A lavender cloud of incense drifted diagonally across the exposed brick like something summoned during a séance for unresolved trauma.
Juan twirled in a slow circle, palms out, barefoot on the hardwood. “It’s amazing what a room does without negative energy clogging up the chakra ducts.”
Tristan was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Darcy and Cole, who were still zip-tied and gagged like failed escape artists.
“I miss him,” Tristan murmured, staring wistfully at the sealed fireplace.
“Who? Omar?” Juan asked.
“There was something about him. A gravitas. Like he’d seen things. Real things. Pain.”
Juan nodded solemnly. “And fear. Like a man who once had to flee in the middle of the night with just his passport and a moka pot.”
“Exactly,” Tristan whispered. “His eyes said I have been broken, and yet I remain whole.”
“Not sexual,” Juan clarified, raising a finger.
“No, no. Paternal. Surrogate daddy-ish.”
“Absolutely. Though—if you two were to run off …”
“Run off?” Tristan said, baffled, “Why are you even going there?”
“I saw the way you were leering at him, Tristan!”
“Juan,” Tristan gently chided, “this is you—projecting again.”
“Oh, is that who this is? Or maybe this is just someone who is not ready to lose someone else to some sweaty Palestinian, Tris-tan! Okay? I know he’s fucking gorgeous and earthy, but you don’t have to leer at him like you’re not getting it at home.”
“I was not leering!” Tristan protested.
“You were leering like you wanted to smoke his ass!” Juan snapped back.
Darcy suddenly let out a gagged, wet grunt. AOC barked.
“Is there something you’d like to add, Darcy? I’m sure Cole has something on his mind as well.” Juan said, quite perturbed.
Tristan leaned back on his hands. “What do we do with them? I mean, the energy has shifted. We can’t just let them go. That’s practically gentrification.”
Juan sat beside him, pulling AOC into his lap. “Let’s spitball.”
AOC growled low, like a tiny espresso machine warming up.
“Art installation?” Juan offered. “Something like a ‘Cisgenders—Not Okay’ display.”
Tristan tilted his head. “Hmmm, maybe. What about mixed media? We could wrap them in newspapers. The Times for Cole because he clearly loathes himself. Daily Mail for her—she vibrates like someone raised on sidebar content.”
Darcy squirmed and hissed behind her gag.
“Ooh, she’s passionate,” Juan noted. “What about a performance piece? They scream their microaggressions live on the hour. Tip jar for reparations!”
Tristan twirled a palo santo stick between his fingers. “Mmm, too edgy.”
Cole raised one brow—just one. He was too tired to raise two.
Juan paced the living room like a militant choreographer, arms gesturing with wild precision. “Okay. Here’s a thought experiment-slash-practical strategy: we offer them as hostages to Omar as leverage.”
Tristan’s head whipped around. “I’m sorry—what?”
“You know,” Juan said, too casually, “he uses them to negotiate with the landlord. The Israeli guy. Full building occupancy in exchange for the straight couple.”
“If only they were worth the karma, Juan.” Tristan pointed directly at his own heart. “I have boundaries.”
They stood in a stalemate of principle and delusion. AOC broke the silence with a soft, approving growl.
Juan nodded. “AOC votes for un-gagging.”
Juan knelt behind Cole and ripped the pillowcase strip from his mouth with the flourish of a magician. Cole gasped. Not for air—he’d been breathing fine—but for dignity.
Darcy followed a moment later, coughing like someone being reborn through a dust storm.
“You absolute lunatics,” she spat.
“Hello to you too, sage demon,” Tristan said flatly.
“You can’t just keep people!” she screamed. “This is kidnapping!”
Juan blinked. “Oh honey, it’s not kidnapping. It’s curation.”
Cole licked his lips. “This is illegal. Even in New York.”
“Is it, though?” Tristan said. “Have you read your lease?”
“You stole our apartment! We don’t have a lease!” Darcy shrieked.
“Exactly,” Juan said, as if she’d just solved a riddle.
Cole leaned forward. “Okay. Okay. Can we just... talk like normal people?”
