Bleed For The Banished King

After about eight calls, Finan confirmed one thing: he was going insane. Nobody knew who the hell Banyen was. Not her name, her face, her job. None of them even remembered seeing her last night. When Finan had the brilliant idea to ask Emma who had patched him right after the fight, she simply answered: "oh yeah, it was some hot Thai doctor right? Happen to get his number by any chance?" God it was like the whole universe was playing some dirty little joke on him. 

He kicked his feet up onto the table and leaned his chair back against his bed frame, chewing on a pencil. To think that last night, he thought he would take the day off. 'What a mess,' he thought, scratching his head. Banyen was erased. Gone from existence; she was some glitch in their timeline that only he was aware of. 

There was also the other option: he had imagined her. Perhaps, in his destitute loneliness, he conjured up this image of a perfect girl. Maybe he dreamed of her throughout his drunken blackout and somehow, that dream felt so real that it meshed with his perception of reality? 'I don't think my mind is smart enough, nor creative enough to think of that. So… Ah, I don't fucking know!' A sudden and very compelling urge to trash his room and start throwing stuff came over him. He resisted that urge by putting the pencil down, jabbing in his jabras, and watching some good old fights to calm himself down. 

As he played through the fight, watching the two UFC warriors exchange devastating blows, his heart rate decreased. He always had to be aware of stuff like that — both Diego and Pi Ketchup demanded that of him. Heart rate, heart rate, heart rate — 'control your heart rate,' Diego had once said 'and you control the goddamn world.' Well, Finan didn't feel like he could bend time or space, but at least he could focus a little more. 

After the fight was done one of his notification banners caught his eye — some missing call from an unknown number, not listed as a possible scam call. Ignoring it for now, he tried once more to think about what he experienced. He ultimately wrote down three primary questions. 

First and most obvious, what happened to Banyen? He needed to travel back to the viewpoint, to find her body— if there was one. 

Secondly, what parasite crawled into him? He felt it vaguely in the morning, though he didn't find it in his excrement. 'Maybe I need a damn x-ray.' 

Lastly, who is the Banished King? Why did that… thing take interest in him. Is it connected to the black goat? 

Pains swelled all over him, making it hard to think. He could feel every aching bone. His head also had this fogginess to it; that was a typical symptom of hard fights. 

Finan ended up napping after jotting down a few more superfluous notes. He thought he might dream of the black goat, however, his mind took him back to an older, more familiar dream: the night his mother threw a bottle at his father. They argued for four hours, while Finan (10 years old at the time) hid behind the couch. Eventually, in a slight fit of rage, Finan's father gave his mother a push. Finan always played that moment back in his head, always trying to figure out how hard the push was. Sometimes, when it played back, it was a hard shove than knocked his mother's back against the counter. Other times, it was merely a firm push, perhaps justified by the fact that Finan's mother was screaming right in his father's face. 

Regardless, his mother's bottle throw played back the same. Brutal. She snatched the nearest sparkling water bottle from the counter, all while Finan's father had begun apologizing profusely for the push, before she chucked it at his head. The glass shattered everywhere, some of it slicing into his mother as well. The majority of it cut into his father though and the poor man was knocked out cold on impact. As his father fell, his head hit the corner of the island countertop. Blood pooled on the floor. 

The blare of his phone ringer woke him up. Rolling over his bed, he picked up his phone — it was that unknown caller again. Picking it up, he half-expected it to be some sort of scam call. 

"Finan, it's me, it's Chanda," she said, panting through every word. 

"Ah shit," he muttered on reflex. It was Raj's sister AKA Finan's ex. "Chanda, I told you, I can't help you. You need professional help—"

"Just— just shut up and listen to me for a second. Have you been contacted by him yet?"

"What?"

"Finan, have you been contacted by the Banished King?"