5 Chapter 5: Walk Home (2/2)

”Pitch, Danger Rabbit, Friend, at least you give a shit, that's more than I can say for most humans,” he joked as he twisted his door key unlocking deadbolts on the other side.

Could I still call myself human anymore? I'd all but given up on trying to reverse my curse. In a way, I embraced my curse, bad luck, and all. The thought of being ”human” again hadn't crossed my mind in weeks unless someone else brought it up first. I was still as naive or possibly complacent as any other human despite my reasons to be better.

”I can't be a magician anymore,” I said.

”Why not?” He asked.

The door was open, but he held himself between the threshold to talk to me longer.

”Because enchanted paper comes from elf ears,” I said.

”So?”

He leaned against the door frame.

”You don't care?” I asked as he crossed his arms.

”It's not like they go around cutting off elf ears anymore, they harvest everything from dead bodies, like organ donors. They hunt creatures who don't live with humans, that's the real problem that needs to be stopped,” he corrected me.

We were watching the sun go down, that might have been the only reason we talked on the porch rather than inside.

”So you don't think its wrong to be a magician?” I asked.

”Pitch, you and me, we're prodigies, we can't stop because of little things like shock value,” he said.

I wouldn't call myself a prodigy. It was nice to hear someone else say, and I did beat Santa in a magic fight, but I'd never say it myself.

”Harvesting organs is a little more than shock value,” I debated.

He sighed.

”Why are you asking me? I'm not the one whose opinion you care about.”

”I care about your opinion,” I argued.

”But you care about the satyr's more,” he said.

The last light from over the mountains faded, and finally, the street was in shade. I let Velmer go inside, and I retired back to my own home next door.

If I weren't with Wes, what would I have done? The answer wasn't easy. If not for Wes, I may never have known anything that tested my morals, much less my juvenile ethics. Would knowing have stopped me? I wanted to believe it would, but there was no way to be sure. I faced a similar problem at the start of my summer and got out of it by splitting myself in half, but I couldn't do that for the current situation. I had to make a decision.

As I walked inside, I was greeted by the familiar silence of an empty house. It sucked that I couldn't help Dad. In hindsight, the idea of using a leprechaun wish to make him the owner of the drive-through was too far fetched to have ever been pulled off. At least with my job as Beth's assistant I had the potential to make money and help out more. That if nothing else was an unselfish reason to remain employed by Beth, but was it enough?

I didn't want to think anymore. When I got to my room, I locked myself in it with the intent to stay there for as long as possible. After guilting myself with more research into magical creatures and how they were used in magic, I shut my phone off yet again.

How were so many people utterly complacent. They kept using magic knowing creatures had to suffer for it. I may not have known before Wes told me, but I was still naive enough to have never asked the question. That might have been just as bad, if not worse.

It was relatively early, but dreamland felt like a better alternative to my thoughts on reality. I should have waited for dad to get home. Laying in bed, I blinked my eyes, and like magic, everything changed. One moment I was laying in bed staring up at the ceiling, but in the next moment I was standing in a hallway

The endless hallway.

”What the fuck!”