How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book Two

by V. Moody

  The universe always had a way of letting me know how much of a fuck it didn’t give about me. Don’t be sad, it seemed to say. Things might seem bad now, but they could always be a little bit worse. Let me show you...

  There was no way to know how long Nabbo would be. I sighed and moved my fingers the way Nabbo had shown me. Of course it wouldn’t work, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do, might as well give the universe another opportunity to laugh in my face.

  So it was something of a surprise when a small blue flame appeared on the end of my finger.

  26. Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

  I stared at my finger for what seemed like forever, although I was still a bit stoned so it may only have been five second. With my other hand, I touched the blue flame dancing on the top of my index finger. It didn’t feel very hot, but it was definitely there.

  A gentle breeze drifted in from across the water and the flame went out. I continued to stare at what was now just my finger, then I repeated the hand movements to bring the flame back. Nothing happened.

  I tried a number of times, but I couldn’t make it reappear. It was fine, though. The flame had definitely been real and if it was possible once, it meant it was possible again. Just knowing that made a huge difference. Now I just had to figure out how I’d done it.

  My first thought was that the weed was responsible. Perhaps it contained some magical ingredient that allowed the smoker to do magic. But there was one flaw in this theory, which was Pitt. I had seen him do magic with the fish-calling, and he didn’t smoke. Then again, Nabbo was on his pipe pretty much 24/7, so there was always a cloud of smoke hanging over the platform. Second-hand smoke magic?

  It seemed a bit of a stretch.

  My other thought was that the weed had put me into a very relaxed state of mind. Just before I managed to produce the flame, I had reached a point where I really didn’t care, about anything. Not about the others going off together, not about being alone, not even about whether I’d be able to produce a flame.

  If not giving a fuck was the key to being able to do magic, I had the potential to become the greatest wizard this world had ever seen.

  Of course, trying to not care about something you actually care a lot about is no easy task. That’s where the weed came in. It had got me to a place where I stopped caring, I just needed to get myself back there and see if that did the trick.

  Since everyone seemed to be busy doing their own thing, I went back to camp where I could get a fire going the old fashioned way. I took Nabbo’s pipe with me, which was a bit cheeky, but he could always make another one. And I had saved his life, which was an excellent trump card to use as my excuse.

  It didn’t take long to start a fire. I leaned in to light the pipe and took some nice, deep drags of pondweed. The effects quickly washed over me and I returned to the warm bosom of stonedom.

  But the flame still wouldn’t work. I tried it a number of times, all to no avail. Even though I was stoned, I couldn’t recapture that feeling of general ambivalence from before. I cared too much (not something I ever thought I’d have to worry about).

  What was at stake was so huge, it was impossible to act like it wasn’t. I couldn’t help but get worked up about it as I made the finger movements.

  I took a break and attempted to calm myself, but my head was too full of the possibilities and my anticipation remained sky-high. Of course, there was one other way for a young man to release some of his tension. Yep.

  To be absolutely clear, this had nothing to do with everyone else getting laid and me feeling lonely. This was for science.

  I went into my tent and took care of business. I’m not sure what the world record is for quickest wank, but I’m pretty sure I smashed it. As I lay there, slightly out of breath, the sheer ridiculousness of what I was trying to do made me giggle uncontrollably.

  Eventually, my amusement at myself subsided and I tried to make magic happen. It worked first time. Flame on! I couldn’t believe it.

  I burst out laughing again. If I had to jerk off every time I wanted to use magic, it was going to make battling monsters very tricky—not many fights allow for a fap break.

  Still, I could use magic!

  The flame danced on my finger. It wasn’t a fireball, but it was a start. I blew it out and crawled out of the tent to find the rest of my party standing there with confused and slightly judgemental looks on their faces. The judgemental part may have been my imagination.

  “What were you doing in there?” asked Claire.

  “Er, magic,” I said. Which was true on a number of levels.

  Producing a flame there and then was not an easy thing to do. All four of them staring at me expectantly was a lot of pressure. I raised my hand and moved my fingers. A flame appeared.

  They were suitably stunned. And then they were shrieking and jumping up and down, hitting me with a barrage of questions. I told them about how being stoned had put me in the right frame of mind (I skipped over the other part) and they were keen to try it for themselves.

  We sat around the fire and passed the pipe around. They quickly got stoned, but there was a slight problem. Unlike me, there reaction to being baked wasn’t a zen-like chill, it made them horny—literally the opposite of not giving a fuck.

  They started giving each other sideways glances and flirty looks. None of them were able to produce a flame, unsurprisingly. Not often you need a bucket of cold water to get a fire going.

  I know I said I didn’t begrudge them their fun, but this was just irritating. Go off and shag yourselves silly in private if you want, but don’t get all hot and bothered in front of me. That’s just rude.

