After drugs after drugs after drugs and losing friends after friends after friends Jake returned home coherent. He filmed a video for his channel. His Youtube channel was a pastime of his. Youtube was an website in the 21st century where someone could film and upload a video of themselves online. Then engage with their audience and grow a fanbase or a “fandum” centered around their quirky content and personality. Some people had millions of fans on this site. But Jake had very few.

Jake made basic white girl vlogger content. Some speedpaints that he’s done. He had been on the site since he was about 11 years old. His original accounts of him with his long hair in a pony tail. Him talking to the camera and directing his fellow kids on what to do and what to say. These days it was a solo operation.

He’d been texting his friends online. However incoherent. They stopped responding. They all stopped responding. Maika visited with him in the hospital. But outside of that and after that, they all disappeared. Maika included. At a con which is short for convention he met up with Cooks. Conventions in this time period were kind of like giant meet ups, with panels on topics for all nerdy habits. In between the panels people would show up in costumes, and nerd out. 

Cooks was awkward. But the message was clear when they briefly saw each other. “I don’t want to be friends, with a crazy” or “I don’t want to be friends with someone who shows symptoms” despite swearing time and time again they’d always be there despite this. Jake had a tendency to rewind responses. Over and over again. He remembers the last night he saw Maika. He had invited him over. It was a sleepover and Maika was on a rush to get to work. Maika had taken him back briefly after he got better. At least he thought he did. He thought it was just “work”. Work that kept his friend’s minds busy. Work that kept his friend away.

That night at Jake’s house Maika slept. Jake began to have romantic fantasies and that was the last of it. Jake still frequently thinks about Maika. How his one true friend was ghosting him.  Ghosting being slang for leaving you on read, leaving you without a proper goodbye, just reading and not responding to your messages. Maika knew Jake was troubled when people did this sort of thing. Maika knew Jake had people leave his life tragically with no goodbye, no letter- no note. Jake’s father had even killed himself this way. But Maika did not feel empathy. So Maika didn’t respond.Jake just couldn't get over it. 

Today Jake would be attending church with his mother’s boyfriends assistance. His country despite a formal separation of church and state was a very Christian one. His mother was Jewish like Maika’s family. The boyfriend was Catholic. Some kind of gathering every Sunday that his mom often attended. Jake believed every religion was equally real. The term for this was “omnious”. His mom didn’t think he was fit to be on his feet again but after loosing Maika? He felt the need for ANY sort of community. 

Jake’s the kind of person who’d let the Latter Day Saints in for Coffee. If only they’d drink coffee. Hell Jake was the kind of person who the Mormon’s could recruit do to polite politics alone. Once Jake was at a convention and one of those salespeople had gotten their hands on him and he ended up paying 15$ for a copy of some budhist book he ended up later turning into a booksafe. He felt bad about it later on, growing to respect religion, but at the time? Felt pretty good to be cutting up doctrine.

Jake sighed. Eventually Jake found himself on what is known as “the left handed path”. A path of magic and ascension. Jake easily became a magician from his time spent trying and somewhat succeeding to sell his soul. He started attending a local bar in Sandy Springs that was quite a drive and very far away from him, known for its art hostings as well its wide array of video games. Battle Brew as they called it. But despite all of this one thing became clear Jake Caloway soon was alone. 

The loneliest I think I’ve ever seen a man. He soon believed himself to be dying of not just a broken heart but a sad one, an lonely one. He could feel it. So that is why he went to the bar. He went to the bar to talk to people. Living at home with his distant mother wasn’t enough to cure him of his pains. No matter what anyone told him, he was determined not to be afraid to go to places alone.

Soon though Jake began to “evoke” gods. He did this by drawing a circle made of chalk, a triangle made of chalk within it. An symbol on a piece of paper known as a “sigil” where he would meditate and claim “so and so I evoke you” through this methodology he got to know the norse god Woden with whom he previously had shared delusions we mostly have omitted in the story thus far.  But we omit them because they are unimportant and just know that they happened. Soon Jake began attending bar crawls. An easy way to spend his time. He still remembers his first one shortly before all the insanity.

