Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen (best motivational books for students TXT) 📕

they are lucky they get old and die with their pretense intact but this is the truth right here. These are the rules. Anything you get that is not this was fought and won. A price was paid.

Someone puts a coffee cup against the back of my head and it goes phudd.

Phudd is the sound of the universe not coming to an end but for a moment there I really think I’m about to die and I just haven’t felt it yet and the only reason I do not lose control of my bladder is that I don’t have time before I realize it has not happened.

Phudd is the noise a shotgun-type weapon such as a Donnerbüchse makes when you pull the trigger and it does not fire. The hammer comes down on an empty cartridge and it goes:

Phudd.

Again. And again and—

She keeps pulling the trigger and recocking it phudd clickclack phudd clickclack phudd and I really should stop her because if it’s misfiring, sooner or later it’ll go off but I already know that isn’t going to happen and so does she. When I turn around there’s nothing in the barrel except a grief that will never go away.

Flavia throws the Donnerbüchse on the ground and jumps on my back and starts to claw at me but honestly her heart isn’t in it. She hates me about as much as she hates everyone else in the world but what she really wants right now is to book a flight yesterday to far away from here and to wake up and find this was a nightmare and she’s in Hawaii in a stinking capitalist resort with waterslides and all her friends and she knows with a stark misery that that did not happen and here we are this is the world. The best she can hope for is just a hug and I so I hug her and she screams and screams and water stuff comes out of her face that is not tears and not snot and not vomit it’s just horror.

This is the shape of the world and how it is and you believe it is not and that is nice for you.

I know better and now so does Flavia.

She gets in a few good ones and my ribs will feel those later but who the fuck cares about my ribs when Bruno’s ribs are over there on that table about two meters from his head and yeah Flavia you beat the shit out of me you are totally right that this is my fault.

But honestly it’s not me you want to kill and we’ll come to that sweetheart I swear we will.

She pukes on my shoes and then she apologizes and I just hug her some more. I am a monster and I live in a world of bad things but that does not make me a monster and if you find that confusing, then I don’t know what to tell you to make it make sense, but I wouldn’t leave you to look after my kids. No obviously I do not have kids.

Flavia pukes some more and this time she gets the back of my legs:

“Sorry sorry I’m sorry—”

“There there honey. Jack’s here now. There there.”

“Did Charlie send you Jack?”

“Naw Flavia she doesn’t know it’s gonna wreck her. Like it’ll break her apart I don’t know what she’ll do. I just came to give Bruno back his coat.”

She looks. “I gave him that coat.”

I put Flavia down for a minute and explain there is something I need to do and then I throw up into a vase. I don’t clear up. Don’t judge me it’s not like the place doesn’t smell awful already. Then I wrap her in Bruno’s coat and I hide her somewhere safe.

But not so far away I can’t use her when I need her.

—

I sit in a classic recliner chair in Agent Hannah’s apartment and I wait for her to come home. Every so often I practice raising my hands so that she does not shoot me before I get the chance to say hi, and I wonder whether maybe just waiting in the hall would be better but it would not. People get shot outside their apartments just as often as they get shot inside and I have brought schnapps and pickles and salami and this weird little rye bread thing that smells of ginger, and these are all on the table, which I hope will also make the point that I did not come to be unpleasant.

I’m not shivering anymore.

I don’t taste puke or blood when I swallow anymore.

But I can smell it when I breathe through my nose not all the time but sometimes.

Charlie I’m so sorry.

I put my hands in the air again: I surrender.

Keeping your hands in the air for even a little while is hard you have done it in gym class so you know.

Practice: up.

Feel the burn.

Down.

Sit around getting bored and wondering whether she’s out with friends and this is a huge waste of time but I know that she is not because Agent Hannah has no friends not while this is happening in her city not now.

Up.

Keep ’em up.

Ow ow ow down.

Up.

Ow ow ow down.

Up…

Agent Hannah says:

“What the actual fuck are you doing?”

She is pointing a gun but everyone does that to me these days and her finger is quite a long way from the trigger.

“I am practicing putting my hands in the air so that you will not shoot me.”

“You are terrible at it.”

“Well I have been practicing a lot and my arms are tired.”

“You’re under arrest.”

“I’ll tell Jacinta she will love that.”

“You broke into my…Shit just pour the schnapps you look ridiculous.”

“Well that is a bit mean I am just trying to make you feel okay about me being here.”

“You want me to feel okay about an international terrorist breaking into my apartment? Pour the schnapps and fuck off out of my country that will work fine.”

I pour the schnapps and