by Simon Archer
I could see the people around me clapping and cheering, but I heard nothing except the pounding of my own heart. It wasn't until Lottie smiled and bowed for the audience that the crowd noise slowly started becoming audible again. The roaring cheers became clear only after she was escorted off the stage and started walking down the aisle toward me. I didn't wait for her to reach the table before running down the aisle and taking her in my arms. No, I picked her up and held on to her as tight as I could without causing her discomfort. I buried my face in her shoulder and silently thanked the universe that she was okay.
“Well, it's good to see you, too,” she laughed once I had set her back down. She took me by the hand and led me back to our table. After we were both seated and I still hadn't let go of her hand, she looked over at me with a concerned expression.
I stared at her, and even though I opened my mouth to say something, words would not pass the fear that still remained in my throat. Lottie moved her chair closer to mine, took hold of my other hand, and let me stare at her without saying a word. I don't know how long it was before my voice started working again, but once it did, there was only one phrase I could get to come out.
“I love you,” I croaked hoarsely. Her eyes softened, and a slow, sensual smile lit up her face. I had never told her that I loved her before.
“I should have orchestrated a near-death experience sooner,” Lottie whispered playfully. She leaned in and softly kissed my lips. “I love you, too.”
We sat there, holding onto each other for the remainder of the show. Every time I looked at her, I saw a vision of myself down on one knee, hoping with everything in me that she would let me make her my wife.
By the time the show had ended, my blood pressure had returned to normal, and I could finally form complete sentences. Never letting go of her hand, I led her out of the theater and back to where Glen was waiting for us in my car. Once the car door was closed, she turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
“Would now be a good time to tell you that you are bleeding?” she said softly.
“What?” I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly.
“Your hand is bleeding,” Lottie reiterated. I looked at the hand that was not holding hers, and there was no blood. I glanced back up at her, confused. She slowly raised our intertwined hands and pulled them apart. Both were smeared with blood.
“Oh, shit!” Through the blood, I could see a gash in the middle of my palm. “I wonder how the hell that happened.”
“I imagine it was from the glass you shattered while I was on stage,” she said softly. I stared back into the gorgeous blue of her eyes.
“How did you know about that?” I was certain the glass had been cleaned up before she made it back to the table.
“The attendant told me on our way out when she saw the blood on both of us,” she informed me light-heartedly.
“Jesus, woman. Only you could possibly distract me from something as noticeable as bleeding!” I told her, feeling myself relax finally.
Lottie giggled quietly and glanced up toward the rearview mirror. “Glen?”
“All ready for you,” he replied as he handed something over the seat to her, a small first aid kit.
“How did Glen know to have that ready?” I was back to being confused.
Lottie brought her eyes back to mine and shrugged her shoulders playfully.
“Magic,” she whispered loudly. “I can't very well send you home damaged! Vila and Andi would freak!” I rolled my eyes at her as she began cleaning up our hands and getting them bandaged. When she was finished, she leaned over and kissed my bandage. “All better.”
She slid up next to me, and I held her close for the remainder of the ride back to her house. As we pulled in her driveway, Lottie sat up and turned toward me.
“Are you sure you can't come back to my place?” I asked her. I knew she had to give a volunteer lecture at a nearby community college early in the morning, but I was still hopeful that she would say yes. She put her hand on my leg and slowly slid it up my thigh. I instantly felt a stirring in my loins.
“If my presentation didn't start at six tomorrow morning, we would already be at your house,” Lottie answered seductively.
I took her face in both my hands and kissed her hard. When we separated, she was breathless.
“You are maddening, you know that?” I teased her.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed mischievously. She kissed me again before we separated, and I got out to open the car door for her. I held her against me for a long minute before stealing one last kiss and then watching her walk into her house.
When I got back into the car, I was suddenly exhausted. I heard Glen chuckling from the front seat.
“What are you laughing at?” I pretended to be irritated.
“The look on your face,” he replied without hesitation.
“What's so funny about it?” I shot back.
“I've seen it in the mirror before,” he commented.
“Oh, yeah? When was that?” I challenged.
“The day I decided I would be putting a ring on my wife's hand,” he answered nonchalantly. My mouth fell open in surprise.
“Man, you can't be serious right now!” I started. “Did the magician back there show you how to read minds, or what?”
“Nah, I've just been around for a while. I think it's great. You two are a good fit for each other,” he told me as we pulled back out onto the street and headed home.
I sat back in my seat and stared out the window, not seeing the world outside. I had never considered marriage as part of my life plan. But now that it was floating around in my mind, it brought a certain level of terror with it. I remained lost in my thoughts until the car stopped. My vision came back to me, and I saw that I was home.
“Thank you for hanging around for tonight,” I told Glen as I got out of the car.
“You're welcome,” he said back with a smile.
“Now, I don't want to see your face until Monday!” I joked with him.