“Like a throuple?” Tristan asked, eyes narrowing.
Cole opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Tristan leaned in. “Do you know what that moment felt like? Being objectified as sex objects?”
Juan chimed in. “It felt like someone reached inside our bodies and pulled our souls out through our asshole chakras!”
Darcy blinked. “That’s not even a thing.”
“Oh it is,” Juan said. “Ask my chiropractor.”
Cole spoke slowly. “It was a joke. I make jokes. I’m a writer.”
“Oh! Oh!” Tristan snapped, clapping his hands like a game show buzzer had gone off. “A writer! That explains the crippling emotional vacancy and disregard for social cues.”
“Writers are allowed to be a little insane,” Darcy said. “It’s—occupational.”
“Cole’s not insane,” Juan replied. “Cole’s disrespectful. There’s a difference. Insane makes great art. Disrespectful makes two gay men feel like fleshlamps in some twisted straight-gay-trouple sex romp!”
Darcy tried. “We were just—trying to fit in.”
“You tried too hard,” Tristan hissed.
Juan stood, cracked his neck. “Well, time for the list.”
Cole looked to Darcy. “There’s a list?”
Juan unrolled the list like a royal scroll.
Cole looked up toward the ceiling.
Darcy muttered, “How bad could it be?”
“The following,” Tristan announced, “is a list of our terms.”
Cole groaned from the floor. “Why is it always a list with you people?”
Tristan didn’t look at him. “You people? Because order, Cole. It’s how we survived Catholic school, retail jobs, and 2016.”
Juan clicked a remote. Satie's Gymnopédie No.1 began to echo through the Sonos speaker. AOC circled the perimeter like a velvet-rope bouncer.
“Item One,” Tristan began, voice low and ceremonial. “1600 hours of sensitivity training for Cole and an apology for the ‘throuple’ comment—via interpretive dance. No verbal language. Movement only.”
Cole squinted. “Wait. But—how interpretive?”
“We’re open to styles,” Juan said generously. “Just not jazz. Too colonial.”
“Item Two,” Tristan went on, “Darcy must renounce the title ‘Positive Lifestyle Architect’ and all derivative branding.”
Darcy's mouth opened like a wound. “You can’t unbrand me!”
“Oh, honey, it’s for your own good,” Tristan said gently. “Do you even have the slightest notion of how pretentious ‘Positive Lifestyle Architect’ sounds?”
“Item Three,” Juan said, flipping the parchment like a wedding officiant, “You will pack what remains of your dignity and accept ceremonial exile to Brooklyn.”
Cole exhaled. “I knew that was coming.”
“You’ll be placed in Crown Heights,” Juan said. “East side. Above a vintage apothecary that specializes in fermented oat tonics and dog treats made of moss.”
Darcy gasped. “We’re being banished?”
Tristan rolled up the parchment with a neat little snap. “We prefer the term transitioned.”
“I have clients,” Darcy said, grasping for leverage. “I have an audience.”
Cole turned to Darcy. “We can do this, Darce. I’ve heard good things about Crown Heights.”
Darcy stared at him. “Have you lost your mind? I AM NOT FUCKING MOVING TO BROOKLYN!”
AOC barked once.
Then again—sharper, sharper still.
Everyone froze.
There was a whistle—faint, high-pitched—and then:
BOOM.
The floor trembled. A concussive shock rolled through the walls like angry bass from an underground party no one had been invited to. A decorative sconce fell dramatically as if fainting from the news.
Smoke puffed from the windowsill.
“Did someone just shell the building?!” Tristan asked, eyes wild, clutching the crown of succulents sliding off his head.
“I thought that was a gas line,” Juan whimpered.
“It was not a gas line,” Darcy snapped. “I’ve lived through at least two controlled burns in Malibu and that had artillery overtones.”
Then, rattatatatatat. Machine gun fire. From outside. And very, very close.
“We’re under attack! Untie us!” Darcy and Cole yelled to Tristan and Juan.
Everyone ducked—except AOC, who calmly walked to the door and sat, proud and serene, like she’d been waiting for this moment her entire life.
