by N. Phillips
“This’ll only take a couple minutes,” he told me, choosing his fighter. He said minutes but trust me when I say it only took a couple seconds.
I felt bad for ‘Ray631’, the person Tory was going up against online. He was gonna get that ass whooped. Tory went by the name ‘PlotArmor69’ online, and for good reason: dude was invincible.
And, just like that, before the first verse of the song playing through my headphones could finish, Ray631 got that ass whooped. Looking at the health bar of Tory’s fighter, his opponent didn’t even land a hit. Perfect.
“That was fast as hell,” I said while hitting pause on my phone to stop the music. “Crazy how you countered his shit and hit’em with an endless combo.”
He turned off the game console and got out the chair. “Yeah, at least I’m good at defending myself in a game, you know? Can’t say the same for real life.”
“What’chu mean?”
“I’m just saying, like, I feel powerless, bro. I got you and Ashanti hurt because I couldn’t do anything. I should be dead, and it feel like I cheated death; like I’m not even supposed to be here right now.”
I stood up and told him, “Nah, don’t even think like that. You would’ve done the same thing for me or her, and I know that for a fact. You ‘pose to be here just like I am.”
He looked away with a face full of doubt. “You sure ‘bout that? Cause if Ashanti ain’t use her crazy time manipulation powers, I wouldn’t be here. This ain’t how life was supposed to go.”
Seeing him really feel some way about this, I had to open up and get real for a minute. No more waiting on the perfect words to speak.
“You should be happy to still be alive. You know how many people out here dying who had big dreams but couldn’t achieve’em? You still here, bro. You could be somethin’ special. You already ahead of the game—you got thousands of people watching and following you every day. They see somethin’ in you. If you not gonna live for yourself or even for me, do it for them.”
He looked down at the floor near his collection of sneakers before nodding and dapping me. “Thanks, bro. I appreciate that.”
“It’s all good. We not gonna waste this chance at life.”
“You right,” he replied as we walked out his room. “Aight, let’s go see your girl.”
I laughed. “She ain’t my girl.”
On our way out the front door, a whole goon squad stampeded inside the apartment with Darius leading the pack. He wore a tank top that showed off his tatted arm sleeves.
“Yo, where y’all goin’?” he demanded to know.
“To a friend’s house,” Tory answered, already walking out the door beside me.
We heard Darius’s voice from the apartment hallway. “Ay, Baby T, come back here.”
Tory sighed and turned back around. He hated when his brother called him that.
“What?” he sneered at Darius, who glared back at him in response like he was gonna knock his head off.
“Watch the way you speak to me.” He put his finger in Tory’s face and sized him up. “Now I heard about the shit that went down at CJ’s crib. That better not be who y’all goin’ to hang with.”
“Nah, it’s somebody else,” I said on Tory’s behalf, who was giving Darius a dirty look.
“Aight, cause them boys he beefin’ with is the opps. We don’t fuck with them, either. They see you,” he pointed at Tory, “and they might try some shit to get to me. So, stay the fuck away from them, you hear me?”
“Clear,” Tory replied under his breath.
Darius dug into the pockets of his jeans as the crew he came in with started throwing bags of weed on the living room table. He took out two twenty-dollar bills. “Take this in case y’all need somethin’.”
Tory scoffed. “We good. Let’s go, Z.”
We walked out of the apartment and left the conversation at that. Thing is, Tory didn’t hate his brother. It was the total opposite of that, in fact. What he did hate was the gang and drug activity that Darius was involved in, especially after their parents died in a home invasion a few years back. The thought of losing his brother to some street bullshit made Tory distance himself from Darius, despite the reality that his brother’s lifestyle was the main source of income keeping a roof over their heads.
Back in the complex, we knocked on Ashanti’s door and waited for her to open it. When she did, both Tory and I were taken aback by her surprised expression.
“Hey,” she said cheerfully. The gauze and adhesive tape covering her abdomen were visible through her yellow shirt. “I thought you guys weren’t comin’.”
