Page 18 of Paradox
“I’m sure the girls love hearing that.”
“And I’m sure they love getting slapped around by you.” Without thinking, my hand is already raised, and Jin instantly cowers away—both arms shielding his head. “I only wanted one.”
My entire body tenses as I stop my fist. “I never… I never laid a hand on Shawn.”
“But because I’ve got a dick it’s alright?”
“Fuck you. It’s different.”
Jin lowers his arms. “Why?”
“It just is.”
“Shawn’s taller than I am.”
“That doesn’t matter—“
“So even though she’s bigger, and probably stronger, she gets spared. But I’m free game?”
“Do you ever stop running your mouth?”
With an over dramatic roll of his eyes, Jin pushes up, takes one of the planks, and moves back to the edge of the roof. “I might be wiley, but you know I don't stand a chance.”
I take four nails out of the bag on my belt, hold them between my lips and pick up the hammer. “And I might not hit women,” I mumble, and begin hammering the first nail. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t take my frustrations out on you every single day for the next three months.”
Eden’s fist pounds on the shack’s door. “Get your ass out here. There’s too much shit to get done today for me to be waiting around for you all morning.”
“It’s eight am,” I mutter to myself, then gulp down the remaining ramen broth left in the small tin bowl.
Opening the vents of the stove, I peer in to make sure the fire is out.
It broke my heart to see the flames die because Eden really did only give me one match. But I didn't have any other choice.
That stove’s almost one hundred years old.
You need to make sure the vent is open or you’ll poison yourself with carbon monoxide.
Move the cot away from it so you don’t burn your arm off in your sleep.
Don’t overload it with wood.
You only get one match so if you fuck it up don’t come crying to me.
If you leave this cabin for longer than it takes to piss, you put it out.
It’s not like it’s a quick process.
I had to have the fire big enough to boil the last of my water so I didn’t start another day on an empty stomach. And it's not like I can just starve it of oxygen because the stove's hundred-year-old vents are so rusty they don't close properly. So for the last twenty minutes I've been savoring my ramen while gradually getting colder and colder because this shack is a shit heap.
I know Eden calls it a cabin just to mess with me. There's no way it's even a hundred square feet so it's not like I can actually move the cot away from the stove. At any given moment I expect one of the deadly tools to fall from the rusty nails they're hanging from and either kill me or leave me with a debilitating case of tetanus. And then there's the dusty piles of newspapers, two by fours, and broken solar panels.
“Jin!”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m coming!” I yell, and it feels good. Maybe having a giant saw and a fire poker by my side isn’t such a bad thing after all. That is, until I have to leave the shack and see his tanned and tattooed face glaring at me through the porch screen.
Seriously, though, tattoo artist or not, who decides that permanently inking a black widow spider and its web onto their scalp and face is a good idea? At least with his hair down I don’t have to look at it because it covers the shaved patch. But today he’s got it pulled up into a douchey man bun, so I get to see his bad decision in all its glory.
“There’s something on your face,” I tell him as I walk past—tapping at the exact place on my cheek bone as where the spider hangs on his from a single strand; the rest of the web hidden in his hairline.