  “There’s something I want to say to you all,” I said. Their attention returned to me, reluctantly. “I know you guys have hooked up and are couples now.”

  They seemed surprised I had figured it out.

  “Ah, yeah” said Maurice. “Sorry about that.”

  “We didn’t want you to feel awkward, that’s why we didn’t mention it,” said Claire. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” joined in Flossie. Dudley also mumbled something apologetic.

  All the apologising was annoying. It wasn’t even sincere, the smug bastards. Sorry for having loads of sex when you weren’t. I wonder why Hallmark never printed that card?

  “I don’t care about that. I feel awkward most of the time already, you lot fucking isn’t going to change that. But I assume you haven’t been using any kind of contraception, so there’s a real danger one of you might get pregnant.”

  This dose of reality wiped the smug sympathy from their faces. Colin-Fu, black belt.

  “We really don’t need the extra problems something like that will bring. Right?” I looked to them for confirmation.

  They said nothing.

  “Look,” I said, “it’s not like having a baby would be the end of the world. People have been having kids in difficult situations since, well, since there have been people. It’s normal. All I’m saying is, it wouldn’t be helpful right now. Having to travel around with a pregnant woman, dealing with the birth, keeping the mother and baby safe when we get into fights… it’d all be a huge pain.”

  Nobody agreed with me, but they didn’t disagree, either. They sat there fidgeting.

  I continued. “All I’m saying is, if you do end up with a bun in the oven, I will be leaving the group to go off on my own.”

  Claire stood up, face contorted into a mixture of disbelief and outrage. “What? Why?”

  I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m just being honest with you guys. Like I said, being in a tough spot has never stopped people having kids. I’m sure you’ll do just fine without me.”

  “Why do you have to be like this?” said Claire. “That’s a really shitty thing to say, Colin.”

  The Sorceress Supreme was about to unleash her arsenal of guilt-inducing weaponry, I could tell. Well, fuck that.

  “I know we’ve come a long way together,” I said calmly, “but once
you have kids, everything changes. One for all and all for one becomes women and children first. Which is fine if it’s your women and children, but I don’t want to become a nanny to a bunch of sprogs, thanks very much. It’s your choice to have kids, and it should be your responsibility to look after them. Don’t you think that’s fair?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  Claire was the only one standing. She was also shaking with rage. “So, you’re saying we have to stop having sex or you’ll leave.”

  “What? No. How’d you come to that conclusion? There’s lots of ways to have sex without getting pregnant. Handjobs, blowjobs, up the arse. All I’m saying is I don’t intend to have my already crappy life turned into a bigger bag of shite just because you were having too good a time to remember to pull out.”

  Claire face got redder and she looked like she might explode any minute. “I am not going to have sex up the arse just to make you happy.”

  “Well it wouldn’t just make me happy, right Maurice?”

  Maurice was caught a little off-guard. “What? I mean yes. I mean no. Wait, what are we talking about?”

  “Well, you can forget it,” Claire screamed at Maurice.

  “But I didn’t even…” Maurice was at a loss for words.

  “And you,” Claire pointed at me, “you’re just jealous.”

  “Yep, you got me, Claire. I’m super jelly. So jealous, that I’m encouraging you to have anal sex. Because that’s what you do when you’re jealous, isn’t it? Try to convince the people you’re jealous of to to take it up the shitter. A well-known cure for jealousy.”

  Claire seemed unable to find the words to express her feelings. She turned to Maurice and pointed at him. “No!”

  “It wasn’t even my idea!” said Maurice, a little unconvincingly, if you ask me.

  Flossie suddenly got up. We all waited to see what she had to say. She stood very stiff with her head bowed, staring at the ground. “Ah… Ah… Ah don’t mind taking it in the boom.” She slowly turned towards Dudley, still intently gazing at her shoes. “Ah mean, if that’s what you want.”

  Dudley’s face did the kind of gymnastics that would’ve scored a perfect 10.0 at the Olympics. I can’t say for sure what was going through his mind, but my guess would be something along the lines of:

  Oh my God, this is it. The dream! The dream!

  No, wait, it’s a trap, she’s testing me. I should say I don’t want to.

  But what if it’s my one and only chance? How can I say no.

  Take the shot! Take the shot!

  “Izzat what you want?” asked Flossie bashfully.

  Reddest of all the red faces, poor Dudley eeked out a pitiful, “Nooooooooo...?”

  “You can forget it. All of you. Flossie, you’re sleeping with me tonight.” Claire grabbed Flossie by the arm and yanked her towards one of the tents. Flossie looked back at Dudley apologetically, just before she disappeared behind the tent flaps.

