“The Magic Number,” is one of my two entries into the Missouri S&T Writing Center’s Writing Contest. It is a prequel story to my 2006 NaNoWriMo novel Magic Seven, which is still incomplete.

UPDATE (May 7, 2008): “The Magic Number” received first place in the MS&T 7th Annual Writing Center Writing Contest.

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The Magic Number

“Rom-u-lus.” The voice was timid and sounded tinny through the thin wooden door. The source of the voice, a small boy of about ten with jet-black hair raised into spikes, punctuated each syllable with a rap on the door.

“Sorry,” came the reply. “Wrong evil twin brother.”

The door creaked open just enough for the boy to squeeze through. Once he was all the way inside, he peeked through the crack in the door—looking for a brief moment like a thief trying to ditch a tail—and then pushed it shut softly.

“Hi, Charlie,” the boy on the floor said without looking up. He sat cross-legged on the brown carpet, carefully trying to shuffle a deck of playing cards. His hair was golden-brown, a militant crew cut, and his eyes were a piercing blue, vibrant even beneath the purplish swelling on the left side of his face. He also had an assortment of bruises on his arms and legs, purple and green and brown.

“Hi, Remus,” Charlie said, allowing a smile to cross his face.

The cards exploded outwards like shrapnel when Remus tried to bridge the two halves back together. “God!” he shouted and threw the cards that hadn’t burst from his hands onto the floor with the rest. “If I can’t shuffle, how will I ever be able to do magic like you, Charlie?”

“Easy,” Charlie responded and sat down in front of the other boy. He bent forward and started to gather the scattered cards. “In magic, you never shuffle like that. It’s too easy to lose everything, and you can’t do it on the go.” Charlie held the reassembled deck of fallen cards in his left hand and quickly shifted small stacks into his right, alternately adding cards above and below the growing pile. He shuffled the deck several times, extended his arm, and then splayed it like a bouquet.

“Pick a card,” Charlie said.

Remus did, and he looked at it, trying on a poker-face that made him look like he was going blind. He held the card over his heart.

“You know your card?”

Remus nodded.

“Good.” Charlie reached forward and held the deck at arm’s length, secured between his thumb and forefingers. “Put it back, anywhere.” When Remus’s card was back with its companions, Charlie shuffled three more times and drew the top five cards. He set the deck aside and placed the cards face-down, side-by-side on the carpet. Staring down at the cards, Charlie performed an impeccable shell-game shuffle, then looked up at Remus and smiled. “Pick a card.”

Remus bent down and inspected the row of cards, looking unnaturally serious. After a moment, Remus plucked the middle card from the carpet.

“That’s your card,” Charlie said. Remus grinned and nodded, as wide-eyed as his bruises would allow.

“How—,” Remus started.

“Magic,” Charlie said and grinned.

□▪▫▪▫▪▫

Remus sat on the light brown carpet of his bedroom with a deck of playing cards in his hands and his legs flayed out as far as they would go. It had been two days since Charlie had shown him real magic, and Remus spent all his alone-time trying to replicate it. Remus didn’t go to school like Charlie and Randal did, because Daddy (“Don’t call me Daddy, you ungrateful, illegitimate little shit.”) said it was too much work to send three kids off every morning.

He could shuffle now—like Charlie had, but not as fast. His hands moved back and forth, and cards migrated between them, but Remus couldn’t recreate Charlie’s magic. Practicing all day got boring (maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a magician?), but Remus couldn’t leave his room, so he was grateful for the little bit of entertainment.

After another few shuffles, Remus set the deck on Charlie’s and Randal’s dresser and crawled over to his mock-bed: a tattered sleeping bag, worn enough to be a homeless man’s abode, given to him when Oscar-who-is-not-Daddy was in one of his violent drunken rages. Before that, Remus didn’t even have dedicated floor-space.

