“Lots of folks call me Jerry.”
Something clicked in Carter’s mind and the warbled chords of an old Grateful Dead song began worming around in his brain. He looked at the man’s face again. Was it…? Nahhhh.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Jerry.”
The brakes hissed and the truck eased back onto the highway. Jerry clicked the radio on and began to sing along. Carter shook his head and wondered what kind of rabbit hole this was that he’d found himself in.
14
Going Plaid
Samantha Dawn Proctor was suddenly exhausted. Her eyelids were bouncing up and down, threatening to close like those of a tenth grader in homeroom class. She knew that the spells she’d used had taken a heavy toll on her and was afraid if she kept driving she would have an accident.
“Mikki, sweetie,” she heard her own speech slurring, “we need to stop for a min—”
Her head slumped down on the steering wheel and the car swerved hard to the left. The red Volkswagen bug rumbled over the median and into the oncoming traffic lane on the opposite side of the highway. Mikki screeched and jumped on top of Sami’s head. She grasped Sami’s hands and tugged as hard as she could to the right, hoping to swerve the car back into the proper lane. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the wheel to budge. Ahead of them, a horn started blaring in the distance. Mikki looked up to see a very large vehicle heading their way. Of course, a doublewide trailer was barreling toward them, its light flashing over a sign that announced it was a wide load. Wide load indeed, it stretched from shoulder to shoulder, blocking any open road. Mikki screamed at Sami. Sami’s head lolled to the left and the car began to swerve in that direction. A thought occurred to Mikki and she grabbed the top of Sami’s ears. She tugged as hard as she could on Sami’s right ear and her hand came off the wheel and brushed sleepily at the side of her head. The car swerved to the right and the rushing air of the trailer pushed them into the median as it scraped by them. The driver’s side mirror shattered and flew off, clipped by the truck.
Mikki squealed as the car jumped back onto their side of the road, but it didn’t slow down. It flew across the pavement and rumbled over the shoulder into the grass and was threatening to slam into a road sign announcing a Love’s Truck Stop at the next exit. Mikki tugged hard on Sami’s left ear and the car clipped the sign sending the passenger’s side mirror flying off as well. Mikki realized what was happening and corrected the steer as all four wheels hit the road. The car straightened and headed down the interstate roughly in between the lines.
Mikki couldn’t help but grin as she realized she was driving Sami’s car. The next exit was coming fast and she thought it might be good to hit the truck stop for a few candy bars and sodas. She was sure Sami wouldn’t mind. They hit the ramp going too fast and the wheels squelched as they jumped a pothole and Mikki realized with a jolt she had no idea how she was going to stop the car.
They swerved through the stop sign without stopping and Mikki turned them into the Love’s parking lot and began to circle around the gas pumps. Her arms were getting tired and she wasn’t sure how to slow down. The car was gaining speed and their circle was widening with each pass. Soon, they’d be too close to the parked cars at the convenience store. Mikki squealed in Sami’s ear, but the most she got from the girl was a moan and a snore.
On their next pass, the bumper of the bug caught a cement pole next to one of the gas pumps and the car jerked hard to the side, throwing Mikki off Sami’s shoulder. She slammed into the car’s radio and the wind was knocked out of her lungs. She flailed and reached out for something to hold onto. Her hands grabbed something and she looked up to see it was the gearshift. She’d seen Sami do something with it when she started the car and thought of a plan. She pulled hard on the knob and it slammed back one space into the notch labeled N. The engine revved hard, but the car slowed. It straightened slightly and rolled into a parking spot. The front tires hit the cement curb hard and the car lurched forward threatening to jump them, but it stopped on top of the block and rolled backward.
Mikki climbed down under Sami and pulled her foot off the pedal on the floor. The engine whined and revved down, coming to a peaceful idle. Mikki tugged the gearshift until it finally popped into the P notch and she turned the key. The car went silent.
