going to become anything other than what you are and I had to move on. I suggest you do the same.”

Norman had had enough, he flipped Charise the double birds and stormed off.

“Real fucking mature, Asshole!” she yelled after him before slamming the door shut.