Chapter 8
Hidden inside a small, pink, broken dollhouse.
A phone. Or… something phone-shaped.
I picked it up like it was cursed. It was covered in dry oatmeal, sticky cereal flakes, and possibly a hint of peanut butter. It didn’t even look like it had known a charger in this century.
But I’m Leon Darrow.
I’ve survived gunfire, three cursed bombs in Afghanistan, and the wrath of a vengeful ex girlfriend. A cereal-covered phone? Please. I can do this.
I began rampaging again, looking for a charger with the desperation of a raccoon on Red Bull. Flipping couch cushions. Kicking over baskets. Digging through drawers full of unpaired socks, broken crayons, and old takeout menus. And then I found it. Inside an empty fishbowl.
Of course.
Because why wouldn’t the charger be in a goddamn aquarium?
The cable was a little soggy, and—wait—chewed.
I held it up to the light. Bite marks.
Small teeth. Maybe a rat. Or a child. Or a child raised by rats. I didn’t want to think about it.
I plugged the phone in anyway. A spark shot out. The smell of burnt marshmallows filled the room. The phone screen blinked. Died. Blinked again. It was… trying.
Like me. But it wouldn’t charge. I stood up slowly. Trembling with the weight of defeat and leftover pancake on my socks.
There was only one thing to do.
Visit the neighbor, Jhing Jhing.
Ten minutes later, I was still at Jhing-Jhing’s door, nodding like a polite hostage.
She lived just a few doors away, but it felt like a journey across the Sahara. She opened the door wearing a Hello Kitty robe and mismatched slippers, her hair in an elaborate nest of curlers, a wooden spoon in one hand and a toddler clinging to her leg like a spider monkey.
“Hi Catherine!” she chirped, not even letting me speak. “I was just thinking about you, you know! I told Jun that I dreamed about you last night again, you were a jellyfish and I was a giant shrimp, and we were doing Zumba underwater, tapos—do you Zumba pa ba? You look like you lost weight, or maybe it's just the pajamas…”
I smiled politely. Nodded.
Did not understand a word.
“Uh… Jhing,” I interrupted finally, after ten minutes of shrimp dreams and telenovela spoilers, “do you have… a phone charger I could borrow?”
“Oh! Yes yes yes. I think Ivy put it in the rice bin. Hold on!” she disappeared into her kitchen like a pink hurricane.
When I finally returned home, triumphant, my phone plugged into the rice-dusted charger, I felt like a soldier bringing fire to the cavemen.
I stared at the charging phone. My hands trembled in anticipation. Finally, I could make sense of everything.
But then… No face recognition. “What on earth?”
I blinked. Tried again. Still nothing. “Of course,” I muttered. “Of course this woman couldn’t afford Face ID.”
I looked around the room. Looked down at myself. A loose shirt with a stretched neckline, boobs slightly jiggling with each movement, and a pair of overwashed pink boxers that had definitely seen better decades.
And don’t even get me started on the bra. I knew armor. I knew victoria secret. I knew corsets cursed by mad witches. But this bra? It was suffering incarnate. The underwire had been replaced with hope and prayer. One cup sagged. The other was stuffed with a baby sock.
I stared at the phone again.
"She couldn't even afford new underwear," I whispered. "What more a phone?"
I collapsed back onto the couch—well, technically a foldable mattress shaped like a donut—while My Little Pony glared at me from the still-looping DVD screen.
I slumped back onto the stained couch, the sagging cushions sighing under my weight like they, too, were exhausted by life. My back ached. My neck throbbed. My shoulders felt like I’d carried the weight of three worlds—which, in this case, might have been literal. The screaming kids, the broken charger, the dragonfly-eating neighbor, and now this damned body that creaked with every breath—it was too much.
Every bone in this too-soft, too-slow, too-foreign body screamed in betrayal. Even the air felt heavier, like I was breathing through disappointment. My knees cracked when I stood. My spine groaned like it wanted to give up.
"I was a man of war, a man of steel. And now—I'm sweaty, saggy, and someone's mother."
I clenched my fists, resisting the urge to scream as Jaya hurled a Barbie doll straight at my temple and giggled like a tiny gremlin. The doll bounced off my forehead with an insulting “thwop.”
I wanted to throw something. Instead, I looked up at the calendar on the wall.
A red circle marked today.
BB’s Bday. 08212024
I squinted.
“Jaya’s birthday?” I muttered, remembering the brief scribbles on the notes app earlier. “BB must be baby.”
Of course. Jaya. The baby girl. The one currently trying to eat a crayon in the corner.
Maybe it was the password.
Desperation pushed me. My fingers were trembling—not with fear, but with sheer burning rage at the universe. I typed it in.
Jaya’s birthday. It took me three tries. The touchscreen was cracked. The phone lagged like it was reconsidering its purpose in life.
But finally—