I like it on Wednesdays when I wake up to see my nemesis standing over me. Sometimes he’s stripped to the waist, a bigass knife in his fist. Sometimes he’s piloting a tank that can walk as a human or fly as a jet. Still other times he’s cloaked in shadows and has a hundred heads on a hundred serpentine necks.
He says, “I’m glad you’re awake. Let there be no more mysteries between us.”
I stand up. I don’t remember why we’re fighting. I don’t think I would care to know the reason, whatever it happened to be. Neither of us serve any flag or holy book. Maybe we pretended to serve a flag or a holy book out of convenience . . . but all that’s done now.
Usually, I kill him in a single stroke of a sword or with one well-aimed rocket or I pummel him into a mess of broken bones and mauled shreds of intestines with my fists, feet, and teeth. Sometimes we dance about, put on a little show, I take on some cool looking battle damage, he might come out of his mech once it has been rendered non-functional so I can give him a proper beatdown-but, no, we don’t usually do theatrics. We’ve done this so many times, and for so long, now, uh, you know . . . we know what we’re about. We just get to it.
Oh, I would say this is, like, what?
Every third or fourth Wednesday?
I don’t keep track, not precisely.
Maybe he does.
I never asked.
I never will.
I don’t need to know.
It’s just, uhhh, not consecutive weeks. We need that time apart. Downtime. A recharge period, if you like.
We’ve worked it out that way.
So it makes sense for us.
