The Paladin by Mel King

It’s a crisp Autumn morning, and you’re sitting in the courtyard of a beachside cafe. You take off your jumper –  it’s not really T-shirt weather, but you want to feel the sun on your arms. The icy breeze makes your hairs stand on end, and that makes you smile. It’s good to feel the cold. It’s good to feel anything, after being numb for so long.

In front of you is a Big Breakfast. Eggs, beans, tomato, mushrooms, and avocado on the side. Normally it’s served on toast, but today, you requested a pancake stack. And maple syrup. You’re hungry. You – well, you and the person sitting opposite you, burned a lot of calories earlier this morning, and you’re pretty sure you’ll be burning off a lot more when you get home.

If you were eating with Cal, your partner of sixteen years, and one-time love of your life, you’d have ordered a fruit salad. Or maybe just a coffee. Anything to avoid the snide comments about calories, or budgets, or whatever arbitrary thing Cal has a bug up the arse about on any given day. 

But this isn’t Cal. Oh, they’re wearing Cal’s clothes – they're wearing Cal’s body even – but those aren’t Cal’s eyes. Cal’s eyes glint, like steel, cogs always turning, thinking up endless strings of mean things to say. 

'I’m honest’ Cal always insists. ‘It keeps people on their toes’.
The reality is something different. More basic. Cal is a bully. 
But this isn’t Cal. What do you call them, this brand new person who is wearing Cal’s face and Cal’s favourite hoodie and Cal’s messy blonde curls?

'Would you like some of my fruit salad?' Not-Cal asks, in a haughty, mediaeval accent. 'It’s delightful!'
You've never seen Cal’s eyes sparkle like that. It’s infectious. You smile back, feeling a bit dizzy. It's been a very strange weekend.
‘Do you – do you like your name? Or would you like to choose something new?’ you ask tentatively.
‘Is my name not a fine name? Does it displease you?’
You shake your head.
‘It’s a perfectly good name’ you say, smiling warmly.

The fruit salad really is exceptional.

Let’s go back to last night, when Cal was still Cal, and no-one was smiling.
Your bed is strewn with books. Occult books – dark ones. You’ve always had a passion for collecting these rare, dark grimoires and tomes, but you’ve never tried to actually do any of the magic within their pages. Well, not the serious stuff, anyway. You try to stay on the love and light side of things. Candles and oils for harmony, moon meditations and incantations and tarot cards. It’s mostly a bit of fun, and it relaxes you. But you’re so angry tonight, and you’re powerless, and you want to do something darker – something bigger. You've found just the thing, in a book of Chaldean curses, and even reading the words makes your blood run cold. You’re petitioning something ancient, and terrifying.

You’ve collected ingredients – mostly mundane grocery items – salt, oil, a bit of raw steak. Cal would scream the house down about wasting food, and that little act of defiance is satisfying in itself. Some ingredients you don't have – you’ve never even heard of them, but it doesn’t matter – it’s all symbolic, isn’t it? You’re just doing this to blow off steam anyway. It’s not like it will actually work. 

You’ve made a clay effigy too – it’s crude, and lumpy. It doesn’t look anything like Cal. But that’s OK; it doesn’t have to be perfect. This is just therapy, right? You hesitate, just for a moment.
What if it works? What if it really works?
Cal pounds on your bedroom door.
‘Turn off your fucking music. I’m in a raid’.
Every night is raid night at your place these days. 

The decision is made. You say the words, and smash the effigy. Of course it’s still wet, so instead of shattering, it just squashes down flat –  a clay pancake in a bowl of meat and pantry staples. Pounding it feels good though, and you want to hit it again and again, but the bowl cracks in half and you’ve cut your hand now, it's just a little nick, but it's bleeding, so you have to stop.
Fuck.

