Love and Magick, A Short Story Double Feature

by Andrew Michael Schwarz

  As a little girl I had played a game of See What’s In The Closet. Nothing but the mundane had ever been in the closet, aside from my make believe. Now, it seemed the game played me and here I was looking back at myself.

  So what's so scary?

  A funny thing happened: I decided to go back in there. I turned on all the lights in the house. The last thing I needed was to be spooked by the fuzzy outlines of clothes and furniture. Then, in some adrenaline-fueled movie scene moment, I pushed open the door and stood my ground.

  Of course the one light I hadn’t turned on was the one in here. But the moon, my God, it filled this room like no other night.

  “Enough,” I told myself and clapped my hands. “Get up,” I shouted. Then I cleared my throat and said in a stern voice, “Wake up!”

  The sleeper lay still, in the gentle rise and fall of slumber. I repeated my command three more times, louder each time. It would have woken any healthy person, I knew. But, perhaps this wasn’t a healthy person.

  I crept closer much to the chagrin of my better judgment. Then I outright screamed at the sleeper. “Get the fuck up!”

  My nerves had gotten to me, I was really keyed up.

  Not a single flinch. I shook my head. How was this possible?

  Whatever. I was in this situation and I would play it out, all the way, to see where it led. I had to. I was simply not willing to turn back.

  I reached for the blankets and yanked them. Still no movement. I stripped them all the way past her shoulders exposing her breasts, her hips and her feet, uncovering the woman who lay there, asleep.

  I gasped.

  Not just her face, but her body, every part of her was a perfect replication, down to the beige birthmark on the right thigh, like a coffee stain, still visible in the moonlight. But with one exception: she had two legs.

  There is an entirely eerie precedent set in your life when you see yourself like this. I can’t explain it; one just has to experience it. There is also something very beautiful about it. I realized at that moment how beautiful I was, or had been, which one I wasn’t certain. Looking at her, lying on my bed, made me appreciate her deeply, and I guess in that light, I was appreciating myself.

  I stared for awhile, at first from novelty and then, the longer I looked the more I felt it.

  Love.

  It hit me. I felt it so deep, as if my heart would burst, as if I couldn’t hold that much love inside me.

  As I examined her I found not only two whole legs, but also no abrasions or scars. Not even the tiny holes in her ears from piercing. The Highway Incident had left me with a host of unsightly scars that, even after reconstructive surgery, remained. Not my face, thank the Goddess; my face was spared that unholy night, but my abdomen and just under my left breast had sustained several unsightly abrasions. This body double had none of these. She was truly a whole me.

  And for a moment as brief as a cat’s meow, I fancied it was I who lay in that bed, asleep.

  No, wait. I shook it off.

  “I’m in my own…I’m in my own head.”

  But a whole me…a new body, right here and perfect. I thought about it. If this could happen, if this Spell of Duality could actually bring her to me, what else could it do? I remembered the initial casting with Arcadian. I had left my body, quite clearly. So, I could do it again and…but how?

  I had no idea how.

  I covered her, feeling that to be the only decent thing to do and tried a few more times with a few more gentler techniques to wake her, but there was no doing it. I sat down in the chair by the window and watched her, my fascination endless.

  In time, as the night aged, I felt my eyes grow heavy. My head dipped and I was startled awake, the way one is when she realizes she's been falling asleep behind the wheel.

  I can't fall asleep, I thought. When she wakes we’ll find out what this is all about.

  The night ticked on and before I could catch myself, my eyes drooped and dreams encroached.

  ***

  When I woke my leg kicked. Only it was the leg that wasn’t there anymore, a phantom-kick. The gray of dawn poured through the windows, flooding the cold room. I had been sleeping for hours. At once, my eyes locked on the bed. It was empty!

  “Oh no!” I forced my tired mind and body to rouse. I burst into the living room and found her. "You're still here," I breathed. "Good. I didn't want you to go."

