My Skylark Buick is the first thing I have to think about. She’s clean at the seams but purrs like a pissed off alley cat, but she’s mine; every bolt, every dent. I bought her off a man who swore she’d never run again. He laughed when I asked for the title. I spent months under her hood, half-frozen some nights, bleeding knuckles and cursing out loud to no one. But I brought her back. She’s the only thing I’ve ever resurrected that stayed. Inside, the seats are slightly cracked, and the glovebox won’t close right. But the smell? It's sweat, leather, old gas, and comfort. She’s not just a car, she’s a constant that keeps me goin'. When jobs go sideways, when people lie, when the world shifts under my feet, the Skylark stays the same. She waits for me. She listens. She drives me out of hell, again and again.
The dagger came later. I made it myself. I was green, barely surviving, and tired of running from the dark. I studied what I could, what cuts clean, what hurts the things that don’t scream like people do. Found a bar of cold iron at a scrapyard and spent nights sharpening it over coals behind a condemned garage. Hammered it with my own two hands until it held an edge that sang when it moved through the air. I wrapped the hilt in leather stripped from an old belt and etched runes I didn’t fully understand but believed in. Still do. The dagger isn’t pretty, but it works. It’s the reason I’m still breathing. And when I hold it, I remember the version of me that decided to stop running and start fighting. I don’t always like that version—but I owe him.