“C’mon we’re gona be late.” 

“It’s gods and goddesses night.” Jake whined.

 “You're not going as a god?” Maika asked. 

“Nope!” Jake said sure of himself. 

“Don’t wanna offend anyone.” 

“I was going to go as Hermes but something told me not to. So instead I opted for Loki.” Maika said. Maika showed off his fur pelt and his larp gear. 

“Gods, you love norse mythology.” 

“And you love Greek so I’m hardly the loser here!” Maika laughed. 

“C’mon now our lyft is here.” they finally arrived at the bar. Maika hopped off and was given a green wrist band to signify he was underage and that he couldn't drink. 

Jake was given no such treatment. Along the way they were outside on the patio. Chatting people up as cigarettes lit flames. Jake tried his hardest to talk to everyone. But Maika got wrapped up in his own little bubble of conversation that as always Jake was excluded from. 

“So who are you?” Jake asked the woman in fur pelts. Her costume was much more elaborate than everyone else's. 

“Frig the real one.” Jake’s mouth hung open a little. 

“What?” 

“I’m Frig.” she repeated. Jake admired her costume. Then one thought hit him. It wasn’t a costume. Soon an eager boy went around asking everyone what god they were. Soon he came upon Jake.
“So what god are you?” 

“Oh I’m just Jake…” 

“Quetzalcoatl?” 

“Uhh-” 

“Waygle?” 

“Uhh-”

 “Odin?”

 “She’s human.” Frig said putting an end to the train of thought patting Jake on the back. 

“Trust me. She’s human.”

 “Well actually I’m-” Jake tried to correct on the gender front.

“Human.” Frig repeated. Soon the memory fades. Jake made his way into the car. Nothing came of the church gathering. Sometimes he hopes that he’ll get snippets of wisdom from the church whenever he attends. But he never does. It’s always, preaching to the quire, and civil praise of the lord, it’s never lessons like what he was taught in synagogue and that’s always what he “wanted” from church. A few days past and Jake falls into dream land.

Jake’s on an island. A large chess piece, the queen is front and center. He’s in the water. He swam towards it, the island. But the current of the ocean pulled him further back. Red lighting engulfs the queen, and it begins to fall into the sand sinking, going under collapsing into it. Jake panics needing it for some reason. It holds the key. The key to his forgotten past. But he cannot grasp why. Light shines above him. A holy voice moves through him; he sees golden eyes. And  they move behind his- he wakes up.

Jake composed himself falling out of bed. He checked his phone. God, it was five in the morning. He really had to check his sleeping schedule. It was all messed up. He collected himself trying to fall back asleep to no avail. Finally he decided to go to his computer room and browse the internet. Computer rooms were an outdated thing of the past, but his family being lower middle class in modern day America relied heavily on one desktop for the whole family. Once online he was favorited among a certain online forum, for people trying to become more than human. Jake thought the efforts pointless, but he spent more time there then he would willingly admit. 

After an hour or two it was finally seven o clock and his mother who was just starting to work from home would begin her day to his relief, -finally someone to talk to. Jake had slowly been making new friends. But the hole Maika left in his heart could not be replaced. Should not be replaced and wouldn't be replaced. He refused to let himself get that close to another human being again. He often obsessed over losing Maika, and when he described his relationship to his friend to the others he knew, they often got angry, sometimes with the fact that Jake loved someone so bitter, but often times at how Maika treated Jake in retrospect often viewing him as abusive.

Jake never saw it that way. Honestly Jake loved Maika despite his leaving. If there had to be one person in Jake’s life that he would take a bullet for Maika Abend would be it. Maika however would never take the risk for Jake though let’s not confuse players here. But Jake adored him. Jake loved him and while it had 5 years since the hospital, since his insanity, since going crazy, since loosing Maika, there had been many nights, where Jake’s mind drifted towards that friend he had lost.