  Maurice and Dudley shared a sorrowful look with each other. I don’t think they knew what had just happened, other than something precious had been tantalisingly hung in front of them, and then cruelly snatched away.

  I sat back down by the fire and lit the pipe from my finger. And that’s how you teach people not to go around flaunting their good luck in front of those not so fortunate. Works like magic.

  27. Dudley Done Right

  For the next week, life was nice and relaxed. Nobody wanted to kill us, and we didn’t want to kill anyone; other than a few fish who, let’s face it, were too delicious to live.

  Claire was still a bit pissed off with me, but she had forgiven Maurice, at least that’s what it sounded like every night. Now that I knew they were all at it, I became aware of all sorts of sounds and I ended up moving my tent away from the camp just so I could get a decent night’s sleep.

  I may have convinced them to try other forms of intercourse, but I really didn’t want to be within earshot of cries like, “No, no, take it out. Take it out!” And that was Maurice’s voice.

  We fished, we swam, we messed around with swords. It was supposed to be hardcore training, but I don’t think you could call it anything other than messing around.

  I showed them all the moves the Princess had taught me, but I didn’t really have them down well enough to teach others. Still, it gave everyone a little more confidence to have specific moves to practise and there was a definite, if slight, improvement as we bashed each other with sticks.

  Even though I’d only had a couple of lessons, I was already far superior to the others. The footwork made an especially big difference as I outmaneuvered them and landed my hits. Don’t worry, I wasn’t as brutal as I was with Laney, and only tapped them lightly.

  I also took to running in the mornings. I would do laps of the lake in my bare feet like those African runners who always win the Olympic marathon. The idea was to toughen up my body, but I was starting from a position of marshmallow softness and my first couple of days were filled with painful sores and cuts. Which led to the discovery of a new kind of magic.

  On the second morning of my new training regime, I came to a limping stop as yet another sharp stone or twig had stabbed me in the foot. I lifted up the sole of my foot to try and sort out the bleeding. Dirt and grit covered the wound, which couldn’t be a good, so I sat at the edge of the water to clean it.

  Jolie came swimming over, her kid splashing about around her. Even though the frogman physiology was totally different to ours, something about her eyes and lips made her look very feminine. The more time we spent around them, the more human they all felt. And no, I was not horny for frog pussy. I’m not even sure there was such a thing.

  “You are injured?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Just a little bit. I don’t suppose you know any healing magic.” I said it as joke. Jolie reached her hand out, made a few finger movements, and touched the sole of my foot.

  There was a tingle and a few seconds later, the cut was completely gone. I poked my foot with a finger to make sure. No pain, no blood, all back to normal. Jolie was about to swim away.

  “Er, could you just show me how to do that?” I said.

  I had continued to practice my magic flame and was getting quite good at it. I’d come to the conclusion it didn’t require me to not care about everything to make it work, I just had to not care about the magic working.

  As long as I treated it like no big deal, the flame would come. The flame itself refused to be more than a tiny pilot light, unable to set fire to anything other than the most dry and brittle of kindling (or pondweed), but that was something to work on later.

  The fish-calling had been less successful. I could get a slight glow in the water, which the fish seemed to find mildly interesting. They came closer to have a look but then swam off. But the fact I was able to raise a little fishy curiosity at all was more than I expected, so I was very pleased.

  Jolie showed me the movements for the healing she had done, and I copied them until I had them down. Then I took out my knife and cut myself on the arm, careful not to make too big an incision. If I failed to make the healing work, I didn’t want to bleed out from accidentally cutting my own wrist.

  The magic worked first time. The cut vanished as I lay my hand over it. This was huge. I wasn’t sure how severe an injury I could fix—judging by the low level of my other abilities, probably only minor cuts and grazes—but the fact something like this was possible in this world made the idea of actually surviving here more than just a matter of luck.

  I returned to camp as the other were just waking from another night of shagging each other senseless (nice work if you can get it) and showed them my new trick. I didn’t just tell them, of course—where’s the fun in that?

  I forced Maurice to hold his hand out and cut him while shouting, “Don’t move, it’ll only hurt more. Look, trust me. No. No. Give it here. Stop crying, you baby.”

  Then I healed him. They all lost their minds and looked at me like I w
as their new god. Their evil god, but still, it’s nice to be feared as a superior being, even if it’s only until after breakfast.

  They all gave it a go, but failed miserably and begged me to heal the cuts I’d made on their arms. I refused, of course. I thought a little bleeding might encourage them to focus. I explained the whole not caring mindset they needed for it to work, but they couldn’t get the hang of it. They were hopeless.

  Actually, the one person I did have hopes for was Dudley. Not in regards to magic—he was as useless there as the rest of them—but with his archery skills.