Martyr!
by Akbar Kaveh
Contents
Zee Novak
Overview
In a flashback to April 2014, Zee Novak narrates how he first realized he might love Cyrus during their pre-sobriety days at Keady. A high-on-fentanyl Saturday at Jude's house—where they traded yardwork for groceries under his voyeuristic gaze—ends with Cyrus accidentally axing his own foot. They extort cash and a wind chime from a panicked Jude, then throw a party, foreshadowing both Cyrus's lasting wound and Zee's quietly growing devotion.
Summary
Zee Novak narrates a memory from spring 2014 at Keady University, a year before Cyrus got sober. Zee and Cyrus, living together after college, would visit a man named Jude every Saturday. Jude, found via Craigslist, watched them do yardwork in his underwear in exchange for free, often expired groceries. The arrangement was creepy but unthreatening, and the two friends treated it as an absurd lark, debating whether it constituted sex work.
On this particular Saturday, Cyrus had prepared homemade fentanyl tincture on a chessboard, dividing it into 64 doses. He and Zee each licked two squares before driving over, both extremely high. Jude tasked them with chopping a large pile of logs for an evening bonfire, supervising from a lawn chair while wearing only stained underwear. His house was filled with wind chimes hung inside every window, and two identical-looking dogs, Noah and Shiloh, were kenneled in the living room.
While clumsily chopping wood inside a tire Jude provided, Cyrus's axe glanced off the rubber and cut deep into his foot. Stunned and numbed by the fentanyl, Cyrus bled heavily through his canvas shoe. Zee helped him to Jude's bathroom, where they rinsed and inspected the wound. Jude panicked, providing only paper towels, duct tape, Neosporin, and shredded coconut (after Cyrus rambled about coconut juice being like blood plasma). Zee fashioned a comically oversized makeshift cast.
Jude, eager to be rid of them before guests arrived, demanded they leave. Cyrus and Zee leveraged the situation to extort $120 in crumpled cash, plus a wind chime Cyrus pointedly demanded as a souvenir. Jude reluctantly complied, hissing as he handed it over. They left, Cyrus hopping triumphantly with the jingling chime.
That night, Cyrus and Zee used the money to buy liquor and threw a party, where Cyrus retold the story to friends, embellishing each iteration. Zee reflects on loving Cyrus's enthusiasms and haplessness, and on realizing only later how much energy went into making things easier for Cyrus. The wound never fully healed, leaving Cyrus with a permanent limp and lingering ache.
Who Appears
- Zee NovakNarrator and Cyrus's roommate; waiter and occasional dealer who realizes he's falling in love with Cyrus during this incident.
- Cyrus ShamsPre-sobriety, enthusiastic about drugs; accidentally chops his own foot while high on fentanyl, sustaining a wound that never fully heals.
- JudeBalding, underwear-clad voyeur and wholesale grocery distributor who watches Zee and Cyrus do yardwork; panics and pays them off after the accident.
- Zee's motherBriefly mentioned; perpetually medicated on prescriptions, benzos, and Egyptian remedies, shaping Zee's ambivalence toward drugs.
- Zain, Eleni, Sad JamesFriends who attend the party that night and laugh at Cyrus's embellished retellings of the injury.