Confused, I asked, “Why would you think that?”
“‘Cause I saw you passing by my house a little while ago, so I figured you had other plans.”
A grin forced its way onto my face. “Oh, so you were spying on me this time?”
She couldn’t hold back a smile herself. “Wow. No, I was just lookin’ out the window.” She started twisting a strand of her braid around her finger.
Tory cringed next to me. “Damn, I’mma have to deal with this all my life? Z, why’d you have to find your soulmate so young, bro? Now you tied down and we can’t play video games ‘til four in the mornin’ anymore.”
Ashanti entertained his joke with a giggle, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling his words going off her subtle eye roll. She looked back at him once he took a step forward and relaxed his facial features.
“On the real though,” he began, “I wanna thank you for saving my life yesterday. You forever cool in my book. If you need anything and I can make it happen, just lemme know.”
“I appreciate that,” she replied. “Dinner isn’t ready yet, but I got somethin’ I wanna show you two in my room. Come in.”
The smell of soul food blessed our noses as we walked inside the house and past the kitchen, where Ashanti’s mom was cooking. Both Tory and I said hello before entering Ashanti’s room.
“Leave the door open,” her mom shouted over the jazz music playing throughout the house. My mom also loved to cook with the music on, so the vibe was similar.
If we being honest, I never been in a girl’s room before; and my belief of them being some over-the-top colorful spot was quickly debunked after looking around. From the plain pink sheets on her bed, to the white walls and curtains—everything about her room was normal and chill.
Well, maybe except for the huge TV mounted on the wall above a small dresser. That thing had to be 60″ inches at least.
“Close the door,” she said while sitting down on her bed and opening her laptop.
Recalling what her mom just said, I had to ask, “Shouldn’t we leave it open?”
“No. I’d rather my mom not pass by and hear or see what I’m about to show you. It would scare her.”
Tory shrugged and closed the door before we sat by Ashanti and observed her laptop screen. The image being displayed was of outside the supercenter, where multiple EMT trucks and police cars were stationed around dozens of injured people being carried out of the building. It must’ve been the aftermath of the incident yesterday.
“There.” Ashanti pointed at a man in the photo wearing a black suit. “And the guy next to him wearing the same thing. Those are two of the men who was after me and my mom in Harlem.”
Looking closer at the men in the picture, both appeared to be discussing something with police officers. “You think they know you’re here in Newburgh?”
She hunched her shoulders with a worried expression. “No clue, but I hope not.”
“Zayn filled me in on everything with you,” Tory said to Ashanti. “And to be honest, the whole thing sounds scary as fuck. You think these guys after you and your mom work for some secret society that controls the police? Wait, wait—what if they brainwash people with powers into fighting the shrouds? Because that’d be cool as shit.”
“You think it would be cool to be brainwashed,” she said in response with an obvious fake smile on her face. She nodded in sarcasti
c agreement. “Anyways, I know nothing about these guys, but check this out.”
She opened another tab on her internet browser that showed her DMs on social media, where of course a stream of desperate dudes flooded her inbox with weak ass messages. Funny enough, there were no replies until Ashanti scrolled down to someone named Ciara.
“Who’s that? She bad,” Tory said while staring at the girl’s profile pic. She was brown skinned with glasses and a frohawk with braids on the side.
“This is my friend from Harlem,” she told us. “We used to run track together before I moved up here. Her cousin was gunned down by police in the Bronx at a school called Ravenvale High. The media reported the incident as another angry Black kid who was out of control and had to be put down, but Ciara figured something else had to be up because her cousin wouldn’t harm a fly. Sure enough, she was right.”
“I heard about that,” Tory acknowledged. “Yeah, that social media influencer, Candice Forever, was also involved.”
“You’re right. So, my friend has been investigating the incident and the Bronx overall out of justice and love for her cousin. Apparently, she discovered that these shrouds making people go crazy are called Shadows.”