  She was standing by the window, her back to me. She was naked and her hair was wet. I could smell the dewy perfume of a recent shower lingering through the small bungalow.

  “I have clothes you can wear,” I said, swallowing with a dry throat. She did not respond. “Did you hear me?”

  As I approached her I felt my absent leg. It ached and I knew I needed more sleep; it always ached when I was poorly rested.

  When I reached my double I was stricken with the undeniable truth that her eyes were closed and she was asleep right where she stood. A sleep-walker? She still dripped from her shower. I hardly believed it, but as I stood beside her, she slept as soundly as she had when in my bed. I touched her shoulders and felt her soft, warm skin.

  “Why are you here?” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “Why?” I laughed and then for reasons I can't explain, sobbed. The emotion overwhelmed.

  I cried over her shoulder, embracing this double of mine. I had never felt so close to anyone.

  The day went on and my double did not wake. I laid her down on the couch, finding her body malleable to my direction. I covered her with a blanket. I sat down across from her and thought about what it meant. I was worried that she wouldn't eat or drink, that she might be sick or somehow unwell. I even took her temperature.

  If it were really meant that I should switch bodies with this new one, whole without so much as a pierced ear, I wanted to make sure it was a healthy body inside. How was I supposed to do that if it only slept? Any examination, medical or otherwise, would clearly show that habitual sleeping is not healthy.

  Could I leave a note with directions to a doctor?

  I sat there all day long foregoing food and drink and, despite the throbbing ache in my stump, sleep. I usually napped when I felt the pain. It was the only cure. Pain killers couldn't touch it.

  Hour after hour, until, late in the afternoon, I sat there, waiting and silently challenging her to wake.

  Then, quite despite myself, I began to drift off.

  There is a time right before sleep, when dreams and reality blur, when the mind does not recognize the difference. In that moment, my doppelganger sat up.

  ***

  The next days were a haze. When I woke, she slept. When I slept, she woke. I know because I would find her about the house in various places and positions, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. She ate too. I found the dirty dishes and the leftovers. She ate what I ate.

  But when I got up, she was always asleep. Nothing I did could wake her when I was also awake. I left notes for her, but she never replied.

  I can only speculate that perhaps she had also tried to wake me when I slept because once I woke to her embrace, finding her fast asleep, cheeks wet with tears.

  Perhaps here surprise at seeing me mimicked mine at seeing her. I fear I will never know.

  If only we could have spoken, even for an hour...but alas, some things cannot be. There came a point when a decision had to be made, when a reason for her presence had to be decided upon.

  I don’t know what thought process drove me to the decision, but I believe that the Spell of Duality was the agent at work, for I know of no single strain of logic that could have guided me to such a dark inference.

  My body double and I were not meant to commune, but my body double did have a purpose. She, with her two good legs, compared to me with my one. One vision, dual intent…those words took on new meaning.

  Was this not the fulfillment of my singular vision for embracing the craft, to work just this one miracle? Surely, her intent paralleled mine, if not one in the same.

&
nbsp; She would not wake, of this I was certain and I had tried. I did not know how to switch bodies and this too I had tried.

  Was I to bring her to the Great Arcadian? I didn't think so. The spell should not need another spell to make it work. That was understood at the outset, it was one straight go once the thing took off. Well, it had taken off.

  It was on the eve of the sixth day when I dragged her naked body into the bathroom. I laid her out in the tub and felt sick. I taped off the windows with newspaper and sat on the toilet, thinking.

  Then, at last, I rose to the task.

  She was beautiful and as I stood over her, I saw that her body, to me, was perfect. She was as whole as a new born.

  “Jesus,” I whispered, gripping the jig saw.

  A single woman living alone does not have certain tools that would have sped up this process. A rusty and battered old jig saw from the barn out back was the only semblance of a surgeon’s bone saw I could find.

  I placed the cold metal blade against her right thigh. “Oh fuck.” I burst into tears and stood back, my hand covering my mouth. I dropped the saw, leaned over the toilet and vomited. I was a mess. I bawled for an hour, sitting sloppily on the floor with my doppelganger draped inside the tub, sleeping.

