Saturday afternoons were sacred.
Not because of religion. Because of ritual—the kind only teenage boys with big feelings and no social lives could uphold properly.
August and Alex had a schedule. A code. A system.
• 12:00 PM — snacks (two salty, one sweet minimum)
• 12:10 PM — mock whoever showed up late
• 12:30 PM — movies, books, weird YouTube rabbit holes
• 2:00 PM — begin unplanned existential spiral
• 3:00 PM — discuss aliens, alternate dimensions, and if cereal counts as soup
Today, they'd skipped straight to spiral.
"You ever think maybe books are alive?" Alex asked, lying sideways across the floor with a bag of pretzels on his chest. "Like, they know when you're ignoring them."
August sat cross-legged nearby, flipping through his old sketchbook. "If that's true, then mine hates me. I haven't touched my old ones in years."
"Tragic," Alex said, placing a single pretzel over his eye like a monocle. "A forgotten god. Trapped. Waiting."
"Why are you like this?"
"Lack of supervision."
They laughed.
August leaned back on his elbows, staring at the ceiling. Alex's room smelled like citrus cleaner and carpet. A candle was burning on the dresser labeled "Mystic Canyon" for reasons no one fully understood.
"I reread something the other day," August said. "One of my old stories. You remember Arthur?"
Alex blinked. "Tall, depressing, had a sword, looked like he needed therapy and a nap?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Of course I remember Arthur. Dude was like if Batman and poetry had a baby and then abandoned it in a haunted forest."
August grinned. "That's… disturbingly accurate."
"You were obsessed with him for, like, a year," Alex said, sitting up. "You made that whole ten-chapter arc. All dramatic and vague. You were twelve, talking about 'redemption' and 'the morality of violence.'"
"I was in my feelings, okay?"
"I support it. It was peak middle school emo energy. Respect."
They both sat in silence for a minute.
Then August said, quieter, "Something about it still gets to me, though. Like I forgot why I wrote it, but it won't leave me alone."
Alex tossed a pretzel at him. "Then write it again."
August caught it. "What if it sucks?"
"Then it sucks. But at least it's your suck."
"…inspirational."
They fell into a lull. The kind of comfortable silence you could only share with someone who'd seen you cry over a badly drawn comic strip at age ten.
Outside, the wind moved through the trees. Leaves rustled. But it was quiet.
No birds again.
August frowned a little.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
"Hear what?"
August shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."
He flipped to the next page in the sketchbook.
Arthur was already there.
Waiting.
So," Alex said, tossing another pretzel in the air and missing his mouth completely, "what was the story again? Like, the plot. I remember Arthur was sad and dangerous and wore a lot of black. But the rest?"
August leaned back against the wall, thinking. "I don't remember all of it. Just bits."
"Humor me."
"…Alright. He was a soldier. Not, like, military—but more of a one-man apocalypse. He hunted these things called the Lost."
Alex perked up. "Ooh, cool name. What were they?"
August hesitated. "They used to be people. But when someone died wrong—like, no closure, or in pain—they'd come back broken. Wrong. Just… stuck."
Alex sat up straighter, face more serious now. "And Arthur hunted them?"
"Yeah. All of them. No matter who they used to be."
"Damn."
August flipped through the sketchbook, stopping on a rough panel he barely remembered drawing. Arthur in profile. Sword down. Covered in black marks. Almost crying.
"He wasn't a hero," August murmured. "Just the one left to clean up what everyone else abandoned."
Alex was quiet for a while.
Then: "Did he survive at the end?"
August didn't answer.
Instead, he looked at the drawing. The scar. The posture. The weight.
"I think I killed him," he said quietly. "I think I wrote him dying. I don't remember how… but I remember crying while I did it."
Alex nodded slowly, unusually serious. "You ever wonder why?"
"Why I killed him?"
"Why he felt real enough to kill in the first place."
August blinked. That did feel weird. He'd made dozens of characters growing up—some goofy, some serious—but none of them stuck like Arthur. None of them haunted.
He stared at the sketch again. Something tugged at the back of his brain. Like a memory with no picture.
"…I used to talk to him," he admitted, tone sheepish.
"Dude. I talk to my shampoo bottles when I'm tired. You're fine."
"No, like—actually talk. I'd come home from school and open my sketchbook like it was a phone call. Tell him how my day was. Ask him stuff."
Alex didn't laugh. He looked at August for a long second, then said, "Maybe he was listening."
August looked back down. Arthur's eyes on the page looked sharper now. Focused.
He suddenly felt cold.
"Anyway," August muttered, trying to shrug it off, "it's dumb. I was just a lonely kid with a hero complex."
Alex smirked. "Still are."
"Rude."
"Correct."
They laughed, but it was a little thinner now. Like the room knew something they didn't.
Outside, the shadows were starting to stretch.
And for the third time that day, August realized—
Still no birds.
They played video games after that.
Nothing fancy. Just two rounds of some chaotic fighter game where the characters wore too many belts and screamed every time they punched. Alex won the first match by spamming kicks. August won the second by pretending not to care until the last ten seconds, then emotionally manipulating the victory out of him.
"You're disgusting," Alex said, slouched dramatically across the beanbag.
"You're predictable," August replied, sipping lukewarm juice from a chipped mug that said #1 Mom. It was the only clean cup left.
They were back to normal. Back to dumb jokes and nonsense chatter. But under it, something buzzed. Like tension in a movie before the monster shows up.
August opened his sketchbook again as Alex scrolled through his phone.
Arthur hadn't moved, obviously.
But the expression looked different.
He squinted. The lines hadn't changed. It was the feeling that had. Like Arthur was staring at him now. Not the viewer. Him.
"Okay," August whispered. "Weird."
He flipped the page.
Blank.
Then another. Blank.
Then another. Still blank.
He flipped faster, fingers jittery.
Every page after Arthur's drawing was empty. Clean. White. As if he'd never drawn anything else in the book.
"…Alex?"
"Mm?"
"Did you touch my sketchbook?"
Alex looked over. "What? No. I know better. That's, like, sacred ground. Why?"
August stared at the paper. His mind ran through possibilities. Sleep drawing? Memory lapse? Printer paper conspiracy?
But no. He remembered those drawings. Creatures. Cities. That creepy vending machine he swore had teeth.
Gone.
All gone.
Arthur was the last thing left.
August closed the book. His chest felt tight.
"Maybe I'm just tired," he muttered.
"You are tired," Alex said, yawning. "You're always tired. You're like a walking dream sequence."
They laughed again, but it felt hollow this time.
August stayed quiet on the ride home. Alex offered him a ride instead of the bus, which was great, because August wasn't in the mood to sit next to someone playing TikToks out loud at full volume again.
At home, the lights felt too bright. The house too quiet.
Reece was already asleep. Kira was out with friends. His mom was in the shower, music faint behind the bathroom door.
August stood in the kitchen, staring at the fridge for no reason.
Then he opened his sketchbook one more time.
Arthur.
Still there.
Same look.
Same silence.
"…You're just a story," August whispered.
But it didn't feel true.
Not anymore.