The Gamer Chapter 1125 – Back in Black 8 – in the back of a Cadillac (Patreon)

Eliana waved at them one last time from the steps of the train station before forcing herself to turn around. The moment she could no longer see them, John smacked his head against the thin ring of the vintage car’s steering wheel. “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh,” he half-sighed, half-screamed, minding his volume in case the pretty little psycho’s absurd senses could still pick up his louder words.

“Worried?” Rave asked from the backseat, where she cuddled with Aclysia.

“Yes.” The Gamer repeatedly tapped his forehead against the wheel, hoping that one of the mild tremors may succeed in beating the paranoia out of him. An absolutely futile effort, as he very well knew. If it had been that easy, his life would have been tremendously less stressful. “Oh God, what if she is squatting at the top of the stairs and we just can’t see her hyperventilating?”

“Is your phone buzzing?” his girlfriend asked.

In sheer panic, he reached into his breast pocket at such speed that any mundane that would have looked into the car at that moment would have wondered if they needed new glasses. His phone was doing nothing. “Can you not ask that rhetorical question?” he pleaded.

“I was trying to make a point, tiger, but ya immediately went all paranoid.”

“Jane, you know what I’m about!”

“I know that she would call ya if she needed help. She’s that stable at least,” Rave told him.

“Jane is correct,” Aclysia echoed her sentiment, reaching out to massage his shoulders as best she could with the seat between them. “Be at ease, Master.”

The Gamer let out a stream of very much uneased words. “What if Thana takes over, destroys her phone, makes her walk out into the plains, gets her lost, and then she sits in the middle of nowhere, crying, and I don’t know how to reach her?”

“Gaia, maybe ya should call her so she can help ya with your panic attack,” Rave joked.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!” John smacked his head against the wheel a couple more times. When he straightened up and fell against the luxurious leather of the seat, Aclysia transitioned from a massage to caressing his scalp. It did serve to calm him down, even if the worry lingered. “If anything happens to my dear broken angel, I don’t know what I will do. It won’t be pretty though.”

“What do we say when we’re frozen by inaction?” Rave asked.

“Live, learn, and move on,” John sighed, unable to hold onto that mantra as well as usual.

“Alright, get outta that seat,” Rave declared and opened the door on her side of the back and then his. Bowing down to him, she grabbed him by the shoulder and gave him a friendly tug. “I’m driving, ya need some cuddling time with Aclysia.” John was too mopey to put on any resistance and so they switched places. Without hesitation, his girlfriend put on the only song John wanted to hear on that drive.

 Rave turned the volume up until it was difficult to hear himself think. That was exactly what he wanted, second only to Aclysia nuzzling up against him. Finally, the vintage car turned around. Aclysia leaned up to him and initiated a long, long make out session.

“Back in the back of a Cadillac,” the hard rock music enveloped them, as they cut through random streets. That single line in the song had inspired this return. It was the fantasy of a triumphant return, enjoying the fruits of his new life, and he was living it fully. The worry he felt about Eliana’s travel eased away. He always stayed mindful of his phone. Greater attention was paid to Aclysia. Her lips, her thighs, her delighting need to press against him, and the breath that caressed his skin.

The song ran on loop. The repetitive chorus robbed any understanding of time, the focus on Aclysia any understanding of space. John just knew that the former passed and they moved through the latter. When his fingers finally found their way into Aclysia’s pants, she moaned into his ear. Lips pressing against her neck, he brought her to orgasm. He wanted to do more, much more, but not in this car. They resumed kissing.

Until Rave suddenly turned the volume down.

The drastic decrease snapped John out of the haze of the moment. Barely, he realized that his girlfriend was rolling down the window. The police officer that stuck his head in was anything but surprised to see three young adults in the car. “I get it, it’s fun to roll around in a nice car,” the man said with stern authority, “but you either need to keep the music down or drive out to the countryside, alright?”

“Sure,” Rave responded in a tone that made it clear, to everyone, that she only agreed to get the cop off their back.

“If you get caught again, we’ll fine you,” the police officer warned, more intensely this time. Obviously the feline Lightbearer’s attitude was getting on his nerves. “If you make too much of a ruckus, you’ll spend a few hours behind bars, until your parents come around to fetch you.”

“Good luck with that.” Rave’s tone was too much of a challenge for John not to intervene.

“We’ll be reasonable, officer,” the Gamer said.

“Uh-huh,” the mundane man grunted in a disbelieving tone. He had clearly noticed what he and Aclysia had been doing in the back. “I’ll have to write down the name of one of you.”

