The Deer and the Dragon (No Other Gods #1)

by Piper C.J.

I stared down the barrel of the lesser of two evils: the flesh-and-blood disappointment of a human man, or a life trapped in my imagination with a fictional lover.

Ugh relatable

This was what normal people did, right? They went on terrible dates with ordinary humans. They didn’t see things that weren’t there. They didn’t cling to ghosts and maladaptive fantasies they’d conjured in the dark. They took their medications they went to therapy, and they learned how to distinguish what was real.

In my early twenties, I would have rushed to cover the check so that Josh wouldn’t expect anything from me. Now I expected him to procure his Amex as penance for making me watch him chew with his mouth open. It was the least he could do.

When they tell you that there are plenty of fish in the sea, they forget to mention that half of marine life is boring, scaly and a part of an identical school of thousands just like him.

When asked what had led to Pantheon’s juggernaut success, I told them that my mythology novels had something that glittery vampires of yesteryear lacked: kinky, gratuitous sex.

People were tiresome and rarely seemed solution-oriented. Why would they bother complaining about where they lived if they weren’t willing to pack a suitcase and move? What was the point of telling me how much they hated their spouse if divorce wasn’t an option?

Gandhi told us to be the change we want to see in the world. He was probably talking about kindness or charity or something, but I preferred to apply it to becoming the author I wished everyone else was.

I just needed to learn to channel the cup of imagination, containing it to its glass within my novels, not allowing it to spill out and get on my dress, drip down my inner thighs, ruin my panties, crumple my clothes to the floor, or create my outline against the wall-to-wall window overlooking the river.

“You’re not having fun” was all he’d said. I didn’t want to see the solemn expression that accompanied his words. He was so beautiful when he smiled. His crooked grins over white teeth, his snowy shock of hair, the winks he’d throw my way with bright, gray eyes that scalded me like a brand, electrifying every part of me. Tonight, I knew that looking at him would mean seeing resolute strength in the set of his jaw, that disappointment would pinch his brows, that there would be no smirk, no cavalier joking, no playful moments that would plant seeds within me, growing into a garden that blossomed only for him.

“I drink to forget the fucked-up shit I imagine at home. I don’t have friends because I just want to be here. I cancel on plans, bail on dates, rush out because there’s something better for me in the dark. I refuse to live with anyone in case you visit. I hook up with strangers to try to pound out the memory of how it feels when you…”

“The visits, the sex, whatever it is we have…it has to stop. It’s ruining my life. I’m losing my mind, Caliban—what’s left of it, anyway. My heart can’t belong to…” My voice splintered.

Alexa play Fortnight

The world would never guess that my vivid imagination—one that had proved grossly profitable as an author—had slowly eroded me from the inside out as fantasy splashed over the cup, soaking my life.

His tongue, like his eyes, was silver. I wondered how many times I’d been locked in a heated debate with my burgeoning psychosis, speaking to the empty shadows.

I felt so real. It always did. “I’m crazy,” I said, voice broken.

People like to comfort themselves by believing the scary things are out in the world. It keeps them from living. It’s often the danger out your front door that blinds you.”

Those were the reasons my heart was unavailable. It had nothing to do with my vibrant imagination, the lifelong presence that filled me in the shadows, or the tantric, unparalleled orgasms that shattered my very cells until I was one with the universe. It wasn’t that my only friend, the one who made me laugh, the one I trusted, who I shared every secret, every hope, every dream with, waited in the night. It had nothing to do with my only reprieve, my only salvation living in the shadows, visiting me in the dark, caressing me, holding me, refusing to let me go. It couldn’t be that. That would be crazy.

What a sensation to know someone well enough to hear the cadence of their silence.

Rot in prison, motherfucker. Let my pretty, smiling face grace the news beside your disgusting mugshot as they announce your place on death row. If I was going down, I’d drag him to Hell with me.

“You can’t study something while looking down your nose at it.”

She’d won the battle against my reluctance to let anyone in, and one chip at the stone of my heart at a time, she’d become my family.

I needed to drink, get laid, date, medicate, fly across the globe, to run as fast and far as I could to get away from him, and none of it had worked. Nothing, except telling him not to come back.

“Come on,” she pushed. “You write fantasy and have spent years fucking a demon, right? Shouldn’t this be an easy pill for you to swallow?”

She parted what looked like petal-soft lips and asked, “Are you fighting this because you genuinely think you’re crazy? Or are you pushing back because you don’t want to deal with the consequences of accepting that there is so much more to life than you knew?”

I tried to respond but had nothing to say. I had reached my capacity for new, earth-shattering information. I’d reached my philosophical fill.

“If someone adores you for your chaos, what’s the best way to honor that love? If they treasure your rootlessness, if they celebrate your anarchy, if they love you as you are, do you think they’d be dancing in the streets if you gave up the very essence at the core of your being that made them fall for you?”

“I am yours, and you are mine. And whether it’s in this life or the next, we will always find each other.”

“If you wouldn’t burn the world to the ground for the one you love, are you even in love?”

I used to say there was a special place in Hell for those who mistreated those who worked in service but was once again confronted with the turn of phrase. Perhaps I should start saying there was a special place on the bottom of the ocean, or in the Antarctic, or perhaps Ohio.

“The deities you call aren’t always the ones who answer.”