Page 20 of Shrapnel
The steadyclick clickfrom his mouse was only paused when his fingers flew to his keyboard and began tapping. Besides the symphony in Morse code, his apartment was quiet. The lights were dim, and he sat cross-legged in his chair, hunched over the expensive gaming computer.
“…and I’m saying that the hyper-sexualization of underage women in anime needs to be examined,” he ranted into his headset. The fuzzy mic was only inches from his lips, attached to the oversized headset wrapping around his ears. Across the staticky line, he could hear his online buddy's mouth breathing as they slaughtered a fresh round of zombies.
“You’re being too sensitive,” KiltedGinger420 sighed over the connection. “Anime has always used art to pander to their target audience. Your attempts at being woke will only hurt the industry.”
Owen nabbed a mystery box. The ghoulish ‘Insta Kill’reverberated through his headset. He reloaded the shotgun he was using and went on a streak, eyes flicking across the screen as zombie blood and gore splattered.
“I think women should be allowed to wear whatever they wa—on your left!” PearlHandledBoner shouted in his heavy Canadian accent.
“I see him,” Owen muttered, knifing the zombie in the back of the neck when his shotgun ran out of shells.
“Women wearing whatever they want isn’t the issue at hand, Bones.” Owen continued without missing a beat. “We’re not talking about women, we’re talking about underaged girls.”
“Yo, why are you hating on them titties?” a user named Frodo_T_Baggins jumped into their conversation. Owen ignored him.
“You want to get into this? Fine. Let’s take the show we were just talking about. Ignoring the fact that the girls are constantly—fuck, fuck, fuck no I got him—being saved by the boys, despite allegedly being just as powerful. Their costumes. The girls are arguably skimpier.”
“That’s a bad thing?” PearlHandledBoner asked with a chuckle, his icon lighting up just as he was swarmed by five crawling zombies.
“They’re children!”
“Technically,” KiltedGinger420 began. “The age of consent in Japan is 13.”
“Ok,” Owen felt his blood pressure rising. “Anytime you have to begin your argument with ‘technically the age of consent is...’ you’ve already lost any moral credibility, you intolerable ass pastry.”
Despite his rising irritation and the increasing levels of venom in his words, he was having a good time. It had been a while since he was able to log on and enjoy some time in the virtual world.
Owen was like a lot of guys in their early twenties. He enjoyed fast food, hanging around in his underwear, and playing video games. The flashing screens and cybernetic violence hummed under his skin, satisfying primal urges society insisted he grow out of. At four it was perfectly acceptable for him to rip off his pants and have a temper tantrum in the middle of the store because his mom refused to buy him chocolate milk but at twenty-four it was no longer ok, even though he had a lot more at twenty-four to cry about than as a toddler.
He liked to get lost in worlds. Call him a nerd, a geek, an otaku, or whatever other colloquialism that fits. It never bothered him. Owen had heard it all before. In high school, those words were thrown at him. Bullies tried to turn them into barbs. Tried to make him feel bad for something he enjoyed. Their taunts died off in the face of his ‘no shit Sherlock’ and ‘thanks captain obvious’.
As if liking these things put him on the fringe, he was constantly pulled into school counselor's offices. They would invite him to sit on the beanbags in the corner of their office as if sitting on overstuffed blobs was somehow less intimidating than just sitting in chairs like normal people. The counselors would always wear that smile—the kind of smile that stretched just a titch too wide. The skin around their mouths stretched painfully tight and their eyes sparkled with fake mirth. Owen always stared at their teeth. He could always tell their age based on the straightness of their teeth. Orthodontal care had a solid generation gap.
With their mask in place, they’d lean forward, caked lashes quivering under too much drugstore mascara while they gestured to his shirt. Or the keychains hanging from his bag. They always wanted to know why he liked anime. Why he preferredLord of the RingsorFireflyto whatever the ‘normal’ kids liked. He wasn’t sure why hisFull Metal Alchemistshirt was more alarming than the cult-like obsession withTwilight. There were teenage girls wearing turtlenecks in the peak of summer so that they could keep their skin pale, but he was the one on the counselor’s radar.
They always wanted a reason, too. A twisted backstory that made him run to his room and tuck himself into make-believe worlds in an attempt to escape.
Owen always enjoyed bursting their bubble.
He had a boring childhood—his mom was a nurse and his dad was an insurance adjuster. His little sister annoyed the hell out of him and loved to steal his hoodies, but she was his best friend and they texted memes to each other almost daily. Owen grew up in a suburb, had an acceptable number of friends, he played basketball until he stopped growing at 5’9” and decided video games were more fun.
There was nothing salacious in his interests. Owen was just a nerd.
And a good one, at that.
Computers came easily to him. He enjoyed the black and white, the simple complexity, and endless possibilities. His parents had been thrilled when he told them he wanted to make a career out of his hobbies. IT was safe. A solid career that would provide for him well into his retirement.
But obtaining that safe lifestyle was easier said than done. He watched his parents struggle to scrape and save for his tuition. His mom took extra night shifts and stopped going to brunch with her friends. Owen got a part-time job at a computer repair shop, but it wasn’t enough.
That’s where the Weavers came in.
He had been unsticking what looked suspiciously like mayonnaise from a MAC’s space bar when the bell over the front door rang. He glanced up to see a skinny guy with a wide smile approaching the counter.
Before Owen could even greet him, he dropped a battered-looking laptop on the counter. There was a knife embedded into the cracked screen, its blade slick with what looked like blood.
“Can you fix this?” The guy with the wide smile asked. “I think it might have some water damage.”
Jamie had come into his life like a splinter under his fingernail and the next four years had been lucrative, but terrifying. The good news is that he was able to graduate debt free with a tidy sum tucked away in his savings. The bad news is that he had lost ten years of his life due to sheer unadulterated terror.