Evan Mercer - Looking for a Shortcut

Evan Mercer had rehearsed the visit a dozen times before he actually did it.

In every version, he sounded confident. Casual. Like the kind of guy who wandered into strange little shops on Thirty-Fourth and Vine all the time. In reality, he stood outside Madame Ruth's door for almost five minutes, pretending to scroll his phone while his heart thudded too loudly in his chest.

Reddit had assured him she was legit.

Well. Reddit, and one deeply upvoted comment that read: She doesn't give you what you want. She gives you what works.

That felt... close enough.

He went inside.

The bell chimed. Madame Ruth looked up from her counter and smiled at him, her gold-capped tooth flashing in the lamplight. She didn't ask what he wanted. She just waited, patient as gravity.

There was a girl in his psychology class. Third row, aisle seat. He thought her name was Tamara. Or maybe Tanya. Something with a T. He'd never heard anyone say it out loud, and he'd never worked up the nerve to ask.

She wore oversized sweaters and sat with her legs tucked up under the desk. When she spoke (rarely) it was like she'd been holding the thought back for a long time, polishing it. Evan had memorised the back of her head. The curve of her neck when she leaned forward to write.

He told Madame Ruth all of this. Too fast. Too earnestly.

"I just need a little help," he finished. "A shortcut."

Madame Ruth nodded slowly, as if he'd confirmed something she already knew.

"I have something," she said, "but you should understand. It's potent. Permanent. And unpredictable."

Evan swallowed.

"It doesn't make people do what you want," she continued. "But shortcut is a good word for what it does. A shortcut to a possibility. A realization of what could have been, or could become. Like water circling the drain, pulled by the gravity all around."

That sounded wise. Confusing, but wise.

"And in the end," she added lightly, "everyone gets what they need."

Not what they want. She didn't say that part out loud.

He paid without haggling.

She took a bottle down from the shelf, not the glowing one he'd noticed earlier, but she placed that nearby anyway, like punctuation. Then she reached up, plucked a single hair from his head before he could flinch, and dropped it into a glass dish. She added a few careful drops from another vial, murmured something under her breath, and poured the mixture into a sleek metal container, professional-looking and cold in his hand.

"Mix it into a drink," she said. "One dose."

He nodded, already half sick with nerves.

As he stepped back onto the street, the guilt hit him all at once. The word he'd been avoiding rose up, ugly and undeniable. He told himself he wasn't like that. That this was fate, or chemistry, or courage with a little help.

He was crazy about her!

That had to count for something.

His dad was still at work when he got home. The house smelled like garlic and onions from something simmering on the stove. Stacy, his stepmother, stood at the counter, back to him, chopping vegetables with neat, efficient strokes.

Stacy was eight years older than Evan. Which meant she was closer to being his peer than his parent, something he tried very hard not to think about. She was too polished, too intentional; yoga-tight jeans, soft sweater, hair pulled up in a way that looked effortless and definitely wasn't. An incredibly beautiful woman, she belonged in a magazine, not in his kitchen. Evan considered her a walking embodiment of his dad's midlife crisis.

Still. He wasn't blind.

He dropped his backpack by the door.

The metal container rolled out onto the tile with a soft clink.

Stacy turned. "What’s that?"

His stomach dropped.

"Nothing," Evan said too quickly. Then, flailing, "I mean... it's just this new water sweetener. Like flavour drops."

She raised an eyebrow. Curious now. Amused.

"Really?" she said. "That fancy?"

"Yeah," he said weakly. "It's... concentrated."

She picked it up before he could stop her, unscrewed the lid, and sniffed. Then, in classic Stacy style, not asking permission but taking what she wanted, she shrugged, poured it into her glass of water, and drank.

"Wait..." Evan said, too late.

She grimaced slightly. "That tastes strange," she said. Then shrugged again. "Not bad, though."

She set the glass down and went back to chopping, completely unconcerned.

Evan stared at her.

At her hands. Her neck. The casual confidence with which she moved through the kitchen like it belonged to her.

Nothing happened.

No shimmer. No sudden confession. No cinematic cue.

Just the knife on the cutting board. The hum of the fridge. His own pulse roaring in his ears.

He stood there, frozen, with the awful, electric certainty that something was happening, not explosively, not visibly, but inevitably.

And he had absolutely no idea what was about to change.