“No chance of that! I have plans for a wild weekend of supervising new landscapers that my wife hired,” he informed me, rolling his eyes.
“Good deal,” I laughed at him. I reached in my pocket and pulled out my money clip. I peeled off a fifty-dollar bill and tossed it on the seat beside him. “Grab her a little something special on the way home, and maybe she'll let you off the hook!” I would have handed it to him directly, but he was in the habit of refusing tips since I had hired him on full time. I waved, turned, and walked towards the door to my house before he could protest.
As I turned the knob and opened the door, I was suddenly very aware of how satisfyingly tired I was. I was most certainly looking forward to a long night’s sleep.
3
Dave
I sank down in the seat of my car when I saw Bennett and Lottie come out of the theater. I was parked across the street from them but did not want to take any chances on them seeing me. Not yet, anyway. They climbed into the expensive sedan that Bennett bought for his personal chauffeur to use. Regardless of having a personal driver, he also owned several of his own vehicles and not the cheap kind like what I was stuck driving. The way that kid threw around money made me sick. He didn't deserve the money in the first place.
If it had been me who had gotten my hands on a winning lottery ticket, there's no way I would be sharing the money with anybody like that Clarence kid did with Bennett. As it was, I shouldn't have had to worry about money at all, but thanks to Bennett, my inheritance had been lost. At least I took care of that idiot kid who split the lottery winnings with him. Talking him into investing in my little video project had been a breeze, and I planned on making him squander every last bit of cash he had left.
Bennett’s car pulled away from the curb and out into traffic. I envisioned myself slamming the gas down in my own car and turning out directly in front of them. With any luck, I could cause an accident that did enough damage to pull Bennett’s life apart. A warmth grew in my ches
t, thinking of him down on his knees in despair. While I'd had similar scenarios play out in my mind over the past year, that was not the way I was going to get back at him. I had something much better planned.
I started reviewing my plot silently as I pulled my own car onto the road. My destination wasn't far, and it was late enough that nobody should be around when I got there. It was pitch black outside, and the moon seemed to be nowhere in the sky. The darkness almost made me miss my turn. At the last second, I slammed on my brakes and cranked my steering wheel to the right. My car disappeared into an alley between two tall buildings, and I knew that nobody would see me from the street. I turned the engine off and stepped out. There was a slight breeze, but it wasn't even strong enough to cool the warm night air.
I walked around to the trunk of my car and opened it. Reaching in, I opened a small metal locker and pulled out a folded cloth. I closed the locker again and laid the cloth on top of it. As I gently unfolded the material, I exposed what looked like a very old necklace made of dangling strings. Indeed, the artifact was old, but it was not a necklace. It was an ancient quipu and one of the first ever found. Quipus were some of the earliest known devices used for mathematical reasons. While there were very few people that would have any interest in it, it was of great interest to me.
I smiled smugly to myself. It had been a cinch to convince Lottie to lend it to me. She was under the impression that I would be using it for a documentary film I'd convinced her I was making. She had absolutely no idea the power she was handing me. It wasn’t magical, but it was power nevertheless.
However, the quipu was not what I needed right now. It was the blanket it was wrapped in that would be serving my purposes tonight. While the blanket looked like nothing more than a tattered cloth, it was actually made with gold. It had something else in it, also: remnant magic. The archaeologist who had shown up at my doorstep last year had absolutely no idea what he had in his hands. All he knew was that he traced the artifacts, ones he discovered during a volcano dig on the complete other side of the world, to me through some intricate genealogy that I had no idea existed. That man had changed my life without even knowing it.
Another interesting fact about the blanket was that the gold was not the valuable part. It was the thin, worn-down strands of material drapped around the gold that was of interest. That material came from a different blanket that had covered an old witch on her deathbed as she performed a spell. That spell, like all powerful magical acts, left a tiny bit of itself behind, which settled in the blanket.
Now, I had the threads from that blanket and fully planned to use the magic they contained.
I held the blanket in my hand, closed my trunk, and walked slowly around the car, feeling my way through the pitch blackness with one careful step at a time. I had waited for two weeks for a night this dark. As I focused intently on the fibers rubbing against my fingers, I stared into the darkness before me.
It had taken me hundreds of hours of spying on Bennett to figure out that this alley was special somehow. If I was correct, the blanket should confirm my suspicions. All magic naturally wanted to connect, so even a tiny bit of magic could reveal more. It could also simply reveal the location that magic had previously been.
I moved ahead slowly, straining my eyes, staring into the black air in front of me. About thirty steps down the alley, I thought I saw something. It was so faint at first that I thought it possible that my eyes were playing tricks on me. However, as I walked forward, it became clear that I indeed saw something. It was an extremely faint, glowing line in the shape of a box. It was so faint that even when I reached it, it was barely visible. I knelt down beside it and watched it dance in place, satisfaction coursing through my veins.
I had been right. Magic had been here, and I was certain it had something to do with Bennett Anders.