 Maybe it was that he was alone, and for a long time Maika was his only friend. After all he lost, Janet, Troya, Lauran the whole batch of them. Now the friends he was making- he was making through a screen. But the friends he did have, given the stories he told strongly thought that Jake and Maika’s relationship was unhealthy, and Jake Caloway refused to see it that way.

Jake had made his nightstand into a makeshift altar. On it were several loose strands of sandalwood incense, a magical notebook full of sigils for everyone from Thor to Enkidu, and lastly a lighter for said incense. It wasn’t the nicest set up as Loki told him “needs more snake idols” but it was his set up, and it worked for what it was. 

After saying hello to his mother, Jake noticed it had been a while since he talked to Hermes. A flashback played in his mind. He was at the mirror, slightly insane. Hermes was before him in the reflection. Ginger curls, greek tunic, winged sandals, though it was cut off by the knee. Jake had the air conditioner on so his sister wouldn't hear him talking to himself via the invocation. Hermes and him began talking.

“I want you to take me traveling. When you die. After it all.” Hermes said bluntly outreaching his arm as if to take Jake by it. But it was just a reflection so Jake knew the gesture purely symbolic. 

“Why?”

“You showed me your inner darkness remember?” Hermes pondered.

“I remember.”

“I liked it.” Hermes said with a smirk.

“So you want me to-”

“When you die. You travel. As a god- and I want you to take me with you next time around.”

Jake was flustered, he had been having delusions that he was something more than this, and Hermes seems to have fallen into that trap with him. Maika he had told, but never bought it. He once told Maika he was a “prince” a title bestowed upon him astrally. Maika laughed looking down at the thought.

“So will you?” Hermes asked, snapping Jake out of his mind and back to reality. Jake thought for a moment. He looked at Hermes, his patron god, whom he had come to love, who he had shown in desperation his true form, his true darkness that he keeps buried, the secrets of his universe, whether delusion or reality, the secrets he tries so hard to hide, underneath the mask of fool, mortal, and harmless naivety, the mask that Jake tried so hard to build up and the mask that eventually lost him Maika as a friend and he said

“Sure. I’ll take you traveling.” 

“You mean it?” 

“Of course I do.”

The two men shared a gaze, and a moment before Jake told the god goodbye, and then the memory fades. Back when Jake was crazy he had a few revelations about himself. One, he wasn’t human. Two, he was a god incarnate that was long forgotten, a god that was punished somehow or some way, and becoming human was the result of that, and three, the world was ending and he had to stop it.

Now whether or not these things were true is arbitrary in a sense. Atleast at this point so far. Because at the time Jake Caloway truly and utterly believed with his whole heart and soul that they were. But as he got “better” and was put on the right meds, he soon quickly and strongly abandoned all his spiritual beliefs. The ones where he would “talk to god” the ones where he “was more than human”. Even if these things were true, and many of them were, he tried not to think about them. Getting back to faith despite having it ripped apart via delusion and back again, was truly a process, and it was one that as we read he is currently undergoing.

So as a part of this process he talked to Hermes, the Greek messenger god. The god of messengers, travelers, theifs, merchants, orators. He lit some incense and met him at his altar. Hermes showed up in his usual form. Ginger Curls, blue eyes, tan skin. He confirmed to Jake all his delusions were truthful and confirmed again to what he had promised him. “That when you die you’ll take me traveling.”

“Yeah. I promised you that I’m not backing out.”

Jake held for a breath. Jake had been warned, recently in fact that he would die soon. Over and over again. Warned by character after character, in vision after vision, in demon after demon, he was even told by Archangel Michael that he would die as a sacrifice for God, but since when was the last time did he trust such angels?

Jake still didn’t know if he believed these things. If he believed what was in front of him even. What he did know was that he was sane now, and he had a world to explore magically. Whether that meant, as a god, as an aspect of anyone or anything, or as himself, he was yet to know. He said goodbye to Hermes and took a shower.