by Varian Milagro
This story was created with the assistance of AI. All the characters, dialog, plot and settings are mine. ChatGPT took my series of long, very detailed, rambling, stream of conscousness prompts and formatted them into something coherent and added bits of sensory detail. I also used AI to create the illustrations.
Part 1
The college library was nearly silent, hushed under the pale hum of fluorescent lights. Somewhere nearby, a printer buzzed halfheartedly. In the back corner, Chase and Riley sat together at one of the computer stations, the kind with slow processors and smudged screens. It was the kind of outdated setup that smelled faintly of disinfectant and quiet desperation.
They were hunting for something they couldn’t quite name—a fix, a shortcut, a miracle. Something that could solve problems they were tired of carrying.
Riley typed slowly, her nails clicking against the plastic keys as she searched variations of “life change spells” and “real magic that really works.” Each result led to more disappointment. Pseudoscience blogs. Clickbait crystal shops. New Age manifesting guides filled with smiling women and vague advice. Even the sketchier sites, the ones that looked promising, failed to load past their landing page.
Chase sat slouched next to her, arms folded, his foot bouncing restlessly beneath the desk. He hadn’t said much at first, but his posture spoke volumes. The last few years had worn down the casual confidence he once had. Every new filter notification on the screen chipped away at his patience.
His thoughts wandered. Mostly to Logan.
His older brother had always been the model: straight A’s, athletic, charming, effortlessly impressive. Their mother, Amy, had practically sculpted Logan out of praise and admiration, then looked at Chase like he was the discarded clay. He could still hear her voice when he dropped out of community college: “You’ll never get anywhere at this rate. Be more like your brother.”
And he wasn’t. He worked at a pizza place no one liked for minimum wage. He lived at home in the same bedroom that he used to share with his brother. He was twenty-one and could barely remember the last time his mom looked at him without disappointment.
Next to him, Riley sat with one leg curled beneath her. Her hair—long, unbrushed, and somehow always perfect—fell over her shoulder as she squinted at the screen. Her sweater sleeves covered her hands as she scrolled.
Chase glanced over at her, seeing more than just her expression. Riley had her own burdens, quieter ones. She had lost her mom years ago, and even though she never talked about it much, the absence lingered in her like an open window in winter. She had been close with her mother, forming the kind of bond Chase had never known. After she died, Riley drifted through high school in a haze of grief. Now, in her third year of college, she was still only taking one class at a time, with no clear direction or purpose.
Her father, Mitchell, had understood. He didn’t pressure her. He didn’t need to—he had enough money to support them both ten times over. But then Deborah entered the picture.
Deborah—expensive, beautiful, and calculating. She had a way of taking over space in a room, and now in Mitchell’s life. Riley saw her father changing under Deborah’s influence: fancier clothes, luxury cars, an entirely new aesthetic. Deborah had turned the warmth of their home into something colder, curated. And lately, she’d been pushing Riley to “get serious,” whispering in Mitchell’s ear about responsibility and adulthood.
Riley wasn’t afraid of Deborah taking her dad’s money. She was afraid of her taking his heart.
The search engine loaded another page of useless links.
Riley sighed, resting her forehead on her hand. “We’re not gonna find anything here,” she muttered.
Chase didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t sure there was anything out there that could fix how broken things felt—how stuck he was in Logan’s shadow, how Riley seemed to be losing the only parent she had left to a woman who saw her as excess baggage.
But deep down, he still hoped.
She stood, gathered her things and started to leave. She turned around. "Are you coming?"
