Vicious

The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t always scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning.

Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.

“You don’t understand,” gasped Eli. “No one understands.”

“When no one understands, that’s usually a good sign that you’re wrong.”

“We could create control, Eli.”

“Not enough.”

“You asked me if I ever wanted to believe in something. I do. I want to believe in this. I want to believe that there’s more.” Victor sloshed a touch of whiskey over the edge of his glass. “That we could be more. Hell, we could be heroes.”

“We could be dead,” said Eli.

“That’s a risk everyone takes by living.”

WHEN Eli picked up Victor from the airport a few days before the start of spring semester, he was wearing the kind of smile that made Victor nervous. Eli had as many different smiles as ice cream shops had flavors, and this one said he had a secret.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, Victor.”

Victor kept digging. “It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“Well,” prompted Eli. “Do you believe?”

“I don’t know,” Victor said truthfully, “if it’s a matter of believing…”

“Everything starts with belief,” countered Eli. “With faith.”

“With wonder, then,” he amended. “Do you ever wonder?”

Victor wondered about lots of things. He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were all really as stupid as they seemed). He wondered about Angie—what would happen if he told her how he felt, what it would be like if she chose him. He wondered about life, and people, and science, and magic, and God, and whether he believed in any of them.

“I do,” he said slowly.

“Well, when you wonder something,” said Eli, “doesn’t that mean part of you wants to believe in it? I think we want to prove things, in life, more than we want to disprove them. We want to believe.”

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse.
—Joseph Brodsky

“This is insane,” said Victor. “I’m not a murderer, and I’m not an EO. I’m a pre-med student.” At least the last one was true.