Usually, when bedtime rolled around, Charlie or Randal would let Remus share some part of their twin bunks, but for now he would sleep on the floor; it wouldn’t do if Oscar came home early and found him on the bed. Stacy (who didn’t mind being called Mommy) was happy to let them share beds, but she said nothing to Oscar. She was as afraid of him as Remus was, and had just as many marks to show for it.

As he lay quietly on his sleeping bag, Remus thought of Stacy: what a great mom she might be without Oscar being mean and making her pretend to be mean, too.

He thought of the day he arrived here, at this two-bedroom apartment, not even two years old. He remembered Stacy, how she had rocked him to sleep in her arms, caressing the nape of his neck and curling her fingers through his golden-brown hair. It was his only vivid memory from before he turned three—he had no recollection of his birth parents.

Remus caught himself playing with the hair on the back of his neck as he lay on his side, and it turned his thoughts back to Stacy, rocking him to sleep as he cried and cried and cried.

▫▪□▪▫▪▫

When Remus awakened, Charlie was on the ground facing almost away from him, playing a game that looked like solitaire, but with fairly loose rules. Randal was on the lower bunk—Charlie’s—reading a book about twin magicians.

Randal looked almost exactly like Charlie: jet-black hair; an egg-shaped, smooth face; and a smile so wide it could be seen from a mile away. The real difference was age-exclusive. Randal was almost twelve, a good way through his first growth spurt, with his voice starting to crack and his face covered in peach-fuzz.

“Hey,” Remus said, and rubbed his eyes absently. He sat up, and Randal waved at him. “How long have you guys been back?”

“Since school ended,” Charlie said without looking back at him. Charlie flipped a couple cards over, pulled another from somewhere he probably shouldn’t have, and set them all on the field.

Remus looked up and caught Randal throwing Charlie an angry look. “It’s almost dinner-time,” Randal said and dove back into his book.

“I slept that long?” Remus asked.

“You were out like a baby,” Randal said. He closed his book, either deciding he would be unable to read anymore with Remus awake and talking, or genuinely more interested in spoken conversation. Remus thought it was probably the latter. “I tripped right over you trying to get up here, and you didn’t flinch.”

“I was impressed,” Charlie said. He appeared to have finished his illegitimate game of solitaire and was now facing the other two boys, engaged in building a house of cards. “If only you’d slept like that when you were actually a baby. Man, it was like sleeping with a broken alarm clock. Bwaaaaah! Bwaaaaah!” As he cried, Charlie cocked his head back like a braying rooster and threw his arms into the air, knocking over the four-tiered card pyramid in front of him. “Whoops,” he said, and started to stack the cards again, unfazed.

While Charlie had been cock-a-doodling his tower of cards to the ground, Remus had climbed up onto Charlie’s bunk next to Randal. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

All of the sudden, a door crashed open outside the room, causing Charlie’s new tower to waver a little. A moment later, the second crash, indicating the closing of the same door, toppled Charlie’s cards back to the ground.

“Shoot,” he said, and then the door to the boys’ little bedroom rocketed open with the same vehemence as the first. The man who barreled through had inch-long grey-white hair; the only trace of its former night-black shade could be found on the heads of his two children. Oscar Charles Baltar’s eyes were brown, almost black, and his cheeks were the rose-red of fresh-spilled blood.

“You!” Oscar bellowed, and his arm shot out to point at Remus. His whole hand shook visibly in the air.

“Sorry,” Remus said as he slipped off the bed.

“Stupid brat, speak only when I tell you to!”

“Yes, sir.” Remus stared down at his beaten sleeping bag and wished for nothing more than to hide beneath it for rest of his life.

“What were you doing up there? Huh? Boy, look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“Sitting.” Remus craned his head up to look at Oscar so slowly it looked like he had a two-ton weight tied to his forehead.

“And why were you on that bed, boy, when I’ve told you not to touch things that don’t belong to you?”

He thought about saying, “Because Randal likes me, unlike you,” and thought better of it. He would rather not get Charlie or Randal involved in Oscar’s tirade. Instead, he said, “I dunno.”