A moment later, the front door burst open.
OMAR.
Face covered in sweat and soot. Bleeding lightly from the bicep. Still in his sweatpants, trench coat flapping open like a cape. He looked like an exhausted freedom fighter who moonlighted as a motivational speaker.
“I told you,” he wheezed, clutching the doorframe. “I told you I would go to war for you.”
“Omar!” Tristan screamed.
Juan fainted on a pouf.
Darcy ran to Omar. “You’ve been shot!”
“I’ve been merely grazed,” Omar corrected, holding up his arm. “I am not afraid to die for my beliefs!”
Cole blinked. “What is going on here? Who the hell is shooting at us?”
Omar looked up, eyes wild with purpose. His voice dropped into something reverent, vaguely haunted.
“My cousin. The landlord.”
Silence.
“The Israeli landlord?” Tristan asked cautiously.
Omar hesitated. “Technically, I’m more Israeli than he is. In spirit, not in passport. Well, we share a grandmother. Sort of. It's complicated. She’s more of a symbolic grandmother. By marriage. Through trauma.”
Juan looked horrified. “So you’re family?”
“He’s not my cousin cousin,” Omar clarified. “He’s… my brother. But not of blood. More spiritual. Like… next-gen Cain and Abel.”
Darcy squinted. “So you’re on the same side but also trying to kill each other?”
“Exactly,” Omar said, relieved someone understood. “But only when negotiations fail. Which they have. Repeatedly.”
Another explosion rattled the fire escape—a ceramic “Live Laugh Love” tile shattered in the kitchen.
“He believes this building is his divine inheritance,” Omar continued, brushing drywall off his shoulder. “But I was here first. ‘No, you weren’t,’ he says, which is partly true. ‘You are realtor,’ he says, ‘I am landlord.’ Back and forth. It’s a long story.”
Cole slumped to the floor. “So we’re at war with your spiritual cousin. Over shared ancestral square footage that neither of you technically owns?”
“Close enough,” Omar said. “But it’s not personal. It’s generational. And we both love a good war.”
“I knew it,” Tristan whispered. “I knew that sealed fireplace was hiding trauma.”
Darcy stepped forward, shaking with adrenaline and decades of repressed privilege. “What do we do?”
“There are weapons in the hallway,” Omar said briskly. “A duffel with everything you need. Pistols, walkie-talkies, artisanal throwing knives, one beret.”
“A beret?” Juan groaned from the floor. “I can’t fight in a beret. I’ll look like a radical mime.”
“Arm yourselves,” Omar said. “If you want to stay, you must take a stand.”
Darcy stepped forward like Joan of Arc with a yoga mat. “I’ll fight.”
Cole turned to her. “Are you insane?”
“You heard him,” she said. “If we want to stay … we gotta fight! I never told you this, Cole, but I adjusted my personality in five separate interviews to secure this apartment for us. I’m not gonna just give up now!”
“Darcy, I am not cut out to fight a war over a rent-controlled apartment.”
“You’re a writer, Cole,” she said, grabbing a pistol from the duffel Omar shoved through the door. “And writers survive everything. Hemingway had shrapnel in his ass and still managed to be insufferable.”
Another burst of gunfire. A window cracked.
Juan sat up slowly, holding AOC. “This is above my chakra pay grade.”
Tristan was in the corner, frantically searching “queer militias” on his phone. “I don’t know if I’m spiritually ready for guerrilla warfare.”
“Ask her,” Juan said suddenly, gripping AOC like she was holding the fate of their lease in her tiny paws. “She always knows what’s right.”
Everyone turned to AOC.
AOC closed her eyes.
Another burst of machine gun fire outside. She opened them.
Then barked once. Short. Sharp.
Omar nodded. “She’s in.”
Darcy turned to Cole. “Are you?”
Cole looked at the pistol. Then the walkie-talkie. Then the cracked ceiling. Then Tristan and Juan and Darcy and the smoking wall where a motivational quote had once been stenciled.
He sighed. “Give me the beret.”
end of part three
© Michael Arturo, 2025
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Michael Arturo writes fiction, contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.
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