She lay on the passenger’s seat breathing hard, thankful that she had saved their lives. Sami snored away. Mikki knew a Solarian Elf’s energy could be completely depleted by using a single spell and Sami had used two, back-to-back in the space of a couple of minutes. She was likely to be out for a couple of hours. Mikki peered over the dash at the storefront and saw a marketing poster of candy bars. In the center…. ahhhhh, Milky Way.
A man walked out of the store swinging a bottle of Dr. Pepper in his hand. Mikki watched with her mouth watering as the man with a greying beard slid into a green, rusted out Jeep Cherokee. Mikki began to formulate a plan to get into the store undetected and buy some snacks. She reached into Sami’s purse, flipped through the cardholders and removed the orange and white checkerboard colored card from the University of Tennessee Federal Credit Union. She’d watched Sami use it several times and thought she could pull it off. Rifling through the glove compartment, she found what she needed…a pen and an old envelope left over from a long overdue electric bill. She scratched a few words on it, hoping she’d gotten them right and tossed the pen back into the box.
She reached over to the door handle and tugged on it. Stepping out of the car, she stood as tall as she could and walked into the store.
Artemis Baen wasn’t completely sure, but he thought he might’ve seen a little monkey skitter into the truck stop behind him, but nothing surprised him anymore. He was on his way to Oak Ridge with a violin in the passenger’s seat beside him that could be the answer to the quest for immortality. He laughed at the thought. He had thrown the violin into a cardboard box, leaving the empty case behind to buy him some time before RayRay and the Proctors discovered it was missing.
Peeling back the folded lid of the box, he peered inside at the violin. It was beautiful in the way that an old, first edition novel by a mid-century author is and had a smooth finish that didn’t shine like new, but shone like a…like a cream soda. Gently, he pulled the violin out of the box. A string twanged and reminded him that he had absolutely zero musical…or magical…talent. The instrument would be as useful as a glass hammer in his hands. He did, however, remember the first few notes of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star from his mother’s lessons at the piano. His curiosity won out. He had to know.
The bow had a couple of fine hairs hanging off of it in wispy random strands, but most of it was still intact. He put the violin under his chin, resting his beard on the black pad like he’d seen actual violin players do. When he got the violin positioned, he realized he was not sure where to put the fingers of his left hand on the bridge. So, he left them off and cradled the neck in his hand. He felt his heart begin to race and his breathing grow shallow and quick. Placing the bow down on the strings with care, he inhaled and pulled it across the strings.
The shriek the violin let out was loud and jarring. But nothing happened. He looked in the mirror and waited for the wrinkles around his eyes to change, to smooth, to look…younger. He pulled the bow back across the strings and they screeched again. He did this several times, thinking it might take a few minutes for the effect to be tangible. He plopped the violin down into its box and jerked the driver’s side sunshade down and flipped the mirror open. Staring at his eyes, first the left, then the right, he watched and waited. Nothing. His fear was confirmed. The violin needed an actual musician and magic user to play it properly to achieve the youthful effect. His playing did nothing, except attract the attention of a few stray cats that had wandered around the corner of the truck stop to see what all the noise was about.
He tossed the bow back into the box with the violin and folded the top back over it. He picked up the Dr. Pepper bottle he’d bought in the store. It
would be his first soda in years. The freaks out at The Farm didn’t think soda was a good thing to drink, but he begged to differ. If God hadn’t wanted us to have Dr. Pepper, he wouldn’t have invented phosphoric acid or sodium benzoate.
He opened his Dr. Pepper quickly…which everyone knows is exactly the opposite way to open a Dr. Pepper. The spray that came from the top of the bottle hit the roof of his car like a blast from the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Almost three-fourths of the bottle gushed out in a sweet and sticky funnel spraying him in the face and dousing the dashboard in front of him.
“Sonofa—!”
He pawed at his cheeks and eyes and wiped his face.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” he flung Dr. Pepper off his fingers.
