Cheech and I went to Lambert’s. It’s a restaurant out near Branson. Your meal is brought to you in a large steel pan. The meal itself is refillable. If you eat your entire pork steak, they will bring you another. Every meal comes with two sides. They walk around with extras, fried okra, fried potatoes. Sorghum. Sorghum is a glob of sweetener that you can smear on the great event.
They throw rolls at you. Guy comes around with a rolling cart with large rolls hot from the oven, and you lift a hand, and from across the restaurant they will toss it to you. It’s a pretty intense, very fattening, awesome place to eat and everyone that comes to Branson hears about it. They serve every imaginable country style food there, and you wash it all down with a massive soda.
Cheech used to work there. He spent his entire career at Lambert’s filling sodas. Evidently, it’s a chore. He hated the place, but when he was working there, he always promised himself he would come back every now and then as a customer, so he could make all his ex-coworkers serve him. He hated them all.
I got the pork steak. He got a salad they served him in a bowl of bread. He and I were more than friends at this point. He was the only thing holding me together. Bekah and I had broken up. Sapphire was hunting me down. Draconic would show up every now and then just to boil with me. Everything was falling apart, my grades were slipping, and Cheech was just trying to find a way to keep me from locking myself in my room and wasting away to nothing.
When dinner ended, he knew I was headed back to my dark room to try to figure out what the hell was going on with my mind, and he wanted to keep me out just a little longer. We stopped at Sam’s Club and he started buying in bulk.
He got Yoo-Hoo, a few massive packs of soda, cakes, a few different kinds of crackers and jerkies. He bought all of this with his father’s credit card. And he talked the entire time.
“God, we have to watch my favorite movie. I bought it and I have to see it again.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There is no movie better.”
“Uh huh.”
“You’re watching it with me.”
“I got plans.”
“Bullshit, man!” he snapped. “That is just bullshit. You are just going to go to that room and dodge everyone’s calls. You’re going to find nothing in those covers and you are going to burn. I’m fucking sick of it, dude. You’re watching the movie, you’re gonna stay up late with me, and we are going to work this out.”
“Whatever, can we get out of here?”
“Saw this chick the other day in poly sci, and she looked at me and grinned. She is really hot, black hair, pale skin. Dude, she kept looking at me. Every time I turned to look at her she was staring at me. You gotta meet her. Maybe she has a friend.”
“Too many girls, man. Too much wild shit going on in my head. I think I need to get some pills.”
“I’m telling you, man, you need to smoke up with me,” he said. “I got some good stuff, and we don’t have to smoke it in my room. We can go on a walk around campus if you want. Find a shadow between two buildings, and you can get high and get away in a safe place.”
He was loading all his shit in his Monte Carlo. The trunk was as big as Bekah’s entire car, and he had plenty to fill it.
“Getting high is the ‘safe way’ to get rid of my problems?”
“Yeah,” Cheech said. “Get you out of your fucked up mind for a while and maybe you can get some perspective. I’m tired of worrying about you.”
In the boat of a car, and we are sailing through the streets of Springfield. It’s a town I was learning to hate. It seems like a prison, a place where there is nowhere to run to. St. Robert is over an hour away, and that was the last place I felt sane. At that moment, when he was doing 65 in a 40, I just wanted to tell him to take me home. Walk away from all of it and say fuck it.
“Maybe Bekah can find me there,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Man, I gotta make a stop.”
“I’ll wait in the car.”
“No, you are coming up with me,” Cheech said. “I got this friend of mine and she needs Cheetos to exist. I bought her like a ton of them and we are just going to drop them off. I haven’t seen her in a while and I need to check up on her.”
“Why?”
“Her boyfriend is a douche. She tried to break up with him a few times, but they just keep falling back into bed with one another.”
“You want to fuck her?”
“No,” he said. “No, fuck that. I’m looking at the poly sci chick. No, she is just from the same small town as me and we are just friends. She only dates assholes anyway. She is hopeless. She called the other day crying. She didn’t say much, just that she wanted to hear a friendly voice, so I am stopping by to surprise her. Might take her out to fuck around. Just ride and talk.”
