Chapter Eight

"Sadly, it was not to be."

Gina got home late that night, taking the bus home since Von had the car for the day. She sighed, setting her purse on the coffee table, slipping off her shoes and kicking them off into a corner, and slumping onto the couch. She took the remote and turned the TV on. The old CRT fuzzed static for a few moments, before she flipped onto Video One and started flicking through the channels. Sitcom, reality show, cooking show, news program showing breaking news of a woman walking in the sky, figure skating match…

Oh, fuck.

She scrambled off the couch, scampering off to the hall, hollering Callana’s name and whipping the door to her room open. Callana sat on the foot of her bed, eating a solid black pistol barrel-first. Midway through a bite, she caught Gina’s eyes and grinned, chewing the metal like bubble gum.

“Did you go outside today?” Gina asked.

Callana looked from side to side. “Uh…”

“Brovar’s ashes, Cal, what did you do?”

“I… went to a ‘hotel.’"

Gina waited for a few minutes, but Callana didn't say anything. "And?" she prompted.

"... and got in trou-ble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Gina asked. “Oh, Brovar, tell me you didn’t kill anyone.”

Callana stared off.

“Holy shit,” Gina said.

“I didn’t kill him long!” she said. “I brought him back!”

“You brought a person back to life?” Gina said.

“Yes?”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Gina took a deep breath. “You killed him with that gun, didn't you?”

“Yeah…”

“Why do you have a gun?”

“Because he had a gun! And I thought I was being rude for not having one…”

Sitting on the floor, Gina chuckled. Of course, Callana didn’t know what a gun was. As seemingly omnipotent as the girl was, that power didn’t extend to her knowledge one bit. Perhaps all this human stuff was just so far below her that she’d never bothered to learn it before, seeing as she had a whole “eldritch” thing going on, but… she seemed interested enough now. And despite that, Gina had just left her unattended in her apartment for an entire day, somehow forgetting that behind the cute, bubbly exterior, Callana really was the same entity as that horrific thing she’d become yesterday, with countless limbs, countless eyes, throbbing with alien feelings and concepts Gina could never begin to comprehend. “This—this is my fault, isn’t it?”

Callana cocked her head.

“Okay. Okay. Tell me everything you did. From the moment I left. And I’ll tell you what you did wrong, and why it was wrong. Okay? You don’t want to hurt anybody, right?”

Callana nodded. “I do not want to do the hurting to the other people!”

“Okay. Okay. So. Go on.”

From there, Callana recounted a horrifying tale of confusion and misunderstandings, topping it off with her impromptu resurrection of a police officer, whom she’d apparently murdered because she felt too awkward to ask what a gun was before taking the plunge. Thankfully, she apparently had control over life and death, which was seriously screwing with Gina’s head. Interestingly, the hotel staff and the cop had simply… let her walk out, amid whispers of her being a demon or a witch or something. She supposed that, were she in a similar situation, she’d have frozen up as well. As Callana recounted the matter, Gina offered simple explanations of what people might find odd about her behavior, along with suggestions on how she could have handled it better. It was slow goings, but at this point, the work had to be done.

Out of everything Callana told her, what got her most was that the lady Callana had barged in on had gone on a horribly racist tirade against Niminvians—which meant Gina had to explain race relations as well.

Lovely.

Inadvertently, Callana had chosen a Niminvian tourist’s body to imitate, which had put her in the line of fire. Hard-line retentionists flew into a froth any time they saw someone with red hair, just because a few thousand Niminvians tended to move across the Western borders for work each year; of course, that only happened because Borakovon had thoroughly plundered their country and obliterated its infrastructure, sucking the country dry. And since immigrants had no labor rights in the awful country she lived in, companies had no trouble screwing them over with low wages. If they protested or went on strike, the cops would storm in and deport them at a moment’s notice. Apparently, being exploited was the same thing as “stealing jobs,” according to the chancellor and his cronies. Quite convenient, considering the many, many investments the chancellor had in the exact industries most likely to abuse immigrant labor.

The way Callana fell into the middle of that broke Gina’s heart. No one deserved the degradation that came with systemic racism, but Callana hadn’t grown up with it, so she’d never learned how to navigate a world that hated her. Neither did Gina—at least, not in that specific way—so she had no idea if her advice was sound. For a moment, she considered advising Callana to alter her appearance so she didn’t look Niminvian anymore, until she realized how horrible that would be to say. Why should Callana have to change her body to fit into a broken mold? Honestly, Gina felt awful for even considering that option. Especially since Callana would probably take it

“Point is,” Gina concluded, “society’s fucked, the climate’s ruined, and the world needs to change. But while it’s in this state, it’s still important to stay safe. Even though, I guess, nothing can hurt you. Apparently.”

Callana looked pensive. “Hmm. Yes. Okay!”

And just like that, the conversation ended. While Gina had no idea how much of her advice Callana would retain, at least she’d put her best effort in. And so had Callana. She’d nodded along, asked questions, even made a few surprisingly useful observations. As innocent as she came across, Callana was dang smart. Scarily smart, even. And with that conversation out of the way, maybe Gina could rest a bit easier. After all, there was no way Callana would do something rash after all that.

Whew! And that is that for the insert chapters. I'm happy with how these came out, I think. At the very least, I hope these serve to make Callana's arc feel a bit less rushed. Either way, if you're enjoying this story, please consider subscribing to my Patreon! Yes, just like every author, YouTuber, artist, and Tom, Dick, and Harry on the internet, I have a Patreon! There, you can get chapters a day early, join my exclusive Discord server, and weep uncontrollably at the inevitable ruination of all things!