What the Stars Want

The apple was half-eaten, half-rotted, and sweating in the heat — still the best thing Tommy had seen all day.

It was buried beneath a pizza box and a broken umbrella, slick with rainwater and the faint stench of something older. He didn’t care. Hunger had no pride—and he was done pretending to have any left. He dug it out of the dumpster, wiped it on the least-filthy patch of his sleeve, and sat down beside a cardboard box that would serve as his shelter for the night. His fingers trembled. Hunger, mostly. But part of him knew it wasn’t just that.

He had nothing left. Not the scorched photo of his mom's smile. Not even the plastic dragon he used to sleep with. His house was gone—burned down with his parents still inside. His aunts and uncles took the insurance money and dumped him on the state like garbage. The state passed the trash to his aunt. She threw him to the street the next day.

Now he was twelve, alone, and sitting in an alley with a bruised apple and no name anyone remembered.

The alley stank of mildew, piss, and sunbaked trash still leaking into the alley after dark. Pigeons stirred on the fire escape above him, and a busted neon sign buzzed through a second-story window, throwing pink light across the wet concrete. Somewhere down the block, someone yelled about a debt unpaid, followed by the slamming of a door. This place didn’t want him. Nowhere did.

Tommy curled up tighter, arms wrapped around his knees. The pavement radiated heat like it still remembered the sun. Even at night, the air stuck to his skin. He tried not to cry anymore—it felt like giving them something to watch. Every pain. Every failure. Every night spent shaking under a box that reeked of mold and defeat.

Above him, the sky was clear—mercilessly so. He used to think the stars were maps. Now he saw them for what they were—marks on a tally board, keeping score. The stars hung like a scoreboard no one turned off. Tommy hated them. Hated how they looked down like smug bastards with front row seats to someone else’s misery. Like they were judging him.

He took a bite of the apple. Mushy. Sour. He kept chewing.

A shuffle. A presence. Something moved beside the dumpster, and a scrawny old man unfolded himself from a nest of cardboard and shadows. His coat was three sizes too big, patched with duct tape and unraveling seams. His beard was wild and patchy, like it had given up halfway through growing.

"Rough night, huh, kid?"

Tommy didn’t answer. He just eyed the man—tired, wary, calculating the danger. Then he let it go. Didn’t matter. What was the worst this old man could do that hadn’t already been done?

The man chuckled, like he knew the math Tommy was doing. "Name's not important," he said. "Just a guy with some fish. Used to have a name once, though. A loud one. One the gods choked on when they spoke it. Don’t matter now. Names fade. Especially when the stars write the story different."

Tommy squinted at him. "You're crazy."

"Maybe," the old man said, settling down on the hot concrete with a groan. "Or maybe just forgotten. That’s worse, I think. Being remembered wrong is a tragedy. Being erased? That’s divine punishment."

He turned and dug in his heap, came back with a can of pickled sardines. The label was so faded it looked like it had been soaked in decades of rain. He cracked it open like it was a sacred rite, then held it out. "You want one? Better than that sad apple."

Tommy hesitated, then reached out. The fish was oily, metallic, weirdly warm — like everything else in this goddamn heat. He ate it anyway, swallowing down the salt like it might keep the cold from reaching his bones.

Then, without thinking, he slammed the can against the concrete. It didn’t break. He hit it again anyway. The sound was ugly—tin and rage and hunger. The old man didn’t flinch. Just watched.

They sat in silence. Tommy shifted uncomfortably, the fish repeating in his throat. Overhead, a train groaned somewhere far off.

"You were askin’ ‘em why, weren’t you?" the old man said suddenly.

Tommy looked at him. "The stars?"

The man nodded. "Asked ‘em myself once. Cried at ‘em. Begged ‘em. Even cussed a few out. They never answered."

Tommy stared upward again. The stars said nothing.

"That’s the trick, kid. You asked the wrong ones."

"What do you mean?"

"You ever wonder what the stars want?" the old man muttered, almost to himself.

Tommy didn’t answer.

"They ain’t just stars. Never were. Eyes of the dead. Or something older. Doesn’t matter. They look down because they’re bored."

Tommy frowned. "Bored?"

"Immortal and bored. Bad combination."

The boy blinked. "Rating?"

"They whisper to the Fates. Next thing you know, someone dies too early or forgets their name."

"That’s dumb," Tommy said, and this time there was bite. Not teeth yet—but the jaw was setting.

"Sure is," the old man said. "Still true. You ever wonder why some stories fall apart right when they’re gettin’ good? Why the hero dies halfway through? Why good folks suffer while bastards ride off into sunsets? Ratings, boy. Ratings."

Tommy stared at the sky, jaw clenched.

"So what," he said. "What do I have to do to get a happy ending?"

The old man laughed. A sharp, one-toothed sound.

"You make ‘em root for you. Everybody loves an underdog. But between you and me, they love trauma more."

Tommy dropped his gaze. Let the silence fill him. Let every bruise, every frozen night, every betrayal crawl back into his mind. He thought about how pain had become routine. How even his grief was predictable — something the stars had probably seen a thousand times before. He thought about the way people glanced past him. Like he was scenery. Like he wasn’t even worth a footnote in someone else’s story. They wanted pain? Fine. He’d give them something they couldn’t ignore. Not grief. Not tears. Something sharp. Something new.

He clenched his fists. The stars could watch. They could rate. But if they were looking for another sob story, he’d rather give them a villain.

Then he lifted his head.

"So they want an underdog story... what if I vowed to kill them all?"

The old man wheezed a breath that might have been a laugh. "Now that would be a story."

He stood, slow and creaky, then turned back toward his box. Before he climbed in, he paused and looked over his shoulder.

"Thing is, kid… how do you kill a god who watches?"

Tommy stared. Then shook his head.

"You can't, can you."

The old man scratched his scalp through his knit cap. Shrugged.

"I haven’t figured it out. Obviously."

He leaned back against the wall, bones creaking, staring up at the blinking sky like it owed him something.

"I tried once, y’know. Climbed too high. Thought I could change the script. Stole a thread. Thought I could rewrite the ending."

Tommy turned toward him slowly.

"What happened?"

The old man smiled without joy. "They didn’t smite me. They didn’t need to. They rewrote me. Took my name, turned me into background noise. Immortality’s a cruel joke when no one remembers the punchline."

He coughed, something rattling deep in his chest. "Call me Phoros, if it helps. Not the name I started with, but it’s what’s left. Means 'to bear.' And I’ve borne enough."

His voice dropped. "When I pulled that thread, the world skipped a beat — like a page torn from a book mid-sentence. The stars blinked wrong for a second. And the Fates... they noticed. They stitched me into the margins instead of killing me. Made sure I’d live long enough to regret trying. But you? You keep pushing. Maybe your story inspires ‘em. Maybe they drop you a thread. After all, once you hit rock bottom… only direction left is up."

Tommy looked at the stars. Somewhere in their thousand-yard glare, something flickered. Attention. Interest. A pause in the eternal.

And somewhere far above, a single one pulsed — not in pity. In interest. And interest, Tommy now knew, was the first loose thread.

He raised his middle finger to the sky. Not in prayer. Not in hope. In promise. Maybe they wanted this kind of ending. Maybe he’d give it to them — but on his terms, not theirs.

He didn’t need mercy. Just a loose thread.