I squeezed the blanket a little tighter as I stood up and felt my way back to my car. I had done enough research to know that a magic footprint as faint as the box outline meant that more powerful magic had been kept inside it. While the container itself would possess some magical properties, whatever was inside it was what I would be looking for. When I reached the trunk of my car, I opened it, carefully wrapped the quipu in the blanket, and put it back in the metal box.
I was fully entitled to the smile that crept across my face. None of the players in the game I was orchestrating knew who I was. Somehow, by fate or by fortune, even in close proximity, my identity had never been revealed.
When I was back in my car, I turned the engine over and slowly drove through the alley to the street on the other side. There were no cars on the street, and I felt safe in the knowledge that I had not been seen. There were only a few things left to do before I would be able to make my true transformation and destroy Bennett Anders at last.
4
I was back in the meadow, following four hooded figures who were hurrying towards the river. The difference this time was that I knew I was dreaming. In fact, I had been having this dream occasionally for the past year. I looked up ahead and saw the genies splashing around in the water of the river. I felt a familiar panic rise up in my gut. The people in the hoods, my boss, the girl I was in love with, and two women I did not know, could not be allowed to reach the river. Otherwise, the genies would be exposed.
As I did every time I was in this dream, I tried to run towards them but ended up going back to walking because somehow, in that crazy world, walking was faster.
Everything played out as it always had right up until a beautiful woman in blue stopped me from reaching out and taking hold of Lottie’s cape. In every dream before, she immediately put her hands to the ground, and I watched my world be sucked in. This time, she was different. Her expression was more serious, and she pointed behind me. I turned just as Andi and Vila started floating toward the four hooded figures.
“No!” I called out, trying to warn my genies to stay away since they were wearing their trails of mist, instead of legs.
The woman in the blue dress put her hand on my arm. “Shh,” she said softly.
Suddenly I could not speak. I stood there, horrified as my genies started swirling around four humans that were not supposed to know they existed. Then my dream started to go back to normal. The woman put her hands together, lowered them to the ground, and everything around me flowed into them as she grew to huge proportions. She held her hands to her lips, and I watched her scatter my world with her breath.
I expected to be standing alone on a sea of white tile after the woman had destroyed everything, but that is not what happened. This time, the woman, back to normal size, was standing with me. Her presence startled me, and I took a step away from her. She tried to say something, but once again, I could not understand what. She reached out a hand and tried to touch me. I stumbled backward, trying to get away from her, but I ended up falling on the tile.
She reached her hand down, almost as if she was going to help me up, and at that moment, I felt myself being pulled from sleep.
I blinked my eyes open and squinted against the bright light flowing into my bedroom. One of the girls had apparently opened my curtains. I sat up and took a moment to shake off the dream. I’d had it so many times that it hardly bothered me after I woke anymore. After I swung my legs off the side of the bed, I took a moment to stretch before standing up. I had gotten the sleep that I had needed and was wide awake. I only paused to throw on a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt before heading downstairs. The enticing aroma of frying bacon and fresh-cooked pancakes greeted me at the bottom of the staircase. I made my way to the kitchen where the girls were floating around the stove.
“Bennett! Happy Saturday!” Vila greeted me. “Come right over here and sit down!” She sped over to me and looped her arm through mine, leading me to the dining room table.
This section of the house had an open floor plan so I could easily observe what was going on in the kitchen from where I sat down. When I was settled, Vila got busy loading the tab
le with platters of food. When she set down the last one, she reached to the middle of the table and took a napkin out of the holder. She promptly wadded it up and threw it at Andi.
“Hurry up and get over here,” she barked at Andi. “Do you think Bennett is going to wait all day to eat breakfast?”
“I'm going to light this napkin on fire and throw it back at you!” Andi snarled back. “He needs syrup for his pancakes if you weren't aware. I am making it for him since you forgot to!”
“I didn't forget to!” Vila huffed back. “You were supposed to do it all along, but you decided that today was a good day to wear your slow pants!”
“The fact that you would say that when I don't even have legs on shows that you deserve the title of ‘slow’ today!” Andi shot back snottily. She stuck her nose up in the air, satisfied with her retort.
Vila’s face turned red, and I saw her reach for another napkin.
“Ladies!” I said before she could grab it. “Nobody is slow, and I appreciate you both for making me breakfast. Vila, have a seat with me. Andi, take however much time you need.”
The girls glared at each other for a moment before complying. Vila switched from mist to legs and sat in the chair to my right.
“Of course, I will come to sit with you,” she said dramatically in Andi’s direction in an attempt to taunt her further. Her remark earned her another dirty look before Andi took the syrup off the stove, switched to walking, and made her way to the table. She sat down on the other side of me after putting the syrup in the middle of the table.
“What would you like to start with? We skipped the eggs today because you've eaten them every day this week, but we do have fresh blueberry muffins that I made,” she informed me, aiming her sarcastic attitude at Vila.