We pulled into the parking lot of a cheap apartment building and he jumped out of the car. The trunk screamed on its hinges as it opened. He came around to the passenger side, knocked on the door with his elbow. I rolled down the window.
“Come on,” he said.
“I’ll wait in the car.”
“Absolutely not. Just get out and help me with these bags. I can’t manage this armload as it is, and I have two more bags in the car. Come on.”
I looked at him through the window.
“You’re doing this. She is cool and she needs a friend.”
I saw him then as if for the first time. Cheech was a healer. He found people in trouble and did his best to hold them together and help them through the bad parts.
I swung the huge heavy car door open and slammed it shut. Grabbed a bag of Cheetos from him, and the last two in the car, and up we went to the second floor of the apartment building.
He kicked the door when he got there, and I heard a tiny scream of surprise on the other side of the door.
“She’s scared,” Guardian said.
“She’s just jumpy, her dad was an ass. Now shut up.”
She opened the door and he shoved his way in. I followed. She watched us from the door, reluctant to shut it behind us.
“Got you about nineteen thousand Cheetos to hold you over through the fucking weekend.” He dropped it all on her small dining room table and looked at her. I set mine down, looked at her stash of seven giant bags of Cheetos. Then I turned around and saw her for the first time. Got a good look at her for the first time. I knew what I was looking at.
She was petite, clean hair, smudged eyeliner, red face just a little bit swollen. She had a cigarette in her hand and her hand was shaking a little. Cheech walked over, hugged her, and she couldn’t look him in the eye.
“This is a friend of mine, when he is out of his cave. His name is Jesse.”
She lifted her cigarette hand in the air but barely looked at me. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the floor. She started crying.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m sure it is nothing a bathtub full of Cheetos can’t fix.”
“You guys have to go,” she said. “You can’t be here.”
Guys were talking outside the door and getting closer.
“Cheech, get over here,” I said to him. He looked at me and the door burst open.
He jumped and her boyfriend walked in.
He was about four inches bigger than me. Had wide shoulders and it looked like he had played football in high school. He had a bit of a belly on him, but he was still in shape. From the way he moved, Guardian knew this guy could fight. Behind him through the door came a monstrous bear of a man with arms the size of a side of beef and hands the size of a boxing glove. His hair was buzzed high, and he walked in and dropped into an overstuffed chair.
“Who the fuck is this?” the first guy said. I knew this was her man by the way his eyes swept the room and the way he walked close to her as he came in the door. But now I was sure.
“They were just leaving. Cheech is just a friend.” Her voice was making all the whining, urgent sounds that set Guardian’s teeth on edge.
“They are leaving cuz you are done blowing them.” He stared at me for a while and Guardian looked right back. “You fuck my girlfriend, mutha fucker? Is that what you did to this little skank?”
His enormous friend laughed.
Cheech looked at me. Terror scarred his face and I stepped in front of him.
“First the whore,” he said, pointing at his girlfriend. “Then I will work on both of you.”
Guardian watched as the man grabbed her by the forearm, shoved her across the room. She landed on the couch and he stomped toward her.
The big guy was watching his friend, and both of my knives appeared in my hand.
Cheech grabbed me. “No goddammit, no blades.”
Guardian heard the first hit. And he turned. The boyfriend had punched her in the stomach. She bent over and dropped to the couch. She curled up and he grabbed her by the hair.
Guardian was gone. He was there one minute, gone the next.
Ronin saw the closed fist and he was moving.
He threw a look at the giant on the La-Z-Boy, and that guy looked at him. Ronin judged the distance and the guy’s weight. He could see the massive man had not even started to get up yet, so he had plenty of time.
She was hit one time and the fist raised again.
Ronin grabbed the fist and the wrist.
He moved on to the elbow.
Still holding onto the bicep, Ronin put his back to the boyfriend’s flank and savagely pulled down.
Before the guy could fall, Ronin kicked the knee and the guy dropped to the ground.
Then the boyfriend started screaming. It had all happened so fast that it was over before the pain hit him.
Ronin had been born in a bar in Allenton when he was twelve years old. We had seen four men about to rape a girl, and with two knives, Ronin had ended it.