John sighed and nodded, leaving the car before either Rave’s dislike of authority or Aclysia’s protectiveness could further escalate the situation. Between him and the police officer, it only took 20 seconds to resolve the situation. John gave his name, the cop gave a final warning, they parted, and the Gamer took the driver’s seat back. Rave moved one over.

“Killjoy,” Rave grumbled, when they went back on the road, the music now at a moderate level.

“We would have been done with that in ten seconds if you had been more diplomatic about it,” John pointed out.

“I said ‘sure’,” she insisted. John could only laugh. That his girlfriend didn’t mind meant that she at least understood that there was a problem, even if she didn’t agree with the solution. “So, we putting the music back on in like ten minutes or so?”

“Nah, I got what I wanted,” John told her with a content smile. “That was exactly the moment I had hoped for. I love you both.” Even with his eyes on the road, he could feel their smiles. “I’ll keep driving around for a little bit longer. Want me to drop you off by the bus?”

“I’ll stay,” Rave assured him.

“There is no place I’d rather be, my beloved Master,” Aclysia swooned from the back.

Once more in an exceedingly good mood, John drove around semi-randomly. He had no specific route in mind. The only limiting factor was that he didn’t want to linger anywhere for too long. Gradually, they made their way through the city.

John was staring at a red light. The traffic was so absolutely dead that he could have ran right over and nobody would have cared. It was a side street off the main road that connected the inner city to the river-adjacent areas. What a traffic light was even doing there was a mystery. Doubtlessly an artefact of poor planning or some piece of legislation that mandated a certain density of traffic regulation. There wasn’t much around. A couple of restaurants and a bar, which was closed at this hour, sitting comfortably between and underneath apartments.

While his hands drummed on the wheel to the rhythm of the electronic song that Rave had put on, John heard a knocking on his window. When he turned his head, the strong jawbone and cleft chin of a typical jock greeted him. It combined with short cut, blonde hair and an aggressive grin to form the face of someone the Gamer had seen way too much of in his life.

‘What are the odds?’ the Gamer wondered and came to the conclusion that they were reasonably high, given how much of the city they had covered. Either way, he found it mildly amusing when the jock kept knocking on his car.

“Open the window, Nerdman,” Frank Dickinson’s voice made it through.

Obliging, only because he was afraid that the aggressive guy would damage the glass, John rolled it down. “Hello, Frank.”

“Man, I heard you were back in town, loser, but I couldn’t believe the photos.” John had wondered if that would come back to bite him.

“Getting plastic surgery is low, even for a total freak like you,” a sneering female voice added.

Calmly, John leaned his head to the side to spot Vanessa. ‘Of course, the bitch isn’t far away from her lapdog,’ he thought.

‘I will murder them.’ Aclysia’s four words were gravely serious. Hate flowed out of her mind, accompanied by swift estimates on how best to stuff the two bodies into the trunk of the car. She was out the door, before John could stop her.

‘It’s really not worth it,’ he told her.

‘Master, they are…’

“Oh wow, how much did you pay for her?” Frank asked, smirking at Aclysia.

“Got some nerd money and immediately you start surrounding yourself with prostitutes, huh?” Vamessa added from the background. “Seriously, how did a loser like you get enough money for that car? Whose cock are you sucking?”

Frank tilted his head, to see Rave in the passenger seat. “You could come with us and have an actual good time, girl. How about it?”

“How about I knock your lights out again, asshole?” the feline Lightbearer hissed back.

“What do you- oh, you’re that bitch!” Frank only now realized who he was talking to.

“Frank, you will do three things for me,” John spoke up. “First, you will never insult any of my women again. Second, you will step away from my car. Third, you will live out the rest of your bootlicking existence away from me. Okay?”

Sneering, Frank spat out and hit the flawless leather padding of the door’s inside. “You will do one thing for me, loser: clean that up.”

‘Stay,’ John had to tell Aclysia, who was half a metre away from ripping Frank’s balls off and shoving them down his throat. Right after that she would most likely disembowel Vanessa, who laughed in the background.

Frank had no idea how much danger he was in and just leered hungrily at the weaponized maid. “Pink menace is out, but you can still tag along. An hour with me and Vanessa and the dumbfuckery that-“ He had to stop in the middle of his sentence as John opened the door. Shoving it open before Frank could pull any stunts, the Gamer forced his old tormentor to stumble back onto the walkway. “What, loser?!” the jock shouted. “You wanna... go…?”