“Shadows?” I questioned.
“Uh-huh. She hasn’t been able to get a lot of info, but supposedly, these Shadows are demons that corrupt human minds and force people into using their superpowers for bad things. How people are gettin’ these powers to begin with, I have no idea. They seem to come from somethin’ we really want and feel, or from desperate needs.”
Answers turned into questions as we sat and processed the information. None of us could believe what was happening. It was too fantastical and horrifying to consider being reality.
“Uh, where my powers at?” Tory wondered out of the blue. Both Ashanti and I looked at him with no real way to respond. Just silence and shrugs.
The shout of her mom outside the room shattered the awkward moment. “Ashanti, get the door.”
Ashanti closed her laptop and said to us, “Okay, let’s all act normal and pretend we don’t know anything about any of this. We can’t tell anyone.”
The three of us came to an agreement with ease before leaving out of the room and walking to the front door of the house. Remember when I said all of this was too scary to be real? Well, that fear gave me a rude awakening once Ashanti turned the knob.
“It’s you.”
I had expected those words to stumble out of my mouth from the unexpected sinister presence of the bald man and the towering Shadow behind him, but it was Tory who voiced his acknowledgement.
The man glanced at Tory before addressing Ashanti with a deep voice. “How are you, princess?”
“Please don’t call me that,” she replied in disgust.
The man laughed before walking past us and into the kitchen, where Ashanti’s mom was putting food on the plates. My eyes widened as I trembled from the cold, dreadful pressure of the demon treading past my body. It was almost too much to bear.
“T-Tory,” I managed to breathe out once the creature was further into the house. “How do you know that g—”
“Hey, you came.”
Ashanti’s greeting of the next person at the door silenced my curiosity and left me in shock. “Marcus? What’chu doing here?”
“I invited him,” Ashanti answered me. “He asked me out at the party Friday, and we were supposed to go out last night, but you already know what happened.” She smiled and rubbed her side where she had been injured. “So, I invited him earlier today to come by and have Sunday dinner with us.”
Really? Fucking really?
“Hey, y’all good?” he questioned me and Tory while taking off his hat to reveal his freshly cut low fade. “Yesterday must’ve been scary.”
“Yeah, we good,” Tory said. “But you kinda fuckin’ up the vibe, bro. My boy here tryin’ to make moves.”
Damn, he really put me on the spot.
“Huh? What’chu mean?” Marcus questioned. “Make moves? You mean on Ash—”
Before a scene was made and everything blew up in my face, Ashanti’s mom called out that the food was ready. Sighing in relief, I made my way over to the dinner table in the living room with the others. This feast was gonna be a nightmare, and I’m not even counting the demon standing behind the bald man’s chair as he took his seat.
What in the hell did I get myself into?
In front of me was black-eyed peas, yams, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, corn bread, and best of all, fried chicken. Sounds like heaven, right? Except I looked up from my plate and saw a man who could’ve been the embodiment of Satan sitting across from me at the long dinner table.
“So.” The bass in his voice demanded everyone’s attention with just a simple word. “Ashanti, how are you enjoying the TV?”
“Um, it’s just a TV,” she replied, sitting next to Marcus of all people.
Remind me why this dude was here again?
Ashanti’s mom cleared her throat next to the man before saying, “She loves it, Lorenzo.” She then glared at her daughter, who looked down at her plate and continued eating.
Most of the feast was quiet, which made the demon standing behind this Lorenzo guy even more unsettling. It stood tall with a beastly, black physical structure that was covered in an even darker shroud. Its eyes glowed a crimson red with a hollowed mouth that was opened just enough to believe that it was smiling. Not to mention this thing was standing eerily motionless right now.
Truly something of nightmares.
“Kids,” Ashanti’s mom broke the silence, “are you happy school’s over in three weeks?” We all nodded, which lead to a set of follow-up questions. “Anyone have plans for the summer? Are some of you graduating?”