  “I can’t do this!” I sobbed. “Please, please don’t make me do this!” But I knew as sure as fire burns that I would. Was I to be the one to mar her beauty? Me? Oh, what cruelty. I heard again Arcadian's words, his admonitions. He had been right, so damn right. I'd had no idea what price I would pay.

  At last I kissed her forehead and with tears sliding down my cheeks, whispered, “I love you.” Then, with gritty and unthinking resolve, placed that horrific blade against her tender thigh and gave it a wretched shove.

  Her naked skin split open like a cotton sheet and blood spurted and ran in rivulets into the white, porcelain tub. The room spun. My vision swam, black spots blipping in and out of sight.

  “No,” I breathed. “Not now!”

  I was going into shock, passing out and if I did she would wake.

  “Oh God, no—stay awake! Damn it, stay awake!” I went to the sink and splashed cold water onto my face. I wiped with a towel and saw in the mirror that bloody thing.

  I had to finish it. Now. I couldn't bear this any longer. I had to end it no matter the consequences. I had to.

  I hacked. Again and again I hacked. I sawed and hewed away at that precious leg as one saws a Christmas tree to make it level for the stand. The limb slipped from beneath my greasy fingers and I grabbed it like a hunk of beef, steadied that saw, and slashed the rusty teeth anew.

  I vomited three times more before the end, and would have again, but there was nothing left. And before the morning sun lit the sky I removed the mangled, bloody limb from her broken body and held it up as a madwoman might an abortion.

  My heart jack hammered. I was covered in gore to my elbows, my chest and hair. The bathroom was a slaughterhouse. But my doppelganger slept still! Silent and peaceful in a pool of her own blood. Oh, so much blood!

  I thanked all the powers of nature that she did not wake, for it would have crushed me.

  There was only one last thing to do. I unhitched my prosthesis and held the severed limb to the wrinkled stump that had once been my leg.

  “Come on, do it,” I urged. Time slipped by. Minutes, and then longer.

  “Noooo!" I screamed, frenzied. "How could you? How fucking could you?"

  The leg dropped to the floor with a hollow splat. I fell with it, slipping in greasy pools of blood and vomit.

  “Do it!” I bawled to the leg, to my helpless stump. "Do it! Do it.” I wept and pled again to the massacred sleeper in the tub.

  That’s when I noticed her chest no longer moving.

  The sleeper was dead.

  “Oh God, oh God!” I fumbled to regain the leg, sliding in the blood, grappling for its slick surface as it slipped from my fingers like a greased ball. I grabbed it and yanked it toward me.

  The skin of my stump split open with an audible tear, like jeans splitting their seam. I screamed and watched my own blood pour out in jerky squirts, coating the hacked-apart limb.

  “Help me!”

  Then the magick came. My stump sucked the limb to it with a sickening slurp. Muscle, nerve and bone knitted together as if by a multithread sewing machine. Tactile feeling shot down into the limb. It kicked and I gasped. Down into the toes and back up again, a surcharge of energy ran riot through my whole body, made me cry out, delivering the kind of healing pain that comes with killing a disease.

  ***

  I love her.

  I wish I could have told her who I am—what makes me who I am—what drives me, my defeats, my victories, my dreams.

  I wish I could have spent just one day speaking with her, telling her everything I know about life and the world and what to watch out for and who not to trust and, more important, who you should. I wish I could have told her everything I've learned and figured out in twenty-nine years of living.

  Given the chance, I would try to give her some small piece of wisdom that she could take and use to succeed. And I would be sure to tell her too, that you must never stop learning no matter how smart or wise you get. Or think you are.

  And I wish, just for one hour, that she could cry on my shoulder in hopes that I might take away some tiny bit of the pain that I gave to her.

  Because the burden she now has to bear, is the hardest price for me to pay.

