Micah Nemerever

It was easy for him to hate her; it was almost primal.

You could do anything to me and I’d let you.

“I love you,” he said, and once he’d spoken, the words took hold of his tongue like a prayer. Julian pulled him nearer, but he didn’t dare open his eyes. I love you. I love you. I love you.

It was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly.

“I don’t worry,” he protested, and when Julian looked skeptical, he dug in his heels rather than let himself be mocked. “I ruminate. They’re distinct actions.”
“Are they?” said Julian. “From this angle . . .”
“Worrying,” said Paul, “means you’re afraid it’s going to happen. Ruminating is when you know it will, if it hasn’t happened already. One is neurotic, the other

“I don’t worry,” he protested, and when Julian looked skeptical, he dug in his heels rather than let himself be mocked. “I ruminate. They’re distinct actions.”
“Are they?” said Julian. “From this angle . . .”
“Worrying,” said Paul, “means you’re afraid it’s going to happen. Ruminating is when you know it will, if it hasn’t happened already. One is neurotic, the other is fatalistic, and fatalism is supported by evidence. It isn’t the same.”

One corner of Julian’s mouth went a little higher than the other when he smiled; Paul remembered something he’d read in his art history class last semester, about how the Japanese believed there was something poignant and endearing about asymmetry

Epigraph

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

By the time Charlie punches out it’s well after midnight, and everyone else has long since gone home. He switches off the lights and watches the long aisles cascade into darkness, then pulls the roll-up door shut behind him. When he steps out from under the awning the rain drapes over his umbrella like a shroud.

Charlie thinks about knitted blankets and hot chocolate, half-forgotten childhood comforts he’s a few years too old now to admit to missing. T