“I am,” Marcus announced. “I got a full scholarship into Penn State University with the intention on being a part of the amateur wrestling team. My real goal though is to be a professional wrestler like on TV, so a lot of times I’m driving long hours to different independent shows and performing for small crowds and little cash. Trying to get my foot in the door, you know?”
This dude.
Real talk, I had nothing but love for Marcus. He was a chill guy and hung out with me and Tory plenty of times. But right now, he was making everything hard for me. Here he is, voicing his accomplishments and dreams while I have no achievements to my name. What was I gonna say if Ashanti’s mom decided to ask—
“And what about you two?”
Dammit.
“I’m gonna play video games all summer,” Tory answered, causing Ashanti’s mom to furrow her brows. Her reaction led to him elaborating. “See, I’m affiliated with a digital platform that I use to stream online for thousands of people around the world. Sometimes, I even get donations from those viewers, which can range from different amounts like twenty, to fifty, to even hundreds of dollars. It’s cool enjoying my hobby while making money, so I plan on doing that most of the summer and gettin’ more popular.”
Thanks, bro. Add on to the pressure.
The frown on the face of Ashanti’s mom turned upside down after the explanation. She then looked at me. “And you?”
I picked up my glass of soda in hopes of stalling while I came up with something good to say. With all eyes on me and very little remaining to gulp down, any points I had with Ashanti were about to be depleted.
From hero to zero.
But out of nowhere, and I mean completely unexpected, Tory came through with the save. “Ma’am, my boy right here is something special. You should see him every Friday night DJ’ing for the hottest parties in Da Burgh. And he only sixteen.” He voiced that last part with extra enthusiasm. “Amazing.”
“I co-sign that,” Ashanti said. Marcus also nodded.
The support was real.
Ashanti’s mom smiled. “Well, I’m glad all of you are so ambitious. My daughter can learn a thing or two from you guys.” Ashanti rolled her eyes in response before her mother continued
. “I hope you’re all enjoying the food. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
The second she got out of her chair and walked away, Lorenzo looked at me with an intense stare and spoke. “Would you happen to have been DJ’ing a party in The Heights two days ago? I heard it ended in a shooting.”
I stumbled to reply, but Tory jumped in. “We weren’t there.”
Now why would he say that? Something was up.
Lorenzo grinned, and I could’ve sworn the demon twitched for a split second. “It’s good to hear none of you were involved. Mixing yourselves in with gang violence is a recipe for disaster. You all have such bright futures, and it would be a shame to see that light blackened for making enemies with the wrong people.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” Marcus said, sitting up straight in his seat as if he was trying to impress the man or something. “We’re not just some kids from the hood. We’re striving to be more than the stereotypes that society places on us.”
Ugh. I felt what he was saying, but did he have to be such a suck-up about it? He was trying way too hard to get on Lorenzo’s good side.
“I’m pleased to hear that,” Lorenzo replied to Marcus before addressing the whole table. “You’re all a part of something bigger: a machine capable of changing the world. If one cog fails, the design falters, leaving us to rot and crumble.”
Ashanti mumbled, “Here he goes,” as me and Tory gave each other a confused look. Neither of us understood what the hell he was talking about.
He continued, “I pray you all make something of yourselves. The plan must always be to function as a unit. This applies to all our brothers and sisters. We will take control of the system.”
His analogy of machines and people was weird and off-putting. It clearly had a deeper meaning, but I didn’t care enough to figure it out, and it appeared Ashanti also had enough of hearing it because she huffed before speaking.
“So last week, I got my period, right? Let me tell you: it hurt like fuckin’ hell.”
Tory snorted after her reveal and tried to cover it up by folding his lips. Marcus’s eyes widened just before he looked down at his plate—almost as if a woman’s menstrual cycle were something of a holy grail. It didn’t bother me, though; my mom would send me to the store for all kinds of healthcare products.