Titan: The Dark Path

Closure

They were alive then.

Before Jim was sent to military school, he and Drew went over to Eric's house every day after school. Eric had an old Nintendo 64 console and they played Mario Kart 64—the newer versions' AI cheated too much. Sometimes they played GoldenEye 007 or Perfect Dark against AI controlled bots, but more often than not, they played three-player split screen Mario Kart.

Jim and Drew hated it, but they played anyway. Jim particularly hated it because Eric tortured them. He didn't play fair. Eric played so often that he knew all the little tips and tricks to not only win but to needle his opponents while he did. He would wait around corners near bridges so he could shoot them with shells and knock them over the edge, he would wait near large jumps with special power-ups that affected all carts at once and made them fall into pits, and he had an annoying habit of almost losing only to return at the last minute and demolish their carts in the process. Jim's temper was infamous, but he was rarely angry about this; no, he often sat in silent defeat and would sometimes let the controller fall from his hands while shaking his head.

"You bastard," was all he would say.

Even though Drew lost just as badly (if not worse), he would usually look over at Jim and say, "Why are you so bad?" Typically, that made Jim angry.

He saw them all sitting together, huddled around his 27-inch CRT TV. The bright light from the ceiling fixture was almost fluorescent. Eric sat on the left in his worn, faux-leather chair. Drew was hunched over on the bottom corner of Eric's bed, and Jim sat in an old rocking chair crammed between the end of the bed and the front of the closet in front of a window.

Sometimes they'd just watch movies. Other times they'd sit and talk about nothing important until two in the morning or later. Once, Jim tripped on Calvin, Eric's cat, while leaving late at night and he fell over in the dark. Drew had laughed especially hard at that. Jim, of course, was not as pleased.

They lived then.

They would always be with him there.

Titan laughed as he ran. Tears burned his eyes. He laughed so hard and so long that his cheeks hurt. He saw them in his mind's eye like they were right beside him sniping at each other. Titan's least sexy superpower was graphic, immersive memory made stronger by his link to the Source. But it was invaluable; he clung to them in his memories.

It had been barely weeks since they died and it had been hard to think about them at first. Drew was the hardest. Eric hadn't been strong enough. He thought he was a hero and he had truly given himself over to this power, but it was a delusion. He had been a boy playing at being a man and doing it badly. He saw the man in the black tuxedo shoot Drew again and again. It was even worse when he closed his eyes because the darkness seemed to drag him back to that time and place. The whole scene played out again and he could never do it any better.

When Jim reappeared, it felt like he had finally snapped. Long days wandering alone and hungry and dehydrated seemed to have finally taken their toll. The demon had wounded him physically and scarred his spirit just as bad.