I am under the weather so I'll keep it short and sweet: please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon or Ko-fi! Thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

        Hot. Hot. Too dang hot. Johnny flipped out of bed like a burger, landing with a sizzling smack upon his bedroom floor. Prying himself from the polymer carpet, Johnny fished through the cleanest-looking laundry pile for the meanest-looking outfit he could muster in a hurry.

        Ktang! Johnny yanked a sleeveless band shirt from the cymbal of a drum set Ollie’s family had given him for Christmas. Getting ready for school was a pain, but his dad’s stuffy duplex apartment was worse. Johnny never spent a second more at home than he was forced to.

        Kthunk! Opening the sallow fridge downstairs, Johnny found that it was full of his dad’s beer and not much else. There WAS a single stick of butter, but he had learned the hard way not to munch on that for breakfast. He COULD whip up a dish that he called “condiment surprise,” but they were low on ranch and pickle relish and his dad would pitch a fit if they were out of either when he fired up the grill. Johnny settled for a nice gulp of refrigerated air; it was the closest thing to A/C he could get this close to home, and it tasted pretty good, like old sub sandwiches.

        Ktink-tink! Guided by thermodynamics like a lizard or a bug, Johnny thoughtlessly groped for a bottle of beer, clinking it out of the fridge through the rest of its regiment, and pressed its frosty glass up to his cheek.

        “HEY!! Whaddaya think you’re friggin’ doin’?!”

        Johnny’s red-faced father had appeared out of nowhere at the kitchen’s screen door.

        “Nothin’,” Johnny shot back, returning his improvised ice pack to the shelf.

        “...Nothin’ good, and that’s a given.”

        Kting-ting! The bell on the door chimed softly as his father slouched inside. Though it seemed a quaint domestic touch, Johnny’s dad had hung the bell up as a paranoid security measure. It was meant to give him time to rally the one-man militia that the Second Amendment clearly sanctified in the event that a burglar waltzed in from the porch. No guest had ever questioned it; like many things about their home, it must have looked less dire at a glance and from outside.

        Ktonk! Johnny’s father set a box of tools down on the table. He was a tensed and tattooed muscle of a man, a dense red dwarf on the constant cusp of a fiery stellar combustion. Johnny shrunk in his orbit, dim and silent as he circled at the greatest distance gravity allowed.

        “You start stealin’ booze from me at your age, mark my words: you won’t like the other ways you gotta grow up real dang quick.”

        He clicked his tongue and made a gesture like an umpire, jabbing his thumb back towards the street. You’re outta here. That threat was a perennial refrain.

        “...I wasn’t stealin’,” Johnny grumbled.

        Ktchink! Tink-tchink! Johnny’s dad scoffed as he dug through his tools.

        “That’s what your mum said when she got caught, too,” he chuckled.

        Ktong!

        Johnny’s heartbeat found his ears, its pulse metallic.

        Kting!

        “Shopliftin’ cheap perfume from the Mega Mall! Sellin’ junk she pried off cars to scrapyards! That the road you’re keen to roll down, Johnny? Huh?” He shook his head. “There’s makers and there’s takers in this world, boy. Makers and takers.”

        KTONG!

        As far as Johnny was concerned, the only thing that his dad “made” was “other people mad.” Donny Jhonny had a boom-and-bust career as a freelance repo man, hauling boats past due on wharf rent high aground. For this, he was a self-made man, unfairly saddled with full custody while Johnny’s mom, his ex-wife, was in prison. Like her son, she’d been a wild child, then a wild grown adult, slapped with two years by a paternalistic judge for a string of petty crimes. Though she had never been a steady presence in his life, Johnny missed her and her spray tan and her big hugs something fierce. The letters and visits were nothing like watching cartoons or mixing vibrant store-brand cereals for dinner like they’d used to.

        “Sooner or later, all that trouble you get in won’t just land you in detention,” his dad droned on. “It’ll land you right beside your mum, capeesh? And that won’t just be playtime with those hoodlum friends of yours. They’ll wise up before you take ’em down with you, Johnny. Mark my words. If all you make is trouble, you’ll be makin’ it on your own sooner than later. Just you wait and see.”

        KTANG!