The soda soaked his torn and cracked leather seat so much that he sat in a puddle. His hair and beard dripped the brown foamy liquid. He looked over at the cardboard box. A few sprinkles had landed on the top, but for the most part, it had been spared the shower. He took a sip of the remaining liquid in the bottle, rolled his window down, and tossed the empty container out his window. Screw the environment, he thought. Cranking the window back up, he noticed a blue rag stuffed down between the driver’s seat and the door. He picked it up and examined it. Except for one corner with a little oil on it, it was clean. He used that portion of the rag to wipe the Dr. Pepper out of his hair, face, eyes, and beard. It was already starting to get sticky.
“Of all the stupid things to have happe—"
His voice trailed off as he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the visor mirror that was still down in front of him. His mouth dropped open as he leaned forward to get a closer look. He used the rag to wipe the wet mirror and was in shock at what he saw. He looked…younger. It was hard to pinpoint exactly, but the crow’s feet around the edge of his eyes, the dark circles underneath them, and the blue of his irises all looked refreshed. He realized he felt better too. Here he was, sitting in a puddle of soda, sticky hands and face, and he felt…
“Fan-freaking-tastic,” he finished his thought out loud.
It worked; he looked over at the cardboard box, the damn thing worked. It made me younger…somehow.
If those two or three scratches of noise he’d made on the violin had that effect, he couldn’t help but wonder what a true magic user who could play it could do. As he stared in disbelief at his youthful visage, he watched in horror as it wrinkled back into his normal aged state. His eyes were paler, the bags under them were back, and crow’s feet…crap the crow’s feet looked like they might be deeper than before.
“Nice, so, I get to be young for about thirty seconds.”
He guessed that might have something to do with the fact that he was not a magical being. He was utterly and disgustingly human. He wondered if an Azurian would have a more lasting result and suspected that Elke Anderson thought that too. That’s why she wanted this thing so bad. He slammed the visor up so hard that the mirror cracked and spilled down on his lap in several sharp pieces.
“Crap.”
He picked them up with his fingertips, being careful not to cut…
“Double crap!”
One of the pieces sliced a thick gash into his thumb and his forefinger. Blood began to stream out of the cuts. Of course, he hadn’t hit any veins, but he needed to stop the flow of the dark red liquid. He grabbed the blue rag and wrapped it around his hand, but not before leaving a softball sized bloodstain on his crotch.
Sighing, he brushed the remaining glass off his lap with his wrapped hand and heard it crunch under his feet as he pushed the brake. He tapped his phone to wake it up and saw that he was only an hour and a half away from Oak Ridge. He was ready for this trip to be through, turn over the artifact, and collect what was coming to him. As he backed out of the parking lot, he thought for sure he caught sight of the monkey swinging around inside the store on top of one of the aisles.
“Can’t make this stuff up,” he thought as he drove out of the lot and back onto the highway.
“Dude,” the pimply-faced attendant said to his pimply-faced buddy sitting at the next register, “what the hell are we gonna do, man?”
“Bro, I have no idea.”
“There’s a monkey swinging from the lights, dude.”
“I can totally see it, bro.”
“This fer sure wasn’t in the training manual, dude.”
“Nope.”
“You think I should call Earl?”
“Bro, don’t even think about calling the manager about this, we’ll be fired for sure for letting a monkey in here.”
“Ya, you’re probably right.”
“I think it’s staring at me, bro.”
Mikki had flung herself up above the rows of fluorescently lit aisles that went on and on throughout the truck stop. She had trouble finding the candy, as it was somewhat hidden behind the refrigerator magnets, coffee mugs, and t-shirts for tourists. Not to mention, they had some of it camouflaged by the old eighties workout videotapes, the lost truck-stop cassettes of Junior Brown, Red Sovine, Merle Haggard, and Dick Curless and the carefully curated as-seen-on-television technological gadgets to improve the function of CB radios. But when she finally found it, she gathered a dozen or so of the giant-sized Milky Way candy bars in her arms, swung her way up to the front registers and dumped them unceremoniously on the counter.
“Bro,” pimply-faced attendant number two said to pimply-faced attendant number one, “what do I do with these?”
Number one, whose name tag read Bill, shrugged his shoulders and raised both hands palm up.
“Ring ‘em up, I guess, dude.”