“Come here, boy.” Oscar lowered his voice, somehow managing to be even more frightening than before.

Remus stood up, his forehead still laden with a two-ton brick of fear, and walked slowly toward Oscar. Charlie’s and Randal’s eyes followed Remus carefully, though neither of them said anything.

Oscar reached forward and grabbed Remus by the throat. “Of course you know! What did I say about lying, boy?”

“Gyot koo,” Remus said, trying to choke out the words, “Not to.” Oscar apparently understood, and let go of Remus’s neck, but not before backhanding him. The hit caused the puffy, swollen patch around Remus’s left eye to burst open in a mist of blood and pus. Remus recoiled, taking two steps backward and tripping over Charlie, who patted him on the shoulder and then stood up. Remus reached his hand up to his eye and began to cry.

“What did he ever do to you!?” Charlie screamed, leaning forward as if his words could pelt Oscar like hailstones. “What did he do to deserve this?”

“I’ll tell you what he did, boy,” Oscar said, and grabbed Charlie’s shirt at the neck. “The stupid little shit was born. That’s what he did. And then he had to come in and ruin my life because some whore claimed we shared blood.” Oscar lifted Charlie up with one hand and threw him to the ground next to Remus, who was still crying. “The day I share my blood with that boy, it’ll be in a pool on the ground, and I’ll be rotting in Hell.”

With that, Oscar stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him, rattling its frame.

▫▪▫▪□▪▫

Charlie skipped school the next day, with Stacy’s approval, and both boys slept well into the afternoon. Oscar did not come home from work that day.

Friday, Charlie went back to school, and Stacy gave Remus permission to watch television in the living room while she was gone. The living room was carpeted with the same material as the boys’ bedroom, and it wasn’t much larger, either. A short walk from a stiff couch the same shade of brown as everything else, the living room turned into a linoleum-tiled kitchen. A small faux-marble counter above a row of double-sided cabinets separated the kitchen from the living room.

Remus sat on the couch but did not turn on the television. Instead, he stared off to his left at the entryway—and the door that sat in it. If he squinted, he could see a doorknob-shaped indentation in the wall beside the door. Suddenly, the knob began to twist, and the door creaked open.

“Hi,” Charlie said. He held up a crinkled paper bag and motioned for Remus to follow him back to the room. “I’ve got something for you.”

Randal walked in a moment later, waving to Remus.

“Here,” Charlie said, handing Remus the brown bag as soon as he entered the room. “Open it.”

Remus dipped his hand into the bag and felt something poke at him. He grasped whatever it was and pulled it out, inadvertently tearing the side of the bag as he did. “What is it?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Charlie said and smiled widely. “It’s a dragon!”

“It’s huge!” Remus said. His eyes widened, as though they were trying to absorb all the statue’s details at the same time. The statuette was six inches tall, and the base added another three. “Remy, god of the sky,” was carved into a little plaque on the base. The dragon had vibrant blue scales, the color of Remus’s eyes; its wings were spread wide, and so were its jaws, frozen in a roar.

“Remy,” Randal said. “That’s your new name.”

“What?” asked Remus. He jerked his head around to find Randal, blinking rapidly in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“The name Remus,” Charlie said, “is bad luck. You know the story, don’t you?”

Remus nodded.

“Look at it, ‘Remy, god of the sky.’” Charlie’s voice gave the title an air of majesty and power. “He’s magnificent!”

“Dad, no, Oscar—he’s not our dad anymore,” Randal said, “has done a lot of bad things to you and Mom. We can’t take that back, but we thought you might want a chance to start over.”

“Remus,” Charlie continued, “is a name representing weakness and, for you, a thousand bad memories.”

“Remy,” Randal said, giving the name not just majesty but grandeur, “is your chance to forget all that. Forget Remus, and forget Oscar. They’re both bad luck.”

“Remy,” Remus said, trying the name out.