Ronin was extreme. He was not afraid of what he was capable of doing, and as the boyfriend dropped to the floor, Ronin slowly turned to place a look on the big guy.
He shoved himself to his feet fast and made for the door. He was so big, and moving so fast, that the chair tipped on its side. He struggled with the lock on the door for a moment, then the giant was gone.
“Close the door,” Ronin said to Cheech.
He looked down at the man screaming on the ground.
“Cheech, door!” Ronin snapped, and Cheech slammed the door closed. He locked it and looked for more locks.
Ronin looked at his work for a moment before leaving.
Broken wrist, broken arm, arm out of socket, knee folded in half. The entire right side of this man was destroyed. Likely he would never fully recover.
Ronin shifted away.
Cheech was talking, but over the sounds of the guy’s screams, Guardian couldn’t hear what was being said. Guardian placed his boot on the guy’s chest and leaned forward.
The boyfriend looked up from the floor and gasped for air.
“Stop screaming,” Guardian said, pressing more weight on the boyfriend’s chest. “Stop screaming or I rip your throat out. The screaming stops right now.”
The screams turned to grunts, then whimpers.
Guardian looked at the girl. Her hair was mussed, her face red, her lip bleeding.
“Cheech, call 911. Tell them there is a man down and where.” Guardian looked at Cheech. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open. “Cheech, hey, Cheech. Call 911.”
Guardian scanned the room, seeing the overturned chair, and he set it straight. “Ma’am, will you please go eat some Cheetos?”
She stared down at her boyfriend and Guardian gave her his hand. “Cheetos, please.” He lifted her to her feet, helped her stumble over her boyfriend. She walked to the table, opened a bag of Cheetos, and stared at it.
“Dude, we gotta go.”
“When you do this to a man, you stay to make sure he is alright,” Guardian said.
Cheech looked at her and nodded. He dropped into the chair, his head in his hands.
The EMTs arrived. They were the first ones on the scene. They walked in, looked at what Ronin had done to that man, and looked up at us. “What happened here?” the woman asked.
“He fell down the stairs,” Guardian said.
“He fell down the stairs and you guys carried him here?” she asked.
Guardian pointed at him. “He fell down the stairs and landed here.”
“He landed here?” the other EMT asked. He was so confused.
Guardian turned and pointed at Cheech’s friend. The EMTs looked at her, saw her staring, shocked, with a Cheeto in her hand, and blood trickling from her mouth.
They looked up at Guardian. “He fell and landed right here.”
They looked at each other, then back at her. “Oh,” one said.
“Took a nasty fall,” the other added.
“He did,” Guardian said.
In the distance, we heard sirens.
“Well, I think you guys are done here,” the female EMT said. “I think we have it from here. You guys have a good night.”
I extended my hand to Cheech’s friend and she took it, Cheetos still in her grip. We passed the cops on the way to Cheech’s car.
When we got to his car, he was shaking so bad he couldn’t get the key in the ignition. Guardian took the keys from him and slid them home. “When you’re ready,” Guardian said.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Cheech said. “Holy fuck!”
“The cops are going to start searching the area,” Guardian said.
Cheech started the engine.
“Do not peel out.”
We drove. We drove for a long time in silence. Then we drove with both of them talking at the same time. We stopped at Walmart and just walked the aisles for hours. The sun was coming up when we dropped her off and went back to the dorm.
“Tell no one,” Guardian said when we reached Cheech’s door.
“Dude, that was so fast. It was so fast, less than ten seconds. I’ve never seen anything like that,” Cheech said. He looked exhausted. The walking, the emotion was crashing in on him.
“If she comes looking for me, don’t tell her where I am,” Guardian said. “Say it.”
“Don’t know where you live, got it.”
She did come by. She came by Cheech’s dorm three times looking for me. She waited outside for a few days, but never saw me.
Her ex-boyfriend most likely limps to this day. His entire right side is crippled, I would imagine. I try to feel sorry for him.
I don’t.
For more about the series Reality of the Unreal Mind, visit Amazon.
Jesse Teller 
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