https://ftyler.bandcamp.com/album/he-paid-the-wizard
Brian Matthews had all but forgotten about the coffee he poured an hour ago. Lukewarm, no sugar, nothing at all to cut the bitterness save for a pinch of salt. This was a potion. What entranced him was the sky that morning, purple with the clouds filtering the dawn sunlight in a way he hadn’t quite experienced. He forgot which season he was experiencing. He forgot which month it was. He forgot which day it was. He forgot what time was. The potion opened his soul.
A moment of quiet assumption distracted him enough, so she thought, the girl who knew him as Matthew Brians, and so she was everyone. She opened the door to the room that served as a makeshift kitchen he had set up in the foyer. It was a perfectly nice kitchen he had, but he couldn’t traverse the living room to get there. He slept on the floor of the foyer. He was surrounded by old newspapers.
She couldn’t handle it anymore, and shot him with a weapon Matthews couldn’t identify. He bled potion and no one cried. She left. He was awake for a few days and could have done something to save himself, but chose not to. Instead, he penned a brief note that simply said, “She didn’t kill me, the potion did.”
He paid the wizard because hell is other people, because she did what he couldn’t, because he was bored and her life was exciting. He loved her and she was jealous of him.