Erasmo Cruz peered down at the battered laptop, his index finger trembling over the “Enter” key. For at least the twentieth time, he studied the words he’d written, as if doing so would somehow transform them into something less embarrassing. Despite the many different ways he’d rewritten the paragraph, its sentences continued to drip with absurdity and desperation. This last version was no better.

PARANORMAL CONSULTANT

Experienced consultant knowledgeable in various paranormal phenomena. Specialty is displacing spirits from your place of residence. Will discuss nature of my qualifications and fee schedule during first consultation. Serious inquiries only.

He continued to stare at the dim screen, not yet quite able to upload this drivel onto Craigslist. Had it really come to this? Erasmo picked up the stack of medical bills and unfilled prescriptions he’d found hidden in his grandmother’s drawer and riffled through them. On one of the envelopes she’d scrawled a bunch of numbers, which Erasmo had been horrified to realize was her attempt at figuring out how much she could spend on the medicine she needed and still make rent. He allowed his eyes to float over the names of the drugs, not wanting to confirm his suspicions. This was cowardly, he knew, but shading reality in order to maintain sanity was a specialty of his. Erasmo accidentally caught sight of a word that he’d rather not have, and reflexively dropped the stack of papers.

Had it really come to this? Yeah, he guessed it had.

Their situation had been grim even before he’d stumbled across his grandmother’s stash of horrifying news. It had now been three months since he’d graduated from UTSA, with an apparently worthless degree in communications. A degree that had voraciously consumed every cent he and his grandmother had, and then some, leaving them virtually penniless. He’d applied to every imaginable job opening, but so far had been met with only terrifying silence. One of the companies had to call soon, but soon was not going keep the lights on next week and fill these prescriptions right goddamn now.

The message stared back at Erasmo, waiting, but he still couldn’t bring himself to upload the damn thing. It wasn’t so much that he was trying to con people. Really, they kind of deserved it if they were stupid enough to respond to the ad. It was more the absurdity of it all, creating such an asinine paragraph and sending it out into the world for all to see.

There was another reason for his hesitation, of course. Even in the unlikely event someone actually responded, he’d be forced to talk about the damn Ghost Tracks to prove his bona fides, and the thought of having to regurgitate that nonsense made tendrils of sharp pain shoot through his head.

Erasmo attempted to turn his full attention back to the ad, but felt a familiar tug at the base of his brain that wouldn’t allow it. He glared down at his laptop and ran a search, grinding his teeth as he typed. The various sites that came up, all of which he’d studied countless times before, callously informed him of what he already knew…that individuals with his particular history were “at a substantial risk for developmental and behavioral problems.” They also declared that people like him were often filled with anger, right to the goddamn brim, like they were a bunch of Incredible Hulks or something.

He’d never understood his relentless compulsion to look up this garbage. What the hell did these doctors know, anyway? Perhaps the simple act of reading about their supposed predisposition to anger made people want to break shit and bash someone’s head in. Had those asshole doctors ever thought of that?

He jumped off his rickety bed and kneeled down, pulling two boxes out from underneath. One was a tattered cigar box that used to have a colorful logo on its top, but whatever image there had once been was now an indecipherable mess. The other was a rumpled cardboard box, with the word Breakables printed on the side in faded black marker. He opened both of them and peered in, even though he had long ago committed their contents to memory.

According to the internet, people like him, those star-crossed souls unlucky enough to be born into the world as addicts, also carried around a deep-seated hatred for themselves. He thought of this as he stared down at the contents of the boxes, using one hand to pinch the other, his thumb and index finger plowing deep into his flesh before twisting.

After a few minutes, Erasmo placed the boxes back under his bed, picked up the laptop, and was finally able to upload the paragraph on which he had worked so very hard. He pressed “Enter” and leaned back, grimacing as nebulous blotches of scarlet spread over his trembling hands.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2