You find a bandaid, while Cal yells at people on Discord and bashes the keyboard like an overly-enthusiastic bongo player in a salsa band. You sleep, and when you wake in the middle of the night you are burning hot; it feels like your room is on fire and there’s buzzing, loud and high pitched, like hundreds of mosquitos are swarming around your head. 

You go back to sleep, feverish and afraid.

Let's go just a little further back – to yesterday morning.
It’s Saturday, and you’re sitting in the living room with your kiddo, who currently only responds to the name Ravioli Pasteur, for reasons that have not been made clear. You’re watching cartoons together, and eating breakfast while rain pours down outside. Cal is in the next room playing that bloody game, and yelling at invisible people through a headset. You’re so sick of the sound of that droning, petulant voice. Ravioli is fed up too, and you exchange periodic eye-rolls. 

You stand up – ‘Do you want some more raisin toast?’ – and you're shocked to find the carpet is wet. Rain is pouring down the inside of the wall behind the couch – not a little, but a lot. It's positively gushing, and you didn’t hear it because you’ve got the TV turned up loud, so you can hear it over Cal's yelling. If the flood isn't stopped immediately, the carpet will be ruined. 

You run to Cal's office, shouting for help; the rain is coming down very hard and the gutters must be badly blocked. It’s an emergency.

‘What have I told you about interrupting me during a raid?’
Cal’s voice is flat, and dangerous.
‘The roof is’ – 
Smack.
You reel in disbelief; it takes a moment to process the fact that you’ve just been belted across the head with a keyboard.
‘Now you’ve broken it' Cal says, in that eerily calm voice you know means real trouble.
'A two hundred dollar keyboard. Are you happy?’
You back away, into the safety of silence.

You call a roofer, and Ravioli helps you clean up the water in the lounge while you try –  unsuccessfully – to hide your growing forehead lump and your seething rage. You’ve had enough of Cal’s shit now. For real this time. You’re done.

Let's go back a week now, to a different sunny Autumn Sunday.
You invited people over for a bbq today, but Cal is in a rage again, so you’ve cancelled it. Cal’s been playing that fucking game for forty straight hours now, and drinking and yelling. It’s awful. You can’t go on like this. It’s got to stop.

You go for a walk with your dog, a beautiful husky with terrible leash etiquette. Every time you say ‘heel’, Ravioli Pasteur throws both arms out in the air, like Russel Crowe requesting a performance evaluation in Gladiator, and you can't stop laughing. You're a little hysterical, if you're honest.

Heal! – it’s what Cal’s teammates yell all the time, because healing is Cal’s in-game occupation, and when that little pixelated character – Coagulin –  restores a team-mate’s health, it throws up its arms like a priest blessing their flock. But Cal’s animated little buddy isn’t a priest, it’s a Paladin. Plate armour, shield, hellishly overpowered. You know all of this because you used to play too. Hell, you used to freaking love that game – it was your game, before Cal ruined it. 

Ravioli skips along beside you, healing the passing cars, the neighbours, the birds in the trees. It’s a beautiful day to be walking and laughing, because you live by the sea and time spent outside with your kid and your dog is the best part of your life. You think about Coagulin the Paladin, Cal’s pixelated alter-ego, brave, politely spoken, chivalrous. Long curly hair, muscular, lithe, commanding. Modelled on Cal, you guess – the way Cal sees Cal, anyway.

You joke with Ravioli – 
‘Rav’, you say, ‘Imagine if we just wished hard enough, and they traded places. Imagine if Cal was sucked into the game forever, and Coagulin was spat out into our world in exchange’.

Ravioli contemplates this.
'Well, Coagulin has maxed cooking, and fishing. So we’d save heaps on groceries. And doctors bills. And blacksmithing, I guess. How much do we usually spend on blacksmithing each month?’

You stare at each other and start to shake with laughter.
'With the money we saved, I could go on that exchange to Italy!' Ravioli says.
‘I could come too!’ you agree. ‘Coagulin could take us there on a pretty flying horse, or a dragon. No more slumming it in economy for us!’