“We love you, Remy,” Charlie said. “No more bad luck.”

“No more bad luck,” Randal repeated.

“Remy,” he said again and smiled. “No more bad luck.” Remy set the statue on the ground and wrapped his arms around Randal and Charlie.

“I love you guys, too.”

▫▪▫▪▫▪□

By Saturday afternoon, Oscar still hadn’t shown his face, and by Saturday evening, the three boys and Stacy had crammed themselves on the living room couch, watching a television game show. The smell of fajita meat wafted in from the kitchen, reminding Remy of their meal an hour earlier. Remy leaned to his right and rested his head on Stacy’s arm; she let his head drop to her chest and wrapped her arm tightly around Remy’s small body.

“I love you, Mom,” he whispered.

“I love you, too, honey,” she whispered back and rubbed the nape of his neck.

A deafening crash brought Remy back to his senses. As Oscar walked in, red-faced and stumbling, Stacy stood up and Remy fell onto the not-quite-springy cushion.

“What the hell’s he doing out of his room?”

“Being a member of this family,” Stacy said. “Not like you.”

“He’s not a part of my family!” Oscar bellowed.

“You’re right. He’s not a member of your family, because you have no family!”

“What did you say, bitch?”

“Get out.” Stacy pointed toward the door. “You’re scaring my children.”

Oscar stepped forward and snatched Stacy’s finger out of the air, twisting until it snapped. Stacy grunted but didn’t scream, and her face contorted as Oscar wobbled forward and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Get out of here,” he said and pointed at Remy. “Out of my sight!”

“No,” Stacy said. “You get out of here, Oscar. You’re not welcome.”

“Shut up!” Oscar screamed. He reached his hand over the counter, grabbed the pan with the meat in it, and swung it in a wide arc, flinging beef everywhere. The pan hit Stacy, the sound of cracking bone mixed with the pan’s gong-like ringing, and Stacy fell wordlessly to the floor.

“Get out of here,” Oscar repeated. “All three of you!”

The boys skulked to their room, weeping silently.

Slowly, they fell asleep, and Remy was the last to go.

▫▪▫▪▫▪▫

Charlie woke up not four hours after he had fallen asleep. The other two still slept soundly, and there was no sign Oscar was awake, either. He pushed the bedroom door open slowly, careful that no noise should give him away. Quietly, he crept down the hall to the living room and saw Oscar unconscious on the couch. Stacy’s body was absent, though Charlie could see a dark stain on the floor where she had been.

The linoleum in the kitchen squeaked softly as Charlie tip-toed across it, heading toward the counter by the sink. He pulled open a drawer and withdrew a black-handled steak knife. The drawer squealed when he tried to push it back in, so Charlie left it. Each step on the linoleum produced a creak louder than the last, and even the paneling beneath the carpet seemed to moan beneath his feet.

As Charlie approached the couch, the sounds of his movement were drowned out by Oscar’s heavy breathing. His steps slowed to a crawl, and by the time he reached the couch, several minutes had passed.

The knife wavered in Charlie’s hand as he drew his arm back, and he squeezed his eyes shut before thrusting it forward into his father’s soft, meaty neck. Oscar coughed, threw one hand into the air, and grasped for Charlie. He caught nothing but air; Charlie had evaded the sluggish swing easily and was preparing for another stab. Oscar’s eyes shot open just before Charlie’s knife re-entered his neck, puncturing his carotid artery. This time, Oscar’s hand swung up for his neck, and Charlie stepped back to watch his former father writhe.

When Oscar’s twitching had all but stopped, the adrenaline vacated Charlie’s body almost all at once. He dropped the black-handled (and now black-bladed) knife, fell to the floor, and crawled to bed, retching with each step. He climbed slowly up and into his bunk, rested his head in the crest of Remy’s shoulder, and then collapsed entirely. He muttered four words, “No more bad luck,” and gave the rest of energy to sob himself to sleep—or farther.

Jeremy Davidson

March 31—April 8, 2008