  ***

  I lay sprawled on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling. How long I lay there was impossible to say. My mind—my spirit—had been drifting. Meadows, open sky, sunlight, so many beautiful things.

  My throat clicked in ragged, dry hitches and when I finally sat up the stink of drying blood forced a gag.

  But the pain was gone. And when I looked down at my blood stained skin, at my naked body, I saw not one, but two whole legs.

  I was overwhelmed. Tears sprung unbidden. I could do nothing but stare and weep.

  “Oh…I see.”

  When I stood I did so on one leg and then laughed, pushing away more tears, as I let my weight settle on both of my feet.

  "A miracle," I whispered. I pulled the foot of my new leg up toward my chest and set it back down again. I did this over and over in total wonderment, watching each inch of movement with complete fascination. And then I took my first step.

  There was something else I had to know. I wetted the hem of a towel and sponged it where the flesh had fused. "Praises be." There was no mark there. No scar, no single line of incision. I pressed a thumb into the skin and watched it bounce back whole.

  And then I remembered and looked to the blood-smattered tub, to the evidence of slaughter all around me. I swallowed, astonished, for I was naked and she was gone and my prosthetic limb gone with her.

  Blue Moon Monday

  That night when I reached into the box, I had no idea what I would find. I had just come home from a very long day, a very long week at the firm and simply was not interested.

  A wooden crate had been delivered to my doorstep, stamped colorfully with various shipping and postal notices. I sighed. From my beloved sister, I knew.

  She lived in China and sent me…things every so often. You could say her heart was in the right place. But to me, these things, these trinkets were useless junk.

  This was just her style, too. The mysterious box on the door-step, the prophetic letter of my future woe or bliss, the blatant pleading to reevaluate my priorities. All under the guise of saving my soul.

  I brought it inside, set it on the table, and stared at it.

  After a carton of take-out and half a bottle of wine, I decided I could do this. I lifted the top off, reached in and pulled out a letter.

  "Because I care about you.

  "Love, Lisa."

  That, and the stink of formaldehyde, was all I got. I sneered. What else? I reached inside again and this time pulled out a white, silk sheet. It was soft and
supple and slipped through my fingertips. I spread it out over the table and stood back. Embroidered in the middle was the face of a blue Chinese dragon.

  “Hmm. That it?”

  There was one last item in that crate. Wedged in between slats of wood. Another card, this one not from Lisa, but written out in a big, machine-style calligraphy.

  Once in a Blue Moon Monday

  When you wish nothing more to do

  Touch the silken dragon

  And say a prayer for you:

  Wish on Sunday, that you on Monday

  Will have no more work ensue

  And as clearly as is written here

  It shall come boldly true!

  "Ahhh! Garbage! Crap!" I tossed it down. “Lisa…damn it!”

  But I didn't throw it away. Or burn it. Not that night. I just left it sitting there folded up on the dining room table.

  And then I forgot about it.

  I returned to my corporate kingdom again for several weeks. The silken dragon and its crate went into storage in some nook and I lost myself in the hubbub of deals and bottom lines.

  ***

  When it happened I never saw it coming. They say the thing that gets you is the disaster you never even thought of.

  It had been a deal gone wrong, really wrong and I was the fall guy. Oh, I could keep a job. A job, but position and prestige were no longer a part of it. The high-roller life became a distant dream again.

  “You can kiss partner goodbye, I can tell you that.” But that was just the tip of the ice berg because when the axe finally fell it hit harder than I would have thought. Jennifer left me too and that crushed me. Seven years and then, sayonara with not so much as a post card.

  Suddenly, I’d become just like everybody else.

  It was on a Friday afternoon some months later that I went home early and looked in the mirror. Really looked, you know. The kind of looking that makes you see past the physical façade into your soul. The kind of look my sister would approve of.

  I looked bad. Haggard and aged too soon. I just wasn’t the same and for all I tried, I could not get back on top. I needed something, but didn’t know what.