You and Ravioli Pasteur giggle like a couple of idiots, even though life is pretty grim for you both, because it’s laugh or go mad right now. You know that you’re going to have to make some very hard decisions soon, and you just want the stress to go away for a little while. You want to laugh in the sun with your dog and your kind, funny child, for just one more day.

Let's go forward a couple of weeks now.
It's 9:30am on a bright sunny Monday. You’re sitting in Cal’s chair, looking at Cal’s monitor, your fingers poised over Cal’s very fancy new keyboard. It cost $400, which is a lot, but then – it’s your keyboard now, isn’t it? Cal never even got to use it; it arrived after the – you know. The curse. The exchange.

The cherry switches are a springy delight beneath your fingertips. You log in to your main, and there, on the screen, is Cal, just waiting, wearing nothing but underwear. Armour is strewn about the ground, an oversized shield balances against a rock. Cal just about exploded with joy over that shield; when it dropped in a raid it was as if all seven winning numbers had dropped, plus the Powerball. You even went out for celebratory Chinese.

You don’t know what to do now; you thought you’d be frightened, or upset, and Cal would be – what? Angry? Terrified? Shocked? You expected a fight – pleading, threats, name calling. Instead, Cal breaks into dance, and then starts applying wards and blessings to you. On the desk, the headset crackles into life, and there’s Cal’s voice.
'Babe, you have no idea how heavy plate armour is! I had to take a break from it! My shoulders hurt! Tell you what, I’m going to get so buff in here!’
‘So you’re not mad?’ You can’t believe what you’re hearing.
'Are you serious? This is the best thing that's ever happened to me! Listen, I’ve got a raid to get to. Can you call my mum? Tell her I love her, and I'll talk to her soon’.
Cal starts to put the armour back on.
‘You’ll have to call her from my phone, and put it there on my desk so I can talk to her. I’ll let you know when! Keep my headset charged! Log in and check your mailbox!’

You shake your head in disbelief, as Cal lifts into the air and vanishes into a beam of light.
'Make sure you pay my phone bill' you hear, feint and far away, before the headset goes dead.
Still giving you orders, from inside a game.
Unbelievable.
You log out – for the last time ever, you decide.  

You hear keys jangling, and the front door shakes and rattles. There is a loud snap.
'I am sorry. The key has broken off in the lock again' Coagulin says solemnly, as you open the door.
'But Ravioli Pasteur has been safely transported to the children's training academy, and I caught this for us on the way home. Perhaps I can cook it for breakfast?’
Coagulin holds up an impressively large snapper.
‘I thought perhaps I could use the outdoor brazier. The woodless fire. The – what did you call it?’
‘The BBQ’ you say, a smile spreading across your face. You smile a lot, just lately.
‘Oh good. You are pleased. Perhaps afterwards, we can walk your pet wolf on the beach, and then go to an auction house and sell some of the ore that I have mined'.
Coagulin points to Cal’s bedroom, or, as you’ve started calling it, the treasury, because it is filled from floor to ceiling with neat gold, silver and palladium bars. Coagulin is a very proficient smelter too, as it turns out.

You sit in the sun, listening to chirping birds and crashing waves, and Coagulin’s polite chatter, and you marvel at how quickly life can turn around, with just a little clay, some common food items, and a simple Chaldean curse.

The snapper, of course, is excellent.

Authors note:
This is the first complete short story I ever wrote, around six years ago. Much of it is based on real events, with some obvious exceptions.
It wasn't intended to make light of serious issues, nor was it meant to be a revenge tale, or a romance.
Instead, it was my first attempt at reclaiming my humour, my voice and my story. I had so much fun with it that I kept going, and wrote another, and another.
It also crystalised my committment to never hide from, or cover up, dangerous things that should never be left to lurk in the dark.
Names have of course been changed, and the dog in the featured picture is my husky, Bowie. He was a Very Good Boy, and he is sorely missed.
-Mel