This is the 58th installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
His ultimate dream fantasy consisted of being content and sleeping eight hours in a row. Instead, Jeremy got a solid four hours each night, maybe, and he felt increasingly leaden with every week that passed. He could blame it on long hours at work. He could blame it on the new baby. Hell, he could even blame it on the screaming cat, who chose 4 a.m. as her simultaneous choir practice and cardio time.
He could blame all of them, but he wouldn’t.
Really, it was all those late-night rituals. Bozreth failed again and again, but he succeeded in keeping Jeremy awake. Maybe that was the whole point, Jeremy thought sometimes as he stared into the mirror way too long. There’d be no brutality, just exhaustion that would win out in the end.
Bozreth didn’t seem smart enough for all that, though. Every night, he appeared on Jeremy’s chest at midnight and dragged him to the backyard. There, Bozreth spent hours drawing symbols and reciting incantations and positioning Jeremy here and there on the deck.
Jeremy had screamed the first night. A lot. But no one seemed to hear him, so he gave that up pretty quickly. By now, all that remained was confusion about what could possibly make him, specifically, worth all the fuss. He could only imagine it was some sort of reverse George-Bailey-and-Clarence situation. Bozreth needed to earn his horns, so Jeremy needed to die or be sent to hell or whatever.
At least, that’s the story Jeremy told himself; Bozreth never spoke a word to him.
“You forgot the pig ear this time,” Jeremy said wearily. He held his head in his hands and willed himself to sleep sitting up—but no luck.
Muttering to himself, Bozreth rummaged in his bag.
“And the radishes.” Jeremy closed his eyes and exhaled. “Don’t forget the radishes.”
Miles Away 