The violent arrogance drained from the bully’s voice while John walked up to him. Last time they met, Frank had been slightly taller, emphasized by the cowed body language the Gamer had employed around him. Standing straight now, John had a few centimetres on the jock. While he couldn’t match the visible brawn, John wasn’t a walking skeleton anymore either. They stood, face to face, two hand widths between them.

“So,” John casually continued the conversation, “you are still at Ashcroft?”

“Still captain of the football team, yeah,” the jock declared proudly.

“How accomplished,” John responded drily.

Vanessa blew air out of her nose. She had the fit body of an idolized cheerleader and large tits to boot. That her character was so rotten that it would have been comical had she not spread misery made her the opposite of a catch though. “Look who developed an attitude. Remind him of his place, Frank.”

That was all the lapdog needed to hear. Violence was the only answer Frank halfway understood and he pulled his arm back to swing at the Gamer with all of the force of a lifelong jock.

John kneed him in the stomach. He didn’t need to employ any superhuman feat to pull that off. It certainly helped that he had reflexes primed to react to milliseconds. The true factor in his superior attack was that Frank was a brawny footballer used to tormenting the weak and John was an expert kickboxer that regularly went up against monsters designed to be a challenge.

“Blurgh…” Frank made a sound between burp and rattle and collapsed to the floor. He held his stomach and John stepped away, in case the jock would vomit. “You… fucking nerd-ass punk,” the bully groaned, trying to fight his way back to his feet.

It would have been easy to kick Frank while he was down. The tip of the Skittersteps to the head, and he would certainly stay down – forever if John aimed correctly. The thought did cross his mind. Not with any burning desire, but the simple acknowledgement that he could if he wanted to. Instead, John just kicked a leg away from Frank. The jock went back down in the softest possible way.

“Hey, Vanessa, you got a handkerchief?” the Gamer asked, while walking towards the woman. “Your date spat on my car.” Intimidated, the cheerleader walked back several steps, until she was against the wall. Wrinkling his forehead, John asked, “Do you or don’t you?”

“T-take it!” the queen of the bullies stammered and pulled a silk handkerchief out of her jacket. John went back to his car, dodged a sucker punch from Frank, floored him with a basic throw, and then cleaned up his door. He dropped the handkerchief on the jock and grabbed the bottle of hand sanitizer Aclysia was handing him.

Looking at his defeated bullies, John felt only relief. He was afraid that running into them might have compromised the peace he had made with the past. That he would somehow forget himself and do something so squarely immoral to them that he would lay awake that night, wondering if he was any better than them.

“Have a nice life,” the Gamer said, after he had cleaned his hands.

“Die,” Aclysia growled.

“I hope ya kill each other in your thirties.” Rave waved from inside the car. They stood in the empty street, waited for the light to turn green, and then drove away from the pair. Soon they reached the river. It was a nice sight, passing them by. Yet, John couldn’t help but stare several times at the stain on his door.

“I’ll need to scrub that a bit more later,” he complained.

“Hmm,” Rave hummed and looked out the window. “Hey, can ya stop for a minute?”

“Sure?” John responded. The street they were on now was in decent use, so finding a spot to park wasn’t that easy. A lookout that was heavily used in the summer but barren at the moment served as the best point. They left the car, following Rave who walked to the stone barrier that separated the street from the shoreline. “Why did you want to stop?”

“How are you feeling, John?”

“Normal,” he responded.

“Ya aren’t behaving normal,” she told him flat out. “That back there, that wasn’t normal you.”

“What, did you expect me to rip their throats out for being a minor inconvenience?” John asked, confused. “Jane, those two mean nothing to me anymore.”

“Bullshit,” she turned to him and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Ya know what ya usually do when someone insults any of us? Ya get angry, up in their face and threaten them. You’re absolutely right that you didn’t need to brutalize them, or whatever, but don’t tell me that they’re like everyone else when you behave this… empty.”

“I…” John didn’t know what she meant by that. At the same time, he knew exactly what she meant by that. In an attempt to find some reinforcement for everything being normal, he searched for Aclysia. The weaponized maid was standing right next to him, carefully taking hold of his arm.

“It will be alright, my John,” she assured him.

Clenching his teeth, the Gamer swallowed a sudden lump that he felt in his throat. It was back, larger, a second later, and blocked the few words he pressed out while his girlfriend stroked his back. “They don’t…  they won’t control my life… anything about me… anymore. That’s all… I needed to prove…”

“You did, John,” Rave whispered and held him while they stood by the streaming water.