        The last time Johnny had detention, his dad had left him high and dry when he got out at sunset. His friends had waited for him, though. They’d run through the woods that night, hooting and hollering all the way to the shore. They’d fled in fear from floating classmates. They’d schemed and gossiped back at Stephen’s house, watched gory movies way past midnight. When at last they’d gone to sleep, Johnny’s chest had hurt from laughing.

        KTONG!

        “Jeez, it’s friggin’ hot in here,” his father snarled, digging through the tool box as if searching for a culprit he could blame. “Were you messin’ with the fans again? I got a system, boy, I’ve told you—”

        KTANG!!

        Hammer struck anvil deep in the burning dark of Johnny’s heart. He balled his fists.

        KTANG!! KTONG!!! KTANG, KTONG, KTONG—

        “Aha! There we go: monkey wrench!” Johnny’s father shouted through the window to the streetside lot outside. “Hey, champ! This work for ya?”

        Kting-ting! The door bell chimed again as a sleep-deprived Coach Oop ducked his way into the kitchen. Johnny blinked. His hands fell slack. Ripples of heat that had surrounded him smoothed back into the air.

        “Uh... yeah. That’ll do. Thanks, Don.” Coach Oop gave his student an awkward nod, tucking the tool he didn’t truly need to borrow in his pocket. “Mornin’, son,” he said to Johnny. “Up and at ’em nice an’ early, I see. That’s how you get the worm.”

        “...I got all my shots,” Johnny said, sloughing off his concern; whatever The Worm was, you probably only contracted it by sleeping rolled up in a wrestling mat—a concern for Coach Oop, maybe, if his fragile marriage finally fell apart, but not for a vibrant, healthy boy like Johnny.

        Johnny craned his neck around the coach to see if Ollie was behind him, but he wasn’t. Coach Oop came by every so often (he was a friend of Johnny’s dad) but Ollie only joined him on occasion. He much preferred to walk or ride the bus to school. His dad, Ollie once said, was like the human incarnation of an insincere apology, and Ollie couldn’t stand him at his worst.

        “I got all my shots, he says.” Donny Jhonny shook his head. “I swear, I don’t know where he learns the disrespect!”

        “...Maybe from his hoodlum friends?” Coach Oop sardonically replied, but Johnny’s father took the jab in stride.

        “Other way around! I keep tellin’ ’im not to drag your Ollie down! A boy that big’s got football in his future, champ, I tell ya—”

        “Hey, if anyone can drag him down, Don, he won’t make much of a linebacker. Ha ha.” Coach Oop taxidermied his drooping jowls into a lifeless facsimile of a banter-appropriate smile. “Nah, they’re all good kids, that crew. Least no worse than we were at their age, eh? Ha ha ha.” The two dads briefly shadowboxed while masculinely chuckling. Coach Oop wanted to walk into the sea and then explode. “Besides, your boy’s got a heckuva hitball arm. Who says that him an’ Ollie can’t try out for the team together?”

        “All right, all right, ya brown-noser. It ain’t just your pipes back home that are leakin’ a bunch of—HEY! Where ya think you’re runnin’ off to, Johnny?!”

        “School,” Johnny shot back at his dad, sidling past them towards the door.

        “Oh, er—” Coach Oop held a plastic bag he’d brought with him aloft, looking awkwardly from Johnny to his father. “Daisy made a casserole—uh, extra casserole by, er, mistake. And I got donuts. Extra donuts. By mistake. If you want a ride to school, son, you still got time for that worm! Er, I mean... y’know, for breakfast—”

        Johnny’s father scowled.

        “...What’s this, some kinda charity?”

        “Uh.” Coach Oop tugged at his collar. “Well, er, with Ronnie gone—”

        “She never cooked to start with! I don’t need your friggin’ handouts—”

        By the time Coach Oop could spare a glance back at the door, Johnny was nowhere in sight.

        Ktonk!

        Ktink!

        Ktonk!

        Johnny had picked up a stick he’d found, holding it out to play percussion on the slats of a steel fence as he trudged his way uphill. He was mad. Johnny knew his dad was wrong but felt like he was right. He thought about tracking Stephen down, or getting RJ to play hooky, but then they’d just get mad on his behalf. He didn’t want that, maybe, or wanted it too much. He didn’t know. Johnny snapped the stick in half.

        Ktonk! Ktang! KTONG!

        Johnny scowled at a purple shape until it disappeared. It was hot and he was hungry, and he kept on seeing things that weren’t there... but he could make it on his own. He’d have to try.