Number two, whose name tag read Ted, shrugged his shoulders in reply and started sliding the bars past the infrared scanner on the counter and dropping the candy into a white plastic bag. When Mikki was satisfied that the two of them could handle the task of bagging the Milky Ways, she hopped back toward the fountain drink machine. She jumped up on the counter, tugged out a forty-four ounce Styrofoam cup and pushed it under the crushed ice dispenser. As the ice chugged into her cup, she looked up in horror to see the yellow post-it note stuck to the front of the Dr. Pepper nozzle. Out Of Order.
She shrieked and slammed her cup up and down on the counter in frantic disgust.
“Bro,” Ted stopped running the candy bars past the infrared price scanner, “what’s it doing now?”
“Dude,” Bill shrugged. “What do you think I am, a zookeeper?”
“Nah, bro. But that’d be sweet if you were, right?”
“Yah, sweet.”
Mikki jumped off the fountain drink counter and scrambled back toward the coolers at the rear of the store. She ambled down the long row of glass doors peeking inside each one. Her face lit up and she pulled her lips back in a wide grin when she saw the shelves of Dr. Pepper in cans and bottles.
“Ahhhh,” she opened the door and pulled out a can.
Studying the tab top, she tapped it, tugged on the ring, but couldn’t figure out how to open it. She shook it wildly in her hands and squealed when it didn’t budge. The two dudes at the front of the store watched her struggle, both still wondering what she was doing. Bill was getting up off his stool to help her when Mikki got disgusted with the can and threw it up in the air, high above her head. Ted’s eyes went wide.
“Dude! Catch it!”
Bill ran…er, rather loped as fast as he could, but when your baggy jeans are hanging far too low (to display your super cool boxers, of course) running isn’t the easiest thing to do. But, his speed was admirable, given his attire and he almost made it in time to catch the tumbling can of soda. Mikki had shaken it quite a bit and Ted almost thought he could see it vibrating with the tension of a carbonated drink on the brink of exploding. Bill dove. The can brushed the tips of his fingers and slid past them, crashing into the floor, upside down, on its edge. The explosion of soda was remarkable…much like the blast that had soaked Artemis Baen.
Dr. Pepper rained down on
Bill. Mikki, sensing that something was amiss, had ducked under a display of Soldier of Fortune magazines and was largely untouched by the sticky fluid. She stepped out from under them and hopped over Bill to open the glass door again. Her smile returned when she saw the liter-sized bottles of her favorite soda at the bottom of the cooler case. She knew how to work the screw caps. Tugging two of them out of the refrigerator, she dragged them past the prone, soaked, and dripping cashier on the floor next to her. One at a time, she hoisted them up to Ted who scanned them and tucked them into another plastic bag. He looked at her expectantly.
“It’s thirty-five dollars and seventy-two cents.”
Mikki extended her hand with pride, displaying the University of Tennessee Federal Credit Union debit card. Ted took it from her and slid it down the side of the register. He pushed a keypad toward Mikki. She looked up at him and blinked. She shrugged her shoulders at him and raised her palms skyward.
“Just enter your PIN.”
She shook her head.
“I can run it as credit if you want?”
She nodded vigorously and smiled widely.
Ted completed the transaction and handed the three plastic bags of candy and drinks to Mikki. She tried to pick them up, but gave up and began to drag them across the industrial white and black-flecked tile of the Love’s Truck Stop toward the door. She was almost hit as a truck driver stormed in from outside. He was vigorously rubbing his hands together and booming on and on about the coming snow. Mikki dove through the open doorway and dragged her bounty toward Sami’s car. She was still passed out on the steering wheel when Mikki pulled herself up into the passenger’s seat and closed the door.
She jumped down into the floorboard by Sami’s feet and dragged her right foot off the gas pedal and slid it over onto the brake. Satisfied that she was safe from runaway acceleration, she hopped into Sami’s lap and turned the key. The Volkswagen whirred to life and Mikki turned the heat up. By the time she had peeled back the wrapper on the last Milky Way, Sami was starting to come to.
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 11
